Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

I main a thief in PvP…..I’m sure any of you who have seen my posts know this…so I just want to make sure that’s known.

I’ve noticed in the current state of the game that thief’s are becoming a rarer sight every day….to the point where I decided to keep track of it for the last 100 games of SPvP.

100 games = 1,000 players total. I myself am in all 100 of these games, resulting in a skewed result, so I will be removing all 100 of my occurrences, leaving the new total as 900.

Not so much to my surprise, there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games…with only 1 of them have 2 thief’s not counting myself. This adds up to 18 thiefs out of a potential 900.

18/900 is 2%………as low as that sounds…..it honestly seems right.

I hardly ever see other thief’s on my team…or the enemy team.

Is thief so UP and nerfed that no one is playing them anymore?

Luclinraider.2317:

Is thief so UP and nerfed that no one is playing them anymore?

Thief is still reasonably powerful owing to shortbow #5 and Shadow Refuge – between the two of those, the thief can out-rotate anything else in the game, threatening decap and keeping all 3 points under constant pressure simply by being in the match. The traits in Shadow Arts also make it a reasonable support class; you can res downed allies like no other.

For those reasons alone thief will continue to have a role in high level matches – if the other team does not have a thief, your thief can run a member of the other team around the entire match, getting occasional decaps and contributing more simply from rotation potential.

The thief is not a good combat class right now – it is at a disadvantage 1v1 against every class in the game except perhaps warrior, and in general you can only drop an opponent in an even numbered fight if you massively outplay them. This makes thief incredibly frustrating to play – you spend nearly the entire match running away from stronger combatants. This is even moreso when queuing solo, when your teammates are not reliable and your weakness at scoring – and snowballing – kills makes it more difficult to carry on than many other classes.

I still find it fun, as I like winning matches by reading the map better and out-rotating my opponents. You are absolutely a support character however, and if you’re looking to carry you really should be playing something else.

Ensign.2189:

Luclinraider.2317:

Is thief so UP and nerfed that no one is playing them anymore?

Thief is still reasonably powerful owing to shortbow #5 and Shadow Refuge – between the two of those, the thief can out-rotate anything else in the game, threatening decap and keeping all 3 points under constant pressure simply by being in the match. The traits in Shadow Arts also make it a reasonable support class; you can res downed allies like no other.

For those reasons alone thief will continue to have a role in high level matches – if the other team does not have a thief, your thief can run a member of the other team around the entire match, getting occasional decaps and contributing more simply from rotation potential.

The thief is not a good combat class right now – it is at a disadvantage 1v1 against every class in the game except perhaps warrior, and in general you can only drop an opponent in an even numbered fight if you massively outplay them. This makes thief incredibly frustrating to play – you spend nearly the entire match running away from stronger combatants. This is even moreso when queuing solo, when your teammates are not reliable and your weakness at scoring – and snowballing – kills makes it more difficult to carry on than many other classes.

I still find it fun, as I like winning matches by reading the map better and out-rotating my opponents. You are absolutely a support character however, and if you’re looking to carry you really should be playing something else.

This may be the most reasonable and accurate response to thief post, that I have seen in a long time.

Thief meta is like being annoying Shadow arts with Shadow refuge that reset your HP,Condi in stealth. Also vampire rune that only make it not fun to play aganist since it only delay the inevitable. Because thief dont have much mechanic or nerfed one that cause them to cannot stay in fight too long.

So current thief rotation is like. Go in with steal that rip boon and try to damage as much as you can. Then go back to Stealth wait for imitative regen.

IMO to fix this current meta Stealth mechanic might need an overhaul so that stleah do not completely make user 100% invisible while buffing Thief HP , unnerf their defensive/initiative regen mechanic.

By least you must mean one of the most right? I would venture a guess and say thief is the third most played behind mes and ele.

Its subjective thought, I played 20 matches yesterday and evey match we had 1 thief in each team, sometimes 2.

Well it often doesn’t go well when there’s more than 1 thief on a team so that may factor in to your results. Maybe they see you on thief so they switch.

