Guild Wars 2

The problem is that when they stealth they can just pop a lot of damage, they can insta kill you and you dont know what happened at all, so stealth shoul have longer cooldown to re stealth, that and the damage needs a nerf, its not balanced to be killed in 2 seconds by someone that you dont even noticed and dont have any type of counter to this, i played a rougue in WOW, and in there you couldnt do that because IT IS overpowered, even if in that game you can be in stealth indefinitely, you cant burst to death someone, its not possible because it is overpowered, and when you are out of stealth you can not re stealth again while in combat only using a cool down would let you to re stealth, and if for some reason you get hit you get out of stealth , in this game you can stealth at any time in combat, you can burst to death someone, you can not be taken out from stealth if you get hit, so in fact the mechanics are not really balanced.

-Longer cool down to re stealth, really longer / no longer possible to enter stealth while in combat

-Reduce burst damage thiefs do from stealth a lot

Thieves can only heavily burst you if you’re running glass cannon, which is stupid move in WvW. To illustrate, pit a Soldier’s Zerg against a Berserker’s Zerg, and see who wins. I’ve yet to see the Zerker’s win. In short, just because your glass cannon build is meta in PvE doesn’t mean it’s meta in WvW. Enemies are smarter there.

Also, this may shock you but. Thieves run zerker’s because they can’t hope to kill anything remotely tanky without zerker’s. They have neither the damage nor the sustainability, even with stealth. And stealth can be beaten by out-thinking, so it’s already a flimsy defense.

it’s so funny.

every time someone screams “it’s not fair” there’s at LEAST one person able to point out a counter to the perceived unfairness.

tbh, i think anet did a great thing with thief. it’s not perma stealth, which means folk have had to relearn how to play. as dual pointed out, it’s not necessarily a good idea to go glass cannon, but folk do it. so … do YOU, as the other player, need to work on YOUR survivability? relearn how to play?

something to consider.

Isende it is perma stealth, that’s the problem.

traditionally in games the counter to having high damage has been decreased mobility. however it rapidly became apparent that decreased mobility was too sever of a condition to have for simply being able to do more damage. so to counter this most classes that could do high damage could also take lots of damage at the cost of reduced mobility.

this is present in TF2 with the heavy as well as planet side 2 with the heavy assault and the MAX

now when stealth is used as a means of getting around and scouting it is generally considered fair, even when it is also used as a means of espionage and disruption.

what this means is very simple.

high mobility = stealth
high damage + high health – mobility is generally considered fair
high damage + high mobility – high health is also generally considered fair
high damage + high mobility + stealth – high health definitively unfair

if thiefs wanted to keep stealth then they would need to trade off their spike damage to keep things balanced. being able to have high damage, mobility and stealth from a PvP perspective is insane.

i believe that the best way to balance thieves is to start by balancing them in PvE. remove stealth all together, but give them better options to blind, a bigger health pool and better sustained damage at the cost of spike damage. personally i would like to see the thief class act more like thieves then assassins. their are plenty of ways to remain un-catchable without the terrible and frankly un inspired and lazy mechanic that is stealth.

Replace stealth with the sin’s shadow step from gw1 – problem solved.

or,

make reveal last for 10 seconds – again, problem solved.

or

make it so that thieves can’t deal 16k+ damage in the first second of combat – see above, problem solved.

or the best option,

Make stealth STEALTH, not invisibility. Remove the character tag, and make them translucent but still visible. So that someone paying attention can still find a stealthed player – as things stand, it’s invisibility, and nearly permanent if the thief is playing smart. This should never have made it into a competitive game.

1) They already have Sin’s Shadowstep
2) No, that totally screw’s over non-burst builds that have stealth at the core of their rotation (ie, and stealth set that isn’t dagger main-hand)
3)The full burst takes more then a second, and I’ve never seen 16k. mostly around 6k-9k. You’d have to be against an exceptionally glassy target to deal that much.
4) Except that stealth offer zero bonuses to defense. It’s purely an illusion. If the illusion doesn’t work then it’s just a stance that lets you do stealth attacks and thieves are rendered as glassy as month one eles. (for those that don’t know, that’s else when didn’t know they were tanky)

As for the PvE thing. Thieves will never be anything but underpowered in PvE as long as champions are resistant to blinds. They’ve already got plenty of blinds. And “a bigger health pool and better sustained damage at the cost of spike damage.”? You know what that’d make thieves? Weak Warriors with blinks.

