Guild Wars 2

I think we can all agreed that currently thieves are stealing (no pun intended) all the attention when it comes to damage dealer/roamer/squishy.

Their OP superb damage coupled with spammable blinds, teleports, dodges, stealth, backstabs is driving to extinction the few eles and mesmers that remain (today we lost 2 top mesmer players due to this, on top of the countless nameless elementalists which plead for fixes long time ago after getting the boot up their …..feet)

Backstabs, without any kind of interaction on the taker other than bending over and taking it regardless of skillfully blocking it, blinding or evading the attack.

Blinds, which reapply on literally every second and then there is the fact that every ranged skill on thieves (except autoattack) applies a blind through this field.

Teleports that cure conditions and break stuns, rendering any form of CC, soft or hard, useless. On top of not only having one, or 2, or 3, or 4 , or 5……. just as many as initiative permit, on top of 2 freebies on low CD.

You cant give one class all the best tools for survival regardless of stats, give it the best single target damage and then allow it to take anybody else’s role and call it a day.

Suggestions; blind fields, same treatment the earth storm ele got; once every 4 seconds.
Teleports, increase initiative cost, give it 1/2 or 3/4 seconds precast, 1/2 activation.
Damage and boon stealing; needs an ICD and the damage needs some shaving down, specially spamable skills, something not along the lines of 8%, but rather 15-25%.
Backstab needs to be an opener, apply 10-15 vulnerability stacks to help vs bunkers but have normal or only slightly augmented damage to not be so upfronted.
Thoughts?

(screenshot taken April 15 post patch)

30/30/30/30/30 build is so OP

Cynz.9437:

30/30/30/30/30 build is so OP

I wont call you ignorant, but you sir need to know about the S/D and D/P that plagues sPvP. They have access to all of the afore mentioned stuff without having to fall in your uncivilized and near sighted fail of a joke.

Fortus.6175:

Cynz.9437:

30/30/30/30/30 build is so OP

I wont call you ignorant, but you sir need to know about the D/S and D/P that plagues sPvP. They have access to all of the afore mentioned stuff without having to fall in your uncivilized and near sighted fail of a joke.

Ah yes, the supreme D/S thief builds, how I despise them. And D/P? My god man, how can you possibly capture a point while your opponent is stealthed?

a thief can’t get a point when they r in stealth plz tell me u r being sarcastic

yet no need to be in stealth when the enemies are dead, so please, YOu tell me you are being sarcastic

Are Thieves the best DPS/burst assist roamers in the current meta?

I’d say, arguably yes.

But are they OP?

Far from it. Both build rely on a crutch for survival. and die near instantly without. Both builds also have very little in the way of condition removal and thus are very high risk builds to play.

S/D draws its survival from constant evades and teleports from Infiltrator’s Strike while D/P relies on the blinds from both Shadow Shot and Black Powder. Without these skills, both builds would be worthless.

So I don’t think nerfing them directly is in any way justifiable.

Instead however I’d like to propose the meta move away from excessive bunker builds and give more room to balanced DPS builds instead of the highly specialized ones we see currently.

Mesmer for example are formidable in 1v1 fights but their class mechanics fail them once things get a little more clustered. Eles rely too much on various boons to survive and given how powerful boons are, so is stripping them.

The solution isn’t further nerfing Thieves, it’s about making them meta more attractive to builds that aren’t either
a) bunkers/sustained DPS
or b) fast and bursty roamers.

I think the real discussion here is not about how Thief is OP but rather how a Thief can do better in anything a Mesmer and Elementalist ever did.

Thief is not OP (but I agree that stealth is) but rather Mesmer (Aside from some PU builds) and Elementalist are underpowered.

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

This was suggested in another thread and it seemed more than reasonable to me. Why not just change Pistol #5 to not drop a smoke field, but a dark field instead? This alone would solve a large number of problems.

You don’t want to hit the class too hard as it’s really not that overpowered right now. It’s overall strength is about the same as Guardians, Warriors, Necromancers, and Engineers. I’d much rather see Elementalists, Mesmers, and Rangers brought up to this level than go with the alternative and nerf more than half the classes down to the Ranger’s level.

It’s not about thief being OP, but about thief being centralizing.

Is thief stronger than other classes? no, because you can deal with them quite well. But you have to go way out of your way in order to deal with them. If you pretend thieves don’t exist, you’ll get wrecked. So the OP wants something done.

