Guild Wars 2

Hi, I want to ask whats Anet stand on Backstab currently. While I understand that thieves dont have all that much going on for themselves when it comes to team support as we know it, Im wondering if Anet is really ok with thieves hitting anywhere from 8k-10k with a single ability that unlike most classes with such a strong hitting spell, this one lacks obvious animation, cannot be blocked and does not reveal the thief until it is dispensed.

Currently I believe that if the class is supposed to have that much damage, then I suggest we move that damage to other skills that require at least some kind of risk. Sure if you are a 20k hp warrior then 9k might not be all htat much to you, but if you are a valkiry/zerker guard, ele or mesmer than a 9k hit will take more than half your life ( 80% of your life if you are guard/ele) and thats every 4 seconds.

Please dont bring the “but thieves are squishy! spam all your long CDs in the hope that it might hit them”. It is not fun to be on the receiving end, it is not fun for any observer (I can assure you many people will close any stream if all you see if a thief one shooting anyone in any 1v1 scenario and disengaging any time their health drop a bit).

Let me put it into perspective to all thieves out there; imagine your 14k thief was hit every 4 seconds out of the blue with a 9k skill and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

tl;dr: I know most people wont even bother to read the whole thing and will comment only based on tittle, please if you are one of those refrain from posting, thanks

(EDIT: Screenshot taken 4/16/2014, POST patch)

Fortus.6175:

Let me put it into perspective to all thieves out there; imagine your 14k thief was hit every 4 seconds out of the blue with a 9k skill and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it.

There are all sorts of wrongs in that statement. Let me put it into perspective for you since you don’t really seem to understand how thieves work. When you claim that there is “nothing you could do about it”, it becomes obvious that it’s a l2p issue.

1) 9k backstabs every 4 seconds? Unless the thief is running 25/30/0/0/15 with scholar runes at over 90% hp, with assassin’s signet, he is NOT going to backstab you for 9k. Especially since you are a heavy armor class. Trust me. The typical D/P build now has become 10/30/0/0/30 and with even over 90% hp, I can only backstab a medium golem for 7k-ish. However, under no circumstances should the thief be backstabbing you with over 90% hp after the initial surprise attack. Even if you land your sword 3, GS 2, or judges, he will be well below 90%.

2) If you are going to let him backstab you for “9k” every 4 seconds, it is a L2P issue. Firstly, you are not turning and strafing your character enough because if you were, it would be very hard for a thief to position himself to hit you from the back every 4 seconds. By the time he is revealed, you should be fighting facing him so that he DOESN’T backstab you. A backstab from the front does 50% less damage, so if you are taking the full backstab damage every 4 seconds, it means you’re not playing the matchup right…I can assure you that it’s no easy task to go behind someone every 4 seconds with everything going on in a fight.

3) A zerker guardian is A LOT more forgiving to fight in a 1v1 than a glass thief. Zerker guardians have all sorts of blinds, aegis, shelter, renewed focus, burning. Thankfully for you, blinds, blocks, invulns, and burning are all banes for a thief. As a experienced thief, I could tell you that the fight is definitely in the guardian’s favor unless you do something totally wrong. In a team situation that’s a different story because a thief’s job is to surprise and gank someone, you just can’t complain about that. But in a 1v1, a zerker guardian vs a zerker thief, it is definitely in the favor of the guardian.

Contrary to your belief, there are a lot of things you could do, like the things I spoke about and something as simple as activating shield of wrath when he goes in stealth. I’m really not sure why you said there’s nothing you can do but take a “9k backstab”, but when you say things like that…it’s hard for people not to troll you.

Yeah I can see all the hate coming my way, but I will stand strong on my point. As someone getting really tired of thieves one shooting me and my friends (which guesss what, have also quitted sPvP for this and many other reasons) I can tell you that this is wrong.

