Guild Wars 2

Kyon.9735:

I’m still wondering why Thieves get a Chill applying skill when they use Steal on an Elementalist. Isn’t it common knowledge that Thieves would usually cheese out Elementalists yet Anet still gave them access to Chill which is an Elementalists greatest bane in terms of conditions?

A good d/d elementalist is actually a tough opponent for a thief, and it’s a pretty even fight if they are of the same skill level. People keep acting like elementalists need pity and are weak, but if played properly they are actually quite strong. Strength runes work really well on them.

Shockwave.1230:

• Blackpowder + Heartseeker x 3 = 15 second recharge = 9 seconds of stealth/12 seconds traited **Note all initiative is used for this

Traited stealth doesn’t actually increase the stealth duration of leaping through or blasting a smoke field. Black Powder + Heartseeker always provides 3 second stealth regardless of traits.

Resetting fights as often as you would like is when stealth becomes a pita, that goes for mesmer as well as thief. Lets not forget the CnD exploit, which makes it spammable, allowing the thief to perma stealth.

Grimreaper.5370:

Resetting fights as often as you would like is when stealth becomes a pita, that goes for mesmer as well as thief. Lets not forget the CnD exploit, which makes it spammable, allowing the thief to perma stealth.

Do people actually think this isn’t negative for a thief?

Resetting a fight means you lost time. CnD chaining after the stealth ends means you attack 1 time every 4 seconds. It’s not an exploit and what does a thief actually accomplish by doing that?

Also just attack/AoE to kill a thief that is chaining CnD.

There is no end to just how broken this class is, 2.4k armor is not enough to mitigate the damage, and to top it off, the thing that truly truly saddens me is the fact that the boon stealing has absolutely no ICD, basicaly any class (namely ele) that relies on boons simply has to bend over and take it.

Most classes have quite the large ICD on boon dispel (note I said boon dispel which is only half as bad as boon stealing, because the opponent doesnt get it), something along the lines between 10 seconds to 60 seconds, but thieves can spam it and leave the ele effectively naked…..

I think a new name for thieves should exist; Spammadiers, since their entire existence revolves around spamming something, whether it is stealth, backstabs, blinds, evades, boon stealing, or sadly, all of the above at the same time.

Fortus.6175:

There is no end to just how broken this class is, 2.4k armor is not enough to mitigate the damage, and to top it off, the thing that truly truly saddens me is the fact that the boon stealing has absolutely no ICD, basicaly any class (namely ele) that relies on boons simply has to bend over and take it.

Most classes have quite the large ICD on boon dispel (note I said boon dispel which is only half as bad as boon stealing, because the opponent doesnt get it), something along the lines between 10 seconds to 60 seconds, but thieves can spam it and leave the ele effectively naked…..

I think a new name for thieves should exist; Spammadiers, since their entire existence revolves around spamming something, whether it is stealth, backstabs, blinds, evades, boon stealing, or sadly, all of the above at the same time.

Someone you’re playing is hacking if they can spam stealth or backstab damage. Revealed prevents this.

They’re also hacking if they can spam blinds forever, because initiative prevents this.

Man i am so fed up with people complaining about thieves. They are perfectly balanced, i bet half the people that complain about them can’t last 10 seconds as a thief in a fight where the thief should be able to down the opponent in 20.

Perma stealth a problem/broken?? If yuo die to anybody perma stealthing then you are not a very good player. As a thiefs dps comes from using initiative and perma stealth saps it all, not to mention the thief is giving you free cooldowns in the meantime wheras the thief practically has no cooldowns so who really is worse off?

Play a thief and you will realise the dps trade-off for survivability is acceptable, also you ever considered that a thief may be a hard counter to the class/build you run? man the thief class is supposed to have ridiculous damage, not to mention in spvp they cannot even defend a point. Eles are generally a decent counter to thieves too, you looked in the thief forums? Half of them have no idea how to counter the elementalists. Boon steal or no.

Sheppy.9306:

Man i am so fed up with people complaining about thieves. They are perfectly balanced, i bet half the people that complain about them can’t last 10 seconds as a thief in a fight where the thief should be able to down the opponent in 20.

Perma stealth a problem/broken?? If yuo die to anybody perma stealthing then you are not a very good player. As a thiefs dps comes from using initiative and perma stealth saps it all, not to mention the thief is giving you free cooldowns in the meantime wheras the thief practically has no cooldowns so who really is worse off?

Play a thief and you will realise the dps trade-off for survivability is acceptable, also you ever considered that a thief may be a hard counter to the class/build you run? man the thief class is supposed to have ridiculous damage, not to mention in spvp they cannot even defend a point. Eles are generally a decent counter to thieves too, you looked in the thief forums? Half of them have no idea how to counter the elementalists. Boon steal or no.

^This^

and in addition except pvp you cannot really do anything else with Thief,in dungeons cuz of corner stacking you die by 1 hit if not the DoT from boss will kill you the damage cannot be even compared with a warrior damage or a caster.I left playing thief only because these reasons it’s only good in PvP and I wish to do bot.

and try playing a thief then complain about agree Hearthseeker spam and Backstab is annoying but sometimes not even enough…I fought many Bunkers against who I was only been able to damage with backstab,only Backstab…

Amnariel.3659:

Sheppy.9306:

Man i am so fed up with people complaining about thieves. They are perfectly balanced, i bet half the people that complain about them can’t last 10 seconds as a thief in a fight where the thief should be able to down the opponent in 20.

Perma stealth a problem/broken?? If yuo die to anybody perma stealthing then you are not a very good player. As a thiefs dps comes from using initiative and perma stealth saps it all, not to mention the thief is giving you free cooldowns in the meantime wheras the thief practically has no cooldowns so who really is worse off?