While I understand where he’s coming from, I don’t really agree.

Most thieves don’t build to spam stealth in PvP cause we are confined to fighting in tiny little circles where stealth loses it’s advantage. WvW however they are a problem, I just don’t fight them there anymore. Maybe one day those stealth/blind spammer will get bored of people not fighting them and rolling a respectable build.

Fortus.6175:

yet no need to be in stealth when the enemies are dead, so please, YOu tell me you are being sarcastic

1. Stealth
2. Assume opponent is completely unweary
3. ???
4. Everybody on opponent’s team is dead.
5. Profit

Yup.

they need to do something with bow though lol.

for some reason thief’s bow is way better than ranger’s bow lmao.

bow #5 is a joke as well ….

Thief currently has one role on a team right now: Roamer. As a roamer, you are relegated to certain tasks. In the case of the thief, they have 3 big ones.

1) They are in charge of creating uneven numbers in a fight. As an example, with their burst potential (D/P) they can easily support home node, and the home defender, from being invaded by 2 opponents. They jump on one target, spike him down or sit on him if you’re an S/D thief (props if your home defender brought him down to 50% health), and you can easily force one of the opponents to or close to downed state. Making the fight a lot easier to deal with. The good opponents will realize that something like this is the role of the thief and will be better prepared for it (keeping their eyes peeled while pushing far, and good communication with the team). If a thief can’t land that initial burst (at least for D/P), things have a potential to go downhill real fast, for reasons I will explain later.

2) They are also relegated to guarding other team members from any hard counters they might run into. One example is necro vs engi. Necro will always win against an engie if the necro knows what they are doing. A thief can show up, however, and ruin their day to save the life of the engie. Another example is another thief: i.e. thief vs. thief. One of the best ways of stopping a thief from forcing uneven numbers is to send your own thief at him.

3) They also decap far node quickly. This is the key factor to matches in order to generate a snowballing effect. You can’t just sit on two nodes and hope to win in this game – it’s just not possible. You could get 19 kills in the game and hold two nodes, and the match will still be a pretty close game by maybe 50 to 100 pts. This also can be very risky, however as you don’t want your team to die on mid because of your antics at far node – more so if your journey to far node is impeded by a home defender because you will be wasting your time fighting that thing. Regardless, smart quick decapping (i’m not even talking about full capping here) is critical to establishing a solid lead over the other team.

The biggest drawbacks to thieves are their lack of sustain (less so for S/P or S/D) and lack of being able to actually contest points because of stealth (only for the case of D/P, but S/D and S/P aren’t a class to just sit on a node like warrior). Contrary to popular belief, thieves are pretty terrible in 1v1’ing things. Many matches are lost in soloque because a thief thinks its their role to solo push far all match, only to ether sit on his kitten doing nothing because he is constantly disengaging, or dieing on node trying to contest it. If a thief blows all his utility skills (shadow refuge being the critical one) and you’re still in control of the fight, then you almost guaranteed your win. Thieves have absolutely no sustain (to a lesser extent regarding S/D and S/P). So much so that there are certain matchups that they will, or rather should, not touch without some type of team support (1 other guy will do, most of the time) simply because it’s ether just too risky or you’ll be serving your team better doing something else. So Thieves, as other classes designed for burstyness like mesmers or eles, are not really OP. Thieves are just simply outshining all other burst classes right now as they have the best mobility and a bit better survivability than the other two. Burst damage is pretty much equal across all boards.

As it stands, the only reason you really want to take mesmer is for portal. Portal bombing can be incredibly effective. Insta teleporting 1-2 additional people to far to jump the home defender can lead to a quick win on far and can lead to a crushing defeat for an opposing team if done properly. You can do a lot of other neat stuff with portal (like far push at the beginning of the match then insta porting back) But access to portal is the only reason why you would want to bring mesmer.

The reason why mesmer has a harder time is more likely because the overall meta has hit them harder than the thief class. Their build options are pretty limited, if they wish to spec for providing the most for the team, in comparison to thieves probably because they are forced to bring certain skills in order to just survive. For example, you can’t really run anything but Mass Invis on a mesmer because you need lyssa runes and the shortest cooldown (90 secs) is mass invis. Condi nukes arn’t the only problem, they also don’t have as easy of a time dealing with things like warriors or S/D thieves. In short, mesmers have to yell “help me!” more than a thief does.