Waaaaat! It’s not even funny how often I end up in teams with 2 thieves so I doubt they are the least played.

We usually win if one of the thieves swap to a class that counters one of the opponents. And plus it’s reassuring that he cares enough to want to increase our chances of winning.

Thief is the king of decap and ress.
Give AoE stealth with Shadow Refuge (or pistol skill 5 and SB blast, for example, used also to obtain stealth with dagger skill 2 leaps).

If a good player use it can kill another player in 1vs1, but actually there’s a lot of builds that make him unable to kill that enemy in 1vs1.
For example I play a necromancer. When I use my dps build a good thief can kill me, if I use my bunker Mm build a thief can not kill me.

But the thief is a god to take down a enemy that have 50% or lesser health (high dps and a lot of traits make him able to do that quick), making him a very useful class to end a fight. But also in a team fight can be killed easy by AoE skills.

There’s a lot of roles the thief can do really good but the best one is the roamer decapper/resser, able to take down a distract enemy fast and unseen.

Ok, let’s assume that thief is the least played profession, even though I wouldn’t believe that from your post:

I don’t think it’s underplayed because it’s under powered because we’ve seen that when played right in organized PvP, it’s an MVP.

However, there’s two things that make it unpopular:
1) Build Diversity. Since S/D was nerfed, there’s only one really strong build. This makes player burnout on the profession a LOT more likely.

2) Performance in unorganized/lower tier environments. Even though you can get wins by utilizing mobility and +1 burst, players still want to jump into 1 on 1s and even when players want to play to the thief strengths, it’s hard to do in an unorganized game. This leaves the experience and range of roles for a thief to play very narrow, which also can lead to burnout.

There’s a couple of things the thief is UP crowd seem to forget, no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.

If your build was ever weak to a thief you would never be safe from it. It would always be able to get to you, it could always chase it, it could always kill you (promptly) and would render you a liability to the team.

The only case this would not be true is if your build was providing a great benefit to your team and you were always going to lose but could take long enough to kill that your team could come and support if needed.

As for the actual OP. If you were playing as a thief the general rule of thumb is more than one thief is bad so you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.

Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.

apharma.3741:

There’s a couple of things the thief is UP crowd seem to forget, no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.

If your build was ever weak to a thief you would never be safe from it. It would always be able to get to you, it could always chase it, it could always kill you (promptly) and would render you a liability to the team.

The only case this would not be true is if your build was providing a great benefit to your team and you were always going to lose but could take long enough to kill that your team could come and support if needed.

As for the actual OP. If you were playing as a thief the general rule of thumb is more than one thief is bad so you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.

Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.

1st There isn’t a class in this game that a thief has a 50% chance to win 1v1. Are there crappy builds that a meta thief can achieve 50% win rate against….Yes, but they are crappy builds thus don’t count due to them losing 100% of the time to all the other classes meta builds.

Reread OP’s post especially this part

Not so much to my surprise, there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games…with only 1 of them have 2 thief’s not counting myself. This adds up to 18 thiefs out of a potential 900

Only 1 match had 2 thieves other than himself. Using that information you are looking at best 18/500 which is a whopping 4%. Going by rule of thumb we can even look at the bigger picture considering that each team should utilize 1 thief per team. that would have made the numbers 100/500 and 200/1000.

4% vs the supposed 20% is quite telling on how UP a thief really is.

T raw.4658:

apharma.3741:

There’s a couple of things the thief is UP crowd seem to forget, no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.

If your build was ever weak to a thief you would never be safe from it. It would always be able to get to you, it could always chase it, it could always kill you (promptly) and would render you a liability to the team.

The only case this would not be true is if your build was providing a great benefit to your team and you were always going to lose but could take long enough to kill that your team could come and support if needed.

As for the actual OP. If you were playing as a thief the general rule of thumb is more than one thief is bad so you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.

Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.

1st There isn’t a class in this game that a thief has a 50% chance to win 1v1. Are there crappy builds that a meta thief can achieve 50% win rate against….Yes, but they are crappy builds thus don’t count due to them losing 100% of the time to all the other classes meta builds.

