Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if it’s a great idea, I mean in order to remove aegis/block/… they would have to sacrifice extra initiative or use a unfavorable move (I’m especially thinking about shortbow) so perhaps we can shift the stealth skill to F2 with a one time activation per stealth.

Tim.6450:

I’m not sure if it’s a great idea, I mean in order to remove aegis/block/… they would have to sacrifice extra initiative or use a unfavorable move (I’m especially thinking about shortbow) so perhaps we can shift the stealth skill to F2 with a one time activation per stealth.

You’re imagining using your auto once to clear blind/aegis, right?
Ironically, the first skill in the dagger auto chain hits twice, so this wouldn’t actually work, though with shortbow it would because bouncing attacks don’t bounce if the initial hit is blocked (I think).
I don’t think this would be good, though, even if it did work. There needs to be some risk/reward system in place for anticipating a stealth attack (you can’t see it, so even more so), even if that cost is just three initiative. With your solution, blind/aegis would sort of work if autos were available, if you could manage to time them well enough to stop a 1/4 cast time ability, but I wouldn’t really consider that a matter of counterplay and intelligent choices because it would really just be about luck.
A major portion of this, for me, is that stealth already screws over active defenses far more than it does passive ones, which in my opinion is very different from what is healthy, because they rely on a certain amount of reaction time which stealth removes entirely. This way, active defenses would become vastly better at dealing with stealth than they are now, but not to the point that stealth is just reduced to spamming of another sort (unless someone blows all of their active defenses during the duration of your stealth, in which case it still isn’t a problem because that assures your victory).

Thieves backstabbing from stealth and two shotting was the reason I became a filthy condi bunker. Even if I’d survive their opening strike and healed they’d just go into stealth and do it again and this time my heal would be in CD.

I’d fight back, but, where are they?

The final straw were the warriors with HP regen, lots of armor, and stunning (and killing in a few swings while stunned).

Between having fun with a squishy build that required acrobatics and bunkering down to laugh at those same thieves and warriors. The laughing is fun too.

+1, doesn’t hurt stealth too much while helping those who are oblivious to it. I like it!

Better suggestion than breaking stealth on miss/block/evade…

Not sure it solves the general QQ’ing of “butz i cantz sees demz when they stealthzors. i kant atak dem when dey stealthzors”…
Or the other complaints like, too much healing in stealth…
Or other complaints like reseting fights. (Or many other issues found in the Nerf Wish List)

Does solve your targeted problem though, promotes skillful usage of backstab and punishes misusage. So the only “problem” I have with it is that it doesn’t solve the other problems… meaning after this change there will be another (or a few), which then overall will make it a lot more painful.

NinjaEd.3946:

+1, doesn’t hurt stealth too much while helping those who are oblivious to it. I like it!

You got that a bit wrong… those that aren’t completely oblivious are getting the help… those that are completely oblivious are still going to eat the backstab. Also those that stand in place when the thief stealth and do nothing… are still going to eat the backstab… coming back to QQ.

Fortus.6175:

…

- “If you nerf stealth, we will be left with no defence!!11!!”
- “Why don’t you fix Warriors first or PU Mesmers first!”
- “L2P”
- “Stealth is working as intended… L2P”
- “Stealth trap”
- “Stack toughness” <—— HAHAHHAHHAHA

Pick one, or of them.

lmao! +1. Thief players in a nutshell.

Standard responses to those that smell of terrible skill, ignorance, hatred, and rage (as well as other emotions). If you ever received those types of responses, congrats your posted smelled of those things.
There’s a big difference between P Fun’s post… and those that come to just cry about some bad experience that they have or keep having.

+1 to this idea. Not only does it prevent the spam of certain stealth attacks, it also rewards players who successfully dodge or block the attempt. I SO want to see this come into play.

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

yesterday a blocked 5 times a backstab in 3 seconds, ofc the thief landed the sixth…..

@Zero day

You see, despite what you might believe, I also play this game, and I want the best for it because at the end of the day I would be shooting myself in the foot. The fact that you are so defensive towards thieves and are even willing to aggressively attack a player who has provided countless constructive feedback on top of suggestions in order to improve the health balance overall (thieves included) shows that there is some underlying thing that you are afraid of. If thieves were to be balanced, people wouldnt complain (or as you childishly call, ‘cry’).

Your attitude is what needs to change. I recognized the potential in the OP’s suggestion and supported it. The second post was a hilarious remark that had humorous intent. I simply thanked the joke, which sadly has some underlying truth to it.

Anyways, @topic:

I was thinking the other day, that given how stealth lacks a true counter int he game, and how we should start moving away from upfront damage and mindless stealth spam, that perhaps in order to give thieves something to make up for it, what if there was a bonus damage that stacked overtime if the thief hadnt use stealth?