I know most of you hate comparisons, but I will do the unthinkable; LoL Evelynn. A stealth cahmpion which would one shoot most people in stealth with a 3 secs stun followed by 2 spikes. This was back when the game was young and very unbalanced, she got gutted and was nearly useless for some time. I dont want thieves to be gutted, I do enjoy playing them a bit, but people has to realize how unhealthy this is for the game. New players and old players are getting annoyed by this, perhaps it might not win games, in fact I believe having a thief in your team might cost you a game, but still makes the game not enjoyable, it is, toxic, yes I went as far as calling one shoot mechanics toxic

And yes, tbh I dont have much issues with my guard vs thieves, but this is not the case for all the other classes. Can we please eliminate rock/paper/scissor stuff and add fights?

It’s not hate Fortus, it’s facts and knowledge. What you seem to be putting out is hate because you don’t have your facts straight.

I’m confused. You make it very clear in your original post that you know most people disagree with you. Yet you seem very surprised when everyone disagrees with you. I must ask the question: what were you hoping to accomplish?

Also, judge’s intervention is way harder to avoid than backstab. They are both awesome skills that are powerful but well-balanced. Neither one has an animation telling you to dodge it, and that’s okay.

Fortus.6175:

But lets be honest, BS followed by a HS on a 14k target is almost a guarantee kill.

Dodge, Blind, Aegis, Focus Shield, Invulnerability, Shelter… I heard pressing buttons was hard.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I’m confused. You make it very clear in your original post that you know most people disagree with you. Yet you seem very surprised when everyone disagrees with you. I must ask the question: what were you hoping to accomplish?

Also, judge’s intervention is way harder to avoid than backstab. They are both awesome skills that are powerful but well-balanced. Neither one has an animation telling you to dodge it, and that’s okay.

Because unlike thieves, as a guard, most of them time you choose to engage, you remain there, and judge ntervention doesnt hit you for 80% of your health. Sure you can use focus 5 but if I see a guard running around with focus 5 on I will count and dodge for the definitely-coming judge focus combo, with a thief you never know. That is the difference.

And Im not surprised, I know Im going agaisnt a tide of thieves and people who play bunkers/classes with more than 11k base health, but if you want diversity in the game you gotta start fixing the balance offenders, Anet already stated that thieves have kept eles and mesmer out of the meta, Im merely stating why, and I believe BAckstab is one of the biggest underlying problems yet they didnt address it.

Fortus.6175:

I will count and dodge for the definitely-coming judge focus combo

Can’t you do the same thing when a dagger thief goes into stealth near you?

There aren’t very many thief or bunker players in this thread—people are defending it because they don’t feel it’s a problem. Backstab is one of the only big damage skills in the game that’s really tough to land, which is something the game needs more of honestly. Others are dragon’s tooth and grenade barrage. People don’t complain about dragon’s tooth because when they get hit by it, they know it’s because they messed up and got baited/cc’d into the burst.

Regarding eles: we all know you want eles to be stronger. But calling for nerfs to stuff that everyone feels is fine is a strange way to go about that.

backstab is not a problem.

If you don’t want to get oneshotted by backstabs, you might want to stop running full glass cannon yourself.

Well here’s our biweekly ‘backstab too strong’ thread. Most thieves resorted to condition or s/d builds, and a good chunk who play d/p. The d/p builds rely heavily on initiative regeneration and stealth traits, and are lucky to hit even 6-7k on another full glass cannon light armor professions.

As what was stated above, either stop going full berserkers or learn to counter the rather predictable build. Being someone who has only played 158 total matches as a thief in 14 months is proof enough that this build is gimmicky and predictable. And before the ‘perms stealth’ counter argument comes up; if they are stealthing 90% of the time, they aren’t doing damage OR capping points.

Thieves are becoming even more unviable outside of wvw every balance patch. Makes you wonder when the QQ will end.

