Guild Wars 2

Using my thief, I fought 4 players at the mine for well over 3 minutes, solo. I didn’t cap the point or get any stomps, but regardless, when they finally dropped me, the entire opposing team started pointing out how OP thief was, and after that display, “How could I deny it?”

Well, rather easily truth be told. None of those 4 players had the slightest clue what they were doing – I stopped playing and explained to them what they did wrong and how to counter my build. They didn’t know thief at all, some of the more basic PvP gameplay mechanics, or even their own specs very well. They all left anyway, but here’s a long list of examples -

- All 4 of them stood around in my caltrops every single time I used them
- The second I stealthed, they acted like Mobs; They stopped moving entirely (usually in my caltrops), and not a single one attempted to find me using Autoattack
- A warrior and engineer attempted to shoot me through the duration of both of my dagger storms
- Not a single one of them did anything to my shadow refuge – with a mes, an elemenatalist, an engi, and a hammer/rifle warrior there, they didn’t drop any sort of AoE in my shadow refuge (which I used every time as my oh kitten button).
- The mes used Mass invisibility twice. Both times, every single player was exactly where they were when the invis was dropped. They hadn’t moved a step.
- At no point were they dodging away from me. Anyone with a passing understanding of how thief works would have identified in 2 seconds that I was survivability/conditions build, and relied on stealth to keep myself up. My primary access to stealth was CnD – the player I was on could have literally dodge rolled when i got near him while the other 3 players shredded me and the fight would have been over in seconds. At no point did they do this, both the Ele and the Mes were more than eager to meet me in melee.
- They stood around and ate DB after DB. I wasn’t using deathblossom much at the beginning of the fight, because 99% of the time its stupid to spam it… unless your opponents have no idea whats going on. Then its kind of funny.

Despite explaining all this to them, they continued to cry how OP thieves were. These are the kind of players I envision rushing to these boards to lament how OP thief is. It didn’t matter that I explained my spec to them, and even linked them my abilities. It didn’t matter that I explained how THEIR specs could have countered me – “thief’s OP, cant wait for the nerf”

evilapprentice.6379:

The Boz.2038:

Yeah, you ran into noobs, big whoop. Thief is still OP.

By all means, if you’d like to discuss, discuss. If you’re just going to lay out blanket statements with no backing, please don’t bother.

The evidence to his statement is littered throughout this forum and several others. If you’re honestly too biased to recognize that the stealth mechanic as a whole in GW2 is a bit out of hand…no amount of ‘proof’ on our point is going to dissuade you.

Thief has a list of things that are extremely good, but also a list of things that are just a little bit better than similar skills on classes that should have the same role in the build that uses said skills. They’re hyper-effective in whatever they want to try and do, except for point defense, I guess.

crewthief.8649:

evilapprentice.6379:

The Boz.2038:

Yeah, you ran into noobs, big whoop. Thief is still OP.

By all means, if you’d like to discuss, discuss. If you’re just going to lay out blanket statements with no backing, please don’t bother.

The evidence to his statement is littered throughout this forum and several others. If you’re honestly too biased to recognize that the stealth mechanic as a whole in GW2 is a bit out of hand…no amount of ‘proof’ on our point is going to dissuade you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies

You go ahead and read that. Your post, and most of the posts on here, fall under one or more. If we were to listen to the boards, every single thief spec is broken (its no longer underskilled and underexperienced players crying about burst, bleed specs are now unstoppable too) and somehow ANet missed it. Literally, every single effective way to use a thief is so powerful it cannot be countered, and somehow ANET MISSED THAT ENTIRELY.

That just sound’s extremely believable to me, you know? </sarcasm>

An infantryman with a grenade can counter a tank. Theoretically. Doesn’t mean that a tank is balanced against an infantryman.

evilapprentice.6379:

crewthief.8649:

evilapprentice.6379:

The Boz.2038:

Yeah, you ran into noobs, big whoop. Thief is still OP.

By all means, if you’d like to discuss, discuss. If you’re just going to lay out blanket statements with no backing, please don’t bother.

