Actually, thief is one of the only classes where you are better off not spamming all of your weapon skills at once. In order to win a 1v1, most stealth builds absolutely require getting an initial jump upon the opponent. It’s also a very fragile class and you can wind up dead instantly in any group fight if you aren’t careful. The thief is still good at 1v1ing against some classes, but I don’t know what is going on in your head for you to say that thief is the least risky class to play. Maybe only in roaming WvW. And roaming doesn’t really have much point. Thief is very risky in tPvP.
Many top players say that thief is one of the hardest classes to play effectively as, especially in tPvP where disengaging doesn’t really get you anything other than a decapped point.
I’m going to take a gamble and guess that by your idiotic response you have only played thief in hotjoin pvp or in WvW. I’m also going to guess that you aren’t even involved enough with actual PvP to see just how easy it is to pick up many other classes like warrior or necromancer compared to thief.
You’ve never even played a single class besides the thief have you? There isn’t any class where you are better off button-mashing. The very definition of ‘button-mashing’ or ‘face rolling’ or whatever else you want to call it is that it is an ineffective use of resources. That doesn’t change the fact that thief boils down to getting a jump on your opponent, and a series of buttons in sequence or combination, that anyone with fifteen spare minutes and a guide can figure out. And these two simple thing bring the class’ greatest output to bear, with no risk if you don’t screw up, and minimal risk if you do. And neither of these requirements take any skill whatsoever so long as there is not counterplay to stealth.
The simple fact. Positioning, timing, execution, everything it takes to set up a perfect thief gank, requires no skill so long as you can do it all from a status which protects you from all counterplay. And requires no risk, so long as you can return to that state so frequently after a mistake.
I doubt any top players have ever said that, and if they had I wouldn’t care. The game is a job for them, their opinion is based on an entirely different system of rules than the game the rest of us play. You want that to apply? Become a professional gamer, talk with a professional gamer. You are not, neither am I.
And you can assume whatever you want about me or whatever else you like, your bad habit, and not my problem.
Actually, I main necromancer (I have more hours of playtime + pvp on it). And it is a hell of a lot easier to play than thief. Also, I don’t know what you are on about claiming that only professional gamers can talk about actual balance instead of just screaming that stealth is the most overpowered mechanic in the game. I also don’t know where you got the idea that there actually are professional gamers playing GW2 pvp. LOL.
If you knew anything about this game’s pvp, you would know that builds that bring more team support are almost always better for it. A pure glass cannon thief CAN insta-gank glass and medium toughness builds. Yet, strangely enough, it doesn’t matter. This is why you don’t see these types of thieves in high level competitive play.
The other point I’d like to make: certain classes excel at 1v1, certain classes excel at support. Thief and mesmer and the primary 1v1 classes of GW2. Thieves are meant to be assassins. However, 1v1 is not important AT ALL in this game. Roaming in WvW is maybe fun, but it doesn’t actually serve a purpose. A build dedicated to only 1v1 fighting will lose tournaments. It’ll also be bad for PvE, it’ll be bad for zerging. Earlier today I fought a couple of tournaments against a pure glass thief on my glass guardian. This guy could down me pretty fast, but he brought nothing to his team other than that ability. Whenever my team showed up to help he would die before he could stomp me. So he was actually a negative for his team, when he could have played something like guardian or ranger and brought massive team utility
I’ve actually given up my thief currently because D/P is so useless in tournament play. If you were complaining about S/D thief, you might make some sense, because the almost permanent evasion up time on that build is pretty silly and actually has no real counter, unlike stealth.