Guild Wars 2

Ok so I have read a few posts about balanced issues with a few characters namely thieves, warriors and mesmers and about 90% of complaints are very short sighted. Most complaints cherry pick the highest damage skill of a character and report it as been unbalanced. There are a lot of people who appear to not fully understand the mechanics of a characters skill. Picking a high damage skill in isolation does not make that character unbalanced. Sure until recent nerfs the thieves had high damage single shots, but actually getting large damage hits is not or was not as easy as people thought. For example a thieves backstab with signet gave a lot of damage but before backstab could be used a thief needed to stealth, additionally the thief need to be placed correctly and if that was not hard enough there were boons that could easily counter that attack like aegis etc. Also a thief has a limited amount of intuitive, once used they have very minimal attack damage. Additionally, thieves going stealth can still take damage. Thieves who hit hard have weak defence. Thieves after recent nerfs don’t have the highest damage output, are one of the lowest health characters and have minimal armour in comparison to other characters traits.

Fix the Shatter Macro and don’t allow time-warp and portals to be used. Problem solved.

Alot of your arguments aren’t very convincing.

Its very easy to stealth in for a back stab. Most thieves have at least 3 ways to stealth, some have up to 5.

Thief auto attack is actually pretty good chain for single target.

You don’t need high defense when alot of your kit provides escapes to pull you in/out of the fight.

Initiative system is a huge buff to the class. Zero CD spam-able skills. Yes you have to wait for initiative to regen once you drain it, but guess what other classes have to do. They have to wait for cooldowns (most of which are on longer timers than it would take for you to regain the initiative needed to use whatever skill you want again.) There i no downside to initiative system when it comes to combat (the only downside imo is it dumbs down the class since you have little “decision making” to do compared to other classes – you don’t have to save skills for precise moments due to CD, and you can spam, so its always best to choose the most efficient damaging skill and use that one to the exclusion of others)

And that being said, i’m for the most part ok with thieves in sPvP. I just don’t think your arguments are terribly good. The only thing is i wish it was harder to play. Again i think the biggest culprit is the initiative system since it removes all the decision making that other classes have to do when they play.

Very easy to stealth in for a backstab? Ok hero. You mention a thieves skills as if you can equip them all, maybe you should understand the concept of opportunity cost and limited skill slots. Very easy to mention cool downs but what you don’t mention is weapon slot, so to most characters there are 10 skills available while the thief needs to regain initiative. Which brings me to my last point, thief’s are heavily dependent on ‘decision making’, even more so than other characters, because is forces a thief to spend initiative wisely to maximise damage. Spamming heart seeker or “the most efficient damaging skill” is not best. Sigh. Maybe you should learn to play the profession before you comment on how you disagree with the relevance of the post.

I agree with a Yoda. A well played thief is rare. Most create one, with a mindset like Recently’s, and bring nothing beneficial to their team. Fortunately, I feel the majority of players don’t have these delusions of grandeur towards thieves and mesmers.

well since you can c&d into stealth and regen ini from stealth it makes those “decision making” points moot case i can stealth and quickly regen while other classes have to go on CD for 30+ sec while i have to wait maybe 3 sec to regen at least 6-8 initiative. Most thieves dont even need alot of initiative since steal, back stab c&d do so much dmg upfront and its all free except for C &D which only costs 4 ini if traited.

they whole idea of the initiative is a poor design especially compared to the LONG CD’s some classes have while the burst dmg of thieves is basically free since it comes from their auto atk

Was toying with my short bow thief its silly how much dmg the auto atk does hitting up to 3 people for bout 1-2k dmg from 900 with a auto atk is just silly fun but silly lol