Eles are just in a terrible spot altogether right now because anything can deal with an ele very easily, though originally you would take them because of the added team support that they offered. AoE boons and heals in their hay-day were very valuable to the team. Now we have spirit rangers who heal for 420 each second.

is that not what the thief is meant to do by being the highest dps class in the game drive away other classes from using full zerk !
so the other classes play a more defensive team built play style !

caveman.5840:

is that not what the thief is meant to do by being the highest dps class in the game drive away outer classes from using full zerk !
so the other classes play a more defensive team built play style !

No

oh my.

now thieves are single handedly forcing everyone into a new meta.

the thief hatred has reached a new level.

lol it is not a new meta the thief has all ways ben the highest dps class

ok go full zerk and watch what happens when u get back stabed !
don’t run full zerk …. don’t try to make your class something it is not !

I really dont think thieves are OP, but I do think they are a big part of why condition bunkers have become so popular.

Most classes simply cant go DPS builds because thieves are the kings and gods of such builds, and everyone knows if you are in a berserker gear and a decent thief attacks you, you’re seriously in trouble.

Their presence just makes it very hard to anyone to play anything except bunky specs, and some classes cant bunker well without being a condition spec, so you end up with people condition bunkering.

Now this is very hard to change without nerfing thieves (which they really dont need), simply because any class running a DPS build is going to be extremely vulnerable to BS. Now.. you can use blocks and evades to try escape BS, but essentially thieves can stealth longer and more often than people can block and evade and theres a lot of luck and guesswork in countering BS anyway.

The most obvious solution is giving people counters to stealth, just as being able to see them if they come within 200 range, so that people have a chance of playing DPS without getting 1 hit, but thats a serious nerf to thieves and generally is an unsatisfactory solution IMO. I dont know what the answer is, but thieves DO stop other people from playing DPS and force others to bunker.

better team play !
not mindless running around !
making u a prime target for a thief !

Im too inexperienced in pvp, but from semi decent player prespective good thief is unkillable. Made myself long uptime stealth build – fail to kill= run away. 13 dodge build and 1s downtime on dodges till another 13s dodge streak – hop around like bunny. But i wont say that class its op. 1×1 – maybe too strong, but it gets weaker when number increases, like 2×2 and so on. Game isn’t balanced around 1×1.
1 thing id like – missing attack from stealth ( either thats is dodged, missed, enemy walked out of the range) should reveal stealh, raises skill level a bit.
By the way – are you all nuts? clearly warrior healing signet is op, you guys lost or something /irony

Ofc thieves don’t LOOK op, cause nobody is allowed to play the builds they destroy. They have as much influence on build diversity as the ENTIRE condi spam meta that doesn’t let players make builds that have trouble with conditions.

Teleports are the largest offender because they negate 90% of defensive mechanics instantly and thieves can run so many of them with absurdly low cooldowns. This means that glass builds which rely on skills for survival simply can’t compete

Introp.8465:

Im too inexperienced in pvp, but from semi decent player prespective good thief is unkillable. Made myself long uptime stealth build – fail to kill= run away. 13 dodge build and 1s downtime on dodges till another 13s dodge streak – hop around like bunny. But i wont say that class its op. 1×1 – maybe too strong, but it gets weaker when number increases, like 2×2 and so on. Game isn’t balanced around 1×1.
1 thing id like – missing attack from stealth ( either thats is dodged, missed, enemy walked out of the range) should reveal stealh, raises skill level a bit.
By the way – are you all nuts? clearly warrior healing signet is op, you guys lost or something /irony

As the saying goes,

“what can be seen, can be killed” = Warrior’s Healing Signet (no irony…lost there)

“what can not be seen. can kill you” = Thief’s Stealth (Irony…Lost, Nuts here)

Anything else?

I should add that there is a very real possibility that the addition of more stat combos on amulets will be a massive hit to thieves. The real counter to a thief is damage, but currently there is no set between zerk which dies too fast and soldier which does too little damage.

More amulets could still be nice for thieves but they will be running less bursty anyhow

not like i am saying nerf wars or anything ?
but if u r having trouble with thieves better team play is the the way to go

Fortus.6175:

You cant give one class all the best tools for survival regardless of stats, give it the best single target damage and then allow it to take anybody else’s role and call it a day.

Yup… this is my last post in this thread…

I’d like to just comment on Jack’s first statement as I did on another thread regarding a very similar subject.

