Guild Wars 2

@swagg
Well considering they just nerfed burst by about 20% I thought you’d be happy with that. Also the trinity wouldn’t make this game better, it would make it far worse since you’d have to rely on someone else doing all of your healing. I’m happy we’re not in a “[insert class], lfg” and not getting back, “nope, sorry, need a monk.” I’m happy that this game relies on both build and reaction time to play it successfully. The skill stacking you’re so fond of still exists as a central part of combat, but it requires some modicum of coordination between 2 or more players, which I especially like. An example, a guard and I (thief at the time) went up against a warrior and necro. He was able to put down a light fild and I was able to whirling axe (stolen skill) on top of him cutting the necro DPS out of the equation for about 3 seconds, turning the tide of the fight.

As much as I dislike the change to crit damage during this last patch, I like where guild wars is going right now. People are asking about builds, skills traits, runes, and general helpful tips again.

Just as a finishing question: if you’re truly getting instagibbed, how would having a party members who has to juggle their cooldowns amongst the entire group help you not get instagibbed? Combat would have to be slowed down to a snail’s pace and limited to a smaller scale for something like that and party organization would have to have more dedicated slots in PvP situations because you would have to bring at least one healer.

I get that the guild wars 2 model is not what you think it should be and you have come up with ideas to change every aspect of every class out there. Guild wars 2 is the model of what I think a game should be, and I like where it’s going.

Read your post. You want to eliminate roles that exist in the game simply because you don’t like them or don’t feel those mechanics should exist. If you have to change every aspect of something for you to enjoy it, it might not be time to move on.

Burnfall.9573:

Swagg, " Thief is overpowered because it serves a role that doesn’t need to exist in a game without a dedicated healer or damage-mitigation class. GW2 wasn’t built for pure classes. An argument could be made that pure classes are a burden on any MMO altogether. In any case, Thief outright shouldn’t be in GW2 because it breaks a lot of common rules that go into balancing combat.

Very well said.

Even these mmo’s in the market: Wow, Rift, A.A, Tera, P.W, B.S, R.O.M, A.C, D.C.U.O, L.O.R., FF14, including furure mmo’s: Bless, Titan, Black Desert, E.Q, L.O etc…..

Do Not violate balance and common rules for Balance.

except this one,

Guild Wars 2

How does Guild Wars 2 stand a chance against them?

They all know the consequence of not abiding by the balance rules and common rules.

They all know the consequence of ignoring the community main concerns.

Why us Guild Wars 2 choosing the path of self-destruction?

and yet here you are playing the game.

Lol these babies are so melodramatic. They complain, you give them solid factual answers, and they disregard anything you’ve said, from experienced players and keep crying

Stealth isn’t broken, it has many easy counters. But keep posting month after month. But instead of writing out detailed descriptions of why you think it’s broke , it might be easier and faster just to say “hey guys, I’m really bad” because that’s all we are really thinking.

The average thief is just a special learning curve one must learn to overcome when roaming, and good thief may not die, but he will run if you make him feel like he lost. Many roamers can run and scream like little girls when they know they will die, but can escape to save their precious stacks.

If one was truly intent on nerfing stealth, I would say make that 3s revealed timer pop up whenever a thief comes out of stealth in combat to keep them from sitting in stealth and pecking you with a CnD whenever it wears off. It would also make kiting a better counterplay to stealth builds, because if their stealth burns out before they hit you, they get no backstab.

CodenameZeus.3945:

Anyways, i play as a thief myself. Thieves are pretty powerful, and can reset fights easily, but we’re really weak to [..] heavy CC (talking to you, kitten hammer warriors..)

If a thief loses vs a hammer warrior, that is simply a skill issue, sorry. D/P, S/D, S/P and even S only easily beat hambow in 1v1.
However, when I see the average thief in WvW/PvE I can understand why they think their class is weak/underpowered but I am afraid it has nothing to do with the class itself.

Bowflex.4502:

Lol these babies are so melodramatic. They complain, you give them solid factual answers, and they disregard anything you’ve said, from experienced players and keep crying

Stealth isn’t broken, it has many easy counters. But keep posting month after month. But instead of writing out detailed descriptions of why you think it’s broke , it might be easier and faster just to say “hey guys, I’m really bad” because that’s all we are really thinking.