Reread OP’s post especially this part

Not so much to my surprise, there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games…with only 1 of them have 2 thief’s not counting myself. This adds up to 18 thiefs out of a potential 900

Only 1 match had 2 thieves other than himself. Using that information you are looking at best 18/500 which is a whopping 4%. Going by rule of thumb we can even look at the bigger picture considering that each team should utilize 1 thief per team. that would have made the numbers 100/500 and 200/1000.

4% vs the supposed 20% is quite telling on how UP a thief really is.

1st thing: I said “no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.” I did not mention classes, I was encompassing builds as well as classes. Marauder ele couldn’t possibly be a thing because, yeah thief and mesmer would eat it for breakfast and DD cele is just so ridiculous atm. It could fight most other meta builds outside of DD ele fairly well so it isn’t a “crappy build” either.

2nd thing: Lets assume we’re working by the rule of thumb that anyone that is a thief switches if they see another thief. This means we have to calculate thief popularity by games not players.

“there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games” which means thief representation is 17%.

However my complaint wasn’t the numbers. I was disputing the numbers, which is why I said:

“you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.
Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.”

If the OP was to do this again as I said above you would have a much better idea of whether thief was UP as it would be present in less than 12.5% of games assuming all classes were balanced with lower representation meaning it is UP.

Edit: To add I am not saying thief is UP or OP or balanced. I am disputing the way in which the whole data collection process. The OP played a thief and so would have to discount themselves and their team from any data collection due to the popular saying of “You don’t need 2 thieves on a team”.

Ensign.2189:

Luclinraider.2317:

Is thief so UP and nerfed that no one is playing them anymore?

Thief is still reasonably powerful owing to shortbow #5 and Shadow Refuge – between the two of those, the thief can out-rotate anything else in the game, threatening decap and keeping all 3 points under constant pressure simply by being in the match. The traits in Shadow Arts also make it a reasonable support class; you can res downed allies like no other.

For those reasons alone thief will continue to have a role in high level matches – if the other team does not have a thief, your thief can run a member of the other team around the entire match, getting occasional decaps and contributing more simply from rotation potential.

The thief is not a good combat class right now – it is at a disadvantage 1v1 against every class in the game except perhaps warrior, and in general you can only drop an opponent in an even numbered fight if you massively outplay them. This makes thief incredibly frustrating to play – you spend nearly the entire match running away from stronger combatants. This is even moreso when queuing solo, when your teammates are not reliable and your weakness at scoring – and snowballing – kills makes it more difficult to carry on than many other classes.

I still find it fun, as I like winning matches by reading the map better and out-rotating my opponents. You are absolutely a support character however, and if you’re looking to carry you really should be playing something else.

Period.

Not going to talk about UP or OP, but no see a lot of thieves in ranked at least. Actually was wondering if it was thief night just last night as had some matches where there were 3 to a side and a large number where there were 2 each side. So least played, no but only one with those numbers won’t be sharing them.

apharma.3741:

T raw.4658:

apharma.3741:

There’s a couple of things the thief is UP crowd seem to forget, no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.

If your build was ever weak to a thief you would never be safe from it. It would always be able to get to you, it could always chase it, it could always kill you (promptly) and would render you a liability to the team.

The only case this would not be true is if your build was providing a great benefit to your team and you were always going to lose but could take long enough to kill that your team could come and support if needed.

As for the actual OP. If you were playing as a thief the general rule of thumb is more than one thief is bad so you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.

Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.

1st There isn’t a class in this game that a thief has a 50% chance to win 1v1. Are there crappy builds that a meta thief can achieve 50% win rate against….Yes, but they are crappy builds thus don’t count due to them losing 100% of the time to all the other classes meta builds.

Reread OP’s post especially this part

Not so much to my surprise, there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games…with only 1 of them have 2 thief’s not counting myself. This adds up to 18 thiefs out of a potential 900

Only 1 match had 2 thieves other than himself. Using that information you are looking at best 18/500 which is a whopping 4%. Going by rule of thumb we can even look at the bigger picture considering that each team should utilize 1 thief per team. that would have made the numbers 100/500 and 200/1000.

