Guild Wars 2

I realy like this game , BUT everyday the influx of new THIEFS is getting out of hand, just tried 10 servers, Min of 3 thiefs per team. The inbalance is evident, by next week yall are going to have to call this game THIEF WARS!

Not actualy, but i for one am going to stop playing pvp. Its no fun to die in 3 seconds, if im lucky to be alive a whole 3 seconds without being able to SEE whats killing me. Thats 1 Thief its painfull to see a game that is great, getting reduced to a “Play a thief or smash your head on your keyboard fest”.

Based purely on your reply, I get the feeling that you’re the kind of person who won’t go to a restaurant because their burgers were bad and yet never try anything else to see if it’s better.

The counters to a high burst thief are; don’t travel alone, don’t use a glass cannon to fight a glass cannon – unless you get the jump on them, use more defense, get more practice, play a thief to work out their strengths and weaknesses… then exploit them.

You’ll lose lots, you’ll die lots, you’ll get frustrated, but at some point you’ll become a better player… or you could make a thread on the forums saying that you would rather not play instead of trying to get better, in which case most people would be hard pressed to care if you aren’t playing any form of pvp.

One more thing, if you don’t take steps to get better as a player then when the thief changes come you’ll find yourself back on the forums complaining about the new “OP” thing with the same results.

Coffeebot.3921
+1
u absolutely right
only those, who tries and tries again, explore, get experience – will became a good pvp players
other will just creating new topics on forum about OP class or OP build

VictorTroska.3725:

spitfire.1563:

Coffeebot.3921
+1
u absolutely right
only those, who tries and tries again, explore, get experience – will became a good pvp players
other will just creating new topics on forum about OP class or OP build

yeah, or reroll thief and faceroll to glory with 2 buttons. Been there, done that.

And it sounds like you were bored the whole time, so if that’s the case then why would you do it in the first place given that glory doesn’t inherently do anything for you?

Hell, given that everybody starts with 5 character slots, there is a good chance that many people will have a thief regardless of changes made to the class or its (perceived) power, additionally, it’s not like everyone that plays the thief is doing so because they think the (front loaded) burst damage is high and want a slice of the action.

If you can have 62.5% of all classes in sPvP from the start, then there is a good chance that most people will have what ever is thought of as being “OP” at any given point in time, if you can’t get over that fact then why even bother complaining on the forums?

Coffeebot.3921:

VictorTroska.3725:

spitfire.1563:

Coffeebot.3921
+1
u absolutely right
only those, who tries and tries again, explore, get experience – will became a good pvp players
other will just creating new topics on forum about OP class or OP build

yeah, or reroll thief and faceroll to glory with 2 buttons. Been there, done that.

And it sounds like you were bored the whole time, so if that’s the case then why would you do it in the first place given that glory doesn’t inherently do anything for you?

Hell, given that everybody starts with 5 character slots, there is a good chance that many people will have a thief regardless of changes made to the class or its (perceived) power, additionally, it’s not like everyone that plays the thief is doing so because they think the (front loaded) burst damage is high and want a slice of the action.

If you can have 62.5% of all classes in sPvP from the start, then there is a good chance that most people will have what ever is thought of as being “OP” at any given point in time, if you can’t get over that fact then why even bother complaining on the forums?

I had to learn how to fight them. I am no thief player but playing class will teach you how to counter it on your main. Thats why I played thief and mesmer. Again, you can practise a lot and become better in PvP playing some kittened class that ANet cant even fix, aka necro or you can roll thief and be instantly far more superiour in PvP with minimal skill or practise. Will you enjoy it or not, its up to you.

today i tried 3 servers just to see if anything have changed. And after that went to lunch. Results in picture

Stop playing hot-join games guys.. if you are looking for a good fun, try free tournaments. Its so better even when playing solo..
sometimes it could be flustrating to get destroyed by guild premade, but in general.. still pretty much better then hot-join thief zerg

Aragiel.6132:

Stop playing hot-join games guys.. if you are looking for a good fun, try free tournaments. Its so better even when playing solo..
sometimes it could be flustrating to get destroyed by guild premade, but in general.. still pretty much better then hot-join thief zerg

In “hot-join” games no thief has ever killed my engineer in less than 5 sec (except hs wars with no stunbreaker :/), but when i tried free tournament i saw farr away thief, than he suddenly teleported to me in stealth and was dead in 1 sec without being able to use any spell at all. Hp gone from 100% to 0% in a moment.