Guessing a thief’s location, dropping AoE, and timing blocks/evades to the possible in coming invisible attack is are not true counters. Counters negate your skills, like blind to an earth shaker combo, berserker stance to a condition burst. Nothing we do can pop you out of stealth, prevent you from going into stealth, or give us any temporary indication of your location while in stealth. Stealth has no counter.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revealed

And out of stealth, we are two shot.

The fact that condition thieves have made it into the game, in their current state, is all the proof that a person needs, that someone at Anet should be fired.

That one spec breaks this game, so hard, that playing now is pointless.

…I’d be embarrassed to recommend GW2 to a friend

Bowflex.4502:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revealed

And out of stealth, we are two shot.

So everyone should roll ranger, surround themselves with traps and wait for your arrival, or quickly build an arrowcart and max out AC mastery in order to counter. None of those seem real easy. The only option that can be considered a viable counter is knocking you out of shadow refuge.

Quit using the quishy argument and stop building super glassy instagibb builds. I have fought thieves and eles that were really tough yet still did enough damage to get the kill.

Like I said before, in PvP and OS Dueling thieves are not really OP. In open field WvW however, they can be terribly broken.

So nerf a class based on its performance in open field wvw, thereby making them struggle everywhere else?

Sure…. That makes sense.

Bowflex.4502:

So nerf a class based on its performance in open field wvw, thereby making them struggle everywhere else?

Sure…. That makes sense.

I never said nerf. I just said it is broken and should be fixed.

Julie Yann.5379:

Bowflex.4502:

So nerf a class based on its performance in open field wvw, thereby making them struggle everywhere else?

Sure…. That makes sense.

I never said nerf. I just said it is broken and should be fixed.

So you expect to be taken seriously when you simply lay a blanket statement over a class, provide no backup information to reinforce your claim, and still think you’re right? Please.

Honestly, stealth is not a broken mechanic. D/P is a broken mechanic Anet decided to give to thieves. I main thief and D/P is extremely easy to play since you literally can perma stealth away. I bet every single person in here QQing fought a perma stealth easy mode thief, doesn’t mean stealth needs “fixed” because let’s be real, when Anet tries to fix something they completely ruin it.

Julie Yann.5379:

Guessing a thief’s location, dropping AoE, and timing blocks/evades to the possible in coming invisible attack is are not true counters. Counters negate your skills, like blind to an earth shaker combo, berserker stance to a condition burst. Nothing we do can pop you out of stealth, prevent you from going into stealth, or give us any temporary indication of your location while in stealth. Stealth has no counter.

There are literally dozens of posts on these forums that go into some detail about how to fight at thief. Some are even step by step instructions based on the weaponsets that thieves use.

“Nothing we do can pop you out of stealth.”

True, but that doesn’t force you to stand still and take a backstab. You have the ability to move, don’t just stand there and keyboard turn hoping to take a front stab. Try to anticipate when a thief is going to backstab and evade it. If you’re on a class that also has access to stealth or aegis, use those to gain an advantage. It’s really not that hard.

“Nothing we can do can prevent you from going into stealth.”

That is such an amazingly false statement that you will be nothing but criticized by thief players. Including me. There are very few skills that thieves possess that instantly put them into stealth, and most of those are used only when the thief is only in a precarious position. CnD and the infamous BPS+HS combo are both able to be interrupted. CnD is actually quite a risky skill to use against a good player of any class. A properly timed dodge or block wastes 6 of a X/D thief’s initiative, usually leaving them with half of their initiative reserve to work with. If they miss 2 CnDs in a row, that fight is practically a loss for the thief (unless you operate under the impression that there is absolutely no way to fight a thief and you just give up before the fight even starts).

“Or give us any temporary indication of your location while in stealth”

It’s generally pretty easy to see where the thief entered stealth, and with basic knowledge of the move speed of the thief class you can actually very easily determine when a thief will be behind you after stealthing. You may be shocked to discover that skillful and veteran thief players actually land CnDs against enemy thieves who are stealthed quite commonly. Doing that once is getting lucky, sure, but doing it consistently in fights against multiple thief players? That’s knowledge and skill, and that proves that you can fight against thieves just fine and that stealth isn’t as strong as the anti-thief crowd makes it out to be.