When it comes to sPvP, mesmers and elementalists simply just do not perform in the roaming roles as well as thieves do. The drawback is that the thief in general is more vulnerable in any situation outside of 1v1, making its role EXCLUSIVELY for roaming.

The problem is not about the thief class but it is with the current metagame and some issues pertaining to mesmers and eles in sPvP.

While on the contrary, mesmers can hold a point and even aggress far better than thieves. Ultimately, mesmers shouldn’t be running backdoor roaming stealth builds on par with thieves seeing as that’s literally the niche role the class is designed to fulfill.

Thief, when compared in combat ability to other classes like guardian, engineer, warrior, and ranger, actually doesn’t have too much going on for it. Nothing’s inherently overpowered about the class so much as it is the lack of usefulness mesmers have in the current sPvP meta and the obvious underpoweredness of elementalists.

Ultimately, traveler runes need to be accessible in sPvP to make the mesmer more mobile and subsequently more viable. And of course, eles just need a rework so that the class can fulfill a chosen role if built for it instead of just being bad at everything and being required to run a particular build for semi-viability.

Fortus.6175:

(today we lost 2 top mesmer players due to this, on top of the countless nameless elementalists which plead for fixes long time ago after getting the boot up their …..feet)

If a mesmer loses to a thief, then the mesmer is just plain bad. Mesmer is by far the best 1v1 class.

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

This genuinely hurt my feelings. I hope you’re happy with yourself. I guess all your problems would be gone if i JUST DIDN’T EXIST DAD!!!… i mean cough Aveneo

ryan.6217:

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

This genuinely hurt my feelings. I hope you’re happy with yourself. I guess all your problems would be gone if i JUST DIDN’T EXIST DAD!!!… i mean cough Aveneo

All problems would be gone if our Parents; Arena.net, didn’t play FAVORITISM

style.6173:

Fortus.6175:

(today we lost 2 top mesmer players due to this, on top of the countless nameless elementalists which plead for fixes long time ago after getting the boot up their …..feet)

If a mesmer loses to a thief, then the mesmer is just plain bad. Mesmer is by far the best 1v1 class.

Let’s see what the 2 top NA pvp mesmers has to say about this. They recently re-rolled to Thieves.

Burnfall.9573:

Introp.8465:

Im too inexperienced in pvp, but from semi decent player prespective good thief is unkillable. Made myself long uptime stealth build – fail to kill= run away. 13 dodge build and 1s downtime on dodges till another 13s dodge streak – hop around like bunny. But i wont say that class its op. 1×1 – maybe too strong, but it gets weaker when number increases, like 2×2 and so on. Game isn’t balanced around 1×1.
1 thing id like – missing attack from stealth ( either thats is dodged, missed, enemy walked out of the range) should reveal stealh, raises skill level a bit.
By the way – are you all nuts? clearly warrior healing signet is op, you guys lost or something /irony

As the saying goes,

“what can be seen, can be killed” = Warrior’s Healing Signet (no irony…lost there)

“what can not be seen. can kill you” = Thief’s Stealth (Irony…Lost, Nuts here)

Anything else?

sorry, didnt understand what u mean by it, not native eng speaker.
What guild wars 2 players needs to do is learn to play the game and stop whining about everything. There is no fairness in life, there should be none in games as well. 1 class beats another, 1 player beats other. Face it someone will always be superior and you will always be superior to someone. All you see these days in forums is nerf cries left and right. Kinda offtopic but reminds me of league of legends community ( who plays/played it understands) – it is everyones but yours fault when you lose

style.6173:

Fortus.6175:

(today we lost 2 top mesmer players due to this, on top of the countless nameless elementalists which plead for fixes long time ago after getting the boot up their …..feet)

If a mesmer loses to a thief, then the mesmer is just plain bad. Mesmer is by far the best 1v1 class.

I just played S/D thief yesterday, I think that the mesmer I annihilated will disagree with you.