The evidence to his statement is littered throughout this forum and several others. If you’re honestly too biased to recognize that the stealth mechanic as a whole in GW2 is a bit out of hand…no amount of ‘proof’ on our point is going to dissuade you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies

You go ahead and read that. Your post, and most of the posts on here, fall under one or more. If we were to listen to the boards, every single thief spec is broken (its no longer underskilled and underexperienced players crying about burst, bleed specs are now unstoppable too) and somehow ANet missed it. Literally, every single effective way to use a thief is so powerful it cannot be countered, and somehow ANET MISSED THAT ENTIRELY.

That just sound’s extremely believable to me, you know? </sarcasm>

Um…that isn’t what I said at all, even a little bit. I said ‘a bit out of hand’. And they are. And no, my opinion isn’t based on reading the forums…but having played the game. I very, very rarely post on these forums, maybe 10 since they opened? But Thief, without a doubt, is a bit out of hand. This isn’t my first MMO.

The Boz.2038:

An infantryman with a grenade can counter a tank. Theoretically. Doesn’t mean that a tank is balanced against an infantryman.

Yeah…but the guy in the tank will make the argument that it is balanced, LOL! At least on the internet!

Ashanor.5319:

No point trying to post this here. Look at the responses you get. This forum is full of nothing but people who whine about other classes.

I suppose you COULD just say that anyone who contradicts your opinion is ‘whining’, but that’s a bit arrogant, wouldn’t you say? I have my opinion based off of having played the game, not reading the forums. Take from that what you’d like.

OP,

You just have to stop and ask yourself one simple question: have you ever done that with any other class? If you haven’t, odds are Thief is OP regardless of how you may feel. Or the classes with which you couldn’t do what you did on the Thief are UP. Either way, it’s not balance.

You could probably troll bad people endlessly on some guardian builds, maybe even on a bunker elementalist as well, but I don’t see anyone else do it. Even a mesmer would be overwhelmed, and the amount of random AoE from four guys would kill off his illusions nearly instantly.

I’m normally pistol/pistol on my thief, but I’ve done dodge(drop caltrop on dodge trait) blossom, blossom, steal, CnD, backstab /end. But I think that warrior I killed was a nub.

Sabbathius.1465:

OP,

You just have to stop and ask yourself one simple question: have you ever done that with any other class? If you haven’t, odds are Thief is OP regardless of how you may feel. Or the classes with which you couldn’t do what you did on the Thief are UP. Either way, it’s not balance.

I’ll venture a guess and say that he/she most likely has not. To be able to 1v4 in THIS game for a full 3 minutes means one of two things; the 4 players you’re 1v4ing are REMARKABLY bad, or…you’re on an OP class/build. And as I have actually played this game, I tend to go with the latter.

Caltrop fields kind of cover the entirety of a point yes?

So how were they meant to avoid standing in it, leave the point and let you cap it?

As everyone else said, what other class could do that….(well maybe a bunker healing elementalist or a bunker guardian could)..which is exactly why people complain about them.

But good job bringing it to the attention of everyone. It came accross like some sort of pseudo bragging post.

Sabbathius.1465:

OP,

You just have to stop and ask yourself one simple question: have you ever done that with any other class? If you haven’t, odds are Thief is OP regardless of how you may feel. Or the classes with which you couldn’t do what you did on the Thief are UP. Either way, it’s not balance.

This and more this. This is the one point in here that matters most. I’ve played every single class in the game in pvp: Bunker builds, condition builds, glass cannon builds all in an attempt to figure out my play style and what I liked best. Even as a bunker guardian, there is no way I could survive any reasonable duration of time against 4 players. When you, as a thief, can survive 4v1, you’re able to do something that no other class can even come close to. Doesn’t make a difference if you didn’t kill someone. You literally tied up an entire team for three minutes, which is more than enough time for your team to cap the other two points and then bring backup.

Logical Paradox.7946:

Sabbathius.1465:

OP,

You just have to stop and ask yourself one simple question: have you ever done that with any other class? If you haven’t, odds are Thief is OP regardless of how you may feel. Or the classes with which you couldn’t do what you did on the Thief are UP. Either way, it’s not balance.

This and more this. This is the one point in here that matters most. I’ve played every single class in the game in pvp: Bunker builds, condition builds, glass cannon builds all in an attempt to figure out my play style and what I liked best. Even as a bunker guardian, there is no way I could survive any reasonable duration of time against 4 players. When you, as a thief, can survive 4v1, you’re able to do something that no other class can even come close to. Doesn’t make a difference if you didn’t kill someone. You literally tied up an entire team for three minutes, which is more than enough time for your team to cap the other two points and then bring backup.

