Guild Wars 2

Okay as title suggest, I think it is about time for people who main thieves and not just on a whim or a recent buff, to stand up.
Please do not come in here and make us look bad, talk with sense. =D

Honestly I want to stand up and just say, leave thief alone! If your not fixing our numerous problems or one trick pony builds, then leave us alone.

I am tired of watching numerous and mindless QQ threads about thieves and stealth specially.
I am actually afraid they are going to widdle down this profession to nothing over time because of other’s complaining.

There is a difference between being over-powered and needing tuned, and then bad players just losing to good thieves and whining about it.
At this point after constant nerfs, if you are still losing to a thief, its time to look at your play style instead of opening your tear ducts all over the forums.

Now for some constructive suggestions

~I read somewhere that they want to increase base damage on thieves. Now I actually think this is a great idea! Take out some of our current damage traits to balance out damage output , but replace them with more defensive talents.

~Next, the SA tree has some amazing condition removal ability if you spec accordingly. I think you should do the same thing for acrobatic tree, add something deep into the tree where you can remove one condition per evade that uses endurance. (This would actually open up more NON-BS builds, as acrobatics and back-stab builds do not have the best synergy— as Critical Strikes + SA tree are almost mandatory.

~P/P Really, I am at a loss for this weapon set. But there are some really good suggestions out there I’ve read. Maybe somebody would post something again here.

~ Venoms Hmm this one is really tough, cause I don’t want to just come out and say they are terrible. But they are so situational at best and rarely worth the utility slot. (lol at venomshare)
Actually I am going to rename a suggestion I seen a little while back that I thought was excellent. Putting in the venoms into f2-fx buttons would add some serious flavor to the class. And add some counter play to the thief so they don’t run when burst cd’s are down. I think they should share a 10 second global CD, but each individual one should be around 30 seconds.
This would probably need some tuning, but when I sit here and think about the extra depth and utility it adds to the profession I get excited.

That’s all for now I can think of at the moment.

Feel free fellow thieves to share things you think would make this class better, or comment on my opinions.

P.S Sorry if I seemed hostile at first, I tried to make my point as direct as possible. Cheers!

Wouldn’t this get a better reception in the Thieves forum? Just a friendly suggestion. =)

I think the problem with the class shows itself when people starts speccing with the idea that they should do huge burst of damage to kill and hope that they don’t die in the process… because that’s when Stealth becomes a problem. We can deal a LOT of burst damage and our “defense mechanic” is possibly the best of all the classes (at least it’s my personal favourite).

That’s when you have people complaining about stealth, and the thieves are complaining about supposed lack of defenses. You can’t nerf the damage because then thieves wouldn’t be able to kill, and you can’t nerf the stealth because then thieves wouldn’t be able to kill.

So ArenaNet has to find a way to discourage the “one-trick pony” play. It’s a valid strategy, I agree… but it’s not worth balancing for.

I’m playing a pressure/support thief and, while none of my stats really stand out (even my stats are sneaky), I do a very large contribution to the team so I really don’t see any real issue with the class. I think it’s perfectly fine as in.

But I see where the complains (on both sides) are coming from.

The Initiative system really messes with Thieves a lot. In some ways they are too good, but they are also brokenly bad in most ways.

They don’t have a broad enough weapon selection as it as, and Pistols and Shortbows are very lackluster in general (though SB can shine very situtionally). This is due in large part to them having weak autoattacks, which is a very critical problem with thieves in particular because all of their other skills share a resource.

Stealth is very problematic – it works a bit too well in PvP and not nearly well enough in PvE. It’s moduled more as an offensive tool than a defensive one, which is a problem given how squishy they are. The terrible downed state and lackluster sustained DPS combines to make the class extremely pigeon-holed in the area of burst damage builds to be very playable.

Meh.

I speak for the underground thieves’ collective when I say “bring it on,” I suppose.

Great class. Doesn’t need much help, doesn’t need much nerfed… won’t complain when either come down the pipe.

poof

Thieves have constantly been standing up since forever. :/

There are no devs that main Thief though so we have no one to relate to us.