How would it work:

Just like ele’s fire trait line, for every period of time spent outside fire they get a higher chance to burn attackers. Except that we have to make it appealing to thieves, enough to stop stealth stacking. Lets say every 5 second soutside stealth you gain 40 power, up to 160 extra power, the trade-off would be -60 power in the first 2 seconds of stealth, giving them a meaniful choice to attack slower or wait and let the defender have some breathing room.

Fortus.6175:

snip

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpmqlcxyKseRSM6RnJtoBpQv+VUB9/pAdB-TkAg0Ecp4yxlhLJXWuGEc+A
Try this build and hunt them down each match

As a thief, I believe that a possible solution would be this:

Across all classes, whenever you activate a skill while in stealth, you are temporarily visible for 3/4 of a second. Basically you have to come out of the shadows to attempt an attack.

This would help players find the thief better and make it so that thieves have to be more careful and not so reckless.

Also maybe backstab could cost around 2 initiative to activate.

@Fortus

I take it you received a response like that at one point in time… Given your attempt at retaliation… Pretty sure you attacked me if anything with your last post. I just simply said who would receive such responses, I didn’t specifically point fingers at anyone.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Eloquence.5207:

- “If you nerf stealth, we will be left with no defence!!11!!”
- “Why don’t you fix Warriors first or PU Mesmers first!”
- “L2P”
- “Stealth is working as intended… L2P”
- “Stealth trap”
- “Stack toughness” <—— HAHAHHAHHAHA

Pick one, or of them.

It’s hard to when none of them actually answer my post, silly. It’s not about the damage, or even stealth in any way. Literally, the only thing that it affects is being able to use stealth skills without paying attention to any active defense. Even then, the only thing you have to do is use your lowest cost ability once, or wait out a dodge, but at least you can’t just backstab twice at no cost to ignore both blind and aegis.

Attacking from stealth while blinded doesn’t ignore the blind or aegis; they are still working as intended, you just aren’t revealed. Why should a thief be revealed after he/she MISSES an attack (therefore an attack did not land)? And most thieves will try to steal aegis rather than to get rid of it.

Super Riceman.8702:

Fortus.6175:

snip

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpmqlcxyKseRSM6RnJtoBpQv+VUB9/pAdB-TkAg0Ecp4yxlhLJXWuGEc+A
Try this build and hunt them down each match

directions unclear; engis do not enter into GC mesmer or GC ele division.

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

I think a better solution is putting the stealth attack on CD to 2-3 seconds. That way the thied can clear aegis or blind while in stealth, but they cant just spam 1 till it hits.

Jelzouki.4128:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Eloquence.5207:

- “If you nerf stealth, we will be left with no defence!!11!!”
- “Why don’t you fix Warriors first or PU Mesmers first!”
- “L2P”
- “Stealth is working as intended… L2P”
- “Stealth trap”
- “Stack toughness” <—— HAHAHHAHHAHA

Pick one, or of them.

It’s hard to when none of them actually answer my post, silly. It’s not about the damage, or even stealth in any way. Literally, the only thing that it affects is being able to use stealth skills without paying attention to any active defense. Even then, the only thing you have to do is use your lowest cost ability once, or wait out a dodge, but at least you can’t just backstab twice at no cost to ignore both blind and aegis.

Attacking from stealth while blinded doesn’t ignore the blind or aegis; they are still working as intended, you just aren’t revealed. Why should a thief be revealed after he/she MISSES an attack (therefore an attack did not land)? And most thieves will try to steal aegis rather than to get rid of it.

…You quite obviously didn’t read the OP. If you can’t be bothered to even read my TL;DR, I will condense it further: Stealth attacks can be used once per stealth, whiffing doesn’t have any other effect other than being unable to stealth attack again until you receive another stealth effect.
Learn2readn00b

Fortus.6175:

Super Riceman.8702:

Fortus.6175:

snip

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQFAUlUUpmqlcxyKseRSM6RnJtoBpQv+VUB9/pAdB-TkAg0Ecp4yxlhLJXWuGEc+A
Try this build and hunt them down each match

directions unclear; engis do not enter into GC mesmer or GC ele division.

U gotta flip them on their back and attack their weak point for massive damage
(its not like GC mesm or ele but it still works since the auto attack can crit for 2k, you just have to get the jump on them to get shots of and use your toolbelts, You also have block, evades and knock backs.)

ANet should ditch the whole initiative system for a day. Let’s see what happens to Thieves when they have regular cool downs.

+1 so thieves actually need l2p

LordByron.8369:

Akari Storm.6809:

I’ve killed thieves on every class. I’ve killed every class on my thief. I’ve killed every class with every other class.

Some just aren’t willing to learn the mechanics of each class. Doing that will give you a better understanding of what and when to expect certain abilities.