4% vs the supposed 20% is quite telling on how UP a thief really is.

1st thing: I said “no-one in there right mind would ever play anything that didn’t stand a 50% or better chance against a thief.” I did not mention classes, I was encompassing builds as well as classes. Marauder ele couldn’t possibly be a thing because, yeah thief and mesmer would eat it for breakfast and DD cele is just so ridiculous atm. It could fight most other meta builds outside of DD ele fairly well so it isn’t a “crappy build” either.

2nd thing: Lets assume we’re working by the rule of thumb that anyone that is a thief switches if they see another thief. This means we have to calculate thief popularity by games not players.

“there were only thief’s present in 17 of these 100 games” which means thief representation is 17%.

However my complaint wasn’t the numbers. I was disputing the numbers, which is why I said:

“you kinda skewed the results massively and simply removing yourself from the pool isn’t the answer.
Now if you only counted the thieves on the other teams and sampled the other teams then that would be more accurate.”

If the OP was to do this again as I said above you would have a much better idea of whether thief was UP as it would be present in less than 12.5% of games assuming all classes were balanced with lower representation meaning it is UP.

Edit: To add I am not saying thief is UP or OP or balanced. I am disputing the way in which the whole data collection process. The OP played a thief and so would have to discount themselves and their team from any data collection due to the popular saying of “You don’t need 2 thieves on a team”.

Maurader Ele not being a thing has nothing to do with Thieves. If thieves are keeping Maurader Eles out of the meta for you than you need to re-evaluate your own game.

Thief representation in games was at 17% which is still crap. You can’t go by a game just having a thief as being balanced b/c by that token I’m sure Rangers are sitting nice and pretty right now since their representation is much higher than 12.5%. The simple fact is that out of 900 possible chances of a thief chosen in those 100 games the fact they only were picked 18 is horrible.

Also using your math of the the fact that thief was chosen either 2% or 4% of the time is in fact well below your 12.5% representation. Also the OP was very descriptive in his presentation and would have likely counted how many thieves were switched at the beginning of the game. Even if ALL 16 games with one thief had a thief switch classes you are looking at 34/900 = 4% or 34/500 = 7% both of which are WELL below acceptable. To get to even get to a 20% margin you need 180/900 or 100/500 and I can guarantee you 162 ppl did not reroll from thief at the beginning of the matches.

Population statistics are a terrible way to look at balance, so I’m going to ignore that (I’m not going to give evidence as to why, anyone with the ability to use google or think logically can see why). The second post is a good read. The issue with thieves is that shortbow, and shadow refuge alone are reason to take a thief now. That means that even though thieves aren’t great in any matchups, they are still being taken for those things. If thieves had even matchups everywhere, and had those things they would be OP. They’d bring everything another class brings and that extra rotation decap ability. Thus, one of two things needs to happen.

Either one, you nerf shortbow mobility and shadow refuge, thus weakening the class initially, but then buff up their actual combat ability to be on par with other classes.

That, or you give 1 or two other classes the mobility, and rezzability thieves have currently, and then go about buffing thieves combat ability. Thus, they would no longer be imbalanced because another class could fill the same role.

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

zapv.8051:

Population statistics are a terrible way to look at balance, so I’m going to ignore that (I’m not going to give evidence as to why, anyone with the ability to use google or think logically can see why). The second post is a good read. The issue with thieves is that shortbow, and shadow refuge alone are reason to take a thief now. That means that even though thieves aren’t great in any matchups, they are still being taken for those things. If thieves had even matchups everywhere, and had those things they would be OP. They’d bring everything another class brings and that extra rotation decap ability. Thus, one of two things needs to happen.

Either one, you nerf shortbow mobility and shadow refuge, thus weakening the class initially, but then buff up their actual combat ability to be on par with other classes.

That, or you give 1 or two other classes the mobility, and rezzability thieves have currently, and then go about buffing thieves combat ability. Thus, they would no longer be imbalanced because another class could fill the same role.

Normally I would agree with anyone in preventing thieves from becoming so OP that they literally stack 4 of them on a team and win ESL’s

Wait we already have that in the ele. We already have Cele Necros. We already have PU mesmers. etc etc etc.