You, like many other players of this game, don’t understand that the reason that there isn’t a hard count to stealth is because of how vulnerable the thief is outside of stealth. If every class has multiple methods of removing the thief from stealth, the class would see 75% of its builds destroyed, and the class as a whole would no longer be very viable. Another important point to note is that many players don’t realize the true counterplay to stealth in this game is prevention, not removal. Stealth isn’t a boon. It’s not something you should want to “rip” from your enemy. It’s something you want to prevent them from ever entering. Don’t wait for the thief to make the first most. You’d be surprised how well you can perform against a thief if you time your interrupts and evades properly. After playing thief for so long myself, I can honestly say fighting 90% of thieves is hilarious easy. As soon as I see a BPS dropped, I throw an interrupt at that thief. HS is negated, and the thief doesn’t get his stealth, so he now needs to use his utilities defensively, or die. Those are his two choices. There is no middle ground.

TL;DR: Stealth isn’t countered by traditional means. It’s countered by prevention. Stop the thief from entering stealth, don’t wait for him to stealth before you start to actively try to defend yourself. The best defense is a good offense vs thief.

Sandpit.3467:

Just get rid of the stealth mechanic and thieves will be fine. Worst game mechanic ever. In a straight fight it’s a two player game where only one player is allowed to play.

LOL. Take away the only survivability a thief has and it’ll be fine. Also take away it’s highest damaging hit, second best heal, and half of it’s overall utility and it’ll be perfectly balanced. They would need to give us other things it wouldn’t just be “fine”.

style.6173:

Burnfall.9573:

Swagg, " Thief is overpowered because it serves a role that doesn’t need to exist in a game without a dedicated healer or damage-mitigation class. GW2 wasn’t built for pure classes. An argument could be made that pure classes are a burden on any MMO altogether. In any case, Thief outright shouldn’t be in GW2 because it breaks a lot of common rules that go into balancing combat.

Very well said.

Even these mmo’s in the market: Wow, Rift, A.A, Tera, P.W, B.S, R.O.M, A.C, D.C.U.O, L.O.R., FF14, including furure mmo’s: Bless, Titan, Black Desert, E.Q, L.O etc…..

Do Not violate balance and common rules for Balance.

except this one,

Guild Wars 2

How does Guild Wars 2 stand a chance against them?

They all know the consequence of not abiding by the balance rules and common rules.

They all know the consequence of ignoring the community main concerns.

Why us Guild Wars 2 choosing the path of self-destruction?

and yet here you are playing the game.

and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game.

Why settle for the same theatrics?

by the way,

when did i ever mention playing the game?

Also, why play a game that intentionally ignore their community concerns ?

What make any one think a New rabbit will come out of the hat?

If anyone don’t know the answer, here’s a hint…

The Same Rabbit/ The Same Deception and Lie since day 1

Enjoy watching the same prerecorded show.

Burnfall.9573:

…
when did i ever mention playing the game?
…

Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it.

Burnfall.9573:

and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game.
…

Aside from the standard l2p solutions, yeah that’s another solution.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Julie Yann.5379:

Bowflex.4502:

So nerf a class based on its performance in open field wvw, thereby making them struggle everywhere else?

Sure…. That makes sense.

I never said nerf. I just said it is broken and should be fixed.

So you expect to be taken seriously when you simply lay a blanket statement over a class, provide no backup information to reinforce your claim, and still think you’re right? Please.

I don’t expect anything at all. I’m just calling it like I see it. In PvP you are fighting on points and closed areas and stealth is easier to manage in those conditions. When dueling in OS, the thief can’t get out of combat and reset the fight. They have to manage their initiative and play strategically and makes for some good fights.

In the open field of WvW however a whole different breed of thief populates the landscape. Full of glassy insta-gib specs that sneak up on you and spam their best skills and stealth out if they don’t get the kill. Reset repeat as needed until they get the kill cause their initiative replenishes faster than our defensive ability CDs and heals. That’s what is broken.

I have a leveled thief but I seldom play her. The reason is that in any reasonable fight a thief should win. A thief who loses a fight where they weren’t grossly overpowered has only themselves to blame.

I hate to lose and I hate even more losing on thief because I know I went into the fight with all the odds in my favor.

Yes, the class is grossly overpowered. No, A net doesn’t give a kitten what the community thinks.

