Guild Wars 2

I don’t care if the cooldown on some insta-gib chain is a day and a half. I don’t care if the person insta-gibbing is a glass cannon or not, it simply shouldn’t exist.

I agree, just like nobody should be able to stun-lock you for 5+ seconds or tank 3 players for 30+ seconds.

Unfortunately however ANet has taken a very binary approach towards balance allowing extremes rather than keeping everything a little more moderate.

I concur, encounters that are decided in seconds are neither particularly interesting or fun compared to extended duels and skirmishes.

I agree. Dodging and stunbreaking is too hard.
ANET please dumb down your game.

Jumper.9482:

I agree. Dodging and stunbreaking is too hard.
ANET please dumb down your game.

Ignore Jumper tool. He’s plays a thief. Easily, the cheesiest class in this game. Any thief who kills another class, the points should be awarded to the downed player. It’s that easy for a thief.

Now, I agree with the OP. No class, No build should ever be able to kill any class under 2-3 seconds, especially while they are cc’d back to back to back.

It really pisses me off my “Master of Damage” class does far less damage vs. every other class in the game. An Ele can spec pure glass cannon and still do far worse with damage then any other classes’ glass cannon builds.

In general, the melee in this game is way out of hand. Most pick on the thief class, deserving so (they should just be removed from the game). But ALL melee in this game can rip up the damage charts. I don’t know why Anet thinks this burst damage is the key to a good pvp game. Apparently their plan is to not require the old fashioned way of playing, with skill.

I tell you right now, as many others have, there is no way in hell this game should ever even think about going Esport. Not gonna happen, or be worthy at all.

Yet another thinly veiled thieves are OP thread?
You can’t play glass cannon without being a glass cannon..
Get a knights or soldier’s talisman and stop giving me free glory..

I have almost no problems with thieves in tPVP since I switched to soldier’s .. though sometimes there are some really good thieves out there that will stomp me….

there is no skill in the game that kills you instantly, 100blades is 3.5s with frenzy 1.7
one single backstab wont kill you unless they have all kinds of buffs stacked and you are 100% glass canon with no defense, several backstabs might though.
Blade trail can get a pet necro very low, but is also extremely avoidable, and the warrior has to align to hit every single one of your pet, and even then you shouldnt die in one shot.

so what skill are you talking about that “insta” kills you?

Well with 26k health on my Necro, I have been killed a few times without even seeing the thief. 12k backstabs and 6k steals take most of my health. By time the stealth reveals them I am dead or maybe a hs or two from it. Takes about 3 sec and you only see the foe when he starts to spike you. Most people would say that was instagibbing.

I play Rifle Engi. I play Power Necro. Thieves are the least of which I have to worry.

You guys should try to play Thief on an actual competitive level and you’ll notice that 95% of the thieves you guys are dying to are utter complete trash leaving you to ponder how the hell do you die to these thieves regardless of what build you are.
It’s the same case w/ Guardians being “ultimate bunkers.” You won’t know how much of an easier time you’ll have w/ Guardians ’til you actually get to play one

ps. Im assuming OP is mainly talking about Thieves

Woah. 12k backstab? You must be running, like… negative toughness or something.
Because the glassiest necros I’ve vs’ed get crit for around 9k.
Most good ones get hit for about 6-7k. Then they turn around and hit you with 10 stacks of bleed which WILL kill you if it goes uncleansed. Not to mention the blinding wells and plague form blind spam and
Wait.. why am I telling you how to play? I’d much rather have that 15 free glory kthnxbye.

Jumper.9482:

Woah. 12k backstab? You must be running, like… negative toughness or something.
Because the glassiest necros I’ve vs’ed get crit for around 9k.
Most good ones get hit for about 6-7k. Then they turn around and hit you with 10 stacks of bleed which WILL kill you if it goes uncleansed. Not to mention the blinding wells and plague form blind spam and
Wait.. why am I telling you how to play? I’d much rather have that 15 free glory kthnxbye.

I’ve backstabbed low toughness people(~1300 toughness because they have zerker’s amulet/divinity runes) for over 14k on my thief, mug steals hit for over 6k, cnd for 5k. If target isn’t instantly dead, just swap to shortbow, outrange all wells and one cluster bomb double-hitting for 4k x 2 finishes the job, or just 2k trickshot spam.