EDIT:

The reason thieves kept mesmers and eles out of the meta is because the spammable 3 skill on s/d, which got nerfed last month and will be nerfed once again into inviability next month. If you honestly think backstab is the reason behind it, you lack the PvP experience in the first place to even consider a Nerf.

i can understand how you feel, fortus. when i was new in pvp, i thought thieves are the most OP thing ever. once you gain experience playing you will think otherwise. you just need to face them and fight. running away from thieves make you a free kill for them.

btw, thieves don’t last long in team fights and they aren’t that hard to deal with 1v1. i can definitely say guardians have better sustain.

Hell i would let a thief have a 100k instagib if i could target him right after he comes out of stealth.

Damage nor stealth are the problem, reapplying the target is imo

S/P was the most fun, entertain and skillful build thieves had. but was nerfhammerd by noobs ages ago. after that m thieves’ revenge created backstab and stuff like that.
so if you want to blame someone, blame the ones who didn’t L2P 14-15 months ago.
best wishes

Look, Im not saying Im a pro 100 top player, neither am I saying thieves as a whole are OP, infact I believe they need help. All Im saying is; one particular skill is out of line, and thats what needs to be addressed. I wont get tired of saying this; a one-shoot mecahnic out of the blue is not fun for anyone but the thief, and even then, that thief will eventually get tired of it and move on. Do you really want that for the game? Do you think it is healthy? If so, then let me refer you to this little video right here;

January 7th patchnotes:
Backstab now blind instead of damage.

QQ more!!!
Enough of rough whine about thief mechanics. Backstab is nowhere near being OP.
And even 9k is a lackluster according to all weaknesses thief has. Just l2p

I understand where you’re coming from Fortus. And i agree to a certain degree.. the whole issue is not backstab though, nor larcenous strike or anything like that. Its the fact that they can use it multiple times by just managing their initiative which is very easy – there is a lot of traits that help you in this direction. If backstab had an internal cooldown, it would be perfectly fine and balanced.

Dps guardians are basically the perfect counter to thiefs but as we all know, they’ve no room in competitive spvp… same for elementalists and mesmers at the moment (when they’re build for power damage), now if everyone goes AI spamming/toughness/condition damage then well, we’ve counters to thief.

What the other people in this thread are trying to say is that backstab has good counterplay, just not in the form of an obvious animation. We don’t understand what you want this skill to be. Would it be better if it kicked the thief out of stealth and then played a huge animation before landing? That doesn’t seem any better to me. Should it be easier to land but deal less damage? That just takes away the unique skill factor of the build. Should it be nerfed to the ground and give dagger thieves massive buffs to compensate? That seems unnecessary.

What do you think the skill should be like, and why would it be better if it were that way?

NevirSayDie.6235:

What the other people in this thread are trying to say is that backstab has good counterplay, just not in the form of an obvious animation. We don’t understand what you want this skill to be. Would it be better if it kicked the thief out of stealth and then played a huge animation before landing? That doesn’t seem any better to me. Should it be easier to land but deal less damage? That just takes away the unique skill factor of the build. Should it be nerfed to the ground and give dagger thieves massive buffs to compensate? That seems unnecessary.

What do you think the skill should be like, and why would it be better if it were that way?

Give it a cooldown so you can’t backstab within 10s, and there.

NevirSayDie.6235:

What do you think the skill should be like, and why would it be better if it were that way?

Fortus.6175:

Currently I believe that if the class is supposed to have that much damage, then I suggest we move that damage to other skills that require at least some kind of risk

I just love reading all those comments defending Thief and how they are going to become unviable [again] after they have been saying the same since the release of the game and still up to this day thieves remain a very strong class in PvP, best part? their signature says “Thief”.

Look, Im not attacking your class, Im merely attacking one skill that is out of line for the entire game, nothing else. Stuff need counterplay, specially when they take 80% of your health out of the blue without any counterplay about it.
You want people to start taking this game seriously? Start treating it seriously! Many games fall into this because they want to cater to a few people and thus overall balance is never achieved. Backstab is unhealthy for the game as a whole, even you, backstabs users get affected by it because at the end of the day, less and less people will take sPvP seriously due to your actions.

yep it’s bad design

but some people need crutches, right? stop picking on disabled gamers!