Play a thief and you will realise the dps trade-off for survivability is acceptable, also you ever considered that a thief may be a hard counter to the class/build you run? man the thief class is supposed to have ridiculous damage, not to mention in spvp they cannot even defend a point. Eles are generally a decent counter to thieves too, you looked in the thief forums? Half of them have no idea how to counter the elementalists. Boon steal or no.

^This^

and in addition except pvp you cannot really do anything else with Thief,in dungeons cuz of corner stacking you die by 1 hit if not the DoT from boss will kill you the damage cannot be even compared with a warrior damage or a caster.I left playing thief only because these reasons it’s only good in PvP and I wish to do bot.

and try playing a thief then complain about agree Hearthseeker spam and Backstab is annoying but sometimes not even enough…I fought many Bunkers against who I was only been able to damage with backstab,only Backstab…

Just want to interject here that thieves actually have the second highest DPS in PvE in the game, after eles, have a bit more survivability, and have skip utility as well.
They are most definitely not useless in PvE, though you could make a fair argument for preferring eles if you’re already sacrificing that much survivability.

Mesmers are third, warriors and guardians are pretty much tied for fourth (guardians sort of win but not really considering the change in survivability and the whole reason you bring guards in the first place), and I forget the order rangers, necros and engis are in.

So yeah.

I had an idea.

Reading through the complaints about Thieves, it seems the underlying issue for many people is the “spam” of stealth. Not stealth individually, but that the effects are chained to constantly break target lock.

This gave me an idea. GW2’s premise with stealth was to remove the always-initiative-guaranteed effect of permanent non-combat stealth. It did so by introducing short duration in-combat stealth instead.

Now, going further with this idea, what if (I play a Mesmer, for reference :P ):

• Thieves had Stealth as their class ability, instead of Steal (more on Steal below).
• Mesmers had only Mass Invisibility for Stealth, but it’d be an actual mass invis (siege cap).

This way, there’s be a single source for stealth. There’ be no direct way to chain it, unless the devs want to bring the cooldown very low for balancing purposes. That would be another benefit, it provides a very simple and straightforward knob to turn for balancing.

Further, Thieves would get some abilities and traits changed to work with this. Examples:

• Shadow Refuge: Provide a cover of darkness, healing yourself and allies in an area and continuously applying blindness to enemies inside. If you stealth inside your own Shadow Refuge, you also stealth all allies but consume the refuge.
• Steal: Elite ability. Rebalanced ofc, but moved to an elite. In general I would make Thieves a class of very low-CD elite skills to bring forth the fast and constantly moving and “doing” gameplay style a bit more.

Now ofc, out of the box this would be a terrible nerf. But if given enough other changes to rebalance this, I think overall it might be healthier. It would allow the individual application of stealth to become much stronger (longer/faster/better for Thieves, mass-target for Mesmer), while at the same time removing much of the frustration of facing stealth (which is from the constant and repeated momentary stealthes, it seems).

Remove the combo field that allows stealth spam via heart seeker etc… problem solved.

It’s really not that difficult.

Hrm, so maybe just change Leap/Blast on Smoke in general?

But to what? Maybe do it like this:

• Smoke: Leap gives AE blindness in 130 radius, Blast gives AE blindness in a 360 radius.
• Dark: Leap takes up to 10% of your HP (won’t down you) to give you Quickness for up to 1s. Blast takes up to 35% of your HP to give people around you Quickness for 1,5s.

The Dark-effect would match nicely against the life-draining effects of Projectile/Whirl on Dark, IMO.

Alternatively, if that’s too “unique”, add single-target Torment to Leap and AE Torment to Blast.

Imo, avigoris has the easiest solution. Dagger / dagger thieves have an extremely counterable way to keep them unstealthed, and it would make it the single stealth set (I guess s/d has stealth too but youd usually be wasting initiative using it rather than flanking/larcenous and your infiltrator strike).

It would make dagger pistol have extremely low damage because there would be no reliable way to backstab, but meh. Id give that up if it helped bad players. Of course they would complain about something else but thats an entirely different subject

Honestly I dont see a problem with stealth, but I admit im biased to pvp where its useless but I have some ideas that could make it useful in pvp and also make stealth spam go away. Of course it would require a complete overhaul, tell me what you think carighan as its feeding off your idea of making stealth a class mechanic.

Okay so 1. Of course is to make stealth a class mechanic, it would have to be a long duration, 1-2 minutes. The next thing would be to make shadow refuge the only way to apply stealth while in combat. Make shadow refuge an elite, and turn basilik venom into a utility on a shorter cd with no cast time.

Imo the stun would be necessary to survival as you cant easily stealth anymore nor burst anymore. A few things would need to happen as well, shadow refuge would have to gain the shadows embrace trait as a reliable way to remove conditions, and possible take reduced dmg while in it (makes player try to push you out rather than just cleave you for half your health). You would also need to be able to take stealth off whenever you want too.