I love this game…. everyone talks like they are professionals at the game… “I play to such a high standard, I never have problems with any class. Just learn to play! Y r u QQ?!”

…anyway… heres my “professional” two cents….

Stealth isn’t stealth. Its invisiblity, AND it’s incredibly hard to balance in any game! People who take the time to master it, will always find a way to exploit the crap out of it, then when it gets nerfed, they say “this class is useless, I quit.”

.
SPvP and Thieves

Thieves don’t own in sPvP because of nodes. They can not take nodes stealthed so they have to be visible and then eat all the damage of the, usually some kind of bunker, who can eat of thier damage and knock them on thier behinds for trying.

Of course you’ll take one thief, they are excellent roamers and great at bursting people down who are on low health. But why would you take 5!? Variety makes your group more flexible and viable.

.
WvW and Thieves

In WvW on the other hand, where fights can be constantly reset, thieves OWN. There is no fight a Thief can not win as long as they don’t push too hard or over extend. They can catch almost any class in the game, or at least follow closely. With an infinite amount of stealth they can make multiple attempts at escaping a fight, whenever they are low on CDs or initiative.

I see almost all roamers to be thieves, at least 60% (and I think I am being generous to other classes here.) I dont know where you see all these Engineers, but maybe people on your server gave up on playing thieves too early?

.
Why are Thieves OP? (Potentially)

Thieves have several advantages that no other class has access to:

1.
Thieves control the tempo of the “dance” like no other. They can slow down a fight when they need initiative and thier cool downs to come back, or play hard and fast when they are ready to do so. They do this with distance, stealth and by keeping you in combat, so your health doesn’t regenerate. And if possible, getting out of combat and regening thier own health back. Then they try again, after they swapped some stuff around, cos’ now they know what you can do…

2.
Unlike mesmers who can only stealth so many times before they cannot stealth anymore (due to long cooldowns and a limited number of stealthing abilities), well-practiced thief players can have an exceptionally high stealth uptime by managing thier iniative effetively.

This means they are constantly dropping target. Which means if you come into the fight with the wrong weapons, weapons that cannot cleave for example, there isn’t much you can do about it.

Even with the right weapons, you are still swinging at a target you cannot see and hoping for a hit or two, you could get lucky or not. This genereally works in an experienced thief’s favour since he can see whats going on and you can’t.

3.
This is very important, since one of a thiefs weaknesses is his susceptablity to crowd controls. Almost all CC requires a target. Sure after stealth, a thief cannot go stealth for three seconds, but you have to acquire him as a target (gotta love tab targeting random deers), start the cast time (of which most CC has some kind of cast timer), hope it goes off before he stealths.

Now if you have 300ms, which is normal for anyone outside of america. Then there is a 50/50 chance that your CC got him and the server registered the CC before you dropped target due to stealth. But you can’t tell cos’ he is stealthed now. So either you unload your burst and hope you got him or you let him escape and hope you can last long enough for another attempt.

What this effectively results in is this: You have to build your build around managing thieves. No other class in the game forces you to adapt to them, in the way thieves make every other class adapt to fighting them.

.
Conclusion

On builds where I have built them around surviving and dealing with thieves, they are not so bad, (depending on how cheesy thier build is). But if I dont have the build or right gear at the time of the fight. Its not even a competition. At least with other classes there is a chance for winning. But with thieves, what you need to beat them, I find, is generally very specific.

.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to my 2 cents.

Zero Day.2594:

Burnfall.9573:

…
when did i ever mention playing the game?
…

Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it.

Burnfall.9573:

and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game.
…

Aside from the standard l2p solutions, yeah that’s another solution.

“Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it.”.

I was being sarcastic.

ZeroDay,

I see that you enjoy tormenting those whose Cause differ than yours?

“and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game”.

This time i wasn’t.

A word of advice to Thief Class:

Embrace Yourselves

" When Justice Is Done, It Brings Joy To The Righteous But Terror To Those Who Commits Injustice "

I object to statements that stealth is a thief’s only survivability. Thief has extremely high access to evades, blinds, teleports and interrupts which provide high survivability without any need to invest in defence.

The only reason why you can generally predict a roaming thief who is in stealth is because most roaming thieves are one-dimensional thinkers. I dodged the same thief’s basi venom 3 times in different encounters in the same session because of how much he telegraphed it, even though he was using the instant cast mug to land it.