If you remove stealth, and burst, you got to add, more substain damage, tankier stats, more weapon options, and such….

I wvwvw on a guardian – the standard Ah build, knights gear. I have been downed fast enough that there’s no time to pop a shout – that is, no time to press 1 key, by thief burst. This implies the damage is ~16k after allowing for my armour. So we have enormous damage out of nowhere (invisibility is bad) that all procs pretty near instantly. (I will admit, this was against DH, who regularly use speed hacks and flight hacks – it’s not unthinkable that there’s some kind of damage hack out there too.)

You also ignored a key word in point 1. Replace. As in, stealth-b-gone, and let them have to step to a target. Being smacked by someone who you didn’t even know was there for your whole health pool is wrong.

stale.9785:

I wvwvw on a guardian – the standard Ah build, knights gear. I have been downed fast enough that there’s no time to pop a shout – that is, no time to press 1 key, by thief burst. This implies the damage is ~16k after allowing for my armour. So we have enormous damage out of nowhere (invisibility is bad) that all procs pretty near instantly. (I will admit, this was against DH, who regularly use speed hacks and flight hacks – it’s not unthinkable that there’s some kind of damage hack out there too.)

You also ignored a key word in point 1. Replace. As in, stealth-b-gone, and let them have to step to a target. Being smacked by someone who you didn’t even know was there for your whole health pool is wrong.

Not viable. Combat is too fast and hectic to be able to methodically target key opponents with shadowstep within a zerg v zerg. Not to mention there’s not enough information on the screen to identify who’s a killable target, especially since every class can run tanky. Stealth achieves shadowstep’s ends, but allows the user to be adaptable in high pressure situations.

And hack or no hack. If 16k was achieved against Knight’s, it’s not normal, even by backstab’s standards.

Just saying, that’s what I faced the entire last rotation of WvW. Get downed, see “Darkhaven Invader laughs” on a thief. Repeat. Repeat, and repeat again. Soldiers greatsword/staff. Knight’s armour, zerker trinkets, 0/0/30/30/10.

Given the last rotation was my first major (as in, played daily) foray into WvW, I have to assume this is standard for thieves. If it is, it is completely unacceptable. I’m nearly a full bunker spec. (2792 armour, 16,382 HP) and have 263 deaths, almost entirely from thieves in the last matchup. There weren’t prolonged battles – these were insta-dead affairs.

I know, from playing my own thief, that I personally can’t put out that kind of damage, but then, I’m a bad thief. (My win loss ratio is only 9:1. From observation, a more normal win to loss for a thief would be 500:1)

EDIT: sorry, those were staff numbers. Numbers with sword equipped are: 2920 armour, 17, 700 hp.

absolute bull whoever says using tanky build and armor counters serker thiefs full tank build thiefs still hit me for 5-7k damage with Single skills.

give thief all stealth they want REMOVE INITIATIVE SYSTEM. theres your fix

if someone blows their cooldowns and went full class cannon he should be punished like every other class.

Make thief lose stealth when hitting Aegis or Blocks . (actually anyone that stealths)

Fiorrello.8126:

traditionally in games the counter to having high damage has been decreased mobility. however it rapidly became apparent that decreased mobility was too sever of a condition to have for simply being able to do more damage. so to counter this most classes that could do high damage could also take lots of damage at the cost of reduced mobility.

this is present in TF2 with the heavy as well as planet side 2 with the heavy assault and the MAX

now when stealth is used as a means of getting around and scouting it is generally considered fair, even when it is also used as a means of espionage and disruption.

what this means is very simple.

high mobility = stealth
high damage + high health – mobility is generally considered fair
high damage + high mobility – high health is also generally considered fair
high damage + high mobility + stealth – high health definitively unfair

if thiefs wanted to keep stealth then they would need to trade off their spike damage to keep things balanced. being able to have high damage, mobility and stealth from a PvP perspective is insane.

i believe that the best way to balance thieves is to start by balancing them in PvE. remove stealth all together, but give them better options to blind, a bigger health pool and better sustained damage at the cost of spike damage. personally i would like to see the thief class act more like thieves then assassins. their are plenty of ways to remain un-catchable without the terrible and frankly un inspired and lazy mechanic that is stealth.