Fortus.6175:

NevirSayDie.6235:

What do you think the skill should be like, and why would it be better if it were that way?

Fortus.6175:

Currently I believe that if the class is supposed to have that much damage, then I suggest we move that damage to other skills that require at least some kind of risk

Fair enough, so you’d like to nerf backstab but increase the damage on another mainhand dagger skill (either auto or heartseeker).

Either that or you’re suggesting to nerf mainhand dagger outright with no compensation and make sword mainhand stronger, which is the other thief melee weapon. I’m leaving out the ranged weapons, since you want to reward risk.

So we could move some of backstab’s damage to either:
1. dagger auto
2. heartseeker
3. sword

Which of those three seems best to you?

9k dmg+ 10 vuln stacks (20s) on CnD seems legit to me

anyway, have you ever played thief in his backstab golden age, as thief?
that was so funny playing russian roulette every match

Sorry Op you and your friends need to L2p go try some tpvp and you will find that BS thief are the current joke of soloQ. At the moment most of the time the team with the most thieves loses. Even thiefs running full glass cannon can not force a decent bunker off point(with in a reasonable time frame) the fact is with all the healing, blocks, petting zoos and dodges available to other class the thief dps is barely even high enough. So go try a thief out and l2p!!

Picking on backstab is just silly as hell. There are many things broken with the game, and backstab isn’t even near top priority. How many thieves do you see in tpvp today compared to how many warriors, spirit rangers, necros, and engis? Not to mention most of the thieves you do see play S/D evade builds.

To the OP, that claims backstab is over the top, I challenge you to try to perform it on the current meta builds and see how you do against them. Record a video, and post it here.

Go fight a decent spirit ranger, warrior, necro, anything, and try to burst them down with a thief’s “9k” backstab every 4 seconds. I think you may find the results very contradicting to your words. I want to be proven wrong.

Classes that can do 9k-12k damage on a medium-low armor target in under 3 seconds:

1) Ranger (signet spec + GS; Maul has 100% chance to crit for 10-13k on opening strike; You can also do 10k with Path of Scars on axe from range if both hits land with the right spec)
2) Warrior (Killshot/eviscerate. My personal best is 12k with evis, but I’ve seen higher).
3) Elementalist (More complicated lightning flash + phoenix + fresh air combo – instant but harder to pull off).
4) Thief (backstab glass cannon)
5) Mesmer (shatter spec)
6) Engineer (power/HGH spec combo with grenade toolbelt skill + flame blast // jump shot + grenade toolbelt skill also works well)
7) Guardian w/ meditations + power build and GS/hammer (does a bit lower damage, about 10k aoe for mighty blow + whirling wrath combo + heals 4k if you toss in the now instant cast smite condition and judge’s intervention)

I didn’t have time to log onto my necro to see if necro can do it too, but berserker dagger + wells should be able to do it — though it’d be the least effective class at doing so.

So, to recap, backstab is fine because all that’s left in the meta is tanks with high health, armor and damage completely inappropriate for their level of survivability.

Fortus, make a thief and try to do what youre saying thieves are doing right now to ANY class. You might get lucky and land one backstab but unless youre running a build designed to hit a backstab for 9k youll be lucky to hit for 6k, and if you are running a backstab build and you land the 9k backstab, your opponent if hes any good will heal and 2 shot you.

Backstab is such a joke and a guardian complaining?! Thats one of the if not the most difficult class to beat in a 1v1 (if youre any good)

You must be playing hotjoin when this is happening to you, because if youre getting backstabbed every 4 seconds by a thief for 9k in s/t ques, my heart goes out to your teammates.