Emapudapus.1307:

Aragiel.6132:

Stop playing hot-join games guys.. if you are looking for a good fun, try free tournaments. Its so better even when playing solo..
sometimes it could be flustrating to get destroyed by guild premade, but in general.. still pretty much better then hot-join thief zerg

In “hot-join” games no thief has ever killed my engineer in less than 5 sec (except hs wars with no stunbreaker :/), but when i tried free tournament i saw farr away thief, than he suddenly teleported to me in stealth and was dead in 1 sec without being able to use any spell at all. Hp gone from 100% to 0% in a moment.

I know, but there is normally only 1 Thief per team, if you dont let him play.. you win. Thief is 1v1 supprise attack pony. Without suprise, he can´t kill (mostly). target him first, let him go back and hide, then once he come back again target him first. Dont let him fire at you from shortbow .. newer give him break and he will die.

Also dont forget there is bacstab build nerf comming and also stealth rendering bug fix comming. Both probably on 15th Nov patch.

i dont see how people are not enjoying playing against thieves…… out of all the classes in the game, you know what their build is 95% of the time. it’s the same thing over and over again. seriously just how many repetitions are required to outfox the same strategy used across the board.

you’re complaining about how many thieves are in the game at the same time… by this time you could say you have the most experience playing with/against thieves out of any other class. really, if you haven’t figured out how to counter them yet (or are too stubborn to take a more tanky build), perhaps competing against other humans is just not for you.

as a warrior i do this…

sword/shield=look! a thief, he dissapeared (now i have you), press 5 (block,block, block (thief thinking: im not gonna run, i need to spam while im invisible=mistake), thief becomes visible, press 4 ( thief stunned), kill thief with full hp, if thief starts running watch thief as he bleeds to death ( my favorite ending), w8 for next on point.

It is absolutely true that you can learn how to counter thiefs and perhaps build to counter thiefs. I would encourage you to practice and then practice some more and it will become better. One has to adapt to reality. It’s survival of the fittest. The paradox is that the best way in doing this is to join the thief profession. Its easier, hence the growth in numbers.

Having said this, there is something wrong, in my humbe opinion. Its annoying that certain classes can kill you in what feels like a flat second, unless you put a thick tin can over your head. Maybe its mostly relevant in hot join but it should, nevertheless, not be neglected (there are casual players out there).

There is a reason we primarily only see burst or bunker builds. The one extreme is countered by the other extreme. First came burst thiefs, then came bunkers. It is simple evolution but a poor example of if as it, being a game, eliminates variations, flexibility and viable builds and thereby encourages shallow one-dimensional playstyles.

I haven’t been playing a lot of hot join the last couple weeks as I’ve been busy with school/work and leveling to 80 for WvW, but I actually find Thieves more balanced now than I did before. They could still use some tweaking (and I think most of this is due to the stealth rendering) but my Ranger can actually put up a fight now which is rather satisfying.

I haven’t been stunlocked/burst down in ages but I have been outplayed more often than I would like to admit. But I think that’s mainly because I’ve just not been playing sPvP very much lately.

Just me though; honestly it has me a little excited about the Nov 15 patch for Rangers just for the simple fact that balance is getting ever so closer between the other professions. Is it perfect? Hell no. Is it better than launch? Hell yeah it is.

Backstab is definitely over the top but this whole “Thieves are OP” thing has been blown way out of proportion. The only reason there are so many thieves is because it’s a meme. People think thieves are OP so they play one, leading to more QQ, leading to more people playing Thief. Most people who have jumped on the bandwagon can’t even play thief well. So 90% of thieves you come across should be a non-issue. If you die to most thieves in hot join; it’s YOU who needs to play better.

In competitive PvP you will never see more than 1 thief per team and some teams don’t even roll with a thief (Team Paradigm have no thief at the moment)

Guardians and Elementalists (especially paired together) are a much more game breaking problem.