That would make sense IF all classes depended on 2 characteristics, but they dont. Think about it this way. Warriors have high sustained, high burst, high mobility, and high survivability. Guardians have high sustained, extreme survivability, extreme support, and good mobility. Rangers have good sustained, crazy range, strong survivability, and good mobility. Ele has great sustained, great spike, great survivability, great mobility, a kittenton of boons, great suppport, and 4 weapon (attunement) swaps.

Just because thieves have 3 characteristics doesn’t make them op. It’s what makes them unique. Please people, stop with all your crying. The vast majority of the arguments we see every day can be summed up as L2P. Every argument I’ve read in this thread come from experience from other games. Other games had blah and blah to make up for stealth because it was op there. Being op in another game doesn’t make it op in this game. You want to hear a funny story? If a thief opens up on a boon guardian or engi and just blindly attack, the guard/engi can kill the thief without landing a single hit. Any class and any build can be beat, just because you don’t know how doesn’t make it broken, it means you’re still inexperienced. That is all. Go to youtube and watch the plethora of videos of other classes just crushing in wvw roaming and zerging.

Ask ANY established good player if thief is op and they’ll all say no. Are they strong? In certain areas yea, in others, no. Simple as that.

Lastly, if you think thief burst is high, check out rifle warrior or shatter mesmer. Their burst hits harder than thief but they have the added benefit of aoe damage and ranged while thief is only single target.

stale.9785:

I’m nearly a full bunker spec. (2792 armour, 16,382 HP)

EDIT: sorry, those were staff numbers. Numbers with sword equipped are: 2920 armour, 17, 700 hp.

Really that’s more like halfway between full zerker and full bunker.

randomfightfan.4091:

Lastly, if you think thief burst is high, check out rifle warrior or shatter mesmer.

Warrior rifle has 1 burst dps skill, it takes a 2 second stationary channel to perform, is easy to see, takes 30 strikes of adrenaline(these drain out of combat) also eating any of your passive benefits from adrenaline levels, and leaves you with a weapon where the auto attack is kitten because it applies guaranteed bleeds but you wanted to use it for power with the f1 skill.

Problem is not invisibility.. Thief doesnt need precision, they have %100 critical chance in stealth.. this is really b..s..t U can do everything with thief.. They can play and laugh with 5 ppl easly in WvWvW

- Amazing cond. damage
- Amazing burst damage
- Amazing mobility
- Perma invisibility

But this class only works in WvWvW. They r really sucks in tPvP and PvE. unfortunately GW2 on bad way about classes balance

do u wanna pve? open warrior or guardian
do u wanna tpvp? open mesmer and elementalist
do u wanna wvwvw? open thief
do u wanna suffer? open necromancer

u cant play with just 1 class in this game

My guard laughs at thieves. I can beat thieves on my other non-thief classes as well (although I can’t just akitten like I do on my guard).

Typical case of…

Dear Dev’s

Please nerf Scissors
Rock is fine

~ Sincerely Paper.

Player Character.9467:

stale.9785:

I’m nearly a full bunker spec. (2792 armour, 16,382 HP)

EDIT: sorry, those were staff numbers. Numbers with sword equipped are: 2920 armour, 17, 700 hp.

Really that’s more like halfway between full zerker and full bunker.

That’s why I said nearly. The point remains that I’m high armour and reasonable health. No other class can smoke me in their opening salvo for 100% of my HP, before I can react. Certainly no other class can come out of invisibility behind me and do it. Therein lay the problem – you can’t plan for the battle, because it comes without warning – in the event you somehow survive the opening, you can’t chase, because thieves have an ability to choose their encounters not found elsewhere in the game.

Anyway, the thread isn’t about me – the thread is about stealth being OP.

I do like the suggestion earlier about removing initiative and putting the skills on cooldowns. Mesmer stealth have long (painfully long, actually) cooldowns. Anyone want to weigh in on what appropriate cooldowns for thieves would be?

Having reveal kick in on block/miss/aegis would help too, along with giving some weapons (torch was suggested somewhere) innate anti-stealth ability.