There are no argument against this.

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

mesmers have more stealth than thieves btw…. and arguably just as much moblity

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

mesmers have more stealth than thieves btw…. and arguably just as much moblity

To be clear; I’m talking about stealth for the team, and even if the mesmer takes the elite and Prismatic Understanding, the stealth from refuge and the smoke-field is way beyond that.

PowerBottom.5796:

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

mesmers have more stealth than thieves btw…. and arguably just as much moblity

To be clear; I’m talking about stealth for the team, and even if the mesmer takes the elite and Prismatic Understanding, the stealth from refuge and the smoke-field is way beyond that.

thief has no portal, no aoe invul

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

mesmers have more stealth than thieves btw…. and arguably just as much moblity

To be clear; I’m talking about stealth for the team, and even if the mesmer takes the elite and Prismatic Understanding, the stealth from refuge and the smoke-field is way beyond that.

thief has no portal, no aoe invul

That’s exactly my point: Thief has sth. that is exclusive to him: enough stealth-uptime for the team to cross the map in stealth and do stealth-openers. Other than that, he’s not really top-tier, but that 1 fact makes him top-tier. That’s what I don’t like about the state of Thief, that’s not good balancing in my opinion.

Thief is popular not cuz its effective or fun, its closest class to kitten ninja/rogue we know from other games, and his playstyle is so dynamic to the point of beeind addictive.

Still if you want to win any 1v1 or any teamfight as thief other classes can just roll all over you in terms of dmg and survi.
Whats even funnier is fact that thief cannot run/decap/be effective without stealth, even initiative regen is tied to it right now and slowly more classes are getting stealth counter like SIC em/Analyze/Herald stunbreak/ that will work great vs annoying PU mesmers that abuse stealth hard, but will destroy thief completly, i dont see any other build even 50%good as D/P, DareDevil wont rly change much, its less working s/d playstyle with less dmg and less survi. Unless Anet decides to change “revealt” mechanic since thiefs no longer will be able to decide when they get this debuff i dont see a great future for a thief.

BUT DONT WORRY GUYS we can always ROLL ELE. Anet dont plan to nerf them and its easier to be average ele than great thief/

Literally the only thing that makes Thief a staple in high-skill premade teams is Shortbow #5. Imagine, for a moment, that it were bugged and had to be disabled for a month. You would see Thieves disappear from all competitive teams overnight.

That’s not even addressing how miserable it is to play Thief in solo queue or lower brackets…

Not really! In spvp & WvW………. lots. Often in team matches you got 2.

But it is bugged, dunno why but sometimes it just fail to teleport and eats initiative…

Cynz.9437:

…

Oh and not to mention in the community it is most hated class, verbal harassment, just because you play the class, is normal daily thing. My favorite is when people (sadly including devs on stream,) try to promote propaganda “ohhhh thief is soo OP cuz of +1, top teams run thieves yada yada”, yet when you end up with 2-3 thieves on team these very same people rage at you if you don’t reroll other class. HYPOCRITES!

Heh, I thought mesmer was currently the most hated class.

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

Cynz.9437:

PowerBottom.5796:

I don’t like the current State of the Thief and here’s why:

- He has certain abilities that are so strong, that you need a Thief in almost every teamcomp, to be precise, an D/P-Thief. Of course I’m talking about stealth.

- Besides the Stealth, Thief is IMHO not too strong, or at least there would be better choices for a +1 roamer.

With new classes possibly getting decent stealth-uptimes for stealth-engages (engi with the stealth-gyro) and more classes with reveal (revenant for example. Also in recent times, engi got played more with reveal), I feel that Thief is gonna hurt pretty badly.