Burnfall.9573:

Zero Day.2594:

Burnfall.9573:

…
when did i ever mention playing the game?
…

Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it.

Burnfall.9573:

and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game.
…

Aside from the standard l2p solutions, yeah that’s another solution.

“Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it”.

I was being sarcastic.

Although ZeroDay,

I see that you enjoy tormenting those whose Cause differ than yours?

“and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game”.

This time i wasn’t.

A word of advice to Thief Class:

Embrace Yourselves

" When Justice Is Done, It Brings Joy To The Righteous But Terror To Those Who Commits Injustice "

Lol, I have to laugh at thieves being righteous and that they are somehow are unjustly hard-done-by.

Seroiously, though, maybe you should just say what you mean, rather than being sacrastic and having tell people later on. Tone is notoriously mis-interpreted in text.

Myst.9182:

Burnfall.9573:

Zero Day.2594:

Burnfall.9573:

…
when did i ever mention playing the game?
…

Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it.

Burnfall.9573:

and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game.
…

Aside from the standard l2p solutions, yeah that’s another solution.

“Well guys, the thief became so OP that even people not playing the game are buying accounts on GW2 to QQ about it”.

I was being sarcastic.

Although ZeroDay,

I see that you enjoy tormenting those whose Cause differ than yours?

“and yet i am quickly moving away from playing the game”.

This time i wasn’t.

A word of advice to Thief Class:

Embrace Yourselves

" When Justice Is Done, It Brings Joy To The Righteous But Terror To Those Who Commits Injustice "

Lol, I have to laugh at thieves being righteous and that they are somehow are unjustly hard-done-by.

Seroiously, though, maybe you should just say what you mean, rather than being sacrastic and having tell people later on. Tone is notoriously mis-interpreted in text.

I was just making a joke about people buying accounts to QQ… Though the alternative to improving is quitting… I mean no one really needs to endure so much frustration.

Burnfall though… Well… that’s just Burnfall. I have this weird suspicion that he talks like that in real life. He’s always like that, and he once posted an anecdotal story about palm trees being trimmed and how that relates to thieves being OP.
(Actually here it is, pretty neat… https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Nerf-Wish-list/page/4#post3402200)

Although…. it is really fun to “talk-back” at him using his own style… but I’m just too tired and in an hour (flood control) I probably wont care to respond…

2221122 is not OP.
/sarcasm

Julie Yann.5379:

Bowflex.4502:

Lol these babies are so melodramatic. They complain, you give them solid factual answers, and they disregard anything you’ve said, from experienced players and keep crying

Stealth isn’t broken, it has many easy counters. But keep posting month after month. But instead of writing out detailed descriptions of why you think it’s broke , it might be easier and faster just to say “hey guys, I’m really bad” because that’s all we are really thinking.

Guessing a thief’s location, dropping AoE, and timing blocks/evades to the possible in coming invisible attack is are not true counters. Counters negate your skills, like blind to an earth shaker combo, berserker stance to a condition burst. Nothing we do can pop you out of stealth, prevent you from going into stealth, or give us any temporary indication of your location while in stealth. Stealth has no counter.

Man l2p, there are really alot counter to stealth like AOE or taking in mind that stealth duration is 3 sec for build without shadow arts 4 sec for build with 30 shadow arts, so if you see thief going in stealth you know that after 3 sec he must put inside him backstab if you take this in mind you can dodge easy the backstab, or go for AOE killing it when he try to backstab you.

simonerd.8672:

Julie Yann.5379:

Bowflex.4502:

Lol these babies are so melodramatic. They complain, you give them solid factual answers, and they disregard anything you’ve said, from experienced players and keep crying

Stealth isn’t broken, it has many easy counters. But keep posting month after month. But instead of writing out detailed descriptions of why you think it’s broke , it might be easier and faster just to say “hey guys, I’m really bad” because that’s all we are really thinking.

Guessing a thief’s location, dropping AoE, and timing blocks/evades to the possible in coming invisible attack is are not true counters. Counters negate your skills, like blind to an earth shaker combo, berserker stance to a condition burst. Nothing we do can pop you out of stealth, prevent you from going into stealth, or give us any temporary indication of your location while in stealth. Stealth has no counter.