Jumper.9482:

Woah. 12k backstab? You must be running, like… negative toughness or something.
Because the glassiest necros I’ve vs’ed get crit for around 9k.
Most good ones get hit for about 6-7k. Then they turn around and hit you with 10 stacks of bleed which WILL kill you if it goes uncleansed. Not to mention the blinding wells and plague form blind spam and
Wait.. why am I telling you how to play? I’d much rather have that 15 free glory kthnxbye.

I dunno. Its the only time I have been hit that hard. It seemed a bit odd. But stil, 9k means 1 extra cast for the thief. 9k or 12k its still double what most other classes do, specced glass cannon or not.

I’ve played stealth characters in other games before and copped huge nerfs, even though the ttk was >10 sec. I expect thieves to get hammered eventually 3 sec ttk is simply not acceptable.

If a skill had 10 min cooldown but did 1 million damage it would in fact be useless see the bigger picture please, its not a 1 vs 1 game.

@tom Yea exactly game is not designed on 1v1 , hence the bunker builds countering everything atm by outlasting them.

As somebody who plays Warrior as a main and occasionally switches to 100blades for random sPvP scrubbing… I have to agree. It’s not particularly fun and it doesn’t take skill as a Warrior or a Thief to jump somebody unexpectedly and down them in several seconds.

Less extremes and more moderates would be good for fun factor.

Maybe it’s time for a pure Thief BS video? My last one only contained half of Thieves BS…

It’s hard to convince a Thief that his high damage is not justified because of his so called low survivability. In my experience, average Thieves will die after trying to insta-gib, while good Thieves will gtfo via Stealth, thus negating the statement “If I miss, I die.”

I’m claim that no class can instantgib me.
So no class can instantgib, aint it?

problem solved.
dont cry when u die without useing your spells or running glascannon about dying plz.

Since you guys caught on, I am talking about thieves, in particular in the OP.

dont cry when u die without useing your spells or running glascannon about dying plz.

@ shiNn – The problem is, we’re not seeing the thief. Because it’s:

1) Pre-Cast Cloak and Dagger
2) Steal
3) Backstab

This all hits you within a half of a second. Lately, with the thief buff (some call it a nerf +15% dmg to steal, cloak, backstab, hs, hs is a buff, let’s face it), it’s 5-6k steal, 5-6k cloak and dagger, 10-11k backstab. That’s 20k…guess what, my ele has less than 20k. My mesmer has 20k. My necro has 25k — and so even on my necro I’m left with 5k health instantly — and a thief is sitting there with 90% initiative still so he simply hits heartseeker (still stealthed mind you for another 2 seconds for some reason — YES, in spvp)…and I’m dead no matter what.

For the record, I’m a very good player. I’d rank myself with the top 10% of all players.

I like how thieves keep pretending that running Rabid over Carrion makes you less ‘glassy’ vs. physical burst damage. Not like there is pure glass cannon jewelry for condition classes. Or purely tanky stuff for that matter lol.

i think jumpers right, it appears to be mostly a l2p issue. Only problem is the stealth rendering issue, and the fact that channeled abilitys track stealth.

Merciless.5349:

Maybe it’s time for a pure Thief BS video? My last one only contained half of Thieves BS…

It’s hard to convince a Thief that his high damage is not justified because of his so called low survivability. In my experience, average Thieves will die after trying to insta-gib, while good Thieves will gtfo via Stealth, thus negating the statement “If I miss, I die.”

You are a funny fellow , since when thief is the only one who can “go in , miss” and then run away , what happened to ride the lightning , warrior can “rush” + whirlwind to get even more extra space if he fails , mesmer can teleport + stealth , am I missing something here ? Is it really necessary to restart saying l2p your class better and counter game mechanics ?

I use toughness in my build. I don’t get insta gibbed. I can get cut down fast, but with toughness I always have time to react. Doesn’t always save me, but at least I have a fighting chance.

Before I started using toughness, when I played glass cannon, ya. I got insta gibbed. But I felt ok about it because I could insta gib others.

If your getting insta killed, but you can’t do that in return, your build is bad. Sorry. Maybe post your build?

Oh, and something that will help with thieves till the rendering thing gets fixed… You can target them before you see them. Mash your buttons! And you can see a swirl of smoke, they don’t appear like they should, but the smoke swirl is there, you can start firing at that point and hit em for sure. The game can see em, it will lock on fine.

ITT: Panda players whining about dodging, stunbreaking, and fun, fast-paced combat which will soon push it into becoming a widely viewed eSport.

If I was Anet, I would buff thieves: Allow them to kill a player in -1 seconds. I’d like to see what the baddy bads have to say about that.