Just my 2 cents as sm1 who doesn’t play Thief at all. :P

mesmers have more stealth than thieves btw…. and arguably just as much moblity

To be clear; I’m talking about stealth for the team, and even if the mesmer takes the elite and Prismatic Understanding, the stealth from refuge and the smoke-field is way beyond that.

thief has no portal, no aoe invul

This is not usually how arguments work. Powerbottom said that thief is so strong in teams because of stealth (for resses and whatnot) and mobility. You argued that mesmer has more stealth than thief. Powerbottom replied that, to the team, thief has much more stealth than mesmer (assuming meta builds). For some unknown reason, you decided to then bring in portal and aoe invuln, which has nothing to do with powerbottoms original post. This just doesn’t make any sense. Besides, a mesmer can not bring both high stealth and aoe invuln which trivializes your point even more. Thief has team stealth- it is one of the reaons why thief is important for teams, especially in combination with shadow arts which makes thief a good resser.

Amante.8109:

Literally the only thing that makes Thief a staple in high-skill premade teams is Shortbow #5. Imagine, for a moment, that it were bugged and had to be disabled for a month. You would see Thieves disappear from all competitive teams overnight.

That’s not even addressing how miserable it is to play Thief in solo queue or lower brackets…

This ^^. The rest of the arguments in this thread miss the point. Shortbow #5 is the only thing that keeps thief from junk tier. It also only works in a well coordinated team. In any other game mode, play a different class.

style.6173:

Amante.8109:

Literally the only thing that makes Thief a staple in high-skill premade teams is Shortbow #5. Imagine, for a moment, that it were bugged and had to be disabled for a month. You would see Thieves disappear from all competitive teams overnight.

That’s not even addressing how miserable it is to play Thief in solo queue or lower brackets…

This ^^. The rest of the arguments in this thread miss the point. Shortbow #5 is the only thing that keeps thief from junk tier. It also only works in a well coordinated team. In any other game mode, play a different class.

Shortbow 5 and shadow arts stealth resses.

Thief is the worst class when played with pugs with no coordination. Cos it lacks team fight potential and even if you’re a good roamer, it’s hard to win if you’re only role is decapping free bases and help to +1 teammates that move around without any logic.

style.6173:

Amante.8109:

Literally the only thing that makes Thief a staple in high-skill premade teams is Shortbow #5. Imagine, for a moment, that it were bugged and had to be disabled for a month. You would see Thieves disappear from all competitive teams overnight.

That’s not even addressing how miserable it is to play Thief in solo queue or lower brackets…

This ^^. The rest of the arguments in this thread miss the point. Shortbow #5 is the only thing that keeps thief from junk tier. It also only works in a well coordinated team. In any other game mode, play a different class.

And this will always be the case. Thief will never be bad because it has Shortbow #5 and it will never be good because of the same reason it isn’t bad. The thief mechanic does not work well for balancing.

You cannot make real defensive skills on weapons on the thief, because they can be spammed. You cannot make a high burst skill on a thief… because it could be spammed. You cannot give them a hard CC weaponskill… because it could be spammed.

Each weaponskill competes with the others for a limit ressource pool. If one of them is better you are harming yourself by using the other skills.

We can see that on skills that are being used. Nobody would ever in their right mind use for example Dancing Dagger. It uses the same ressource you could use on Heartseeker or Body Shoot. If you are a melee you want to close the distance fast, so you heartseeker after your target. If you are ranged, immobilizing your target is much better than crippling it, as immobilize will also disable dodges and leaps.

You could of course buff the damage on dancing dagger, but once the damage is so high that it becomes the alternative to jumping with heartseeker… well why not just keep throwing daggers for damage?

One skill will be better and when it is using the same ressource as the not so good skill the latter one will not be used at all.

No other class has the same problem. Even if an ability on your bar is worse than the others, there is no downside in using it as once you are done with your good skills that will be all you have left.

The current thief mechanic of initiative needs to be redone in order to actually be able to make thief a fun and engaging class.

OK, I feel like one thing has never been addressed in this thread: the original research. I am assuming, since the OP said he was a thief main, that he played thief, during all of these matches. That’s why this experiment is not significant in any way.

1) The match-making avoids class stacking. So naturally, if you play thief, the system will try to put the least possible amount of thieves in your team. That’s the strongest bias.