I’m still not seeing 5 thieves in a single team in tpvp

Xiomaro.2563:

Guardians and Elementalists (especially paired together) are a much more game breaking problem.

exactly… i still haven’t found a way to solo a bunker guardian before his team gets to help. i often get defeated before they even do… that’s not balanced.

The responses / counters posted on these forums to thieves being over the top are always hilarious. They always boil down to:

a) don’t play the spec you want to play, play the spec you’re forced into playing to deal with one ridiculous class/build combo

b) don’t you dare defend a node, always move with the zerg (as if that prevents thieves from picking you off once you’ve engaged someone else anyway)

c) don’t play hotjoin PvP, just play tournaments instead

How insane is this? Don’t play the build you want, don’t play the map correctly, don’t play the game type you want. Just play an AoE bunker build, move with the zerg and profit?

How is that fun?

CakeOrDeath.4859:

The responses / counters posted on these forums to thieves being over the top are always hilarious. They always boil down to:

a) don’t play the spec you want to play, play the spec you’re forced into playing to deal with one ridiculous class/build combo

I want to play a low hp, high armor, high healing class, with no condition removals. Yet condition classes really hurt. Especially ones with poison that lower my healing by 33%. Nerf conditions. They shouldn’t bypass armor. Poison shouldn’t reduce healing.

No I don’t want to run condition removal. I should be able to play the spec I want. Not be forced into playing something to deal with those ridiculous conditions

CakeOrDeath.4859:

The responses / counters posted on these forums to thieves being over the top are always hilarious. They always boil down to:

a) don’t play the spec you want to play, play the spec you’re forced into playing to deal with one ridiculous class/build combo

well… thats how it is with builds wars:) thiefs will get old as soon as they get countered by another build. what you are saying is you want to make whatever build you like and have it kill every enemy or any other build out there…

i dnt think it will happen

CakeOrDeath.4859:

The responses / counters posted on these forums to thieves being over the top are always hilarious. They always boil down to:

a) don’t play the spec you want to play, play the spec you’re forced into playing to deal with one ridiculous class/build combo

b) don’t you dare defend a node, always move with the zerg (as if that prevents thieves from picking you off once you’ve engaged someone else anyway)

c) don’t play hotjoin PvP, just play tournaments instead

How insane is this? Don’t play the build you want, don’t play the map correctly, don’t play the game type you want. Just play an AoE bunker build, move with the zerg and profit?

How is that fun?

a) You can’t expect to play any build and be successful with it. I love to play quirky builds but if I’m playing an unusual build I just accept that I won’t be as effective as if I was playing a stronger build. Either play a strong build and win or play an ineffective build and lose (but perhaps have fun doing it).

b) Winning the game in hot join has no incentive. People just want to maximise glory gain. Running around as a zerg and doing AOE is more effective at gaining glory. When ever I play bunker and actually try to hold points in hot join I get no glory but will often win the game. No one cares that I’ve done it though… I’m just the noob with 50 points.

c) If you want to actually play the maps properly; tournaments are your only option. There is an incentive to win in tournaments.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

what you are saying is you want to make whatever build you like and have it kill every enemy or any other build out there…

i dnt think it will happen

That’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t have to pigeonholed into altering your build to deal with ONE other class/build combo.

If I have build X that competes just fine against 7/8 other classes but I can’t play it because there are 3-4 thieves in every hotjoin game and that build happens to get stomped in 2 seconds by backstab thieves, then something is wrong.

MMOs are supposed to be about choice. There are tradeoffs for every decision you make in crafting a build, and if you choose to play glass cannon then of course you can expect to get wrecked when the rock paper scissors game trumps you. But right now thieves are forcing some classes into a very limited selection of builds and gear choices simply because the alternative is constant death.

It wouldn’t even be a problem if every game only have 1-2 thieves out of 8 players, then you’d just suck it up and still stand a chance against the rest of the team. But this is the important part: when builds that would otherwise be completely viable need to be thrown out the window to compensate for an imbalance among a single class/build combo, it ruins a lot of what makes this mmo fun.