Anyone who complains about thief damage is a quitter, and has readily accepted defeat as a gw2 player. grow some kittening balls and learn to dick slap thieves.

Thieves are by far the hardest class for me to beat, with my ranger, warrior, and necro. I’ve been INSTANT killed by them a number of times on both my necro and ranger. With my warrior an average 1v1 is up in the air. None of my characters are pure glass cannon.
In my experience the most infuriatingly frustrating OP class. It feels really good to kill one when they didn’t get to jump me from behind.

There is a group of people in the gw2 community that do not think that thieves are over-powered. These people do not play thieves. Nothing more needs to be said. Everyone who can’t figure out how to counter a thief needs to return to the drawing boards.

Lets just phrase it as it is. Some of the builds in the class with the highest burst also has stealth for days. There are rendering issues with stealth and on top of all that they have access to the best gap closer in the game which also hits pretty hard. The game over all is balanced around DPS and the few pure tank builds that there are are just that since they cant kill a fly.

Thieves claim eSport but rarely play any other class or builds for that matter.

Lets make this very clear and lets be honest insta-gib back stab thief requires little to no skill. Even if you argue sport fact is the person who even survives half your burst has already shown skill more. Now you can argue for days that the other person had “Time” but its a second at most.

We can play this kitten game all day. 1-shot or 3-shot whatever thieves have the advantage. Only class I can consistently drop a backstabber on is P/D and that’s because I have the same access to stealth. So I wont complain.

Lets just be honest it doenst require all that much skill and its not really all that much glass.

I know other thieves feel its fine but looking from the outside in it really isn’t but I doubt anything will change. If you nerf it thieves with daggers simply wont win and if you don’t the QQ will continue. I say let the status quo stand. I don’t think Anet has a choice. I say give up these threads and realize your going to have to work around it or at best give up on one v one if the thief got the drop on you.

TL:DR just read it :-)

Thieves are a little over the top but don’t ruin games as much as bunkers do.

Any1 who doesnt understand the difference , of 1 character to kill an other in 1,5 sec , while the others need 6-10 sec , needs to go back in Math class :P

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Any1 who doesnt understand the difference , of 1 character to kill an other in 1,5 sec , while the others need 6-10 sec , needs to go back in Math class :P

Mesmer can kill more instantly than that.
Warriors can kill similar targets in half of a 100b. Or an eviscerate. Or a whirling attack.
Rifle Engi can do similar burst but most good players run bunker/bomb spec.

With mesmer u can see their clones walk to u to explode
With Warriors u can see their bull rush
Not a clue with Engineers sorry :P

Steal its almost istant + the thief doesnt have a GCD
+ his attack are fast paced , while the other characters have to 0.1-0,2 minisec for their attack animation to end , before they can cast an other

Mesmer wont insta someone in 1 sec from the start of the fight. You need to summon clones first and even then the total damage of the combo is around 10k… full backstab combo is 30k.

For a game without healers there are some class which do too much burst. Burst is usually need to pressure a healer and get a kill. In GW2 it is just a gib fest.

Darnis.4056:

Yet another thinly veiled thieves are OP thread?
You can’t play glass cannon without being a glass cannon..
Get a knights or soldier’s talisman and stop giving me free glory..

I have almost no problems with thieves in tPVP since I switched to soldier’s .. though sometimes there are some really good thieves out there that will stomp me….

I am sorry but your post is rather ignorant and you should play other classes, too.

1. Specc a e.g. necromancer as a glass cannon and see if it comes even close to what a thief does despite being more fragile.

2. Thieves are fragile? With their stealth and the render issues the game has the class is much more survivable which results that if you (I will stick to the example) specc a thief as a glass cannon and a necro, the thief will live much longer plus has more means to control the fight plus outdps the necro by a serious margin.

I agree. Dodging and stunbreaking is too hard.
ANET please dumb down your game.

^ at least Anet does not need to dumb down some of its players anymore then the already are.

Thiefs need some serious balancing allround ,period.

One thing I’ve noticed in these continual thief whine threads is that there is a big “usual crew” of people crying about the thieves in every thread. However, as more and more of these threads have been created there have been less crying over thieves in general and a swelling population of players saying to make adjustments and you will beat thieves.

It seems like the community is moving forward but this crew of players doesn’t seem to want make the right adaptations and rather cry for nerfs.