Our stealth is our main source of survivablility.

Once i’m visible, I start to die very quickly. The only other thing that saves me is my S/P to daze and stun them.

New Character Yo.6487:

Our stealth is our main source of survivablility.

Once i’m visible, I start to die very quickly. The only other thing that saves me is my S/P to daze and stun them.

Yes. Except it doesn’t work as such very well in PvE especially.

Einlanzer.1627:

New Character Yo.6487:

Our stealth is our main source of survivablility.

Once i’m visible, I start to die very quickly. The only other thing that saves me is my S/P to daze and stun them.

Yes. Except it doesn’t work as such very well in PvE especially.

Exactly, Thieves at the moment are one hit wonders. In PvE, it’s difficult to do any kind of melee (only against trash mobs). In boss fights, 90% of the time I use ranged so I don’t get 1 shotted.

I used to main a thief. Then I found with the new ranger specs I could win 1v3s 98% of the time, deal alot more damage and have substantially more survivability.

I’ve already stopped actively playing until thieves get a buff.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that thieves aren’t rewarded enough (if at all…) for being skilled. The most effective way to kill someone (at least before the patch) requires literally 3 button presses. CnD, Steal, Backstab. The next most effective way requires spamming 2 until you run out of initiative or your enemy dies. Boring as hell, and the main reason I don’t run D/D.

Would like to see more risk-reward gameplay added. A few examples of what I mean:

1. Reduce the hitbox on being “behind” someone, but cause backstab’s damage to scale cleanly depending on how to close to the “back” you are.

2. Replace the “gain might on dodge” trait with “gain might for each successfully evaded attack”. Perhaps move it up the tree a bit.

3. Headshot deals additional damage (like 2-3k on crit) upon successfully interrupting an attack.

People against thief stealth, stealth is the primary defence of thieves. Without protection, or a reliable regen (1 trait does not solve the issue as a whole) we NEED something like stealth. THe problem is, many people can’t l2p and when they don’t think there is a counter for stealth, they call it op. It isn’t op, its the kinda thing that makes players think. If you can’t predict the movement of someone who is running straight at you and then goes stealth, well bad news for you.

I made a thread in the thief sub-forum called,“Ask a thief”. If you need advice, post there. Share your story, come back here for more advice. In the end, ask a thief. Don’t assume they are unkillable as they most certainly arn’t.

Some nice opinions, thanks for sharing.

MasterGeese.4756:

I’ve already stopped actively playing until thieves get a buff.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that thieves aren’t rewarded enough (if at all…) for being skilled. The most effective way to kill someone (at least before the patch) requires literally 3 button presses. CnD, Steal, Backstab. The next most effective way requires spamming 2 until you run out of initiative or your enemy dies. Boring as hell, and the main reason I don’t run D/D.

Would like to see more risk-reward gameplay added. A few examples of what I mean:

1. Reduce the hitbox on being “behind” someone, but cause backstab’s damage to scale cleanly depending on how to close to the “back” you are.

2. Replace the “gain might on dodge” trait with “gain might for each successfully evaded attack”. Perhaps move it up the tree a bit.

3. Headshot deals additional damage (like 2-3k on crit) upon successfully interrupting an attack.

I’m really not sure what you mean by this post. You said you stopped playing thief until they got a buff. Nothing you said in there is an actual buff though.

And that back stab idea is not good at all imo. If you take into account of the variables not in your control like latency, you would really destroy thief back stab viability as this is the internet and is not stable 100% the time.

Right now, I also disagree on no risk/reward for thief. In this game you can actually face-stab something for little or no damage and mess up your setup, put reveal up and cripple your fight. ~Just to name pretty risk/reward thing for running back stab.

Also heartseeker spam does not win fights, I think the large misconception is people getting hit with 2-3 after hitting 50% health and exaggerating the “you hit 22222 and win”.
Its a finisher, and it’s doing its intended job of finishing the target after certain health percentage.