It’s what every pvper should do. Learn every class.

And you didn t read the part where if the thief want to run away in WWW he can t and you can t do anything to prevent it.

By design.

Thieves aren’t the only classes that can do that either. They just do it better because that is the way they were designed.

The only real solution would be:

Make stealthed characters visible (the same scrambled invisible character overlay you see when you or party members are invisible) if the character is in front of you (maybe 150° view angle) and within 600-900 range. Get rid of the spottet debuff.

@OP:
Uh, I first wanted to write a troll post, then I reread the proposal and I find it a very good idea. It makes spamming #1 less effective and would raise the skill level needed to play thief well.

While it sounds like a good idea, it might have some serious drawbacks or might be too hard to utilize backstab and such skill effectively. However, it is a sound idea and I hope ANet will try this one out and test it at least.

Backstab should cost initiative. Move it to f2 and give thieves an auto attack in stealth so the intelligent ones can clear blinds/aegis at no cost.

Imo, revealing them for a missed backstab would be way too harsh. Allowing one attempt doesn’t really fit with the class mechanic. Making backstab cost 3 initiative is the perfect middle ground.

Wouldn’t mind this. And hey if Guards become overpowered vs Thieves, maybe they’ll buff us some other way.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Maybe the thief can be visible after taking a hit or some damage like from the moment the thief disappear if he take 1000 damage he will reappear, something like that. With some tweak it might work, no?

Vortok.6975:

Maybe the thief can be visible after taking a hit or some damage like from the moment the thief disappear if he take 1000 damage he will reappear, something like that. With some tweak it might work, no?

Then you realize thieves are super squishy and an auto attack reveals them

Or they go into stealth with a few condi on em and get auto revealed since the only reliable clear is tied to stealth….

People need to let this go with thieves and learn about how they work

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

With the kind of reactions going in this thread, I for one am not even going to get into the discussion, or consider the suggestion originally posted. Sorry P.

I think this is a really bad idea. Against skilled players it is kinda hard to land a proper backstab. And with this idea you would just have to wait +/- 5 seconds to attempt another backstab, while each time your initiative drains.

What about a mesmer with scepter? He can block 90% of the backstabs is he uses his stealths when thief stealths and dodges when the thief is stealthed. No way for a a thief to kill him then, heal is recharged before you can land a backstab.

I think you should try thief yourself before you make any suggestions, because vs newbs thief is superior in anyway, because they don’t know what to do vs a vanished target. But if against skilled players i think stealth is pretty balanced as it is now.

I do agree that Shadow refugee noobs are pretty annoying, but there are also plenty ways to push or pull them out.

I have an idea to stop spamming skills like heartseeker and it might work for BS too. The idea is that each time you use the same skill, the initiative cost goes up by 1. So it you heartseeker 3 times in a row it would cost 3+4+5 ini. But when you do another skill in between or do an autoattack then it will be reset to the original cost. This could apply for BS aswell that the cost goes up from 0→1→2 each time you try to backstab. Simply giving BS an initiative cost goes against the idea of stealth and is just too initiative intensive.

IcyFlame.9705:

I think this is a really bad idea. Against skilled players it is kinda hard to land a proper backstab. And with this idea you would just have to wait +/- 5 seconds to attempt another backstab, while each time your initiative drains.

What about a mesmer with scepter? He can block 90% of the backstabs is he uses his stealths when thief stealths and dodges when the thief is stealthed. No way for a a thief to kill him then, heal is recharged before you can land a backstab.

I think you should try thief yourself before you make any suggestions, because vs newbs thief is superior in anyway, because they don’t know what to do vs a vanished target. But if against skilled players i think stealth is pretty balanced as it is now.

I do agree that Shadow refugee noobs are pretty annoying, but there are also plenty ways to push or pull them out.

I have an idea to stop spamming skills like heartseeker and it might work for BS too. The idea is that each time you use the same skill, the initiative cost goes up by 1. So it you heartseeker 3 times in a row it would cost 3+4+5 ini. But when you do another skill in between or do an autoattack then it will be reset to the original cost. This could apply for BS aswell that the cost goes up from 0->1->2 each time you try to backstab. Simply giving BS an initiative cost goes against the idea of stealth and is just too initiative intensive.

I didn’t suggest an initiative cost for backstab, to clear that up. I was purely talking about making a stealth attack a 1/stealth deal, so that skilled counterplays aren’t mostly ignored. It really shouldn’t affect anyone that times their backstabs to avoid dodges (which you really should be doing for such an important skill) already.

I really just want to get rid of the whole, “Oh, you timed your dodge/blind/aegis perfectly so that when I got to you and backstabbed I would whiff? That’s cute. (presses 1 again)”.

Thank you for making a constructive counterargument, by the way. It’s nice to see something other than “lol L2P n00b”.