Introp.8465:

Burnfall.9573:

Introp.8465:

Im too inexperienced in pvp, but from semi decent player prespective good thief is unkillable. Made myself long uptime stealth build – fail to kill= run away. 13 dodge build and 1s downtime on dodges till another 13s dodge streak – hop around like bunny. But i wont say that class its op. 1×1 – maybe too strong, but it gets weaker when number increases, like 2×2 and so on. Game isn’t balanced around 1×1.
1 thing id like – missing attack from stealth ( either thats is dodged, missed, enemy walked out of the range) should reveal stealh, raises skill level a bit.
By the way – are you all nuts? clearly warrior healing signet is op, you guys lost or something /irony

As the saying goes,

“what can be seen, can be killed” = Warrior’s Healing Signet (no irony…lost there)

“what can not be seen. can kill you” = Thief’s Stealth (Irony…Lost, Nuts here)

Anything else?

sorry, didnt understand what u mean by it, not native eng speaker.
What guild wars 2 players needs to do is learn to play the game and stop whining about everything. There is no fairness in life, there should be none in games as well. 1 class beats another, 1 player beats other. Face it someone will always be superior and you will always be superior to someone. All you see these days in forums is nerf cries left and right. Kinda offtopic but reminds me of league of legends community ( who plays/played it understands) – it is everyones but yours fault when you lose

I mean he’s also bad at English as well. But your post is just defeatist. If something is leading to degenerative gameplay it should be removed. When players began tackling opponents on breakaways in football (soccer) to prevent them from shooting, they banned tackling from behind because it was leading to degenerative (unfun, uninteresting, skill-less) play. You don’t just let the game fall to pieces because you think the natural world is out to get you and games should mirror your concept of reality

Introp.

What is to learn when you are created to be the best?

What is to learn when you are design to be the best?

What is to learn when your destined to be the best?

What is to learn when everything you do wrong is right?

What is to learn when you are given the best of everything?

What is to learn when you are admired for everything you do?

What is to learn when you are adored for everything you do?

What is to learn when you are cared for, for everything you do?

What is to learn when you are rewarded for everything you do?

What is to learn when you praised for everything you do?

What is to learn when you are given attention to everything you do?

What is to learn when you are given success to everything you do?

What is to learn when you are given power to everything you do?

What is to learn when you are given the tools to exploit others for your personal gain?

What is to learn when you are given entitlement to everything you want?

What is to learn when you are given entitlement to everything you need?

What is to learn when you are given unlimited access to everything you want?

What is to learn when you are given unlimited access to everything you need?

What is to learn when you are treated special by Arena.net?

Burnfall.9573:

wall off text

Learn to play the game. Get good at it. Improve your gameplay isntead of looking into other things. Are you one of the best guildwars players and you can’t beat thiefs just because of they skillset? Do you think with 1 class you can beat all other class, would not that make mentioned class op instead?

Srsly this pathetic nerf talks are out of control. This happens when people are given a thought they can cause some changes into the game is they whine long enough. I die to good thiefs in seconds, because its is me versus good player. I beat bad thiefs or die to few aswell. I think that thief steal spell is kinda too strong, not stealths ( it can stea water field from ranger, and all boons from mesmer or 10k damage spin from warrior, like really balance). But i dont cry about thiefs. Class is strong, some players are good. You die in pvp, its part of it, being killed.
Stop trying to make anet nerf your “enemy”, improve and kill it yourself, petty whiners

I can honestly say that I thought thieves were OP until I played one. After playing one a lot and understanding how they work, I find them to be the easiest thing in the world to kill.

What most people that don’t play thief don’t get is that even if they trait to be super tanky, they are as squishy as can be. Every class has access to some sort of AoE like ability (even if it is a warrior/guard gs swing). When they stealth and try to backstab you, or are sneaking around, don’t just stand there waiting for that blow to come. Attack the area around you. That is the counter play. And if they come up and try to heartseeker spam you, don’t run like your instinct is to do, because that is exactly what a thief wants. Rather you should drop all of your dps on them, and watch them crumble even faster than you are. And last but not least, for your complaints of the spamming blindness…. step out of the blind circle gasp, and drop more aoe since it isn’t affected by blindness! Or auto attack to remove blindness if it is on you.

And before you ask, I don’t main thief. I actually main guard and have 6 classes at level 80 (the other two are 40 plus). I just think that you have to play a class to 80 at least before asking for nerfs on it. You can’t beat what you don’t know. :-)

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

+1 Couldn’t agree more. I’m amazed how spot on it is, it is exactly what i’m always telling my guildmates. Stealth, Initiative, never existed. Just every word. Wow.

Only difference is, i surrendered and are playing thief, even though i prefer the playstyle of my ele (i love attunement dancing) and the style of my mesmer (i just love everything about it, clones, the butterfly pink style, shattering, phantasms,… ) more.