Player Character.9467:

stale.9785:

I’m nearly a full bunker spec. (2792 armour, 16,382 HP)

EDIT: sorry, those were staff numbers. Numbers with sword equipped are: 2920 armour, 17, 700 hp.

Really that’s more like halfway between full zerker and full bunker.

randomfightfan.4091:

Lastly, if you think thief burst is high, check out rifle warrior or shatter mesmer.

Warrior rifle has 1 burst dps skill, it takes a 2 second stationary channel to perform, is easy to see, takes 30 strikes of adrenaline(these drain out of combat) also eating any of your passive benefits from adrenaline levels, and leaves you with a weapon where the auto attack is kitten because it applies guaranteed bleeds but you wanted to use it for power with the f1 skill.

So a 1500 range homing line nuke is easy to see even when the warrior is hiding behind 3 people or on top of a wall? And that adrenalin is extremely easy to fill up (not to mention adrenal surge fills it up even if you’re ooc). That warrior f1 can hit over 20k to up to 3 targets and can follow up with their unload thingy for another 10k. Doing that requires a lot of specific skills and usually some vuln from others but the warrior supplies all the might and the stopping power. If you don’t believe these numbers, I implore you to go to youtube and check out some rifle/sniper warrior vids.

A real good thief can take out my Guardian but never in one shot. A couple of just good thieves would take me out but I managed to take out 3 not so good thieves defending a camp in WvW. Mind you, the NPCs did help!

However a real good anything could take out my Guardian. I have been downed by every class there is as that player was just better then me. Should I cry to have all those classes nerfed? Or should I get better? Decisions, decisions, decisions.

So you want thieves pigeon-holed into boon hate while making 40% of the class even more useless?

Play the thief before you kitten about it.

Thieves and stealth are fine.

I was able to acquire the knowledge on how to deal with them with my character.

A lot of responses in here, there is something going on in here, some truth in all this.

OP, have you ever done a search for tactics on countering thieves who make good use of stealth backstab builds? Ever watched any video tutorials? I’m guessing you came here to make a suggestion without having done any research, because you fought against one or even two good thieves who used this strategy and lost to them.

The truth is, they are rare. They cause a lot of chaos when they are present, but there really aren’t that many thieves truly skilled enough to run this build to it’s full potential. Every class forum has threads created by players who got defeated by that class and are moaning about how over-powered they are. The reality is that, while your one build and current tactics may be working out in some situations, it clearly isn’t in this one. You have a build and playstyle which is being countered by theirs.

As this is a suggestions forum, my suggestion to you would be to learn not only from your own experience, but from the experience of others. Go online and look up ways of countering backstab thieves and make yourself a better player. Even change your build if it bothers you that much, but be aware that suddenly other professions and builds will start to seem overpowered to you if you do this.

Still needs attention.

let’s see they took out culling in WvW they nerfed the damage the steal teleport does, and they fixed a bug with steal that allowed for stealth even when not close enough to teleport using that skill and people are still complaining? I think some people need to get out of the Zerker mindset for PVP that’s not effective and even I know that much about PVP.

The only reason why I’m leveling a thief is because they are over powered. I hope I can level him fast enough and kick some kitten in wvw before anet nerfs them.

Aberrant.6749:

Dear Dev’s

Please nerf Scissors
Rock is fine

~ Sincerely Paper.

Classic!!!

Hitman.5829:

The only reason why I’m leveling a thief is because they are over powered. I hope I can level him fast enough and kick some kitten in wvw before anet nerfs them.

My suggestion would be to check out some of the great Thief videos and demos on “How to” that are posted on the internet.

I was a amazed when our wandering band of 10 guildies got tied up in knots by a stealth thief when we were doing a karma train on an off night in WvWvW. That player was having a great time messing with us and probably laughing all the time.

My hat was off to his play techniques and even my guild mates had to agree it had to be a very good player to do that to such a large group of us. At least half of our 10 were serious pvprs and none of us were on our 80 characters. We finally got him down but it took a bit of time and wrangling to do it.