Of course this would break a lot of things. Hide in shadows, blinding powder, cloak and dagger, the entire shadow arts trait thats already only viable in one game mode, however ASSUMING its balanced correctly it would make stealth in pvp useful, sneaking to nodes without people seeing you run there or steal buffs etc etc. Cloak and dagger would need to change into a build defining ability or dagger dagger would be so weak.

the invisible part of stealth is not the problem, its the loss of target that is the issue……. its basically a way to gain almost complete immunity to attacks that require a target even once out of stealth.

think of it this way ,I see the thief I go to attack he vanishes 2 seconds later uses heart seeker I try to click on him (other people around me so tab target does not work neither does auto target) I miss miss again because he is jumping all around finally click him then pop gone again rinse and repeat…. in the meantime my health has droped by at least half

Master of Timespace.2548:

Shockwave.1230:

Stealth Available to Thief

• Blackpowder + Heartseeker x 3 = 15 second recharge = 9 seconds of stealth/12 seconds traited **Note all initiative is used for this
• Shadow Refuge = 60 second recharge/48 seconds traited = 15 seconds of stealth/20 seconds traited
• Smokescreen + Heartseeker x 5 = 30 second recharge/24 seconds traited = 15 seconds of stealth/20 seconds traited
• Blinding Powder = 40 second recharge/32 seconds traited = 3 seconds of stealth/4 seconds traited
• Hide in Shadows = 30 second recharge = 3 seconds of stealth/4 seconds traited.
• Cloak and Dagger= 5 second recharge = 3 seconds of stealth/4 seconds traited. **Note this requires the skill to connect with a target.
• Steal (when traited) = 35 second recharge/ 21.5 seconds when traited = 3 seconds of stealth/4 seconds traited.

Best case scenario for stealth duration is a thief with 15 points in shadow arts is a build like the following template:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVlsMp7pVPx8JsPFRRBwXA

Here’s why I don’t understand why people think Permastealth is good for winning fights.

• The rotations to maintain stealth would leave the thief constantly without initiative to use offensively.
• The thief gets revealed for 4 seconds if they choose to attack before they can stealth again.
• The thief can’t do damage while in stealth
• The thief is only allowing cool downs to recharge while in stealth, which are cooldowns for more stealthing, and the enemies cool downs are recharging too.
• Perminantly stealthing means you’d never be doing anything

Counters to stealth in general

• Blackpowder – Start attacking it, so that when a thief heartseekers through it you hit him, and he will sometimes heartseeker you and reveal himself. Obviously don’t stand in it when you are attacking it.
• Smokescreen – Same counters as blackpowder
• Heartseeker – Interrupting heartseeker doesn’t allow the leap finisher to complete, preventing the thief from entering stealth through smoke fields.
• Shadow Refuge – Use knockbacks, launches, and pulls to knock the thief out of the refuge revealing him. AoE the refuge forcing him to take damage.
• Hide in Shadows – Interrupt hte 1 second cast time
• Already in stealth – Use an auto attack chain to tell if you are hitting him, and keep track of his location. Use AoE’s to damage him. Recognize how much stealth a thief would have obtained depending on the skill used. Distance will work for the short duration stealths, so will blocks and blinds. Combine blocks and blinds and distance and evades for longer duration stealths.

Because permastealth loses offensive capabilities, and because there are numerous counters to stealth, I am failing to understand what people are complaining about.

You never use shadow arts in spvp. Perma stealth is for trolling in wvw.

Yeah Anet if you’re going to merge the WvW thread about Stealth Thieves can you change the title of this thread to take out the sPvP reference?

And also to Shockwaves points, in WvW at least (don’t know about sPvP ‘cause I don’t play it), it is not literally "perma"stealth. Its that they can stealth at will without consequence. And they still hit like a mack truck – don’t have to sacrifice offense. No cooldowns.

There is no risk/reward choices with a thief. It’s all reward.

Yesterday, I watched 14 people try and fail to kill a D/P perplexity Thief. These kinds of Thieves I usually prefer to avoid so instead of being a victim of the troll I decided to observe… This guy, no matter how close to dying he got, would always vanish before he crossed the 10%< mark and reappear a few seconds later with 70%>… He was never killed, just eventually made a run for it.
I crossed him shortly afterwards and wanted to see how I measured up, even if I knew it was completely one sided… So I thought before engaging, let’s make this as in my favor as possible. I equipped as many immobilizes as possible, as well as “Sic’m!” and dropped Spike Trap and Viper’s Nest at my feet. Waiting a few seconds for him to make the first move, I pegged him with a Poison Volley, he moved in, got nuked with my traps, I used Muddy Terrain to pin him down, he ported out as I thought he might, I then used Entangle followed by “Sic’m!” and proceeded to nuke his feet with traps, Bonfire from offhand torch and Throw Torch, got him to 10% of his health and what happens? He vanishes, I again nuke my feet with traps and prepare a Muddy Terrain for his reappearance but instead… I find him with 80% of his health /laughing on a hill behind me…
Now, I can admire talent, I have no problems with a talented Thief. But it’s one thing to be talented, a whole other thing to be talented with a build that doesn’t require any…
On the bright side he never killed me… Just ended up giving me another few hits and running off when I kept stacking bleeds on him. I know that’s a “win” when fighting a Thief, if they run off… But that whole D/P perplexity condition build thing is just stupid beyond words.
For the record, I don’t think stealth is “OP.” I think line of sight abuse and the ability to perpetually reset fights is. No one should have as much control over a fight as a Thief does, not even a Thief. No one should be c__ky enough to engage a dozen + people without hesitation and still have a 60% chance of escaping alive.

I love how the general thief complaints changed from 13k backstab to resetting fights all the time.