I can agree that this would be good when you time aegis of something very well. You should be rewarded for that kind of play, but on the other hand you have some active defenses that can be repeated way too often that it would be impossible for a thief to land a BS.

the initiative cost discussion was because i read it in one of the comments. What are your thoughts on the antispam idea?

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

T raw.4658:

OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

Yet you supported the whole BS to cost initiative movement a lil while back. You’ve also made other posts in that area as well….then you just happen to main ele/mesmer who are the leading complainers about thieves in PvP.

O don’t get me wrong you’ve tried your hand at a stealthless thief…whether you finished it and actually fought anything other than AI remains to be seen.

I’ll be staying in this thread to provide a voice of reason among the ideas that would break a class I immensely enjoy fighting against…..because I actually took the time and L2p like they told me too

On my warrior i can kill a thief easily.

IcyFlame.9705:

I can agree that this would be good when you time aegis of something very well. You should be rewarded for that kind of play, but on the other hand you have some active defenses that can be repeated way too often that it would be impossible for a thief to land a BS.

Still, that means that those same active defenses are not available when the thief is out of stealth. Most active defenses have decently lenghty cooldowns (ironically, thieves are the exception), and if they get blown on stealth to prevent stealth attacks, that’s an element that the thief can use to his advantage. Again, it creates and promotes actual counterplay, as for each action taken, there is a tradeoff that the opponent can exploit. Right now, there isn’t such counterplay against stealth attacks because if you avoid them, they just get to hit “1” again and try again immediately.

IcyFlame.9705:

I can agree that this would be good when you time aegis of something very well. You should be rewarded for that kind of play, but on the other hand you have some active defenses that can be repeated way too often that it would be impossible for a thief to land a BS.

Thats the whole point of this thread. A thief shouldn tbe impermeable to defense mechanisms of other classes. Whenever I hear “but else how are we supposed to land backstab all the time?!” all I see is people who believe they are immune to everything and everything should go their way. ALL classes are affected by defense mechanisms that can be repeated often.

Lets take for example a thief vs an ele. Thief with dagger pistol. Thief timed his pistol #5 and made the ele miss his firegrab with a 45 secs CD. The ele depended on it, but for the thief that was nothing but literally a no CD spell. See how that works? Now lets see it the other way around. The same thief now uses HS on that same smoke field and goes into stealth for a nasty backstab, the ele times his defense and uses Arcane shielding (75 seconds CD) , it shows block block block 8k backstab 4k HS and the ele is dead.

See the disparity of defense vs attack on that? Whats the CD on the thief combo? Virtually none. Whats the risk? Virtually none. Whats the CD on the ele? All of his spells are on about 40+ seconds, his defenses are on 75+ seconds CD, his risk is also going into melee with very limited options.

As you can see, all thieves out there need to stop being so selfish and stop defending something they deep down know is wrong. If you cant see the logic on that i would be more than glad to share another example. The point is; defenses are there for a reason, classes that rely on those active defenses shouldnt be pooped on. In fact, the reason why eles and mesmer are hard countered by thieves is because of this very same reason. Why it remains like this is beyond me.

Hit either F2 F3 or F4 to find moar spells to use.

Use a utility

Ele has 20 skills to use. A thief is LUCKY if they use all of their 1-5 skills. In fact only 1 weaponset uses all 5.

its time to make a thief fort and L2p

T raw.4658:

Hit either F2 F3 or F4 to find moar spells to use.

Use a utility

Ele has 20 skills to use. A thief is LUCKY if they use all of their 1-5 skills. In fact only 1 weaponset uses all 5.

its time to make a thief fort and L2p

I was expecting someone to say this, so I will give you another example spinning exactly from your words;

What do you think thieves are the only ones that dont have second plans? You failed your combo? How about you use your ~ and switch weapon? How about if you use your F1 to close the distance? or use your 7-8-9 or elite or heal to reset the fight? See, I can do this too.

How about this, thieves, l2p to you too. Classes have defense, learn to deal with this like any other profession would have to. I will not stop until all the n00bs abandon the class due to easy non-skillful rewards. Changes like this do nothing to inhibit good players while punishing players such as yourself. You have a great day

Uhh if a thief swaps a weapon they don’t get another bar of initiative.

In fact I find most thieves are pretty much screwed once they swap since SB 3 got nerfed.

Also once u start wasting thieves utilities that’s the end of the thief

Fortus.6175:

T raw.4658:

Hit either F2 F3 or F4 to find moar spells to use.

Use a utility

Ele has 20 skills to use. A thief is LUCKY if they use all of their 1-5 skills. In fact only 1 weaponset uses all 5.

its time to make a thief fort and L2p

I was expecting someone to say this, so I will give you another example spinning exactly from your words;

What do you think thieves are the only ones that dont have second plans? You failed your combo? How about you use your ~ and switch weapon? How about if you use your F1 to close the distance? or use your 7-8-9 or elite or heal to reset the fight? See, I can do this too.