Then you’re not as good as you think you are. I don’t say that to antagonize you, but from what you’ve said and my own personal experience, its obvious. I’ve watched bunker engi’s dance around 3-4 players in GY in foefire on numerous occasions. I’ve also seen a guardian -easily- tank 3-4 players (of course, both those situations are somewhat build dependant). Not for 3 full minutes, but Mind you, these players knew what they were doing compared to the ones I described from my experience.

If you had bothered to read my post (or try to understand it), you’d notice that most of the time those 4 players weren’t doing anything, or were actively killing themselves. The entire point of the post, in fact, was to point out how from their perspective, I was unkillable in a 1 on 4, where it was more like a 1 on 1.5, seeing as how most of them had no idea what to do. The purpose was to show that when people come crying to the boards about ANY class, it should be taken with a grain of salt, because alot of the times these people don’t understand why hitting their big damage ability while I’m mid dodge might be a bad idea.

If your guardian was in a 4 on 1, and all 2 of the players did was try to shoot you through your reflect abilities, would you call that a 4 on 1?

@evilapprentice

I think you’re missing the point. Something is amiss with the Thief profession at this point in the games life, and it isn’t just a handful of players saying that. I’ve played stealth professions in every other MMO i’ve played…I broke from this tradition with GW2. As a person that has ALOT of high-end experience on stealth professions, Thief is a bit out of hand, in my opinion.

evilapprentice.6379:

Logical Paradox.7946:

Sabbathius.1465:

OP,

You just have to stop and ask yourself one simple question: have you ever done that with any other class? If you haven’t, odds are Thief is OP regardless of how you may feel. Or the classes with which you couldn’t do what you did on the Thief are UP. Either way, it’s not balance.

This and more this. This is the one point in here that matters most. I’ve played every single class in the game in pvp: Bunker builds, condition builds, glass cannon builds all in an attempt to figure out my play style and what I liked best. Even as a bunker guardian, there is no way I could survive any reasonable duration of time against 4 players. When you, as a thief, can survive 4v1, you’re able to do something that no other class can even come close to. Doesn’t make a difference if you didn’t kill someone. You literally tied up an entire team for three minutes, which is more than enough time for your team to cap the other two points and then bring backup.

Then you’re not as good as you think you are. I don’t say that to antagonize you, but from what you’ve said and my own personal experience, its obvious. I’ve watched bunker engi’s dance around 3-4 players in GY in foefire on numerous occasions. I’ve also seen a guardian -easily- tank 3-4 players (of course, both those situations are somewhat build dependant). Not for 3 full minutes, but Mind you, these players knew what they were doing compared to the ones I described from my experience.

If you had bothered to read my post (or try to understand it), you’d notice that most of the time those 4 players weren’t doing anything, or were actively killing themselves. The entire point of the post, in fact, was to point out how from their perspective, I was unkillable in a 1 on 4, where it was more like a 1 on 1.5, seeing as how most of them had no idea what to do. The purpose was to show that when people come crying to the boards about ANY class, it should be taken with a grain of salt, because alot of the times these people don’t understand why hitting their big damage ability while I’m mid dodge might be a bad idea.

If your guardian was in a 4 on 1, and all 2 of the players did was try to shoot you through your reflect abilities, would you call that a 4 on 1?

So, because those 4 players were possibly the most terrible in all of GW2…Thief is in-line with other professions? Is that your logic?

I’m going to agree with evilapprentice, on the grounds that I don’t trust complaints for the sake of complaining. However, I think a few things about the Thief could be looked at (note: I don’t play Thief, and I’ve only looked at the Traits a few times, so please feel free to explain the finer points):

1. Perma-stealth. We had a situation the other day where a single Thief was hiding in stealth on a WvWvW point for several minutes. A large group of us was scattered, all auto-attacking, all dropping AoE. A few times we thought we found him, but couldn’t be sure. I saw a Shadow Refuge drop, instantly lept onto it with a Hammer combo, but still nothing. Finally a Binding Blade hit, we converged, and dropped the Thief. However, it was a little silly. I heard that the Thief has to hit someone to continue the stealth, so I don’t fully understand the mechanic, but this leads into my next point that pertains more to sPvP.