But the Thief is amazing if played to its strengths.

regardless of FIGHTING thieves, they can still permanently stealth themselves

I play a thief, and it is not easy to play, you can not keep the stealth forever. Making it last is not an easy thing. The Thief’s handicap is a balance between it’s low resistance to damage and the initiative points to perform attacks.
If you think there is an unfair balance, I invite you to play a thief and experience it for yourself. You must be very aware of your surroundings at all times and keep an eye on your initiative, and not spam attacks or you will be a featherless sitting duck. Playing thief is all about skill and patience,

Player Character.9467:

regardless of FIGHTING thieves, they can still permanently stealth themselves

Permastealth was removed. Stealth cannot be stacked higher than 12s.

emadc.7680:

you can not keep the stealth forever. Making it last is not an easy thing

Yes, yes you can. It is well known. It is posted on these forums. It has been pointed to by anet as something not intended in the design of the class. Please refrain from lying on the forums.

Zacchary.6183:

Player Character.9467:

regardless of FIGHTING thieves, they can still permanently stealth themselves

Permastealth was removed. Stealth cannot be stacked higher than 12s.

and you can continue to stack it to 12s…

More prove to this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thieves-uncatchable

stale.9785:

Replace stealth with the sin’s shadow step from gw1 – problem solved.

or,

make reveal last for 10 seconds – again, problem solved.

or

make it so that thieves can’t deal 16k+ damage in the first second of combat – see above, problem solved.

or the best option,

Make stealth STEALTH, not invisibility. Remove the character tag, and make them translucent but still visible. So that someone paying attention can still find a stealthed player – as things stand, it’s invisibility, and nearly permanent if the thief is playing smart. This should never have made it into a competitive game.

Pretty much this, don’t see why “thieves” were made in the first place and Assassins not just transitioned over from GW1, they were perfectly fine, a HIGH RISK (but could still escape with shadow steps or close distance with them but it still took skill and tactics), HIGH REWARD class if you pulled off your combos perfectly and made sure to cover/cancel properly to not get interrupted/stripped of enchants. GW2 Thieves are HIGH REWARD, LOW RISK, this is the issue with them, in wvw and spvp, if a thief gets caught out in a TERRIBLE position even as a glass cannon they don’t have to worry, they just pop stealth and run off. Other classes at the moment can do this as well (such a bunker eles, which are arguably broken with d/d cause their damage output/tankability is too high when done properly) and these need to be addressed as well but lets leave that for another time.

In short, Thieves need skill indexing added to them like GW1 Assassins had, everyone knew who the bad sins were in gw1, i can’t tell a bad thief from a good thief cause every thief does the same thing, pop out of stealth, attack OH kitten I GOT IN TOO DEEP hits INSTA STEALTH NO FADE TIME button.

Either remove stealth or give it freakin fade time, the current stealth is just dumb, it’s a get out of jail free card, especially when combined with all the dumb stun breaks that thieves have on their shortbow/utilities.

Hyraltia.4185:

In short, Thieves need skill indexing added to them like GW1 Assassins had, everyone knew who the bad sins were in gw1, i can’t tell a bad thief from a good thief cause every thief does the same thing, pop out of stealth, attack OH kitten I GOT IN TOO DEEP hits INSTA STEALTH NO FADE TIME button.

Either remove stealth or give it freakin fade time, the current stealth is just dumb, it’s a get out of jail free card, especially when combined with all the dumb stun breaks that thieves have on their shortbow/utilities.

Well that’s not entirely fair, you can tell who the really bad ones are when their downed body/corpse materializes where they were standing when you immo’ed them entering stealth.

I don’t think the thief needs a nerf… instead change the Stealth Trap to a permanent 1 hour location siege device.

Yet the device can be destroyed.

As it is the stealth trap is quite useless.

People are still talking about this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Stealth-has-to-reward-you-the-better-YOU-are/first#post2188000

Player Character.9467:

emadc.7680:

you can not keep the stealth forever. Making it last is not an easy thing

Yes, yes you can. It is well known. It is posted on these forums. It has been pointed to by anet as something not intended in the design of the class. Please refrain from lying on the forums.

Zacchary.6183:

Player Character.9467:

regardless of FIGHTING thieves, they can still permanently stealth themselves

Permastealth was removed. Stealth cannot be stacked higher than 12s.

and you can continue to stack it to 12s…

Only so much.