Apparently those nerfs are working.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Yesterday, I watched 14 people try and fail to kill a D/P perplexity Thief. These kinds of Thieves I usually prefer to avoid so instead of being a victim of the troll I decided to observe… This guy, no matter how close to dying he got, would always vanish before he crossed the 10%< mark and reappear a few seconds later with 70%>… He was never killed, just eventually made a run for it.
I crossed him shortly afterwards and wanted to see how I measured up, even if I knew it was completely one sided… So I thought before engaging, let’s make this as in my favor as possible. I equipped as many immobilizes as possible, as well as “Sic’m!” and dropped Spike Trap and Viper’s Nest at my feet. Waiting a few seconds for him to make the first move, I pegged him with a Poison Volley, he moved in, got nuked with my traps, I used Muddy Terrain to pin him down, he ported out as I thought he might, I then used Entangle followed by “Sic’m!” and proceeded to nuke his feet with traps, Bonfire from offhand torch and Throw Torch, got him to 10% of his health and what happens? He vanishes, I again nuke my feet with traps and prepare a Muddy Terrain for his reappearance but instead… I find him with 80% of his health /laughing on a hill behind me…
Now, I can admire talent, I have no problems with a talented Thief. But it’s one thing to be talented, a whole other thing to be talented with a build that doesn’t require any…
On the bright side he never killed me… Just ended up giving me another few hits and running off when I kept stacking bleeds on him. I know that’s a “win” when fighting a Thief, if they run off… But that whole D/P perplexity condition build thing is just stupid beyond words.
For the record, I don’t think stealth is “OP.” I think line of sight abuse and the ability to perpetually reset fights is. No one should have as much control over a fight as a Thief does, not even a Thief. No one should be c__ky enough to engage a dozen + people without hesitation and still have a 60% chance of escaping alive.

I’ll give you the thieves perspective on the fight to help give the full picture of what happened. First off if the thief was running d/p perplexity then it was probably a burst build that has low hp. So when you are watching the thief for from 10% -70% hp. It is probably only healing 4-5k health but they already have extremely low health to begin with. It only looks like a lot because you can only see the bar and not actual numbers. But I I think you have the weapon set wrong to begin with. They were probably running p/d perplexity condi build. With this build it’s usually full dire which means they’ll have nearly 20k hp. Now the only way a thief heals from 10% to 70% with that build is to use a shadow refuge and stay in it for almost the complete duration of the stealth. Plus you said he teleported away which means he probably used shadow step since you were playing range by the sound of it and wouldn’t have been able to hit you with the p/d number 3 skill. That means the thief just blew two of his long cd get out of jail free cards to escape your damage. If you continued the fight with him you would have won so the thief made the tactical retreat.

Tips for fighting a p/d condi thief. Once a thief uses its basilisk venom burst their damage goes way down because pistol aa sucks. . Don’t panic just cleanse and fight. Watch out for the melee range on thief because they will try and cloak and dagger you for a bleed burst, or tele away and kite you plus inflict torment. So if you fight them at range and kite there goes the effective ness of those two skills for them. If you can, stand in aoe fields or blind fields to make their melee set ups more risky. The entire fight will be a game of attrition. Wait for the thief to blow shadow refuge and shadow step and you are pretty much guaranteed the win. Also be weary of wildlife in the open field that a thief can attempt to cloak and dagger off of. Any AI assisted allies like pets, clones, minions, and turrets are easy cloak and dagger targets. If a thief stealth continue attacking, and use channeling skills because they will continue to follow the thief when they stealth.

One last thing for everyone complaining about how hard it is to target a thief. In the options panel there is a way to set up a key to “target nearest enemy”. This is essential for any fight not only just agains thieves and everyone should have it assigned on their keyboards.

Dunno what the current topic of discussion is, but I’d like to drop in a few cents down the wishing well (literal “wishing” well).

- Stealth should last longer, have a longer revealed duration accordingly as in if you add 3 seconds stealth it doesn’t technically mean add 3 seconds reveal. This would mean also rebalancing the stealth related traits to be more suiting and relevant. In-combat stealth is a lot of fun but many people just waste time in it which is boring on both ends.

-Revealed should have 2 stages. Stage 1 reveal you happens when you attack and are blocked, evaded, countered, etc by another player (so wall skills would not cause reveal). Stage 1 reveal doesn’t apply any revealed effects and still maintains the inability to be targeted but a heavily blurred outline radiates around you. Stage 2 revealed would be the full on reveal as usual. Goal being to give some counter play and rewards to those who aren’t all familiar with stealth or those who are familiar but not rewarded for good timing.

-Fix the dozens of traits that just plain suck or don’t work anywhere.

Guess that third one applies to basically everyone though O.o

What is horrible about this thread is the simple fact all these changes would destroy a GW2 class

The only thief that is over the top right now is the condi thief

I know how to fix this !! lower their base hp even more. right now they may have low health but the person they are fighting may as well have 10 health as well with the numbers they can hit many situations in a glass cannon vs glass cannon fight as a necro against a thief they have out damaged my dagger by just spamming auto attack…. usually after I immob them in place so my 20k hp vs their what 12k hp? gets downed faster with auto attacks =|

KillerJacket.9735:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Yesterday, I watched 14 people try and fail to kill a D/P perplexity Thief. These kinds of Thieves I usually prefer to avoid so instead of being a victim of the troll I decided to observe… This guy, no matter how close to dying he got, would always vanish before he crossed the 10%< mark and reappear a few seconds later with 70%>… He was never killed, just eventually made a run for it.
I crossed him shortly afterwards and wanted to see how I measured up, even if I knew it was completely one sided… So I thought before engaging, let’s make this as in my favor as possible. I equipped as many immobilizes as possible, as well as “Sic’m!” and dropped Spike Trap and Viper’s Nest at my feet. Waiting a few seconds for him to make the first move, I pegged him with a Poison Volley, he moved in, got nuked with my traps, I used Muddy Terrain to pin him down, he ported out as I thought he might, I then used Entangle followed by “Sic’m!” and proceeded to nuke his feet with traps, Bonfire from offhand torch and Throw Torch, got him to 10% of his health and what happens? He vanishes, I again nuke my feet with traps and prepare a Muddy Terrain for his reappearance but instead… I find him with 80% of his health /laughing on a hill behind me…
Now, I can admire talent, I have no problems with a talented Thief. But it’s one thing to be talented, a whole other thing to be talented with a build that doesn’t require any…
On the bright side he never killed me… Just ended up giving me another few hits and running off when I kept stacking bleeds on him. I know that’s a “win” when fighting a Thief, if they run off… But that whole D/P perplexity condition build thing is just stupid beyond words.
For the record, I don’t think stealth is “OP.” I think line of sight abuse and the ability to perpetually reset fights is. No one should have as much control over a fight as a Thief does, not even a Thief. No one should be c__ky enough to engage a dozen + people without hesitation and still have a 60% chance of escaping alive.

