Guild Wars 2

PREFACE
I’m not saying thieves are OP, because they aren’t… I’m saying thieves create kittenty gameplay for the player and opponent (constant evade spam, infinite stealth, backstab in a game built around active defense)
I’m not saying thieves are utter jokes to play with a skillcap as high as the skillfloor.
I am saying that the class ends up having a relatively low skillcap in a great many situations, not for the average player, but for anyone who wants to take the game seriously.
That leaves a massive area for improvement if this game ever wants a shot at attracting legitimate esports teams.

THE IDEA
Add a shadowstep onto each and every weapon attack.
Before you say ‘but wait, thats OP, like having every weapon, every attack be S/D shenanigans’… hear me out.
A LOS shadowstep back to where you started casting the ability, it stays up for 5-7s and costs initiative to active… the teleport only has a 400 unit range. Possibly ‘porting back has a cast time (1/2s) or can’t be used while CC’d.

That creates a close range tricky class (not kittening teleporting across the map class) that still has the option to spam an ability, although situationally and for more ini since you have to pay the ‘port back’ ini to avoid the 5-7s CD. That gives thieves some innate, in combat survivability, less mindlessness to the class and lets things like… massive evade spamming… ‘shadowstep’ the utility… ‘shadow trap’… infiltrators strike… flanking strike… to be toned down…

IMO it’d actually make the class balance-able without creating cheese…
It’d even allow for things (over time of course) like…
-adding ‘apply weakness for 3s to target, and protection for 1.5~s to any nearby allies’ to the heartseaker or shadow shot ability so the thief has some ‘spike hate’.
-making ‘leaping death blossom’ apply vulnerability or cripple along with light bleeding and put up a poison type buff on you that makes your next attack or two do a bonus condition (spammable->bleed, #2->confuse, #4->poison, #5->torment)
-make s/d attacks give a fair amount of buffs to auto attack dmg (maybe even let an ability give quickness for 1~s and the auto attack 3rd hit give it for 1~s so you can chain allot of spammable dmg given the opportunity).

Anyways, just some random thoughts I had.

I have a idea that is simple. Initiative is similar to energy in gw1. My solution? Give classes initiative degeneration skills. Or have skills like weakness apply initiave degeneration. Energy denial and degeneration prevented spamming. This would end thieves spamming very quickly.

Aza.2105:

I have a idea that is simple. Initiative is similar to energy in gw1. My solution? Give classes initiative degeneration skills. Or have skills like weakness apply initiave degeneration. Energy denial and degeneration prevented spamming. This would end thieves spamming very quickly.

That’d just create another ‘boon like’ niche counter… not really sure if that would help the game.
The problem atm isn’t that they are OP. Because they aren’t.

The problem is that they are a mindless spam based class that has extremely cheesy tactics (constant evade spam/infinite stealth, backstab in a game built around active defense) that disrupt the flow and enjoyment in combat. And it will never become anything else because of a terrible design. Even with your fix, thieves would still stay just as broken… except now they will be bad when fighting anyone who can degen ini, and OP when not (weakness isn’t common and it isn’t easy to apply).

If they would remove stealth and nerf thief damage thief would be less broken.

Revolutionary new idea: Stealth becomes a boon.

The Boz.2038:

Revolutionary new idea: Stealth becomes a boon.

??
Making stealth a boon… does literally nothing but buff its duration from +boon duration… you are in stealth when you have stealth up… so are untargetable by boon removal…

There are boon removal AoEs available to necromancers, mesmers and engineers. This would make at least some classes capable of countering stealth.
Yes, I admit, this isn’t the best idea, I just wanted to throw it out there, see what other players could make of it…

Perma stealth is really annoying and unfair to all the other classes in game.
How about, in some way the give ability the sense stealth characters, for example:
if someone in stealth comes close (lets say 300 range) you´ll be able to see it (like in glass shader)

I think fixing the thief should look at other underused weapon sets appart from S/D & SB.

This class is broken and really a mess.

this thread is hilarious

garethh.3518:

The Boz.2038:

Revolutionary new idea: Stealth becomes a boon.

??
Making stealth a boon… does literally nothing but buff its duration from +boon duration… you are in stealth when you have stealth up… so are untargetable by boon removal…

but not by AOE with a nice sigil ontop

Prysin.8542:

garethh.3518:

The Boz.2038:

Revolutionary new idea: Stealth becomes a boon.

