Guild Wars 2

Hello,

So first let me say i understand the thief counter argument to many of these complaints I have. I will try to say some possibly good changes to their class, but I feel like I need to get this rant out.

1. Where they fit. In this game a class that does high single target damage and has a ton of non counterable escapes is really poor. Shadow refugee is one of their main draws for teams in tpvp and in zergs. I feel like a thief should specialize in applying to both AoEs and single target conditions and debuffs that make them easier to kill for everyone. These include vulnerabliity, possibly a new debuff that increases condition damage taken. Things like that. This could greatly improve their draw in bigger group fights.

2. Defense is reliant on stealth. Thieves are very squishy and without stealth they are dead. I feel like having them rely on things like evades and stealths, both of which are impossible to counter unless you stunlock or chain CC (both of which I feel are very bad things in a MMO pvp, very simplistic and boring). I feel like they should have defensive mechanisms at their dispolal that are good, but also counterable. Right now their only counterable defense mechanism is shadow refugee, and not all classes can do that with their meta builds. I’ve fought thieves run into entire 20+ zergs, attack some people, then go stealth and escape. I feel like that if a player is so confiden in his classes ability that he would gladly charge into the middle of players in an attempt to kill one of them and escape, there’s a problem. I’m not sure how to fix this because there are A LOT of non counterable skills in the game, especially defensive ones.

3. Insanely Large single target damage- The problem with this is that if you have 2-3 thieves in a group in WvW or even spvp, they can coordinate their attacks and down one person instantly and easily escape, chaining together shadow refugees and what not. They have many skills that can crit and be spammed if desired that can crit well over 8k. I think this is a bit much. I feel like the amount of skills that can do this should be decreased, possibly only one.

4. Little to no AoE damage. In a game where mass zerging is considered good or where point control with AoEs is very important, having a class that doesn’t do a whole lot of AoE damage seems bad. Right now calatrops is their major AoE build and its really only usable on Points in spvp. Players can easily move away from the calatrops making them useless, or using the massive condi removal that is in the game.

5. Stealth downing/rezzing. They are amazing at picking up and downing targets. With stealthing having no counter, it is amazing that stealths can sit in the middle of players while they swing widely hoping to hit them while they down a friend.

I just feel like the way thieves are designed, they don’t fit into the game very well at all. Both their Pros and their cons.

Deified.7520:

I just feel like the way thieves are designed, they don’t fit into the game very well at all. Both their Pros and their cons.

A couple of good points in your post though I would like to answer just to that last statement. Imo the design of the thief would very well fit into the game it’s just perverted by the current balance.

What do I mean by this?

Lately I saw a L2P episode with Jumper showing how to play his build and basicaly he relies heavily on 3-5 skills. I play an engi atm and HAVE to use between 19-30 skills. Still a thief is certainly not weaker. What does that tell you about thos 3-5 skills? Almost all the utilities and damage is concentrated there which imo is an artificial enhancement of the class that does not fit the design idea.

With stealth, a ton of evasions as well as instant teleportation and last but for sure not least the initiative system instead of hard cooldowns this class screams HARASSER. But that’s not what they excel at. Atm they are executioners. Imo they shouldn’t even be able to kill somebody on their own.

So. Buff traps, maybe introduce some more and half all damage and we are where the design of this class wants to be.

If it’s fun playing that has to answered by somebody else.

I would simply add a diminishing return on stealth.
This would force them to choose either stealth for damage or defense and take away the ability to pick and choose their fights once initiated… just like everyone else.

What build are you using on your engie? I just need about 10.

Zenon.7364:

Lately I saw a L2P episode with Jumper showing how to play his build and basicaly he relies heavily on 3-5 skills. I play an engi atm and HAVE to use between 19-30 skills. Still a thief is certainly not weaker. What does that tell you about thos 3-5 skills? Almost all the utilities and damage is concentrated there which imo is an artificial enhancement of the class that does not fit the design idea.

Lately i saw teldos ( NG ) stream in a 1v1 agains jumper, jumper lost like 20 fights.
It all comes down to your skill.

Sure a S/D thief can be stupid to fight agains, but he is still a theif, and normally has no condiremoval besides s#2 ( takes off 1 condition ).
So as an NG you should not have to much problems ( when both players are on par ).

Of course you have to use more abilies, which perhaps make it a look harder for your, but trust me, you have also a LOT more options.
You , can deal with so much more as an engineer . Thiefs cant.

And of course there is a spot for us thiefs, depending on your Team , and thats very good.

The buff to FS gave us another spot, and you can still play D/P or D/D , but it depends on your teamsetup.

And your idea to make a thief a debuff-only class, WTF ?
Thief is supposed to nuke people fast ( if specced for that ) , and now we can alos spec for buker-punishment -

Who would want to get that taken away to be a debuff class, most likely also from range ?

We are agile melee fighters , with many tricks in our bag, to harass ( interrupt / kill) keyplayers in the other team. This is our spot.

We can also roam very fast to neutralize unguarded offpoints, sure, this could be done by other professions, but if played ( and specced ) right, noone is faster than us.

We really don’t need a “design rework” – we need some traits fixed ( buffed ) so we have other options then 30 in CS , – a few utils should be better ( traps + poison ) , but outside of that we are fine.