Same old story—the good players destroy their own game by trolling all the new/casual players.

I agree that glass cannon thieves aren’t a problem at the top level, but they’re a real problem for casual 8v8. Yes, you should be concerned about that.

Necromancers kill people in 2 seconds, I’d rather get killed in 4 seconds by a thief then 2 seconds by a necromancer.

Look at all that with condition curing, a second health bar and all that awesome DPS, and double the health of a thief!

I play necro tough/cond and cond engi. So yes, I have a pretty stable build against glass cannons. Glass cannonThieves are simple for my two setups. Outlive burst. They got two choices. Try and finish the job and die or stealth and run. If the thief is really good it is harder, but it should be a good fight if both players are good.

If you cannot tell a good thief from a bad one, then you are typically not good enough to know. 4 seconds sounds like a short time. But in reality 4 seconds is a long time when you talk about skills that have 1/2 second activates etc. If you can’t react and mitigate some of that incoming damage with a dodge/invuln or CC in 4 seconds then that is your own fault. If you didn’t have any of the options available then you were either unlucky cuz you got out of a recent fight or bad because you do not have any of the necessary tools to pvp.

The reason you see so many thieves in 8v8 is because they are effective against untrained players. I will admit that point. The reason they stay current is because people are still bad at dealing with them. It is like any competitive game why wouldn’t you use something that a higher % of players can’t deal with? That doesn’t prove that thieves are imbalanced though.

That is a Glass Canon Specc with 0 defense and easily countered. In absolutely no way comparable to the issues the thief has. What do you try to say here ? Necro´s OP ? I LOL´d hard………….

Also in response to CakeOrDeath. Yes it does suck to have to alter a build you like to play, but stating that a “good MMO” should let you do whatever is ludicrous. Every mmo has preferred pvp stats. Typically they involve surviving burst too. The problem is a higher % of players want to see big numbers.

Choosing thief fits the current meta of pug spvp. But if more people started to use balanced builds favoring toughness, you will see a trend of glass cannons start to go away. The way to stay ahead is to outplay the meta and think of best ways to defeat the most common tactics.

Thieves have made me stop playing pvp. I can usually beat them 1v1, but they often kill the people I am with in seconds, then its a 2+ v1. They need to be addressed.

I tried to play a thief just for fun. I could down most people while mashing buttons like a monkey and not even knowing what half the abilities on my bar did. Thief playstyle is not rewarding, when you down someone you can’t even say it’s because you’re skilled. I found the damage a thief does is absolutely insane compared to my warrior. A basilisk stun, a few autoattacks and heartseekers is all it took me to down most people so I can see how very overpowered it would be if I played that profession even just half as good as I play my warrior.

I play Thief and Warrior mostly. My Warrior stomps 95% of Thieves. The only time they win is if they catch me at low health or with everything on cooldown. I play Hammer/Axe/Mace.

i play shouts gs/rifle on my war and i don’t have a problem with thieves either. at all. only class i play that has trouble with thieves is my ele. even my ranger is decent against the typical dagdag glass cannon thief. just pull out sword/warhorn, pop quickening zephyr/sic my pet on them and suddenly im bursting the burster, so to speak. ;p

I don’t have a problem with most thieves on my warrior also, but that’s just because the majority of them are very bad. The problem is when you meet a GOOD glass canon thief it just doesn’t matter how well you play your warrior because you’re lucky if you still have 10% health left after they open up on you. The damage is simply way too high and overpowered in the hands of a moderately good player. The problem with thief damage is that everybody would be forced to use a stun breaker ability for the single purpose of countering thieves, when fighting any other profession is manageable without a stun breaker.

Nero.8623:

One huge thing I don’t understand about these forums is the following,

“I’ve got a great spec it’s really tanky has a lot of utility, but I get 1 shot by thieves”

Flawed logic much?