??
Making stealth a boon… does literally nothing but buff its duration from +boon duration… you are in stealth when you have stealth up… so are untargetable by boon removal…

but not by AOE with a nice sigil ontop

Ugh…
You can’t time the sigil.
It hitting another enemy, eats the proc, the aoe not critting or not being 60% of the time.. eats the proc, it proccing before the theif goes in stealth… eats the proc… it eating the regen or might from going into stealth… eats the proc.

Countering stealth with a guessing game just doesn’t seem like an at all worthwhile way to handle AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PROBLEM

The Boz.2038:

There are boon removal AoEs available to necromancers, mesmers and engineers. This would make at least some classes capable of countering stealth.
Yes, I admit, this isn’t the best idea, I just wanted to throw it out there, see what other players could make of it…

Null field… and a mine? being the only counters to stealth is kinda absurd.
Stealth needing to be this counterable thing seems more the area to be addressed.

10 sec reveal and problem solved
they have enough teleports on top of stealth so they can escape any time
up their dmg a bit even hp or whatever so they don’t cry like it was with the 1 sec longer reveal

the main problem with thieves is the great mobility + stealth combo also spamable abilities because initiative mechanic is broken since day one

yes they are not op and yes they need fix

Batlav.6318:

10 sec reveal and problem solved

That doesn’t help the class in the slightest.
It only destroy stealth forcing every thief to play S/D evade spam… it actually forces stealth back into kinda beta regions where it was mainly used for an intense basilisk venom spike…. which would have to have its dmg buffed back to beta times to make a viable spec…

Nothing good comes from a longer reavealed.
The problem is with how spammably the thief can actually get stealth… most notably blackpowder…

Those crying about stealth if you have enough exp with or against thieves they are easy to kill. In my view the issue is more about the evasion not that they should not be evasive but it makes these nobs that are QQ feel stupid for what ever reason. The evasion of s/d is over the top, but it does poopoo dmg and the longer a thief is in a fight the higher his loss % goes. Even stealth makes them feel inferior, but its just lack of exp.

The balance issues I see are sword skills are a lil too cheap to cast, pistols do to little dmg (it could be a cast time bug as stated in another thread), and cluster bomb does to much dmg.
I think daggers are in a good place if you were to change something though you could change the 5 skill from a 3s stealth to a 3s daze this would take away a backstab and the health/energy regain of the skill and you could rename it liver shot. Like a boxer knocking someone out with a body shot they tense up can’t move and fall over like a downed tree. The animation seems like it would fit.

Eliminating the ability to stealth at anytime reveal is not up.

Making the timing of stealth utilities more valuable.

Indirectly lowering dagger dps and survival in group situations.

Thesilentflute.8761:

Those crying about stealth if you have enough exp with or against thieves they are easy to kill. In my view the issue is more about the evasion not that they should not be evasive but it makes these nobs that are QQ feel stupid for what ever reason. The evasion of s/d is over the top, but it does poopoo dmg and the longer a thief is in a fight the higher his loss % goes. Even stealth makes them feel dumb, but its just lack of exp.

The balance issues I see are sword skills are a lil too cheap to cast, pistols do to little dmg (it could be a cast time bug as stated in another thread), and cluster bomb does to much dmg.
I think daggers are in a good place if you were to change something though you could change the 5 skill from a 3s stealth to a 3s daze this would take away a backstab and the health/energy regain of the skill and you could rename it liver shot. Like a boxer knocking someone out with a body shot.

Thieves need to spam their abilities to be viable… if you just cut at their ability to spam, they will jbe in a worse spot than ever.
The only way to make them less spammy, yet stay viable is to do a decent change to how the class operates.

That can be anything from having each of the abilities give a buff that isn’t conducive of spamming. Like all abilities give buffs to your next few auto attacks (heartseaker->weakness, LDB-> bleed, headshot->auto crit, exc.)
Or the teleport thing.

The class will never create good gameplay in its current state, within a years time it has only gotten cheese-ier than ever..
[As a sidenote, I’m not saying thieves are OP, because they aren’t… I’m saying thieves create kittenty gameplay for the player and opponent (constant evade spam, infinite stealth, backstab in a game built around active defense)]

Did you even play thief brah?
From Launch till December (well technically even after that) S/D demanded quite a bit out of the player to get effect that mirrored a more simple to succeed with D/D and D/P (and S/P until PW nerf). From PW nerf till the haste nerf, S/P was in the exact same state. Bottom line S/ sets have for the majority of GW required good use of all of their skills for optimal effect. They’re really not about spamming while S/D is more so about it now (and in some cases this is an overstatement) that didn’t hold true before.