Man l2p, there are really alot counter to stealth like AOE or taking in mind that stealth duration is 3 sec for build without shadow arts 4 sec for build with 30 shadow arts, so if you see thief going in stealth you know that after 3 sec he must put inside him backstab if you take this in mind you can dodge easy the backstab, or go for AOE killing it when he try to backstab you.

None of those are actual counters and this is only true if you are playing against nub thief with the same predictable attack pattern.

BTW I did L2P, I have a level 80 thief which I rolled to learn their strengths and weaknesses so please don’t give me that argument. If you read some of my other posts you will see that I find the thief class to be pretty balanced in PvP and in OS duals even though fighting a thief is mostly just educated guesswork. It’s in open WvW that they are broken.

Julie Yann.5379:

Bowflex.4502:

So nerf a class based on its performance in open field wvw, thereby making them struggle everywhere else?

Sure…. That makes sense.

I never said nerf. I just said it is broken and should be fixed.

Thiefs are made to solo players, if they didnt had mechanics to win, that woould be broken.
WvW is group wide gameplay, some classes excell on solo other in group play.

NeroBoron.7285:

I’m fine with the damage in my opinion the problem is that backstab hasn’t a cd. The thief goes invis again (like nearly the hole fight )and can use another backstab. And the most annoying thing: you block or dodge his attack from invis and he doesn’t get revealed. So he can just try again and again and again.

You think the cost of 6+ ini and the revealed debuff of 4 secs are no CD?
Nice story dude

But I agree, that stealth need a rework.

D/P Trickery Thief is on the verge of being unplayable in spvp after the current changes, because of all the cleave damage going around.

Atm, really the only thing a D/P trickery thief might be able to do in a fight is to force uneven numbers in small-scale fights.

S/D is still alive and well, but is as shame as it’s a spec that is completely dependent upon its dodges to get its job done, whereas D/P trickery relies on a prevalent array of skills/abilities that all have certain advantages and drawbacks – of which many inexperienced players are unaware of.

Since they have so many options in a fight, the strength of D/P Trickery in general (and what separates the good thieves from the bad) is it’s inherent change-ups in all its combos/abilities. Many new players aren’t familiar with this play-style, kitten many people are used to dealing with basic rotations. Even then, newer players still have no idea how to deal with other players who have such a predictable rotation, regardless of the class – heartseeker spamming is in one of those areas. But this is all besides the point.

In short, the critical thinking needed to play D/P trickery is far and above an S/D thief, but D/P Trickery is on the verge of being unplayable because of all the cleave damage going around. If you haven’t caught on by now, in my opinion, S/D is boring whereas D/P Trickery is not. This is such a shame that these topics dissolve into what they do, as they are anything but productive – from both sides of the coin.

Shockwave.1230:

Can you please compile a list of combat functionalities that have this “opportunity cost”?

Hrm… interesting idea.
Shatter on Mesmers definitely has an opportunity cost. Taking away your illusions, especially your Phantasms, at the wrong moment can and will cost you a fight.
Another one I can think of is attunement swapping on Elementalists. You cannot immediately swap back, as such swapping at the wrong moment may preclude you from winning the fight in the next 10 seconds.

Aeolus.3615:

Julie Yann.5379:

Bowflex.4502:

So nerf a class based on its performance in open field wvw, thereby making them struggle everywhere else?

Sure…. That makes sense.

I never said nerf. I just said it is broken and should be fixed.

Thiefs are made to solo players, if they didnt had mechanics to win, that woould be broken.
WvW is group wide gameplay, some classes excell on solo other in group play.

Like I have also said before. Dueling in Obsidian Sanctum is a solo fight and they are balanced (yet still quite strong) there since they can’t escape combat (the point is to actually win the fight not run from it.) and thieves have to manage their initiative an actually play the class the way it should be played.

Those same mechanics applied in the wide open fields of our borderlands is has created toxic gameplay atmosphere. Roll an instagib build, sneak in, spam all your best skills and stealth out. Lather, rinse repeat as needed. On the opposite end you get the high survivability stealth spamming bullkitten build that can troll groups of 5 or 6 for as long as they please and still manage to down a few in the process. That is where all the QQ comes from.