How about this, thieves, l2p to you too. Classes have defense, learn to deal with this like any other profession would have to. I will not stop until all the *n00bs abandon the class due to easy non-skillful rewards.* Changes like this do nothing to inhibit “good players” while punishing players such as yourself. You have a great day

Not really defending raw… But really? “~” switch weapons…? Okay, but we don’t get all our init back when we do switch weapons… we’re still left with the same init, so if we used up a good portion of it and switch weapons it doesn’t help much as there might not be init to use on skills. This is beyond some people tbh… The other thing is, a good majority, I would say, use shortbow as a secondary… which isn’t the “best” weapon for 1v1’ing (comparing to other weapon sets, it can be done just…) (1v1 as it’s the most complained about…)

So… okay 7-8-9 (and you forgot 6, since it will probably be hide in shadows) can reset fights… I will give you that. “Elite”… um so the choice is Thieves Guild, Dagger Storm, and Basilisk Venom. explain to me how those heal (the only way i see is dagger storm +SoM) or reset fights (stun with bas? run away?). Hey I’m willing to learn .

You seem to have some sort of a personal agenda here. No wonder I struck a nerve when I pointed out to whom those lines are said to commonly, notice you received one. And it’s not by me either, I’m just point it out. :P

“Good” players… a very non-specific term. :P sad part is w/e you define it as, “good” players will make “bad” players cry (or at the very least feel bad, since “crying” is a childish term), always, even with the proposed change.

“non-skillful”… last time I checked, there’s no rewards for “skill” in this game, it’s never picked up or detected by the system that you’re playing “skillfully”, everyone is rewarded for completing “tasks” be it capping, completing events, killing loners in WvW (loot bags!)… there’s no written rule on how you do it… so yeah. Sorry but that’s a system flaw that will persist even if you try to make it more “skillful”… :P

P Fun Daddy.1208:

TL;DR: After you use your stealth attack once, your #1 skill reverts to auto regardless of whether you left stealth or not. No stealth break, no reveal.

How about stealth skills can only be used once per stealth use?
What would happen upon a missed skill is not reveal or loss of stealth, but the stealth skill would just be replaced by the normal autoattack chain.
Active defenses still get some use but doesn’t horribly screw over stealthing because you could use a heartseeker or the like to clear off a blind/aegis, or even hard to catch. Literally the only thing this prevents is spamming the stealth skill until it hits, because after the first use you would be doing autos until another stealth effect was applied.
Sounds pretty fair to me honestly, it makes aegis, blind, dodging and other active defenses not entirely useless while not making them hardcounter stealth in any way, shape or form.

How do other people feel about this?

I like this.

It means people will need to pay attention to what they do in stealth.

Zero Day.2594:

snip

Im glad that for once we seem to be speaking in good terms without having to offend each other.

I would more than gladly show more examples of how biased I see the views of thief players are, however I will use a very abstract metric; upvotes. I know I know, they are not a good way way of measuring things but I do want to note that most “anti-thief threads” or “QQ threads” (as some people refer to) tend to be very highly upvoted but most of the replies come from thief players themselves, which in turn receive little to no upvotes. Except for the occasional vocal and passionate people (such as myself) which cant stand them anymore of course. My view about is that it goes without saying that people recognize there is a problem with stealth and thief mechanics.

In reference to your post, unfortunately as you can tell, Im no thief player, however, I rolled a thief a long time ago which I give a couple of games every so often, to learn the class mechanics, to learn how to counter it and get a feeling of how a thief would behave. I can tell you this, the class is binary and both broken OP and broken UP.

What do I mean by this? First you and the guy above you mentioned about teleports and how could be used defensively. I will tell you this; sword #2 is probably the single most amazing teleport scape in the game, hands down. You can cast it behind a wall and it will still hit the person since it doesnt need LoS. You can cast it in place you can use to escape and voila. It has virtually no CD. No, initiative regenerates too quickly o count as CD, sorry. Specially with the 33% buff to it, which is humongous, and please dontsay otherwise because that would be a lie and we both know it. You gain initiative even with signets. Yes, the so-called ‘one-trick’ pony signet build has shortbow to get out things after the steal backstab combo, and even if that didnt work, you can use basilisk right after the backstab to stun the opponent who is in no shape to do much about it because he probably is at 20% or dead.

As you can see, the defense comes from actively trying, and well done can be devastating. Lets say that said thief has D/D with signet build, CnD can be used for quick stealth right after the basilisk wears off. There is very, too small window to retaliate in between basilisk wearing off and revealed, not to mention you still have full initiative from the stealth-backstab combo, and if that wasnt enough 2 dodges can fill the hole too, which can be used to evade until you can use to get out with short bow (full intitiative remeber) or switch to the off weapon (lets say dagger pistol) to chain another backstab with #5 and #2.