I’ll give you the thieves perspective on the fight to help give the full picture of what happened. First off if the thief was running d/p perplexity then it was probably a burst build that has low hp. So when you are watching the thief for from 10% -70% hp. It is probably only healing 4-5k health but they already have extremely low health to begin with. It only looks like a lot because you can only see the bar and not actual numbers. But I I think you have the weapon set wrong to begin with. They were probably running p/d perplexity condi build. With this build it’s usually full dire which means they’ll have nearly 20k hp. Now the only way a thief heals from 10% to 70% with that build is to use a shadow refuge and stay in it for almost the complete duration of the stealth. Plus you said he teleported away which means he probably used shadow step since you were playing range by the sound of it and wouldn’t have been able to hit you with the p/d number 3 skill. That means the thief just blew two of his long cd get out of jail free cards to escape your damage. If you continued the fight with him you would have won so the thief made the tactical retreat.

Tips for fighting a p/d condi thief. Once a thief uses its basilisk venom burst their damage goes way down because pistol aa sucks. . Don’t panic just cleanse and fight. Watch out for the melee range on thief because they will try and cloak and dagger you for a bleed burst, or tele away and kite you plus inflict torment. So if you fight them at range and kite there goes the effective ness of those two skills for them. If you can, stand in aoe fields or blind fields to make their melee set ups more risky. The entire fight will be a game of attrition. Wait for the thief to blow shadow refuge and shadow step and you are pretty much guaranteed the win. Also be weary of wildlife in the open field that a thief can attempt to cloak and dagger off of. Any AI assisted allies like pets, clones, minions, and turrets are easy cloak and dagger targets. If a thief stealth continue attacking, and use channeling skills because they will continue to follow the thief when they stealth.

One last thing for everyone complaining about how hard it is to target a thief. In the options panel there is a way to set up a key to “target nearest enemy”. This is essential for any fight not only just agains thieves and everyone should have it assigned on their keyboards.

mesmers are never the nearest enemy

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

KillerJacket.9735:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Yesterday, I watched 14 people try and fail to kill a D/P perplexity Thief. These kinds of Thieves I usually prefer to avoid so instead of being a victim of the troll I decided to observe… This guy, no matter how close to dying he got, would always vanish before he crossed the 10%< mark and reappear a few seconds later with 70%>… He was never killed, just eventually made a run for it.
I crossed him shortly afterwards and wanted to see how I measured up, even if I knew it was completely one sided… So I thought before engaging, let’s make this as in my favor as possible. I equipped as many immobilizes as possible, as well as “Sic’m!” and dropped Spike Trap and Viper’s Nest at my feet. Waiting a few seconds for him to make the first move, I pegged him with a Poison Volley, he moved in, got nuked with my traps, I used Muddy Terrain to pin him down, he ported out as I thought he might, I then used Entangle followed by “Sic’m!” and proceeded to nuke his feet with traps, Bonfire from offhand torch and Throw Torch, got him to 10% of his health and what happens? He vanishes, I again nuke my feet with traps and prepare a Muddy Terrain for his reappearance but instead… I find him with 80% of his health /laughing on a hill behind me…
Now, I can admire talent, I have no problems with a talented Thief. But it’s one thing to be talented, a whole other thing to be talented with a build that doesn’t require any…
On the bright side he never killed me… Just ended up giving me another few hits and running off when I kept stacking bleeds on him. I know that’s a “win” when fighting a Thief, if they run off… But that whole D/P perplexity condition build thing is just stupid beyond words.
For the record, I don’t think stealth is “OP.” I think line of sight abuse and the ability to perpetually reset fights is. No one should have as much control over a fight as a Thief does, not even a Thief. No one should be c__ky enough to engage a dozen + people without hesitation and still have a 60% chance of escaping alive.

I’ll give you the thieves perspective on the fight to help give the full picture of what happened. First off if the thief was running d/p perplexity then it was probably a burst build that has low hp. So when you are watching the thief for from 10% -70% hp. It is probably only healing 4-5k health but they already have extremely low health to begin with. It only looks like a lot because you can only see the bar and not actual numbers. But I I think you have the weapon set wrong to begin with. They were probably running p/d perplexity condi build. With this build it’s usually full dire which means they’ll have nearly 20k hp. Now the only way a thief heals from 10% to 70% with that build is to use a shadow refuge and stay in it for almost the complete duration of the stealth. Plus you said he teleported away which means he probably used shadow step since you were playing range by the sound of it and wouldn’t have been able to hit you with the p/d number 3 skill. That means the thief just blew two of his long cd get out of jail free cards to escape your damage. If you continued the fight with him you would have won so the thief made the tactical retreat.

Tips for fighting a p/d condi thief. Once a thief uses its basilisk venom burst their damage goes way down because pistol aa sucks. . Don’t panic just cleanse and fight. Watch out for the melee range on thief because they will try and cloak and dagger you for a bleed burst, or tele away and kite you plus inflict torment. So if you fight them at range and kite there goes the effective ness of those two skills for them. If you can, stand in aoe fields or blind fields to make their melee set ups more risky. The entire fight will be a game of attrition. Wait for the thief to blow shadow refuge and shadow step and you are pretty much guaranteed the win. Also be weary of wildlife in the open field that a thief can attempt to cloak and dagger off of. Any AI assisted allies like pets, clones, minions, and turrets are easy cloak and dagger targets. If a thief stealth continue attacking, and use channeling skills because they will continue to follow the thief when they stealth.