Think I’ve repeated this like clockwork but it always holds true. The thief doesn’t “Spam” when it has reasonable choices for success. It can do so but the mechanic of initiative has every action have a global opportunity cost that other professions just cannot feel as heavily when it’s firing on all cylinders. That and predictability being a weakness in itself.

A lot of thief ‘spam’ is still overstated and higher success generally goes beyond just hitting any individual button the most you can (or you ini starve yourself). However in certain respects the profession has been dumbed down (FS) and in other’s it has been deepened (HS and PW nerfs for example). In some respect they just removed choice and forcibly dumbed you down not by one thing being too effective but options just not being respectable uses of ini either to use multiple times or in any sort of rotation (death blossom and dancing daggers).

It feels like quite a few here spew horse kitten about the profession as if it lives in some magical pixy land where hitting 1 skill multiple times in a row really breeds success against people who actually care to better themselves.
D/P, S/P, SB use all their skills, S/D does as well but that used to be far more visible than atm. If all you do is hit 3 on D/P, you’re going to get trolled against people with a pulse, Hitting Pistol whip all the time is going to get you either blocked by stability, or straight up interrupted, hs spam has been beaten to death.
Generally optimal success of a thief actually requires full use of a weapons abilities outside of D/D, P/P and previously P/D (don’t know how that fairs now).

If you want to address spam you don’t have to do anything other than create meaningful choice by other skills not being incredibly niche or mediocre. Even then spam is frankly overstated if you want to look at spam, D/D condi spam is a lot clearer when a lot of the cases pressing 3 really is huge because there is nearly nothing else there to facilitate that style of play or similar with P/D up till last patch (don’t know it now) utilizing Sneak attack heavily, because condi damage pretty much was coming from nowhere else, and as a physical partner set nerfs to CnD and DD have put it primarily into disuse when it was already struggling. Or P/P hitting unload because VS puts out pretty much nothing, 4 and 5 don’t do credible damage, and 2 is more of a set-up skill than a damage alternative.

It’s almost an entire laugh when your examples are "Flanking strike, Inf strike, Shadow trap, " When 2 of them weren’t even in play until two months ago, and inf strike’s been semi-prominent in play with S/P (and early game S/D) from launch until the haste nerf (though a couple people say they always disliked inf).

Then again same thing happened to Necromancers I guess, Anet changes something and now everyone wants to kill staples that have always been there instead of going back on the new additions that were the source problem.

Don’t remember anyone crying about Death blossom thieves spamming evades considering they sucked, are still mediocre and easy to disfuse. So it seems to me that if the evades which have existed and been prominent in some cases before hand are only now something to whine about, that a) there was something about the evades that was actually broken or b) something new has been added on in addition to evades that now makes it a problem….I wonder what that is.

ensoriki.5789:

The class will never create good gameplay in its current state, within a years time it has only gotten cheese-ier than ever..
[As a sidenote, I’m not saying thieves are OP, because they aren’t… I’m saying thieves create kittenty gameplay for the player and opponent (constant evade spam, infinite stealth, backstab in a game built around active defense)]

Did you even play thief brah?

Yes the thief went from one gimmick spec to another.
Yes some thief specs are a spam and suck.
Yes there is a skill cap higher than the skill floor in most any spec.
Yes there is ‘oppurtunity cost’ when it comes to initiative.

No that doesn’t really reference my point.
The closest thing was opportunity cost, and the opportunity cost of initiative is one dimensional, you have no effect from using ini costing abilities short of the loss of initiative… that may seem blatantly obvious… but the thing is that it just leads to situations, rather commonly, where you run through the exact same rotation or spam (as a counter or initiation) since the weapon abilities themselves add little extra to the equation…
Heartseaker to gain distance or kill if weak, infiltrators strike to stay out of CC, flanking strike to evade and get out larcenists strike, blackpowder to spam heartseaker in for stealth…
Depth isn’t in the class.