2) Thieves do not stack well, so chances are, some players in your team who play thief swapped to accommodate you. Similarly, a player queuing on, say, necro, but who also plays thief and sometimes swaps to it when need be, would not swap seeing you, leading here again to biased results.

3) You didn’t say if your queues were in ranked or unranked. People don’t play the same professions in each queue. I, for example, never play my mains in ranked, while I know that some ranger mains never play their main in competitive matches.

To sum up, I like the effort, but you might consider reconducting your study playing, say, an elementalist (because it stacks well) in ranked.

Now, on thief: I think it fills its role well. Naturally, given how fast it is, and how much damage it deals, it would be ridiculous if it could actually win 1v1s against meta professions. Remember why pre-June mesmers see little use in competitive play? Exactly: because having the fastest profession in the game hard-countering you is game-breaking. Thieves still hard-counter mesmers, but at least mesmer has enough stealth now to at least juke the thief for a little while.

I really, really enjoy playing thief (I played most of my games in pvp on this profession), but it’s true that its true strength is in a competitive setting. I think that’s fine: the game definitely needs high mobility, high skillcap professions whose sole purpose is to shift the pressure to the other side of the map quickly, as Capablanca used to play chess (I’m pretty sure he’s one of the inspiration for how Helseth plays). I’m sure what we enjoyed the most in WTS was the mesmer portal plays and Magic Toker leading his team to victory.

The core issue with thief is its lack of build diversity, which makes it a bit boring to play for too long. It’s definitely not its lack of use.

Thieves asking to efficiently 1vs1 all other classes that must invest in defense, while they can focus entirely on the offensive because stealth is already a strong defensive mechanic and their attacks can be spammed thx to initiative

Hold on…..why the hell should I even play any other profession if a thief can simply 1vs1 anybody, run faster than anybody, decap better than anybody and stealth reset any fight?

Like…:" Oh KK dear devs I want the defensive options to 1vs1 that tanky guy..but I want to keep stealth so I can run away easy if I ever happen to lose and I want to still have stealth so I can always engage first and never be taken by surprise, I still want initiative so I can easily access what I need when I need and..huh..give me some nuclear bombs and planetary laser cannon access just for good measure, thx"

Btw people seems to forget about pistol whip era and lyssa rune god thief before that; at that time thief wasn’t that “rare” in PvP was it?…..yeah thx god the devs didn’t forget about that

Yeah give thieves the ability to 1vs1 tanky specs while keeping stealth and initiative…LIKE HELL

P.S let’s not conveniently forget about all the specs that thieves have always kept out of PvP, WvW..TY

Supreme.3164:

Thieves asking to efficiently 1vs1 all other classes that must invest in defense, while they can focus entirely on the offensive because stealth is already a strong defensive mechanic and their attacks can be spammed thx to initiative

Hold on…..why the hell should I even play any other profession if a thief can simply 1vs1 anybody, run faster than anybody, decap better than anybody and stealth reset any fight?

Like…:" Oh KK dear devs I want the defensive options to 1vs1 that tanky guy..but I want to keep stealth so I can run away easy if I ever happen to lose and I want to still have stealth so I can always engage first and never be taken by surprise, I still want initiative so I can easily access what I need when I need and..huh..give me some nuclear bombs and planetary laser cannon access just for good measure, thx"

Btw people seems to forget about pistol whip era and lyssa rune god thief before that; at that time thief wasn’t that “rare” in PvP was it?…..yeah thx god the devs didn’t forget about that

Yeah give thieves the ability to 1vs1 tanky specs while keeping stealth and initiative…LIKE HELL

P.S let’s not conveniently forget about all the specs that thieves have always kept out of PvP, WvW..TY

do you know right that the word spam and thief don’t go well together?
Sure you can use 2 times in a row 1 skill at the cost of putting every other skill on cooldown. This is the thief! And iniziative based skills are no efficient as any other skill in the game for the reason they can be used twice in a short time.
The reason that Thief is choosen only for SB 5 explains well how bad is all the rest of the class. I would trade anytime that skill for a stronger presence in team fight and the ability to 1v1 anyone on the same balance level.

Nobody wants to hear the truth, just lies… typical.