One last thing for everyone complaining about how hard it is to target a thief. In the options panel there is a way to set up a key to “target nearest enemy”. This is essential for any fight not only just agains thieves and everyone should have it assigned on their keyboards.

mesmers are never the nearest enemy

Which is the point of the Mesmer, still should be useful vs a thief

Usually pressing tab works for me to re-target a thief after he leaves stealth.

So last night I was running with a Guardian and a thief decides he wants to engage us…of course I’m the squishy Ranger so he constantly targets me (I think my bow was kittening him off too)…but I digress, we fight him off and run on to cap some more camps and Guards…the thief follows and engages us again, again we bring him to near death and he disengages …this is repeated three more times.

What other profession thinks nothing of engaging two or more opponents? this thief was taken to near death five times but kept escaping (and he brought me down several times in the process as well).

If near permanent stealth is going to be allowed, then I think damage output and movement speed should be halved when a person is stealthed.

Kill him faster.

Okaishi.8320:

Usually pressing tab works for me to re-target a thief after he leaves stealth.

really? and what about if someone else is around or they have ogre runes on so you target the stupid rock dog constantly…… thief might not be a problem for warrior or guardian who have high hitting weapons that cleave! but play anything else and the loss of target becomes a big problem especially when they can do it so often not to mention all the evades and weapon abilities that are also counted as an evade

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

Okaishi.8320:

Usually pressing tab works for me to re-target a thief after he leaves stealth.

really? and what about if someone else is around or they have ogre runes on so you target the stupid rock dog constantly…… thief might not be a problem for warrior or guardian who have high hitting weapons that cleave! but play anything else and the loss of target becomes a big problem especially when they can do it so often not to mention all the evades and weapon abilities that are also counted as an evade

Judging from most of your comments you seem to just want an easy mode on thieves. A thief will never use rock dog unless they are bad because rock dog follows them around when they are stealthed giving away their position. Plus if I recall you play a necro. That rock dog is free LF for you, and with all your aoes that rock dog will be dead in a heartbeat without you even meaning to aim for it.

KillerJacket.9735:

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

Okaishi.8320:

Usually pressing tab works for me to re-target a thief after he leaves stealth.

really? and what about if someone else is around or they have ogre runes on so you target the stupid rock dog constantly…… thief might not be a problem for warrior or guardian who have high hitting weapons that cleave! but play anything else and the loss of target becomes a big problem especially when they can do it so often not to mention all the evades and weapon abilities that are also counted as an evade

Judging from most of your comments you seem to just want an easy mode on thieves. A thief will never use rock dog unless they are bad because rock dog follows them around when they are stealthed giving away their position. Plus if I recall you play a necro. That rock dog is free LF for you, and with all your aoes that rock dog will be dead in a heartbeat without you even meaning to aim for it.

I have heaps of aoe do I? that would mean I need to be running wells that only stupid people stand in and staff aoe couldn’t kill a fly, they do not help against a thief who would just wait it out then continue to do its thing

I don’t see why running ogre runes is bad thing considering from what I see stealth is not relied on in pvp it is only used to gain immunity from ranged weapons and to constantly get rid of the target. most thieves that I have fought don’t even stay in stealth for the full 3 seconds they just flash stealth and continue attacking to remove the target that’s all

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

KillerJacket.9735:

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

Okaishi.8320:

Usually pressing tab works for me to re-target a thief after he leaves stealth.

really? and what about if someone else is around or they have ogre runes on so you target the stupid rock dog constantly…… thief might not be a problem for warrior or guardian who have high hitting weapons that cleave! but play anything else and the loss of target becomes a big problem especially when they can do it so often not to mention all the evades and weapon abilities that are also counted as an evade

Judging from most of your comments you seem to just want an easy mode on thieves. A thief will never use rock dog unless they are bad because rock dog follows them around when they are stealthed giving away their position. Plus if I recall you play a necro. That rock dog is free LF for you, and with all your aoes that rock dog will be dead in a heartbeat without you even meaning to aim for it.

I have heaps of aoe do I? that would mean I need to be running wells that only stupid people stand in and staff aoe couldn’t kill a fly, they do not help against a thief who would just wait it out then continue to do its thing

I don’t see why running ogre runes is bad thing considering from what I see stealth is not relied on in pvp it is only used to gain immunity from ranged weapons and to constantly get rid of the target. most thieves that I have fought don’t even stay in stealth for the full 3 seconds they just flash stealth and continue attacking to remove the target that’s all

Yes you have heaps of Aoe, staff 2 through 5 which have great utility and cc. Scepter 2 aoe bleed and a cripple. Dagger 5 aoe bleed and weakness. axe 3 retal, cripple, and boon removal (really hurts the new might meta). Focus 4 bounces. warhorn 4 aoe cone daze. Plus warhorn 5 for aoe cripple and LF gain. Lastly you have death shroud 4 and 5.

and yet you are worried about a thief running ogre runes having a 25% chance to summon a squishy minion on a 90 second icd.

Also thieves don’t “flash” stealth just to remove target, that would be the biggest waist of initiative or a utility. They “flash” stealth because they are being heavily targeted and need a stealthy escape, or they go stealth for the stealth skill.

you missed the point dude… to use half of that I need a target in the first place something that vanishes every time they flash stealth and then they need to run into my staff marks to activate them because dodging into them negates them

you can say its a l2p issue all you want but every time I engage a thief no matter what I do to try keep them targeted half my attacks will miss combine that with the amount of damage they can put out I may aswell have 5 hp

its only sheer luck if my fear hits or I manage to freez them with focus because they made a mistake or blew their cooldowns too quickly and didn’t leave time to escape

ens.9854:

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.