As I said a bit ago, if all the ini costing abilities had another factor, like the CD/teleport or also buffed the next auto attack in some way, that would give the weapons a second dimension and really drive in an opportunity cost for using an ability at a certain time, or one ability over another… you know… instead of cluster bomb spamming any corpse or heartseaker spamming any weak enemy… the class might actually involve taking in the situation and future a bit more…

It’s almost as if the other professions live in some magical pixy land where they do not have rotations and generally optimal skill choices for specific situations. Oh wait they most certainly do. The blatant attempt at simplification and trivialization honestly already makes this pretty much fruitless to discuss any further.

You know what anet should do? Remove the stupid initiative mechanic from the game and give thieves a CD like everyone else. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaah!! i know this comment will make some thieves cry but that’s the only way to fix cheese such as stealth spam and S/D evade all day bs.

Nuka Cola.8520:

You know what anet should do? Remove the stupid initiative mechanic from the game and give thieves a CD like everyone else. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaah!! i know this comment will make some thieves cry but that’s the only way to fix cheese such as stealth spam and S/D evade all day bs.

This won’t happen because they would have to scrap the entire class and build a new one. I can’t even imagine have HS with a CD, especially with the way it works now. Same for black powder, or even all the pistol skills.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Nuka Cola.8520:

You know what anet should do? Remove the stupid initiative mechanic from the game and give thieves a CD like everyone else. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaah!! i know this comment will make some thieves cry but that’s the only way to fix cheese such as stealth spam and S/D evade all day bs.

This won’t happen because they would have to scrap the entire class and build a new one. I can’t even imagine have HS with a CD, especially with the way it works now. Same for black powder, or even all the pistol skills.

that’s what i always thought but this is an mmo, here to stay for half a decade or more, they have time to rebuild a class completely (would like that for my ranger as well)

Nuka Cola.8520:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Nuka Cola.8520:

You know what anet should do? Remove the stupid initiative mechanic from the game and give thieves a CD like everyone else. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaah!! i know this comment will make some thieves cry but that’s the only way to fix cheese such as stealth spam and S/D evade all day bs.

This won’t happen because they would have to scrap the entire class and build a new one. I can’t even imagine have HS with a CD, especially with the way it works now. Same for black powder, or even all the pistol skills.

that’s what i always thought but this is an mmo, here to stay for half a decade or more, they have time to rebuild a class completely (would like that for my ranger as well)

Considering the pacing, does anyone have the patience for such an update?

ensoriki.5789:

Nuka Cola.8520:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Nuka Cola.8520:

You know what anet should do? Remove the stupid initiative mechanic from the game and give thieves a CD like everyone else. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaah!! i know this comment will make some thieves cry but that’s the only way to fix cheese such as stealth spam and S/D evade all day bs.

This won’t happen because they would have to scrap the entire class and build a new one. I can’t even imagine have HS with a CD, especially with the way it works now. Same for black powder, or even all the pistol skills.

that’s what i always thought but this is an mmo, here to stay for half a decade or more, they have time to rebuild a class completely (would like that for my ranger as well)

Considering the pacing, does anyone have the patience for such an update?

lol no but that’s the ONLY possible way to remove their current cheese without breaking the class completely

But knowing anet from over 5y of gw1 experience they will most certainly chose the easy route and nerf the **** out of thieves. One day you’ll wake up, look at patch notes and see stuff that will make you uninstall the game if thief was the only character you cared because no classes in gw1 came even close to annoying people as much as stealth thieves or currently the evade ones

Stealth is hardly a problem…people have learned to kill thieves through stealth and it’s not hard especially with the current AOE condi meta.

If you fight thieves enough you should already know how they move…when they are permastealthing, they are not killing you. And if they are not perma stealthing, they are probably next to you trying to backstab you…act accordingly!

Btw, for those who don’t know, perma stealthing is done through spamming heartseekers in a BP. If you simply just walk INTO the BP and stay there, the next time they heart seek, they will hit you and reveal himself, thus cancelling the perma stealth…learn to do this and it will screw them up!

Though I don’t agree with perma stealthing and do agree that it should go, stealth in general is really not OP. It’s nothing but a gimmick, you still get hit through it.

Amaterasu.6280:

Stealth is hardly a problem…people have learned to kill thieves through stealth and it’s not hard especially with the current AOE condi meta.

If you fight thieves enough you should already know how they move…when they are permastealthing, they are not killing you. And if they are not perma stealthing, they are probably next to you trying to backstab you…act accordingly!

Btw, for those who don’t know, perma stealthing is done through spamming heartseekers in a BP. If you simply just walk INTO the BP and stay there, the next time they heart seek, they will hit you and reveal himself, thus cancelling the perma stealth…learn to do this and it will screw them up!