You missunderstood us Seether :P
By nerfing Backstab , we are trying give the Thief population more specs to choose from , instead of choosing the spec with the highest damage :P
We are trying to remove the <<bad reputation>> that Thiefs is the easiest class to play :P
A skilled player whatever spec he will choose , he will be always skilled :P

I agree. While I used to put these lack of balance on the account that it’s a MMORPG. I believe Anet could do way better by looking toward games like Super Monday Night Combat and try to balance their game untill the point of no extreme is possible BUT you still have many way to “express” yourself as a gamer (multiple way to play your favorite class, just so you may feel “unique”).

I agree, I play a Toughness/Conditionmancer which generally does pretty well at holding points, but when a thief can pop-in and kill me with THREE moves before his stealth officially wears off, thats going a bit too far.

No amount of tanky building can mitigate that much of a severe imbalance, things need to be scaled down so there isnt one person steamrolling the whole team, it should take cordination with the WHOLE team and should take a team to take a point, not one thief or swiftness stacked warrior with 100 blades.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Any1 who doesnt understand the difference , of 1 character to kill an other in 1,5 sec , while the others need 6-10 sec , needs to go back in Math class :P

Mesmer can kill more instantly than that.
Warriors can kill similar targets in half of a 100b. Or an eviscerate. Or a whirling attack.
Rifle Engi can do similar burst but most good players run bunker/bomb spec.

Rifle engineer? THAT"S a huge load of crap.

Krustydog.1043:

Rifle engineer? THAT"S a huge load of crap.

Rifle Engi can actually be built to have some of the highest burst in the game.

I think the discussion about thiefes is far away from being objective. This is due to the fact that it isn’t fun playing against them… what makes people go to the forums and cry. From my experience, a normal fight against thieves is:

1. you approach your opponent, he stealthes
2. try to avoid first burst; this can be quite tough since you don’t know exactly when to dodge. Now, we have 3 possible situations:

- If you fail, thief will pawn you -> frustrating

If you avoid thiefes burst and start to counter his attack:
- thief uses stunbreak, hides in stealth and escapes using stealth and his teleports -> no victory, frustrating
- thief fails, you kill him -> stomping a thief is somehow frustrating as well

Those points don’t have a real impact on balancing; if the thief does not kill you, he can’t capture the point and a downed thief is useless, etc. pp.; but I don’t think that the majority of players will be satisfied with that.

Another problem are those stealth issues someone mentioned before. If I am not wrong, Anet stated that they don’t want to make thief a permastealth class as known from other games. However, it seems like they just reversed the stealth feature: thiefes cannot use permanent stealth and surprise you whenever they want; instead of that, it feels like they can permastealth while fighting. And running in circles, hitting autoattack and hoping to hit something isn’t fun as well.

tldr: Playing against thiefes is unrewarding and thus frustrating. We shouldn’t talk about l2p or op and focus on the fun factor instead.

Edit: same for mesmers and other comparably frustrating professions

Zatria.5783:

Jumper.9482:

I agree. Dodging and stunbreaking is too hard.
ANET please dumb down your game.

Ignore Jumper tool. He’s plays a thief. Easily, the cheesiest class in this game. Any thief who kills another class, the points should be awarded to the downed player. It’s that easy for a thief.

Now, I agree with the OP. No class, No build should ever be able to kill any class under 2-3 seconds, especially while they are cc’d back to back to back.

It really pisses me off my “Master of Damage” class does far less damage vs. every other class in the game. An Ele can spec pure glass cannon and still do far worse with damage then any other classes’ glass cannon builds.

In general, the melee in this game is way out of hand. Most pick on the thief class, deserving so (they should just be removed from the game). But ALL melee in this game can rip up the damage charts. I don’t know why Anet thinks this burst damage is the key to a good pvp game. Apparently their plan is to not require the old fashioned way of playing, with skill.

I tell you right now, as many others have, there is no way in hell this game should ever even think about going Esport. Not gonna happen, or be worthy at all.

What world are you in Zatria? My ele certainly bursts much harder than my ranger, guardian, and mesmer – and still maintains more utility than the ranger or guardian. This whole (ele is bad) line of thinking and arguing needs to stop. The class is absolutely amazing, for bunkering, burst, and support.

MarkedOne.1309:

TheGuy.3568:

TL:DR just read it :-)

What a bunch of BS. Like the smarter person above you said, very good players know that thieves are not OP and can counter them easily.
Seems like you cant… well I will give you a friendly advice mate. So, here it goes: l2p.