Nothing’s forcing you to wear gear all sharing the same descriptor. Why not run a mix of Zerker and Soldier gear?

Sartharina.3542:

ens.9854:

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.

Nothing’s forcing you to wear gear all sharing the same descriptor. Why not run a mix of Zerker and Soldier gear?

because in pvp all you can have is an amulet.

Ozzy Toxin.3074:

you missed the point dude… to use half of that I need a target in the first place something that vanishes every time they flash stealth and then they need to run into my staff marks to activate them because dodging into them negates them

death shroud 4 and 5, and the focus skill are the only ones that require you to have a target to use the skill. And death shroud 4 and 5 still hit the thief if you use them before they enter stealth because they channel. All the other skills either form an Aoe around you, or are ground targetable. This is a l2p issue.

If you want Ozzy I will be more then happy to go into spvp with you and teach you some tricks to killing a thief on necro.

Evade is overpowered and always has been. The problem is evade is the dodge mechanic renamed and pinned to weapon and utility skills. Its like being able to dodge and do damage or use healing skills at once. When dodge is used all other skills can not be used since dodge takes priority.

From a broader perspective, what evade does is give specific classes access to a alternative dodge mechanic that doesn’t play by the same rules as dodge. Dodge and evade can be chained in succession giving the user large periods were they remain untouchable, which is probably what most complainers have a problem with.

The thief class is exempt from a lot of the conventional rules of combat in gw2:

1. Chill does not affect their skills
2. The class does not use static cooldowns for weapon skills
3. Stealth has no counter outside of sic em

So when you look at how evade is exempt from the same rules used by dodge and you give it to a class that is exempt from many basic gameplay rules then you can see how it becomes over the top.

I feel evade should be changed to work different than dodge or at the very least make skills that can’t be evaded. There are already unblockable skills in the game, dodge has weakness to counter balance it. Evade has nothing.

Youre right evade is broken on someone like a thief, because they have to either dodge everything and win or dodge 99% of everything and get hit by one burst and die. I cant even count how many times ive ACCIDENTLY killed a thief aoeing with my warrior or elementalist

Give thieves enought survivability (HP + skills/traits) and the dodge or stealth effects on the weapons weren’t necessary, but this is only one of many, many design mistakes, which ANet does.

(One the other hand, don’t think that we will have a good class balance as long as ANet doesn’t split all gamemodes and need months for only one balancepatch. More and smaller classupdates are much better and easier to control than bigger and few updates.)

Initiative works good and is no problem for the balance.
—Up to 5 times the same skill in a row, give thieves a little advantages at the start of a match, but against classes, which can use up to 8 skills in a row, which have stronger, and faster reloading skills, than the thief get his initiative, make them much weaker in longer fights.

Stealth: The biggest problem for the thieves- and the generally classbalance.
— Longer stealth- and revealedtime is necessary, to giving this mechanic a better balance and stop the abuse of spamming it.

The dogdes on the weaponskills have a similiar problem, they are currently necessary to survive and thieves would die within secounds without it, but spamming one evade after another make them partly too strong and very annoying.

Steal is complete useless, but also with BT it’s very weak. Two boons; – 5 secs; – 240 range; 1 time every ~30secs, dont help you or your team. The only reasons, why thieves use steal are the shadowsteps and BT because the combination of Vigor + SoH.

—They should remove the vigorbuff, put them into the acrobatic line and buff BT: Better range, longer buffduration, and steal one more boon (or better add the last point this to the classmechanic )

Acrobatic: Maybe the worst traitline in the game, or at least thieves worst traitline.
3 of 13 traits are stealth traits, only two, which support acrobatic-builds and the rest is weaker than every T1 SA trait (e.g. PR, our only condition remove in this tl) or complete useless, how HtC.
—The whole traitline need an overhaul, but dont need any stealth skills.
We have SA for stealthskills.

Venoms: Extremly weak, too long CD and not even in a condition build very useful.
— 1. Decouple them from Venomous Aura and buff/rework the venoms or remove them complete and replace them.
— 2. Put VA into another traitline: DA or Trickery, and combine Potent Poisons with Quick Venoms.

Traps: Who use them regular? Pls give me a serious answer.

Underwater: Well, I don’t think I must writing something about that, or!?

General: Switch the positions of Improvisation(DA) and Ricochet (Trickery)

T raw.4658:

destroy a GW2 class

This is exactly what needs to happen to the Thief.

Destroy it and start over Anet.

I’m curious why wvw is composed 80% of warrs/guards and some top PvP teams don’t even use a thief. Really weird.

^Confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy will do that to you.

There is no amount of consolidation that will make threads like these any better.

Almost single thread that was merged into this one had an OP that didn’t want a discussion but for people to simply agree with them. They eventually turned into flamebait if they weren’t flame to begin with because the OPs and the people who blindly agreed with them did not want to discuss, they just wanted thieves to die.

And it happens every time. I wonder what happens to upholding the forum ToS when a player posts a paragraph of nothing but “NURF THEEF kitten ”. It is flame and incites flame. All of them should be deleted on the spot.

Question: How long does revealed debuff last? I constantly knock a thief out of shadow refuge, it evades once and then its back to stealth. That’s not much of a debuff.

And for the person who doesn’t understand why constantly resetting a fight is a big advantage: It allows you to “lose” over and over, and continue the fight. You can wait around to engage on your own terms. If your burst is high enough that you don’t need more than a few hits from certain skills, then constant resets allow you to screw up more than other classes and survive.