Narcarsis.5739:

You’re asking why a glass cannon can hit you like a truck when you can turn around and do the same thing to them. As a guardian you can directly counter a thief with proper use of Blind, Aegis, Focus Shield, Invulnerability, Retaliation, Counter Pressure (Burst), Crowd Control (Pull, Immobilize), Large amounts of burning, AoE, etc. If I had to choose the most direct counter to my class it would be a DPS Guardian.

As for other classes such as Elementalists, Mesmers, etc. They put out more damage more often, along with providing more team utility.

If you’re complaining about backstab you’re playing poorly and deserve to die.

Cheers,

Caed

Doesn’t matter. In an open field without the worry of contesting points, all you need to do is to reset with black powder stealth blast spam and wait out their dodges and cooldowns while you have pretty much no meaningful cooldowns on your high burst.

1v1 built D/P shadow arts thief is cheesy as hell.

There’s a good reason why stealth stacking os getting a nerf come December, but most of you tpvp thieves can’t see why because all you see is the cleave damage on you in teamfights.

Backstab damage is fine.

The rather not fine part of stealth mechanic is that the stealth attack (any stealth attack) can be spammed into blocks without revealing the thief. This shouldn’t be a thing.

If it’s blinded or otherwise evaded? Sure, the thief didn’t actually hit their target. If it’s blocked, that’s contact, and the thief should be revealed.

Why does this thread feel like 8 months ago?

On another note, you claim, backstab cannot be blocked, it can. Aegis, works, warrior shield 5 works, list goes on. Also, dodging, while the thief is in stealth works as well. I do not know the class you are on, but if you were on mesmer, mesmers have tons of ways to avoid damage from an incoming backstab from stealth, or even a burst combo from a thief.

The only thing that I see changing with thief is their burst combos.

backstab doesn’t have any risk? did you ever try a thief even?

plz go roll a thief and try to land those 9k backstabs on half decent players on ANY class, tell me how it went

Fortus.6175:

Yeah I can see all the hate coming my way, but I will stand strong on my point. As someone getting really tired of thieves one shooting me and my friends (which guesss what, have also quitted sPvP for this and many other reasons) I can tell you that this is wrong.

I know most of you hate comparisons, but I will do the unthinkable; LoL Evelynn. A stealth cahmpion which would one shoot most people in stealth with a 3 secs stun followed by 2 spikes. This was back when the game was young and very unbalanced, she got gutted and was nearly useless for some time. I dont want thieves to be gutted, I do enjoy playing them a bit, but people has to realize how unhealthy this is for the game. New players and old players are getting annoyed by this, perhaps it might not win games, in fact I believe having a thief in your team might cost you a game, but still makes the game not enjoyable, it is, toxic, yes I went as far as calling one shoot mechanics toxic

And yes, tbh I dont have much issues with my guard vs thieves, but this is not the case for all the other classes. Can we please eliminate rock/paper/scissor stuff and add fights?

9k is not one shot though, even zerker ele would have more HP than that….

i play a thief and necro, i did get hit that hard few times; i blinded them right away, guess who died….yep, that very same one shot thief

i honestly would be more worried about things like mesmers after patch, about necros being probably the most effecient class for pvp with their tankiness dmg and utility etc. thieves are getting worse and worse with every patch, i don’t think you will have to worry about them soon

Phoenix and dragon’s tooth do the same damage as backstab, are we nerfing those at the same time? These kinds of posts are pretty good for a laugh in the evening.

You stay classy my friend!

Narcarsis.5739:

If you’re complaining about backstab you’re playing poorly and deserve to die.

Cheers,

Caed

Nobody said for balance and balance alone.
Yes it is balanced against other top tier specs.

No it isn’t, even somewhat, decent gameplay (against the vast, vast majority of specs).

I find it kind of hilarious, that those are mainly Anet’s thoughts.
During beta they talked about how much the game was going to be active defense based, how there weren’t going to be tons of bursts and spikes and the theif was going to be a mobile tricky class, not very bursty…
GW2 is so far from that.

garethh.3518:

Narcarsis.5739:

If you’re complaining about backstab you’re playing poorly and deserve to die.