You do realize I said I consistently beat Backstabbers right? L2P lol learn to read. If you took the time to read you would realize that I say D/D thief burst cant be nerfed and the only real alternative is to deal with it. Read my post history see how often I say D/D is not only beatable but easily so. That doesn’t change the fact that any class with an insta-gib should not be in the game period. My backstabber friend the truth may hurt but its still the truth. Its a gimmick, requires next to no skill, and is utterly useless anywhere else.

@TheGuy actually it requires massive skill , to get in “fail” an ambush and getting out of it from 1-2-5 people. Thief is fine as is if you can play him your can do amazing things if not you will die in the opener to most out there.
@NakNak its an L2P thing.

Seriously, if your getting “instagibbed”, either your build is glass cannon (which you should not be using without a team designed around protecting you) or you do not know how to control your character in PvP correctly. Likely both.

Ironic that you are attempting to build to instagib people while complaining about it.

You mentioned your Ele gets hit for over 20k and that’s more than your health, but even the 2 classes with the lowest health in the game can get to that point fairly easily.

There’s a reason most serious ele’s invest in to the earth tree. My ele would be able to survive that burst, because it has more HP (and likely more armor) than you. If you build to play a high risk game where you can be instagibbed, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Not to mention your description of your fights with Thieves show that you are playing right in to their game. That’s why they are frustrating, you are doing exactly what they want. You are your own worst enemy.

I do think they need to tweak a bit the thieves damage, however i find this 10seconds duels intresting all happens so fast and if you know what you’re doing you can actually win even if he pops guild.

offence.4726:

@TheGuy actually it requires massive skill , to get in “fail” an ambush and getting out of it from 1-2-5 people. Thief is fine as is if you can play him your can do amazing things if not you will die in the opener to most out there.

“Massive skill” really? To pop 2 skills cast C&D as you steal so they never see it coming and hit one more button and likely win. If you happen to fail switch to short bow, and port away, or go stealth, and walk away, or just HS til the target dies. That’s not really complex.

And your’e right most thieves pay for it big when they fail but, how often can you fail this? Either the other person has split second reflexes or they don’t that simple either way the thief started out at an advantage. Honestly the class with the highest raw burst should not have combat stealth but without it every other builds falls apart. Its not skill not by a long shot. Its easy to do and man do it easily. Like I said I usually win. Even when I’m on ele I have enough Toughness to survive the first part of the burst but there shouldn’t be a first part that hits that hard from stealth.

Once again all this doesn’t matter there isn’t much that can be done. We all have to accept that every once in a while a thief will burst you down and you wont have a chance that’s about it.

Simple truth is if you play anything else you need to be a better player than the mechanics of the simplest build on the most burst proficient class.

BTW I do play a thief and the amount of times I have dropped a group using stealth mechanics alone is stupid. No its not a brag its the truth. Its not hard on any thief build to hit and never get hit. The only saving grace is that the rest aren’t burst.

No class should ever hyper-carry either. And I’m looking at Mesmer right now.

Some Mesmer builds can go full tank and still deal short bursts of damage. Fix it please ANET.

ZenoSpyridon.1396:

Seriously, if your getting “instagibbed”, either your build is glass cannon (which you should not be using without a team designed around protecting you) or you do not know how to control your character in PvP correctly. Likely both.

Ironic that you are attempting to build to instagib people while complaining about it.

You mentioned your Ele gets hit for over 20k and that’s more than your health, but even the 2 classes with the lowest health in the game can get to that point fairly easily.

There’s a reason most serious ele’s invest in to the earth tree. My ele would be able to survive that burst, because it has more HP (and likely more armor) than you. If you build to play a high risk game where you can be instagibbed, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Not to mention your description of your fights with Thieves show that you are playing right in to their game. That’s why they are frustrating, you are doing exactly what they want. You are your own worst enemy.

When you get your ele to 20k HP and 1800+ toughness, let me know how wet noodle your damage is.

Elementalists in GW2 are relegated to being trashy bunker water/arcane specs w/ staff that can’t kill anyone and are brought for treb demolition duty on Khylo; earth tree is garbage and no one goes more than 10 points deep (just for earth armor @ 50%). Ele’s in GW1 were brought en masse for their single attunement spike in GvG. In this game you just bring thieves for spike.

Thieves are brought on every map as roamer/ganker and have arguably the highest survivability in the game. Shadowstep is hands-down the best stun-break/displacement/condition removal ability in the game, shadow refuge is over 18 seconds of stealth/heal/condition removal, hide in shadows is top 5 best heals in the game. If you’re going to sit here and say that thief backstab blowup isn’t deserving of a nerf when most thieves roll the aforementioned utilities/heal to reset every burst, your credibility is shot.