Please tell me how defenseless you really think you are vs a person you took more than 50% of his health.

On the other side I do understand how thieves tend to lose vs condi bunkers such as perma fear necor and condi engi, but you arent doing any better than an ele or mesmer who is as squishy and wearing beserker. Eles in berserker have as much health, no condi removal on regen, only ether renewal which makes the ele a sitting duck for 4 seconds where he can only run around, can be interrupted or killed, something eles cant afford without stealth.

As for the personal agenda, please stop it. I understand that you and some other people are developing a hatred towards me, still, it isnt an better than mine for thieves. Im trying to get rid of things that cause frustration, and notice that all my threads about those topics tend to get highly upvoted, because, once agian, a LOT of people have issues with it that goes beyond “l2p” issues that some people tend to deject so condescendingly. I have no personal agenda here, Im very straight forward about it and I would prefer if people stopped those hateful comment. I understand they wont stop and in fact will increase because of this, however I would like to think of myself of a civilized person.

Yes, Im not a top player, Im perhaps your average player, or worse, who knows, no real metric for me to compare to. However I speak for a large player base when I say that thieves have some inherent issues when it comes to facing glass cannons and such. Debate all you want but I will stand firm on my that until proven otherwise, and to do that I will need a better argument than “l2p” and “stack toughness, n00b”.

You have been given countless arguments which you either

A.) combat with false truths, through lack of class knowledge

Or

B.) ignore completely

You keep comparing glass ele to glass thief, not realizing that an ele doesn’t HAVE to go glass to be effective in damage. A balanced ele will still take off 50% of a thieves health pool with a fireball which is splash damage, not to mention huge ground aoes and things like meteor shower

Apples and oranges and you can’t compare the two.

You know what a glass thief uses for condition removal? Shadowstep. You can’t use it offensively. You can’t afford to. And the cooldown between cast and return is so short, you can’t rely on it mid fight, so you just can’t use it, until it’s needed.

I’m all for having a legitimate discussion, but when you’re arguing with the blinkers on, without knowledge of the class, it’s pointless and passive aggressive.

You can argue until you’re blue in the face, but generally speaking the only people who have an issue with thieves, backstab, or stealth are new, or lower tier players.

There’s a reason why there’s a thief falloff rank 30 and above.

And it is important to note thief abilities that have a cast time. Such as basilisk, cloak and dagger, shadow refuge ect. Because when you have such low health, cast times will get you killed out of stealth.

I realize glass else can have similar health pools, however they also have the advantage of range.

A 11k hp pool, having to get into “the thick of it” to be effective, is very very different.

I’m not arguing that thieves are a terrible class that are forever pushing kitten uphill, in the right hands of a skilled player they are wonderful, but they certainly aren’t as strong, unfair, or overpowered as you claim.

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OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

Yet you supported the whole BS to cost initiative movement a lil while back. You’ve also made other posts in that area as well….then you just happen to main ele/mesmer who are the leading complainers about thieves in PvP.

O don’t get me wrong you’ve tried your hand at a stealthless thief…whether you finished it and actually fought anything other than AI remains to be seen.

I’ll be staying in this thread to provide a voice of reason among the ideas that would break a class I immensely enjoy fighting against…..because I actually took the time and L2p like they told me too

More ad hominem. I think you either don’t understand the concept, or are a follower of Nietzsche (who believed that ad hominem arguments were the only valid ones). I could think that the president is an alien frog from the center of the earth and it wouldn’t make any other argument I make more or less valid.

I did support the BS initiative cost a while ago, it is true, but I no longer do because frankly this is just a lot more fair to everyone as far as I can see, especially good players of both classes. Frankly, a BS initiative cost wouldn’t really change anything for the bads who just spam it through dodges (because whatever the cost is it would still be worth it), and it would hurt the good players who put thought into it.

Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

@Icyflame:
Your idea would probably be a viable solution as well, and it has the additional benefit of punishing heartseeker spam as well (which is less an issue of how powerful it is than of how obnoxious it is) though I think thieves would have to be compensated somewhere else in order to compensate for the total power loss (for those who don’t know the logic behind thief skill spam, there tends to be a single skill that just flat out has the best damage/utility ratio, so most of the time there’s just no reason to use anything else).
I also agree that certain defenses are would be abusable (evade thieves would probably be the most frustrating things to fight ever even more than now, and guardian’s OOC aegis would certainly be a place where both of our ideas would tend to fall through, though yours slightly less in terms of cost), but I still feel like that should be weighed against the current lack of effect of good use of those.

I demand more discussion.