We will never be a 1v1 class , and if we 1v1 we have to play it what people call “unfair” – but belive me , i also think it’s unfair when i fight eg, a BM ranger – just saying.

lol you cant say cause teldo can beat it its fine^^

teldo is a very skilled player and atm the best 1v1 player out there – he beat just everyone on stream 1v1 and he won this 1v1 tournier
he even win sometimes 1v2 in stream or 1v3 and you cant say cause HE (Teldo) do this ingi is OP cause nearly all ingis i saw till now with this teldo build failed hard.

So plz stay on earth

edit: but the other way most thiefs i saw till now with the jumper build could easly kill ppl just with spam 3

Romek.4201:

lol you cant say cause teldo can beat it its fine^^

teldo is a very skilled player and atm the best 1v1 player out there – he beat just everyone on stream 1v1 and he won this 1v1 tournier
he even win sometimes 1v2 in stream or 1v3 and you cant say cause HE (Teldo) do this ingi is OP cause nearly all ingis i saw till now with this teldo build failed hard.

So plz stay on earth

edit: but the other way most thiefs i saw till now with the jumper build could easly kill ppl just with spam 3

Jumper is rank 8 in NA.

Romek.4201:

lol you cant say cause teldo can beat it its fine^^

teldo is a very skilled player and atm the best 1v1 player out there – he beat just everyone on stream 1v1 and he won this 1v1 tournier
he even win sometimes 1v2 in stream or 1v3 and you cant say cause HE (Teldo) do this ingi is OP cause nearly all ingis i saw till now with this teldo build failed hard.

So plz stay on earth

edit: but the other way most thiefs i saw till now with the jumper build could easly kill ppl just with spam 3

Easy dude, so you watched the 1v1 tourney, right ?
How many thiefs were in there ?
Yeah right !

NGs ( and not only Teldo ) are very strong, of course it takes more “work” – but S/D thief play is also much more then #3 spam – sorry if you really think its enough you should l2p.

Btw, jumper is no noob either – but wouldn’t you agree that a duelseries of two very good player should end other then 100:0 for one of them ?

The problem with Thief is at lower skill levels. Mediocre Thieves can be moderately successful due to the low skill floor. Mediocre players struggle with Thieves because it requires fast reactions to avoid the initial burst or it requires an almost chess-like dance of death – just waiting for their initiative to run dry – or surviving just long enough to whittle down the Thief’s tiny health pool.

At higher levels of skill the Thief is an easy target. Any good team will instantly target the Thief – one root and some coordinated burst and the Thief is toast. There’s a reason there are so few Thieves in the top teams right now.

Aside from the current S/D spam builds (which need tweaked in my opinion – but not actually by that much) – it’s a learn to play issue.

lvis.3824:

Romek.4201:

lol you cant say cause teldo can beat it its fine^^

teldo is a very skilled player and atm the best 1v1 player out there – he beat just everyone on stream 1v1 and he won this 1v1 tournier
he even win sometimes 1v2 in stream or 1v3 and you cant say cause HE (Teldo) do this ingi is OP cause nearly all ingis i saw till now with this teldo build failed hard.

So plz stay on earth

edit: but the other way most thiefs i saw till now with the jumper build could easly kill ppl just with spam 3

Easy dude, so you watched the 1v1 tourney, right ?
How many thiefs were in there ?
Yeah right !

NGs ( and not only Teldo ) are very strong, of course it takes more “work” – but S/D thief play is also much more then #3 spam – sorry if you really think its enough you should l2p.
Btw, jumper is no noob either – but wouldn’t you agree that a duelseries of two very good player should end other then 100:0 for one of them ?

Do you know why Teldo was able to do it that often? It’s because his build has plenty of damage that doesn’t require a target…(AoE) S/D eventually has to come into melee range and that build can just drop bombs and napalm and eventually hit the thief. Very few builds out there can say that. Most of the times it’s trying to hit the thief with casted abilities that get los’d and go on gcd or evaded altogether.

Dual.8953:

What build are you using on your engie? I just need about 10.

In a single encounter I won’t need more as well. Over the course of an entire match however …

lvis.3824:

And your idea to make a thief a debuff-only class, WTF ?
Thief is supposed to nuke people fast ( if specced for that ) , and now we can alos spec for buker-punishment -

Hm. Don’t know where you get that from but this is not my idea.

I understand this is a difficult topic. So I want to make this clear.

I don’t hate thieves and even don’t think they are OP. But also based on how I understand the idea behind this class’ design I don’t think they are supposed to nuke ppl. On the contrary, like said, imho (this is important as this is solely how I would like thieves to be) they should NOT be able to down other players themself. They should be fighting the guerilla war, denying paths and harassing on others playing the nutrition game.

Imo some weirdly placed and concentrated utilities which have been above that combined with obscene damage pulls them artificially off that track.

So I rly don’t want to take away anything else than being the dps-troll and rather add in a valuable asset to organized teamplay.

Arganthium.5638:

Romek.4201:

lol you cant say cause teldo can beat it its fine^^

teldo is a very skilled player and atm the best 1v1 player out there – he beat just everyone on stream 1v1 and he won this 1v1 tournier
he even win sometimes 1v2 in stream or 1v3 and you cant say cause HE (Teldo) do this ingi is OP cause nearly all ingis i saw till now with this teldo build failed hard.

So plz stay on earth

edit: but the other way most thiefs i saw till now with the jumper build could easly kill ppl just with spam 3

Jumper is rank 8 in NA.

Assuming you somehow believe that individual rankings in a team based competition make any sense.