Don’t be surprised, those are the tipical forum users right now…a tank can really laugh at a burst thief…and then kill him

god im soo sick and tired of everyone complaining about theifs on every forum section ¬_¬ most of the people who play theifs read the forusm or saw youtube videos are are like “omfg theif is over powerd must play it and i be super awesome” thats why there is soo many theifs… its like a new phone comes out so they all must get it… in truth theifs are just the same as any other class… they really are not all that powerful as most people say… most is just lies to make them seem less bad.. just L2P really… theifs are not bad at all

People complain about thieves because there is so much truth to it that it stabs you in the eyes when it happens. What thieves can do now only reminds me of people leveling up a rogue in WoW and nearly one-shotting every one with 1 ambush hit, leaving opponents with no opportunity to defend themselves. Exploiting bad mechanics like this is griefing and only damaging to the game, but it should also get fixed a lot faster.

Thief is too easy to do well on even if you’re a terrible player. That is why you see 5 of them in every hot join. It’s an extremely noob-friendly class.

I am so tired of the so-called top players saying thiefs are not OP and its simply a matter of l2p. Just because YOU chose to be a bunker and made your fotm anti-burst build does not mean the problem is not there.

Now, lets see, whats makes a class overpowered (actually I don’t like the word in this context – lets call it unbalanced)? Its not the class itself, its the percetion of the players. Just the fact that there are sooo many posts about thiefs seem to indicate that something is wrong. Screw the 1% godlike, hardcore amazing players that can handle thiefs and every other thing thrown at them ingame. I say power to the people!

And it’s not just about being skilled, it’s also having to be willing to dedicate 1 out of your limited 3 utility slots to deal with thieves exclusively i.e. a stun breaker utility when you can easily do without when playing other professions. When a single profession imposes this kind of limitation on other builds you know there’s a problem.

draugris.9872:

That is a Glass Canon Specc with 0 defense and easily countered. In absolutely no way comparable to the issues the thief has. What do you try to say here ? Necro´s OP ? I LOL´d hard………….

Oh…because glass cannon thieves are not a 0 defense build with 14< k hp and without a second hp bar or condition removal? This one is a genius…

Superkav.5012:

I am so tired of the so-called top players saying thiefs are not OP and its simply a matter of l2p. Just because YOU chose to be a bunker and made your fotm anti-burst build does not mean the problem is not there.

Now, lets see, whats makes a class overpowered (actually I don’t like the word in this context – lets call it unbalanced)? Its not the class itself, its the percetion of the players. Just the fact that there are sooo many posts about thiefs seem to indicate that something is wrong. Screw the 1% godlike, hardcore amazing players that can handle thiefs and every other thing thrown at them ingame. I say power to the people!

ya totally, power to the people ! the louder the people cry the more truth is heard ! like when after release everyone and their mother told you that thief is underpowered and nobody would ever want to run a thief in tpvp – although backstab glasscanon wasn’t buffed the spec now just is op because the people know ! power to them ! and power to all the people who just knew elementalist is a kitteny useless class – untill they were told about staff support spec and valkyrie sd/dd. let the 8v8 proplayer base tell the devs how to balance the game – the more the merrier. power to the people

Your sarcasm is unwarranted. The community, more often than not, is right. It’s the changes that are not coming anywhere near fast enough. I like the philosophy of small incremental changes but they shouldn’t be spaced months apart. Overnerf/overbuff often until balance is reached. It’s quite ridiculous to allow a few builds to ruin the game for so many people for so long, and inevitably leads to losing a chunk of the player base.

If you are getting instagibbed by a thief, that means you understand the risks in running your 14khp glass cannon build and its just a l2p issue of your reaction time being too slow to stunbreak them.
Let’s list the counters to glass backstab theif, shall we?
Trap Ranger, Bulky Necro, Retal/Burn Block Guard, Warrior w/ Endure Pain, a skilled Bow Thief, Bunker/Bomber Engi, Any skilled Mesmer with more than 18k hp, Staff Ele.
Wait… What was that? Every class has a hardcounter build to the alleged overpowered backstab build? Whaaauuuuuttttttt?

That being said, yes everything is a bit extreme right now. Glass cannons are too glass cannon-y. Tanks are too tanky. Both need a nerf. As it stands, they are equally overpowered.

Hello,

As this discussion is starting to get an inflammatory one, it is now closed.

Thank you for your understanding.