2. Tiny Window of Opportunity. One of the issues I debate with myself frequently on is around the window of opportunity to attack various classes. As a Warrior, I’m always right where I am, with no real surprises. I can break stuns, but in I believe every case, I remain where I am. It works for me, but with Mesmers blinking/decoying/etc. all over constantly, and with the Thief’s ability to frequent stealth/vigor, I feel like I have these tiny windows to actually do damage. I have multiple openings for a CC combo, but trying to actually chain them together successfully is almost silly amounts of difficult. However, this is only one piece of the potential problem, combined with the next point.

3. Damage to Window of Opp ratio. I’m fine with ultra-survivable builds that counter CC chains and are hard to hit. In fact, they can be enjoyable to fight. What’s much less enjoyable is the slippery slope I feel like I’m on when fighting one because of the damage potential that remains. For example, if I were to choose weapons/traits/utilities that maximized my survivability, you’d notice in a wild reduction in damage. It’s a trade-off. It almost feels like Thieves do not have a similar trade-off, or if they do, it isn’t necessarily that impactful.

4. Being able to use Steal in the middle of the animation of another ability. It honestly just feels like a bug, and I would very much be unsurprised if this were changed in the near future. To me, this is the crux of the real issue with the Backstab combo, and not just the number Backstab pops up with.

The thing to note is how teamwork and coordinated AoE start to impede a Thief’s ability to influence a game. At what threshold is the burst from a Thief too little to make sense in a coordinated team fight, given general Thief squishiness? Their ability to pop in, do damage, and (hopefully) pop out safely is sort of what the class is built around, yes?

At the end of the day, I’ll be curious to see what ANet does.

Ahem … don’t you yourself (OP) make a strange generalization? And doesn’t your whole point fall a bit apart once you realize that?
Anyway: I know 2 places where the word “proof” has any relevance … none of them are here.
Somehow your little anecdote is sufficient to put the burden of proof “on the other side”? Why is that relevant …. and can that even be accomplished? I am baffled honestly. I have no issues with thieves in general, even if I find DB-builds a bit silly and backstab ott … it is things that can be tuned, I suppose.

You have to ask yourself … if people don’t approach your information in a constructive way, then “where did I go wrong?”. If you care, that is … if you just want to point fingers at them, saying they are bad, then by all means, do so. From what you wrote here, I have my doubts about how you approached them, and what your agenda really is … just saying

As everyone else said, what other class could do that….(well maybe a bunker healing elementalist or a bunker guardian could)..which is exactly why people complain about them.

As I play a bunker/healing Elementalist, I can pretty much promise you that we could not outheal 4 players beating on us if they had even half a brain. I don’t claim to be the best Ele ever, but from my perspective regen doesn’t tick fast/high enough to outheal that amount of damage (remember, regen stacks in duration, not intensity, even permaregen can’t outheal 4 players damage), and one only has so many dodgerolls and cantrips before we run out of endurance and can’t combo our water fields anymore. One could last a good amount of time in a 4v1, but you WILL drop eventually and you won’t make it 3 minutes if even 2 of the other 4 players realize they have interrupts on their bar. If all 4 remember they have interrupts, god help you…

I can’t speak for guardian builds, I haven’t played them.

@Bsquared

Agree completely, and that’s my issue. What other class can do this? 1v4 for 3 minutes?

My question is: why does it matter that he could 1v4 against people who didn’t seem to know what they were doing? Is that the goal of balance, to make sure everyone can 1vX given particular skill levels?

This is another case of people focusing on some out of context point, claiming imbalance, and then siding with one another into a Red Rover-style band of brothers. Someone might challenge them, but they say “Look at us, the proof is in the pudding, Thieves are OP”, and discussion falls to trash because no one knows how to remove emotion from the equation and discuss the details to come to rational conclusions.

At this point, we have those who fly off the handle because a number looks high, and those who have been aggressively called OP to the point where they’re forced into the defensive. Even if Mr. Rogers came on these forums and, in the nicest way possible, proposed that many people probably aren’t as good as they think, there’d instantly be a strong reaction saying “Nah, you’re just OP, check out all of my brethren who agree”.