P.S. There is a marked distinction between intoxicated snarky me and normal me, please take less offense from the former if at all possible.

Fortus.6175:

…
It has virtually no CD. No, initiative regenerates too quickly o count as CD, sorry. Specially with the 33% buff to it, which is humongous, and please dontsay otherwise because that would be a lie and we both know it. You gain initiative even with signets. Yes, the so-called ‘one-trick’ pony signet build has shortbow to get out things after the steal backstab combo, and even if that didnt work, you can use basilisk right after the backstab to stun the opponent who is in no shape to do much about it because he probably is at 20% or dead.
…

So yeah the init regen is high… If you spam all your skills or carelessly use them and drain all the init, when you switch over you will be able to use at most 1-2 skills (depending on their costs), doubtfully at that point you can use skills like shadow infiltrator or CnD to gtfo. I can see that you can use skills that cost 2-4 init.
All I’m saying here is while sure there’s no real CDs and the init regen is fairly “fast” (1/sec, naturally – equivalent of 1 tick of CD)… it still takes management in combat, to ensure when you weapon switch you have enough init for what you were planning.
Though, different machinics, the normal CD way on skills, would allow you to blow the 5 skills, switch and blow another 5 skills. (Assuming you’re starting “fresh”). For init, you drain your init to go on “CD”, switch over and your still a bit on “CD” (if you drain the init, switch over you will probably have 2-3 init, then shortly 4 and so on)… but in contrast, yeah you can use the same skill 3-4 times (again depending on cost and max init/regen).

Fortus.6175:

Yes, Im not a top player, Im perhaps your average player, or worse, who knows, no real metric for me to compare to. However I speak for a large player base when I say that thieves have some inherent issues when it comes to facing glass cannons and such. Debate all you want but I will stand firm on my that until proven otherwise, and to do that I will need a better argument than “l2p” and “stack toughness, n00b”.

Fortus, you do realize in this closing paragraph of your last post in this thread basically says:

“I am not even close to being a good player, but I shouldn’t have to improve my skill to fight good thief players. They should be dumbed down to my level so I can have free loot bags.”

That’s what that comes across as. Anybody who says they don’t need to “L2P” is only fooling themselves. Even the best players in this game have more to learn to continue playing well. L2P is a valid argument, especially against people like you who admit you are at best an average player.

I see that you people has managed to turn a great thread about a change into a hateful string of comments towards me.

godz raiden.2631:

Even the best players in this game have more to learn to continue playing well. L2P is a valid argument, especially against people like you who admit you are at best an average player.

Want to know whats the difference? That I admit that Im not a pro player, while all of you who proudly wear the “thief” signatures who can only effectively play thieves elude themselves into believing they know it all and they are impermeable to any imbalance.

I think both side can agree to disagree in this aspect. We see each other as stubborn and unwilling to change, as unskilled and ignorant.

Since this is the case I will now leave this thread, but before that I will share a final thought; I know why Anet will never fix the thief issue:

There are all kind of people out there. People that like to share and help others, they tend to lean towards supports, healers. There are people who like to take things into their own hands, these people tend to play high damage dealers, aggressive playstyle involving lots of buttons for maximal results. Then there is the kind of player who is lazy and likes to do underhanded stuff, who will backstab anyone for their own benefice. Not always have to be this bad (specially the lazy part) but this kind of people tend to lean towards one-sided classes where they have most if not all the control,(instagibs, faceplant condibunkers, etc) where they know they have an unfair edge over others, even if this means losing their team’s game or abandoning their allies.
Unfortunately this kind of people exist, and like any good company trying to make money, they will create something that caters to it. The thing keeping it in check? Although it is a toxic behaviors, in the grand scheme of things they are nothing, since people who arent capping points or towers arent winning the game for their team.

@Op, great suggestion, a shame it will be lost in the sea of founded complains and biased counterarguments, on top of this giant placebo we call “forums”.

Fortus.6175:

Snip

First of all, grow some thicker skin. You’re beginning to come across as a bit of a whiner. “Everyone is just being MEAN to me now waaaah.” Okay… yeah… now I’m being a little mean to you :P (Relax I’m just kidding with you).

Secondly, if you had bothered to read past the point in my post that you quoted, you would be able to read (unless you’re illiterate, in that case I apologize, but that doesn’t seem to be the case) that I stated EVERYBODY has to L2P. Someone telling you to L2P doesn’t mean you’re a bad a player, it’s your own fault for taking it in a negative context. L2P is simply a lazy way of saying: you do not yet understand this mechanic to its full extent, and thus you need to heed advice and play with and against it more to understand it more thoroughly. There are just as many people who play this game that don’t struggle against stealth as those who do, and a lot of the players that handle stealth mechanics just fine play poorly against other mechanics. It’s just the way it is. Deal. With. It. You are not perfect, neither am I. You get your butt kicked by stealth. I get my butt kicked by something else. Oh well.