Cheers,

Caed

Nobody said for balance and balance alone.
Yes it is balanced against other top tier specs.

No it isn’t, even somewhat, decent gameplay (against the vast, vast majority of specs).

I find it kind of hilarious, that those are mainly Anet’s thoughts.
During beta they talked about how much the game was going to be active defense based, how there weren’t going to be tons of bursts and spikes…
GW2 is so far from that.

That’s no way to balance a game. You bring up the lousy builds to the same level as the meta builds. You don’t cherry pick the soon to be only viable build for 1 class and destroy it. You can understand that can’t you?

Hype.8032:

Phoenix and dragon’s tooth do the same damage as backstab, are we nerfing those at the same time? These kinds of posts are pretty good for a laugh in the evening.

You stay classy my friend!

Clearly the Ele using Phoenix and Dragon’s Tooth can hit stealth>teleport away if those 2 skills miss, restarting the whole fight right?

Edit: FYI this is in no way agreeing with the OP though, you just cant compare the damage for a class with no type of stealth to a class with it.

sirflamesword.3896:

Hype.8032:

Phoenix and dragon’s tooth do the same damage as backstab, are we nerfing those at the same time? These kinds of posts are pretty good for a laugh in the evening.

You stay classy my friend!

Clearly the Ele using Phoenix and Dragon’s Tooth can hit stealth>teleport away if those 2 skills miss, restarting the whole fight right?

Edit: FYI this is in no way agreeing with the OP though, you just cant compare the damage for a class with no type of stealth to a class with it.

The OP is a known thief hater so I’m just using his poor logic against him but relating it to his class.

sirflamesword.3896:

Hype.8032:

Phoenix and dragon’s tooth do the same damage as backstab, are we nerfing those at the same time? These kinds of posts are pretty good for a laugh in the evening.

You stay classy my friend!

Clearly the Ele using Phoenix and Dragon’s Tooth can hit stealth>teleport away if those 2 skills miss, restarting the whole fight right?

Edit: FYI this is in no way agreeing with the OP though, you just cant compare the damage for a class with no type of stealth to a class with it.

no, they just can go mist form, earth shield etc., if all fails still have absurd heals

Cynz.9437:

no, they just can go mist form, earth shield etc., if all fails still have absurd heals

Plz don’t ever equate mist form and earth shield with stealth…every 4 sec stealth = 60 sec recharge on mist form right?

sirflamesword.3896:

Cynz.9437:

no, they just can go mist form, earth shield etc., if all fails still have absurd heals

Plz don’t ever equate mist form and earth shield with stealth…every 4 sec stealth = 60 sec recharge on mist form right?

idk it seems like eles don’t have issues fighting ppl even now, talking about d/d eles that is… i saw some d/d ele fighting for ages (and he had around 12K HP) simply because his heal sustained combined with shield and MF was really good

thieves are a one trick pony, didn’t kill someone fast? run

Hype.8032:

garethh.3518:

Narcarsis.5739:

If you’re complaining about backstab you’re playing poorly and deserve to die.

Cheers,

Caed

Nobody said for balance and balance alone.
Yes it is balanced against other top tier specs.

No it isn’t, even somewhat, decent gameplay (against the vast, vast majority of specs).

I find it kind of hilarious, that those are mainly Anet’s thoughts.
During beta they talked about how much the game was going to be active defense based, how there weren’t going to be tons of bursts and spikes…
GW2 is so far from that.

That’s no way to balance a game. You bring up the lousy builds to the same level as the meta builds. You don’t cherry pick the soon to be only viable build for 1 class and destroy it. You can understand that can’t you?

Why are people so angry on these forums?
You can ask for clarification if your not sure what a person is saying before deciding to rant…

Saying, that a build is balanced compared to top tier builds, then that it isn’t utter cheese when fighting a few select builds, doesn’t mean I…

For one, want to destroy stealth builds.
For two, think that cherry picked builds should be nerfed to the ground.