Implying they spawn BP on you and HS takes half an hour to be activated… You see BP, you need to walk to it and before you reach it, hearseeker will be already used and you blinded yourself for nothing.

I would much rather them, balance the class in a different way than restructure it completely. Say if it there was more builds that dealt damage outside of stealth, other than S/D. Maybe S/P, or P/P. More sustained damage rather than random burst or spam dodging to live, and never having to commit to a fights.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Amaterasu.6280:

Stealth is hardly a problem…people have learned to kill thieves through stealth and it’s not hard especially with the current AOE condi meta.

If you fight thieves enough you should already know how they move…when they are permastealthing, they are not killing you. And if they are not perma stealthing, they are probably next to you trying to backstab you…act accordingly!

Btw, for those who don’t know, perma stealthing is done through spamming heartseekers in a BP. If you simply just walk INTO the BP and stay there, the next time they heart seek, they will hit you and reveal himself, thus cancelling the perma stealth…learn to do this and it will screw them up!

Implying they spawn BP on you and HS takes half an hour to be activated… You see BP, you need to walk to it and before you reach it, hearseeker will be already used and you blinded yourself for nothing.

Not really sure what you’re saying, but it takes at least 3 heartseeks through BP to maintain “perma stealth” with infusion of shadow trait. If you can’t reach the BP and stand in it by the time they do 3 heartseekers, then you are probably way too far to be in harm anyway…You will be blind, but the second they hit you, they will have their reveal buff on…

This is how I fight against “perma-stealth” thieves and trust me, it screws them up.

Not to mention perma stealthing hardly works in a team environment…it’s VERY easy to screw up because anyone can walk into your heartseek radius and you’d end up revealing yourself.

Thief needs buffs to the class not nerfs.

I play d/p because d/d truly only had 3/5 decent skills while d/p has 5/5.

4s reveal killed any x/d stealth play also.

There is a lot wrong with the thief, but it needs more patch love than hate to fix it…

shimmerless.4560:

i don’t think many people on this board have actually played thief and discovered how the class actually plays out in practice (rather than on paper). it’s not all sunshine and roses.

For sure but an experienced player on a thief could outshine any other. Now you may say “an experienced played will be good on any class” but the fact is, an exp thief will destroy an exp ranger, warrior or whatever. You don’t give a class so much dps with tones of ‘thanks for playing, i’m out’ tickets like SR, shortbow teleporting and tones of other stealth…

garethh.3518:

Thesilentflute.8761:

Those crying about stealth if you have enough exp with or against thieves they are easy to kill. In my view the issue is more about the evasion not that they should not be evasive but it makes these nobs that are QQ feel stupid for what ever reason. The evasion of s/d is over the top, but it does poopoo dmg and the longer a thief is in a fight the higher his loss % goes. Even stealth makes them feel dumb, but its just lack of exp.

The balance issues I see are sword skills are a lil too cheap to cast, pistols do to little dmg (it could be a cast time bug as stated in another thread), and cluster bomb does to much dmg.
I think daggers are in a good place if you were to change something though you could change the 5 skill from a 3s stealth to a 3s daze this would take away a backstab and the health/energy regain of the skill and you could rename it liver shot. Like a boxer knocking someone out with a body shot.

Thieves need to spam their abilities to be viable… if you just cut at their ability to spam, they will jbe in a worse spot than ever.
The only way to make them less spammy, yet stay viable is to do a decent change to how the class operates.

That can be anything from having each of the abilities give a buff that isn’t conducive of spamming. Like all abilities give buffs to your next few auto attacks (heartseaker->weakness, LDB-> bleed, headshot->auto crit, exc.)
Or the teleport thing.

First of brother there is allot more timing to a thief than any other class and what rotation we do have is in our utilities a slow play when compared to any other class since we don’t just mash a button once its off cd. Our internal timers are set by compounding reveal that takes a bit to get use to. Our weapon skills do some time get used more than once because they are situational. There is nothing wrong with the class apart from some minor balance issues. If you don’t like the class don’t play it, but I doubt you do anyway.

shimmerless.4560:

Nuka Cola.8520:

shimmerless.4560:

i don’t think many people on this board have actually played thief and discovered how the class actually plays out in practice (rather than on paper). it’s not all sunshine and roses.