I think we need more mechanics added to stealth.
Firstly, theif is the only class in game with a unique stealth mechanic… and mesmers, and engis… why not give everyone else one stealth mechanic. Then again, theif is the only class that gives you large crits, and +500 power hits, and regen, etc, when in stealth, sounds fair enough to me.
Secondly, I’ve had great 1v2s, where I could very well outskill both opponents, however two theifs isn’t a balanced 1v2 even, it takes two backstabs and 3 sec double heartseeks and you’re gone. There’s literally no way to actively counter a 1v2, both theifs. It supports class stacking WAY to much.
I suggest creating a status called ‘Alertness’ or ‘Awareness’ so that when attacked by a stealthed character, any other attacks recieved by a stealthed character in 10s will be glancing blows, BOOM no more thief stacking encouragements.
What else, yes thirdly, stealth is both a defensive mechanic and an offensive mechanic for theifs. Don’t give your theifs ANY toughness, ANY healing, ANY vitality, ANY boons such as regen, vigor, or protection, you can replace all of that with a click of a button. You should not encourage a class which has the strongest capabilites to survive, to roll ONLY DPS.

One way to learn this anet… look through every lvl 80 theif build, and look at the percentage of thiefs that play a defensive/survival/support role… you will get <10%. BALANCE ANET
“Balance is not where every class is exactly the same, its where not everyone is playing the same thing, or the exact same build.”
Well, I’d say you are not doing a great job with thief… about 90% balance to go.

etiolate.9185:

Question: How long does revealed debuff last? I constantly knock a thief out of shadow refuge, it evades once and then its back to stealth. That’s not much of a debuff.

And for the person who doesn’t understand why constantly resetting a fight is a big advantage: It allows you to “lose” over and over, and continue the fight. You can wait around to engage on your own terms. If your burst is high enough that you don’t need more than a few hits from certain skills, then constant resets allow you to screw up more than other classes and survive.

Revealed only happens when someone stealthed does direct damage. It has nothing to do with getting knocked out of SR.

I hope this was a troll post… i really do!

Murtygale.2635:

I think we need more mechanics added to stealth.
Firstly, theif is the only class in game with a unique stealth mechanic… and mesmers, and engis… and rangers… why not give everyone else one stealth mechanic. Then again, theif is the only class that gives you large crits, and +500 power hits, and regen, etc, when in stealth, sounds fair enough to me. other classes get those same things from NOT being in stealth :>
Secondly, I’ve had great 1v2s, where I could very well outskill both opponents, however two theifs isn’t a balanced 1v2 even, it takes two backstabs and 3 sec double heartseeks and you’re gone. There’s literally no way to actively counter a 1v2, both theifs. It supports class stacking WAY to much. balancing for 1v1 is silly… balancing for 1v2 is… wow. I’ve never seen more than 3 thieves together in wvw… guards, warrs, etc on the other hand…
I suggest creating a status called ‘Alertness’ or ‘Awareness’ so that when attacked by a stealthed character, any other attacks recieved by a stealthed character in 10s will be glancing blows, BOOM no more thief stacking encouragements. BOOM no more dagger thief burst
What else, yes thirdly, stealth is both a defensive mechanic and an offensive mechanic for theifs. Don’t give your theifs ANY toughness, ANY healing, ANY vitality, ANY boons such as regen, vigor, or protection, you can replace all of that with a click of a button. You should not encourage a class which has the strongest capabilites to survive, to roll ONLY DPS. have you ever been hit by a full pvt thief? hehehehehehehe

One way to learn this anet… look through every lvl 80 theif build, and look at the percentage of thiefs that play a defensive/survival/support role… you will get <10%. BALANCE ANET by all means, give thieves VIABLE support builds!
“Balance is not where every class is exactly the same, its where not everyone is playing the same thing, or the exact same build.”
Well, I’d say you are not doing a great job with thief… about 90% balance to go.

etiolate.9185:

Question: How long does revealed debuff last? I constantly knock a thief out of shadow refuge, it evades once and then its back to stealth. That’s not much of a debuff.

You said it: you constantly knock thieves out of SR. It is easily done. Why should there be anything bigger than the 3 sec Revealed debuff on something so easily achieved?

Murtygale.2635:

I suggest creating a status called ‘Alertness’ or ‘Awareness’ so that when attacked by a stealthed character, any other attacks recieved by a stealthed character in 10s will be glancing blows, BOOM no more thief stacking encouragements.

I suggest creating a system called “Resilience”: whenever I eat a Warrior burst (like an 8k Eviscerate), the Warrior does glancing blows for 10 secs and their stuns are disabled.

Carighan.6758:

• Dark: Leap takes up to 10% of your HP (won’t down you) to give you Quickness for up to 1s. Blast takes up to 35% of your HP to give people around you Quickness for 1,5s.

That would ban thieves from open world event and wvw zerg battles.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

etiolate.9185:

Question: How long does revealed debuff last? I constantly knock a thief out of shadow refuge, it evades once and then its back to stealth. That’s not much of a debuff.

And for the person who doesn’t understand why constantly resetting a fight is a big advantage: It allows you to “lose” over and over, and continue the fight. You can wait around to engage on your own terms. If your burst is high enough that you don’t need more than a few hits from certain skills, then constant resets allow you to screw up more than other classes and survive.

Revealed only happens when someone stealthed does direct damage. It has nothing to do with getting knocked out of SR.

Wrong have 3 or4 secs to knock a thief out of sr and they will receive a 4 sec debuff in spvp 3 sec in pve/wvw.

In sPVP, everyone can “reset” a fight. Without stealth, you are transported back to your spawn point first. With stealth, you can stick around a little closer and maybe get back into the fight a little sooner. Either way, you’re out of action for a little while.

Of course if you reset using stealth, then your opponent won’t experience the joy of stomping you right before you take your time-out. But that’s a problem only if you mistakenly assume that the purpose of sPVP is to rack up stomps.