Hope that answers your question….

garethh.3518:

Hype.8032:

garethh.3518:

Narcarsis.5739:

If you’re complaining about backstab you’re playing poorly and deserve to die.

Cheers,

Caed

Nobody said for balance and balance alone.
Yes it is balanced against other top tier specs.

No it isn’t, even somewhat, decent gameplay (against the vast, vast majority of specs).

I find it kind of hilarious, that those are mainly Anet’s thoughts.
During beta they talked about how much the game was going to be active defense based, how there weren’t going to be tons of bursts and spikes…
GW2 is so far from that.

That’s no way to balance a game. You bring up the lousy builds to the same level as the meta builds. You don’t cherry pick the soon to be only viable build for 1 class and destroy it. You can understand that can’t you?

Why are people so angry on these forums?
You can ask for clarification if your not sure what a person is saying before deciding to rant…

Saying, that a build is balanced compared to top tier builds, then that it isn’t utter cheese when fighting a few select builds, doesn’t me I…

For one, want to destroy stealth builds.
For two, think that cherry picked builds should be nerfed to the ground.

Hope that answers your question….

Mind restating that more clearly? “doesn’t me I”?

Thieves have lousy sustain, lousy burst and lousy DPS in general compared to a number of classes.

I’d say they actually RELY on getting an initial advantage to be able win a fight. As much as you whine and complain Fortus, Arenanet isn’t going to nerf backstab.

infantrydiv.1620:

Thieves have lousy sustain, lousy burst and lousy DPS in general compared to a number of classes.

I’d say they actually RELY on getting an initial advantage to be able win a fight. As much as you whine and complain Fortus, Arenanet isn’t going to nerf backstab.

I’m not so sure anymore.

Zenith.7301:

Doesn’t matter. In an open field without the worry of contesting points […]

Skill balance should not be dictated via WvW where everyone gets insane stat bonuses. L2P.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Zenith.7301:

Doesn’t matter. In an open field without the worry of contesting points […]

Skill balance should not be dictated via WvW where everyone gets insane stat bonuses. L2P.

It’s not just WvW, fool. Watch Cruuk’s video and you’ll notice how cheesy it is, maintaining high defense and still critting 6k backstabs on high toughness specs.

And don’t even pretend like tpvp is any more balanced than WvW. At least in WvW staff elementalists and power necromancers exist.

i think in spvp the thieves are way easier to defeat as they are in wvw where permastealth is an issue.
there u got ascended gear, food, guardleech and applied fortitude where u will get hit with 14k backstabs out of the blue. i dont think the backstab itself is the main issue, its the attack out of stealth itself as u werent able to counter it at all because u didnt know the thief was even there.
i think if stealth was a little less, the 9k(14k) backstab would be ok as u had the chance to react. same with killshot. u got plenty of time to react there due to a long animation. if u know the thief is there, u can dodge or block the initial burst.

Zenith.7301:

[…] maintaining high defense and still critting 6k backstabs on high toughness specs.

The only person who runs Cruuk’s build in tpvp is Cruuk. Stealth builds preform poorly in prolonged fights on points in spvp because they cannot contest them. In spvp, it is virtually impossible to one-shot backstab someone unless the thief is running a terrible build and their target is also light armor glass. For all your other concerns regarding backstab in spvp, this:

“You’re asking why a glass cannon can hit you like a truck when you can turn around and do the same thing to them. […] you can directly counter a thief with proper use of Blind, Aegis, Focus Shield, Invulnerability, Retaliation, Counter Pressure (Burst), Crowd Control (Pull, Immobilize), Large amounts of burning, AoE, etc. If I had to choose the most direct counter to my class it would be a DPS Guardian.

As for other classes such as Elementalists, Mesmers, etc. They put out more damage more often, along with providing more team utility. [L2P]" – Caed