I may have thief in my signature, but that’s mostly because I’m too lazy to update it. Heck, I play my thief less and less nowadays just because I played it so much for the first year of release. Now I alternate mostly between my Guardian, Engineer, and Warrior. I have 0 issues with thieves on any of those classes. On my Mesmer I have 0 issues with thieves as well. Here’s my secret: I main thief. I understand the class and its only strong mechanic. I understand how to prevent a thief from using it. I don’t wait for a thief to stealth to press my attack, I act as the aggressor throughout the fight. What do I do when the thief is in stealth? I predict its movements and drop aoes/cleaves where I know the thief is. It’s always pretty satisfying to see a thief unstealth with even less health than he had when he entered it.

We do not have stubbornness in common when it comes to learning this game. I branched out and I’ve learned to play many classes to understand them so I can fight them more effectively. An unwillingness to learn how to play against stealth is the true enemy of players like you who think it’s a broken mechanic. The truth is, not everybody will have the skill (or in some cases hardware) to play this game well enough to fight certain classes all the time. If you lack the reaction time to stop a thief from entering stealth, I’m willing to bet you also struggle to interrupt a hammer warrior who is about to stun lock you.

You can make bold claims that thief players, like myself, are selfish players who want to abuse a “broken” mechanic. But time and time again we come to threads like this one, post information to try and help you thief haters understand how to play against us, but you are so firmly locked in your beliefs that stealth has 0 counterplay that you’d rather just tell us, “No you’re wrong because you play thief. You’re just trying to defend your class.” Sorry, but no. We want you guys to get better at fighting us. That’s why we give you advice. We want you to be more challenging to fight. So stop asking for nerfs just to turn us into easy lootbags. Start bettering your play and solidifying your playstyle. Give us something to look forward to fighting, and we promise to reciprocate that.

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OP is still on his anti thief forum spam I see.

Thieves are balanced the way they are and someone who plays mesmer shouldn’t be having ANY problems with thieves

I am the OP.
I think you may be talking about someone else, I certainly don’t spam anti-thief stuff, and while I do play my mesmer occasionally, I main ele because they killed all of the mesmer gameplay I enjoyed (that is, not spamming stealth and not letting AI carry me).

Mesmer/Ele are the biggest thief haters atm

Play a thief and learn

Or be like me and just fight em enough to learn. Either way this post is full of bad ideas and continual unfounded thief hate

Ad hominem (an argumentative fallacy that relies on attacking elements of the opposition’s person that do not directly pertain to the argument at hand).
Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

Yet you supported the whole BS to cost initiative movement a lil while back. You’ve also made other posts in that area as well….then you just happen to main ele/mesmer who are the leading complainers about thieves in PvP.

O don’t get me wrong you’ve tried your hand at a stealthless thief…whether you finished it and actually fought anything other than AI remains to be seen.

I’ll be staying in this thread to provide a voice of reason among the ideas that would break a class I immensely enjoy fighting against…..because I actually took the time and L2p like they told me too

More ad hominem. I think you either don’t understand the concept, or are a follower of Nietzsche (who believed that ad hominem arguments were the only valid ones). I could think that the president is an alien frog from the center of the earth and it wouldn’t make any other argument I make more or less valid.

I did support the BS initiative cost a while ago, it is true, but I no longer do because frankly this is just a lot more fair to everyone as far as I can see, especially good players of both classes. Frankly, a BS initiative cost wouldn’t really change anything for the bads who just spam it through dodges (because whatever the cost is it would still be worth it), and it would hurt the good players who put thought into it.

Either explain why this idea, and only this idea, is bad, or get out of my thread.

@Icyflame:
Your idea would probably be a viable solution as well, and it has the additional benefit of punishing heartseeker spam as well (which is less an issue of how powerful it is than of how obnoxious it is) though I think thieves would have to be compensated somewhere else in order to compensate for the total power loss (for those who don’t know the logic behind thief skill spam, there tends to be a single skill that just flat out has the best damage/utility ratio, so most of the time there’s just no reason to use anything else).
I also agree that certain defenses are would be abusable (evade thieves would probably be the most frustrating things to fight ever even more than now, and guardian’s OOC aegis would certainly be a place where both of our ideas would tend to fall through, though yours slightly less in terms of cost), but I still feel like that should be weighed against the current lack of effect of good use of those.

I demand more discussion.

P.S. There is a marked distinction between intoxicated snarky me and normal me, please take less offense from the former if at all possible.

Can’t claim ad homien when your card gets pulled because of your previous posts. If all you had to do was throw in a new Latin phrase on the same BS biased argument to pretend like you’re not a hater then Burnfall would be a developer right now…