Turtle.4130:

dancingmonkey.4902:

I am curious where you get the statistics to make your assumptions a t s e. Most roamers are engineers? What server is that on? I know on Maguuma, SoR, JQ, TC, and BG, I almost exclusively see thieves, with the rare engineer. I list those servers specifically, simply because one of them is the one I am on, and the others are the ones I have battled against lately.

Any player who wants to win any roaming fight right now should roll Engineer, why?
Condi meta? Check
Good 1v1? Check
Good 1vX? Check
Good AoE? Check
Good survivability? Check

Bam, you got your golden profession.

Necro fits all that too… then golden profession for roaming is necro too?

The problem is the very concept of a Thief class is antithetical to “Fair and fun” play. People say they want covert/subtle options supported by the game, yet have no actual idea what any of that means.

People don’t hate thieves or think thieves are over powered, they realise it’s the stealth mechanic when it can be applied near indefinitely resulting in a situation where only 1 player is capable of playing. it’s an unbalanced and unfair position. Most people wouldn’t care if the stealth mechanic had a 10 second cool down where the player can’t re-enter stealth once leaving it for 10 seconds but when you have a situation where a class can hit for half a players hp pool, stealth near instantly (or as another thread shows, do damage and never leave stealth) then do the same half hp pool hit again without giving the other player any real way to deal with it in a 1 vs 1 situation unless you’re an extreme bunker build it essentially becomes an exercise in griefing rather than a balanced situation.

Protoavis.9107:

People don’t hate thieves or think thieves are over powered, they realise it’s the stealth mechanic when it can be applied near indefinitely resulting in a situation where only 1 player is capable of playing. it’s an unbalanced and unfair position. Most people wouldn’t care if the stealth mechanic had a 10 second cool down where th player can’t re-enter stealth once leaving it for 10 seconds but when you have a situation where a class can hit for half a players hp pool, stealth near instantly then do the say half hp pool hit again without giving the other player any real way to deal with it in a 1 vs 1 situation unless you’re an extreme bunker build it essentially becomes an exercise in griefing rather than a balanced situation.

Another one, who see the real issue.
I wish it would give more people like you.

Stealth is currently a very big problem for this game and thieves, also that the whole class is build around stealth and SA don’t make it better.

Sartharina.3542:

The problem is the very concept of a Thief class is antithetical to “Fair and fun” play. People say they want covert/subtle options supported by the game, yet have no actual idea what any of that means.

Well yes.
That’s also something people need to understand I think, the concept of a thief/rogue/backstabber class goes against balanced 1v1 play. As does the concept of a mind-tricking duellist like they’re selling the Mesmer as.

Which isn’t necessarily a problem, because this isn’t a 1v1 game. One class can be balanced around their superior power in taking out long reinforcements/runners, so long as that role provides a meaningful function in PvP and they’re weaker in the group engagements (with Thieves and Mesmers they are, check, but “highwayman” and “anti-highwayman” lacks game support, IMO).

Amonatory.2453:

Honestly, stealth is not a broken mechanic. D/P is a broken mechanic Anet decided to give to thieves. I main thief and D/P is extremely easy to play since you literally can perma stealth away. I bet every single person in here QQing fought a perma stealth easy mode thief, doesn’t mean stealth needs “fixed” because let’s be real, when Anet tries to fix something they completely ruin it.

alas this person has stated the factual truth
thief by itself is perfectly fine as long you fight smartly or have proper gear

as it stands

Initiative has to be replaced with cooldowns

or Heartseeker needs its finisher removed or have a cooldown on its finisher

also Reveal stealthed players that hit Blocking/invuln/aegis players wich would make their “high” skilled high reward play be actually about having skill and timing

The worrying thing is that no matter how OP a profession is, ANet always listen to those wanting more OP if it’s one of their favoured professions. Thieves are very favoured so expect more buffs incoming.

Sandpit.3467:

The worrying thing is that no matter how OP a profession is, ANet always listen to those wanting more OP if it’s one of their favoured professions. Thieves are very favoured so expect more buffs incoming.

The last year’s worth of thief nerfs say “hi”.

Hi everyone,

Since we are receiving a lot of feedback about this topic, we are gathering it in a dedicated thread. You are very welcome to repost your question, comments and concerns in this discussion.

Thank you for your understanding.