What does ranger pet do? It provides CC, some dmg and rezzes but is absolutely useless by itself.

Rings the bell? Yeah, thief is ranger pet basically. I don’t see how it can be enjoyable to be a pet for other players.

infantrydiv.1620:

Shadowstep.6049:

Nobody wants to hear the truth, just lies… typical.

What does ranger pet do? It provides CC, some dmg and rezzes but is absolutely useless by itself.

Rings the bell? Yeah, thief is ranger pet basically. I don’t see how it can be enjoyable to be a pet for other players.

Yeah clearly Thief must be equal to a Ranger pet since EVERY SINGLE top team runs a thief and a team with a Ranger on it hasn’t won a real tournament in over a year and a half. Perfect logic… actually, head on back over to the thief forum, thanks

lie

Abjured, TCG/R55, and oRNG are the top teams in this game. They all use thieves regularly. As well as a huge majority of mid-top tier teams.

you said every single

tcg disbanned btw

Now I want a thief as pet for my ranger

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Now I want a thief as pet for my ranger

Thieves can’t taunt keep the bird

infantrydiv.1620:

Shadowstep.6049:

Nobody wants to hear the truth, just lies… typical.

What does ranger pet do? It provides CC, some dmg and rezzes but is absolutely useless by itself.

Rings the bell? Yeah, thief is ranger pet basically. I don’t see how it can be enjoyable to be a pet for other players.

Yeah clearly Thief must be equal to a Ranger pet since EVERY SINGLE top team runs a thief and a team with a Ranger on it hasn’t won a real tournament in over a year and a half. Perfect logic… actually, head on back over to the thief forum, thanks

You need to start watching more tournaments. You are getting out of date. Watch the NA finals for this past week for example.

The meta is evolving. Smarter teams are realizing that other classes do a better job than thief. Don’t get me wrong, elite thieves can still be valuable, but they are overcoming the class.

An interesting point to ponder. If the oRNG thief decided to quit the game, would they immediately recruit a new thief, or would they go in another direction. I’m not sure the answer.

Should thieves be in every team comp?

DaShi.1368:

Should thieves be in every team comp?

where do you see anyone asking for it?

infantrydiv.1620:

Shadowstep.6049:

Nobody wants to hear the truth, just lies… typical.

What does ranger pet do? It provides CC, some dmg and rezzes but is absolutely useless by itself.

Rings the bell? Yeah, thief is ranger pet basically. I don’t see how it can be enjoyable to be a pet for other players.

Yeah clearly Thief must be equal to a Ranger pet since EVERY SINGLE top team runs a thief and a team with a Ranger on it hasn’t won a real tournament in over a year and a half. Perfect logic… actually, head on back over to the thief forum, thanks

You walked right into “perfect example” town. 10/10.

DaShi.1368:

Should thieves be in every team comp?

No? Thieves arent asking for anything but the required core tweaking to be competent in 1v1. And frankly, the players that are proclaiming flatly that a classes potential to 1v1 should be inversely proportional to its ability to move around while warrior exists should be ashamed of themselves. I should not be barred from at least speccing into actually fighting because one skill on one of my weapons lets me move a short distance away twice, in exchange for all of my combat potential for a few seconds.

That’s asinine.

And the viewpoint that “Thieves were once picked by people who played tournaments, so they must be good” is also stupid. The meta has changed. Not every PVP team is tournament-quality, especially in ranked, especially if pug. And that viewpoint fails to take into account that those thieves are part of a rehearsed strategy that is probably constantly reinforced vs teamspeak. It says very little if anything about the thief’s inherent viability. A soldier with a peashooter can be valuable in an army if he has a good team and a specific function.

Stop that kitten. You’re just regurgitating year old arguments against a class that hardly resembles what was argued against then.

DaShi.1368:

Should thieves be in every team comp?

No, why handicap your team like that?

style.6173:

An interesting point to ponder. If the oRNG thief decided to quit the game, would they immediately recruit a new thief, or would they go in another direction. I’m not sure the answer.

I’m ready to bet A LOT of virtual gold that they would take another thief. Interested in trying your luck?