For sure but an experienced player on a thief could outshine any other. Now you may say “an experienced played will be good on any class” but the fact is, an exp thief will destroy an exp ranger, warrior or whatever. You don’t give a class so much dps with tones of ‘thanks for playing, i’m out’ tickets like SR, shortbow teleporting and tones of other stealth…

that is not true i have seen many talented and passionate players of all classes beat others, on mes i have likewise been defeated by every class. there is no magic i win button, in many situations the thief is at a marked disadvantage

the tools are there for us in these scenarios we just have to use them.

You say that but you know for a fact thief has as close to “i win button” as it gets… Why do you think there’s so many in wvw solo roaming (its like 8/10 thiefs when you see some1 alone)? because they kill quickly and can easily gtfo when needed. That also allows them to run full glass cannon with close to no disadvantages. of course some1 playing a thief will never agree with me because they don’t want their little class to be nerfed but that’s a fact.

Lol its because most wvwer are bad at pvp and they can just run around owning people with low exp. My thief is lv 37 in pve world and people in wvw freak out and run from me half the time in teir 1. Oh no a thief i should run away and give him my back they turn around after they realize I can’t do any dmg to them and like one shot me but whatevs.

And bro worried about being nerfed we are like the weakest class right now we can kill new players and other thieves that’s about it. I struggle in hot join if there is anyone like lv 20+ cause they know a thief is an easy kill.

Edit: But I can always run away

Meh why i even bothered stating the truth about what’s negative in a game where almost everyone play a thief lol its not better than posting negative comments about X class in that same class forum section. When you state the obvious truth, all you get is nerds raging with their “qq mooar” or “learn to play” bs so ain’t no1 got time for dat, mmo forums, people will defend their class to death by giving you random garbage as examples of why X profession isn’t ‘OP’.

shimmerless.4560:

Nuka Cola.8520:

shimmerless.4560:

Nuka Cola.8520:

shimmerless.4560:

i don’t think many people on this board have actually played thief and discovered how the class actually plays out in practice (rather than on paper). it’s not all sunshine and roses.

For sure but an experienced player on a thief could outshine any other. Now you may say “an experienced played will be good on any class” but the fact is, an exp thief will destroy an exp ranger, warrior or whatever. You don’t give a class so much dps with tones of ‘thanks for playing, i’m out’ tickets like SR, shortbow teleporting and tones of other stealth…

that is not true i have seen many talented and passionate players of all classes beat others, on mes i have likewise been defeated by every class. there is no magic i win button, in many situations the thief is at a marked disadvantage

the tools are there for us in these scenarios we just have to use them.

You say that but you know for a fact thief has as close to “i win button” as it gets… Why do you think there’s so many in wvw solo roaming (its like 8/10 thiefs when you see some1 alone)? because they kill quickly and can easily gtfo when needed. That also allows them to run full glass cannon with close to no disadvantages. of course some1 playing a thief will never agree with me because they don’t want their little class to be nerfed but that’s a fact.

rogues are always popular roaming classes (both because of the “cool” aspect and because many mmo players seem to have immense trouble dealing with them).

on the server i play you really can’t get away with the whole roaming thief thing, at least not as easily. the game’s been out for a while now and people here understand how SR works and what BP/last refuge look like and mean.

I have played a thief since pre-offical launch and I agree they are popular classes for their mechanics but lets be real. Theifs are over powered when it comes to WvW with all the stats and food buffs but ALOT of classes are. I’ve been hit as a squishy zerker for 20k from a warrior stomp skill when im full exotic/ascended with only 12.5-13k health. WvW is just not balanced in general so don’t complain just about theives because you run into them more than other over powered classes (which is pretty much every class). All the classes you don’t get creamed with are either players not using berserker gear or are not even 80 yet. The reason I say it’s over powered is because comparing it to sPvP (far more balanced and ideal when it comes to health pools and damage output) WvW is absurd so don’t blame it simply on theives.

As far as “perma thieves” comments I assume people are talking about s/p theives that run with refuge/Shadowstep/X? Those theives suck, yes I’ve fought with one for almost an hour in Stonemist while we had it controlled. The reason he’s able to perma stealth is because he hardly ever attacks back to get revealed so he just restealths, black powder spams stealth, uses a CD if needed, and has both sword and and shadowstep to escape. I agree it’s annoying and a bullkitten spec but it’s nearly worthless since they can hardly kill anything rolling heavy survival just to irritate you. Ignore them.