Conversation’s unfortunately going nowhere, and it bums me out.

Cogbyrn.7283:

My question is: why does it matter that he could 1v4 against people who didn’t seem to know what they were doing? Is that the goal of balance, to make sure everyone can 1vX given particular skill levels?

This is another case of people focusing on some out of context point, claiming imbalance, and then siding with one another into a Red Rover-style band of brothers. Someone might challenge them, but they say “Look at us, the proof is in the pudding, Thieves are OP”, and discussion falls to trash because no one knows how to remove emotion from the equation and discuss the details to come to rational conclusions.

At this point, we have those who fly off the handle because a number looks high, and those who have been aggressively called OP to the point where they’re forced into the defensive. Even if Mr. Rogers came on these forums and, in the nicest way possible, proposed that many people probably aren’t as good as they think, there’d instantly be a strong reaction saying “Nah, you’re just OP, check out all of my brethren who agree”.

Conversation’s unfortunately going nowhere, and it bums me out.

My personal opinion that Thieves are a bit out of hand is based off of my personal experience playing the game. I had that opinion before I read this thread. You know, not everyone who thinks balance needs a bit of work are just terrible players, right?

crewthief.8649:

My personal opinion that Thieves are a bit out of hand is based off of my personal experience playing the game. I had that opinion before I read this thread. You know, not everyone who thinks balance needs a bit of work are just terrible players, right?

And you know that not everyone who claims to be good is actually good, right? I didn’t call anyone out as being bad, as I don’t know any of you. However, why am I supposed to believe you’re good? Because you say so?

I’ve been around these forums fairly consistently for a while, and I can’t remember any posts that actually try to weigh the Thief class objectively or aim for the crux of the problem. Is it just that Backstab does too much damage? Doubtful, but that’s all I seem to see: shallow analysis based more on emotional reaction than objective analysis.

Poxxia.1547:

Ahem … don’t you yourself (OP) make a strange generalization? And doesn’t your whole point fall a bit apart once you realize that?
Anyway: I know 2 places where the word “proof” has any relevance … none of them are here.
Somehow your little anecdote is sufficient to put the burden of proof “on the other side”? Why is that relevant …. and can that even be accomplished? I am baffled honestly. I have no issues with thieves in general, even if I find DB-builds a bit silly and backstab ott … it is things that can be tuned, I suppose.

You have to ask yourself … if people don’t approach your information in a constructive way, then “where did I go wrong?”. If you care, that is … if you just want to point fingers at them, saying they are bad, then by all means, do so. From what you wrote here, I have my doubts about how you approached them, and what your agenda really is … just saying

Unfortunately, I did not fraps the fight – all I have is my anecdote. I did however try to be as specific as possible; what abilities i was using, their classes and or specs, how they could have easily countered me time and time again, but chose not too…

The point of my post was to explain how I took 4 extremely poor/inexperienced players (I’m not knocking them, but their lack of understanding plays a crucial role in my point) and turned them in 4 more players who are going to visit these boards and beg for thief nerfs. Explaining here exactly how I was playing, just how poorly they were playing, and how their lack of even basic understanding of the thief class created a situation where everything I was doing seemed some uncounterable magic; and all people focus on is “4 on 1, thief is OP”, perfectly parroting the way the players from last night reacted, and just proving my point perfectly.

Unfortunately, “where i went wrong” was I started out my thought with “I don’t think thieves are as OP as most of the boards feel….”. There was more after that, but that was all wasted effort; claiming you don’t feel thieves are as big a problem as people think they are is a quick way to get a negative reaction from everyone who has ever felt cheated by one. People often feel cheated by thieves because of (read original post)

It’s not often someone ignores their instant visceral dislike of your opinon, reads the rest of your points calmly, and then thinks about them – my first point was so out of whack with the reality they live in, then the rest of my reasoning is probably pointless hyperbole, and they’re just going to rush to point out how I’m biased, I live in a fantasy world, “4 on 1 what? OP, broken, right there, blah blah blah”.

Hello,

There are already several threads talking about the thief, therefore this one is now closed.

Please use the search feature of this forums, before posting a thread, in order to avoid duplicate.

Thank you