I don’t mind losing because i’m getting outplayed, i failed or my builds weakness is countered by another players strength, but to lose because of my class chosing becomes really annoying. Especially since there shouldn’t be a holy trinity and a rule of class x kills class y because of healer tank and dps. Every class should hold his own (more or less, of course every class has its own emphasises) and player skill and/or the build should determine the outcome.
I simply outperform my ele and mesmer (especially in wvw, doing 80%wvw, 20%mists) with less effort, less risk and more reward.

On no other class i ask myself so often why am i allowed to do this or that and am simply stunned what this class is, similiar to helseth’ outrage in his twitch video in the other thread.

@DeceiverX.8361
there are runes of speed in pvp available!

i thinkittenufalating.8479 and ens.9854 are right in some assumptions. thiefs are very hard to fight against for other glasscanons cause blind, stealth and teleport or constant evades.

d/p has enough blindes and stealth. as glascanon u cant afford to miss that crucial blow to bring the thief in a defensive position. and u hasnt either the time to clear blind with spamming aa.

s/p has teleport on demand, blind and stun + evadeframes to survive even in a big teamfight. overextend spam pw and jump out.

s/d has teleport on demand and can overextend and pressure enemy. like before its crucial for a enemy glascanon to hit. but s/d evades just to much and has very high pressure on glascanons. just rewatch old esl tourneys has see how seizer negates all other glascanons with s/d thief.

regarding s/d thief i think http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Feline_Grace needs an overhaul it should work like http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Natural_Vigor to avoid stacking with vigor.

so unlike other roamer/ glascanons every viable build for thiefs delievers enough survivability in the weaponsets if played right. the last crucial thing is initiative negates cooldowns, thats why thief has an advantage of every other glascanon that is not thief. the blind + evade is enough to negate mistakes by the thief with help of initiative. also is allows to “spam” crucial skills in a short time frame, another advantage of other no thief glascanons.

so not only condition(bunker) push other roamer out of meta. thiefs do it also.

oh plz, we already have tons of flame threads about “OP” thief….
l2p means, you have to learn your enemy, too
at last, your sweety “mesmers”(or other classes) get nerfed by ANET and not by Thiefs ….. we also get nerfed by every patch …..

Thieves are not OP 1vs1. Just are simply a very strong asset for every team. Much more valuable than a mesmer or elementalist.

I don’t get how Mesmer is an underpowered class, unless they nerfed phants by about 80% in the last 4 months…it’s an extremely GOOD 1v1 class.

Agree with the OP..
Take a look at this pic

thief did more dmg than Ranger..Rangers Longbow attack speed is 1sec and must be at max range for max dmg..

Thief did a leap, a gap closer and huge dmg..

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

+1

Soilder.3607:

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.

Thief has to rely so much on stealth to get anything done as an old man has to rely on his cane. And personally I find the Thief class very unfun both playing one as well as playing against one as there is little to no counterplay involved.

+1

Agree..
But i have to add that almost everything in GW2 has no counterplay…
How do you counterplay the Healing signet?
How do you counterplay the no obvious animation condi hell from Necros?
How do you counterplay the autoattack from Spirit Rangers?

Form.8741:

I don’t get how Mesmer is an underpowered class, unless they nerfed phants by about 80% in the last 4 months…it’s an extremely GOOD 1v1 class.

Nobody’s disputing that, but the issue is far more complex than you’re making it out to be.

Just read the good posts in this thread and learn.

Dardamaniac.1295:

thief did more dmg than Ranger..Rangers Longbow attack speed is 1sec and must be at max range for max dmg..

I dream of the day when Rangers actually co-ordinate their spikes/defensive measures with their pets. Or really, rather CAN co-ordinate with their pets because the AI in the game is just soooooooooooo bad. Right now, Rangers just let their pet sit on a target and provide high sustain damage on them – that’s really it and it leaves many to greif about them on the forums.

In the meantime, you have to remember that Thieves can’t even hope to have the amount of sustain that a ranger can accomplish with 30 points into wilderness survival and some condi gear.

style.6173:

If a mesmer loses to a thief, then the mesmer is just plain bad. Mesmer is by far the best 1v1 class.

If a mesmer brings one of the strong 1v1 specs, then they are not of much use to their team. I know you think it is different, but you are mistaken.

Form.8741:

I don’t get how Mesmer is an underpowered class, unless they nerfed phants by about 80% in the last 4 months…it’s an extremely GOOD 1v1 class.

Hardcountered by thief. => no point on using mesmer for roaming..it is outperformed by thieves.