As for the topic talk in sPvP I can see why people are annoyed due to “spam” skills which other classes don’t really function with. Theives aren’t OP as to annoying so I don’t think nerfs are needed but I could agree something could be changed to get rid of the “spam factor” and keep them where they are at in sPvP. Perhaps you can’t use the same skill twice in a row unless it’s auto-attack or death blossom which removes HS spam and allows Backstab to function as normal. Perhaps put a skill cooldown on shadowstep/steal so it can’t be instantly used with another ability but that would get rid of some sick combos or stomps. There are many ways to it, or just leave them as and get control over your dislike of the same skill being used twice in a row.

Maybe some mechanic to discourage spamming the same skill. Each subsequent skill use costs additional 1/2/3/ initiative. Or, it could scale with the base cost: + 50%/+ 100%/+ 150%/…

That would give thieves the option to burn the initiative for a burst (or using multiple evades in an emergency), but bringing down an opponent to “burstable” health would require a “rotation” of at least 2 skills.

pmnt.4067:

Maybe some mechanic to discourage spamming the same skill. Each subsequent skill use costs additional 1/2/3/ initiative. Or, it could scale with the base cost: + 50%/+ 100%/+ 150%/…

That would give thieves the option to burn the initiative for a burst (or using multiple evades in an emergency), but bringing down an opponent to “burstable” health would require a “rotation” of at least 2 skills.

That’s a great idea but the problem people seem to have is the fact theives are burning it for burst anyways so wouldn’t make anyone happy unless we’re not allowed to use HS or CB more than once in a short period of time. TBH it’s balanced or theives would be super overpowered, it’s just the annoying factor people have a problem with it.

The skill they use isn’t steal most of the time its sword 2 skill it blinks to the target and set a return point that you can blink back to.

pmnt.4067:

Maybe some mechanic to discourage spamming the same skill. Each subsequent skill use costs additional 1/2/3/ initiative. Or, it could scale with the base cost: + 50%/+ 100%/+ 150%/…

That would give thieves the option to burn the initiative for a burst (or using multiple evades in an emergency), but bringing down an opponent to “burstable” health would require a “rotation” of at least 2 skills.

“We need to discourage the use of a skill more than once on the mechanic that purposefully allows a skill to be used more than once and discourages it by removing your ability to use other skills by using one more than once….by adding another discouragement to using a skill more than once.”

“Why bob”
“Well, while using a skill 3x in a row is generally impractical against people paying attention and many thief sets are not considered viable at the moment, we’ll put this in because we visually don’t like seeing skills used more than once and it makes us upset.”

@Thesilentflute
Alls fair in perspective.

First of brother there is allot more timing to a thief burst dps than any other class…

The core of any burst dps is timing.

CDs involve a massive opportunity cost on use… you lose the ability to do it again for 10+ seconds, initiative is much more relaxed of a mechanic…. that combined with the thief abilities having no more depth than any other classess…

I’m not saying thieves are utter jokes to play with a skillcap as high as the skillfloor.
I am saying that the class ends up having a relatively low skillcap in a great many situations, not for the average player, but for anyone who wants to take the game seriously.
That leaves a massive area for improvement if this game ever wants a shot at attracting legitimate esports teams.

Gameplay, for an entire class, can’t fall out like that, it kind of has to… ESPECIALLY in a game based around skirmish instead of group v group fighting…. have very deep and well conceived class mechanics/weapons.

Osi.3504:

pmnt.4067:

Maybe some mechanic to discourage spamming the same skill. Each subsequent skill use costs additional 1/2/3/ initiative. Or, it could scale with the base cost: + 50%/+ 100%/+ 150%/…

That would give thieves the option to burn the initiative for a burst (or using multiple evades in an emergency), but bringing down an opponent to “burstable” health would require a “rotation” of at least 2 skills.

That’s a great idea but the problem people seem to have is the fact theives are burning it for burst anyways so wouldn’t make anyone happy unless we’re not allowed to use HS or CB more than once in a short period of time. TBH it’s balanced or theives would be super overpowered, it’s just the annoying factor people have a problem with it.

That’s actually the same reason I like the teleport idea, except the teleport deal seems like a more elegant solution.
It allows spamming, situationally with increased initiative cost, but adds a whole nother layer of depth to the class, skyrocketing the skillcap without remaking every ability… kinda seemed pretty solid of a way to shore up the main problems and let the class get less gimmicky yet stay viable.