Guild Wars 2

@Redscope:
- maybe “target closest enemy” + “melee attack assist” could help to don’t show the back to opponent

- thief should not always win, but if he can come to a non-stealthed thief, both with 14k hp, the one stealthed has a great advantage.

There is venom control support, pistol whip roamer, D/D condition and people whine about Backstab builds? hahaha oh kitten didn’t know there are so many bad PvP’ers in GW2. Backstab build is a joke in any serious sPvP/tPvP.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

There is venom control support, pistol whip roamer, D/D condition and people whine about Backstab builds? hahaha oh kitten didn’t know there are so many bad PvP’ers in GW2. Backstab build is a joke in any serious sPvP/tPvP.

-defending boring, lame, old, one shot from stealth mechanics by saying nobody uses it anyway

BACKSTAB IS SO FINE NOW, amazing. People are just typing crap without thinking of what the other persons argument is.

Anyway the whole thief class is pretty much filled with lame stuff. How cool was heartseeker spam? How awesome is it to roll your face on Deathblossom instead? They are fundamentally flawed because their abilities do far too much at once, while the broken initiative allows them to squeeze every bit of overpowered from these abilities in rapid succession.

Not to mention they can stealth waaaay more than in other MMO’s. Allowing them to safely get even more initiative and then to just resume spamming. (bugged) stealth, horrible initative mechanic, and dodging while attacking is probably the dumbest thing i’ve ever seen in a game. Did arenanet think all this stealth was what people where waiting for in a skill based MMO? Free dodging/immunite while attacking? Lets give em quickness too!!!1
Why would you NOT want your horrible class fixed to take an inch of thought? How the hell can you play this class like this if not for making pubstomp videos in 8v8.

And yes they are OP in tournaments as well, we all know it.

Not to mention they can stealth waaaay more than in other MMO’s. Allowing them to safely get even more initiative and then to just resume spamming. (bugged) stealth, horrible initative mechanic, and dodging while attacking is probably the dumbest thing i’ve ever seen in a game. Did arenanet think all this stealth was what people where waiting for in a skill based MMO? Free dodging/immunite while attacking? Lets give em quickness too!!!1

You forgot superior mobility, they need that to ensure they can faceroll or disengage safely if they miss the keyboard with their face.

so much hate in this thread.

they are not OP in tourneys, not by a long shot. they get countered by any competent group harder then nearly any other class.

that said yes there are numerous things that need changed on the thief class, from bugs, to abilities /specs that are out of line.

howver, it is not NEARLY as bad as people like ganksinatra claim. if people like him were in control of balancing hed just nerf them or delete them, make them unplayable.

you know why things like retaliation have been nerfed before all these “problems”? cuz they are not as big of deals as people think.

fact is regardless of how unbalanced a thief is, its not what its about anymore, playerbase has branded tehm for slaughter and they wont rest until they are bottom tier, hell, below bottom tier. and then they will defend/rant over the next OP thing and demand justice!

edit: not too mention boring or lame is highly subjective to personal bias

I run a D/P backstab build (no not the infamous glass cannon one shot builds, my damage isnt nearly that high even with 2880 attack). my only real damage moves are backstab, autoattack, and HS if target is low on hp.

I make full use of my weapon set however. I black powder to disrupt group fights and to support my team during the downed state. i interrupt spells with headshot, and despite shadow shots limitations i use it to close gaps.

yet when i kill someone half the time they whisper/mail me or call me out in the map channel saying im a HS spamming noob, even tho i have a bad habit of forgetting to use HS at all to kill someone!

half the people that rant about thieves are people like that.

1 vs 1, thief is no prob. But when you’re in the middle of combat with someone else, and your hp suddenly drops 15k in 1 second, isn’t that a bit over the top? Keep in mind thieves can stealth and shadowstep from far away to prevent you even noticing them. This is specifically the backstab build. 95% guaranteed kill every 45 secs.

KogarasuMaru.7036:

1 vs 1, thief is no prob. But when you’re in the middle of combat with someone else, and your hp suddenly drops 15k in 1 second, isn’t that a bit over the top? Keep in mind thieves can stealth and shadowstep from far away to prevent you even noticing them. This is specifically the backstab build. 95% guaranteed kill every 45 secs.

While that build does need addressing, it is not “the” backstab build, it is “a” backstab build that utilizing very specific trait set to do dstupid amounts of damage.

even with 30 points into critical strikes nad 2880 attack i dont get near that type of backstab crit damage.

what needs to be addressed are some of those traits/skills. assassins signet for one (150% damage on next hit) and power signets is a trait that needs looking at, its pretty much built for the backstab spec (5 stacks of might for 5 seconds after activating a signet)

even tho it needs addressing its also the least game impacting spec, only able to impact a single target once every 45 seconds. this doesnt change however that it does need fixing.

I really dont want to see a direct nerf to backstab skill itself, the thief already has a issue with only speccing glass cannon, nerfing backstab would just further diminish non glass cannon dagger mainhand builds. rather nerfing the abilities that make backstab hit so hard seems a smarter choice, resulting in nerfing the rediculous glass cannon backstab build, while not reducing thieves to playing glass cannon only.

Hmmmmmm…….I wonder why we don’t see many thieves in pro 5v5 matches if they are soooooo OP. Oh yeah, I suppose the pros just disagree with everyone in this thread who doesn’t know how to combat a thief.

Can you imagine if Starcraft 2 was modified by Blizzard based on what the Silver League whined about? That game would be ruined in a matter of days.

As a thief, I can honestly say that I am not easy to kill because (1) I am aware of my surroundings, use them to my advantage, and know when to fold ’em and (2) this being month 2 of the games release, nobody knows what I am doing, where I am going, or when to avoid me yet!

It’s hard to see what I’m doing when I’m invisible but when I, having a thief main, see a thief go invisible, I can usually guess what is about to happen and react accordingly. This isn’t to say my alts don’t die to thieves, mind you, but I wouldn’t say that it’s any more so than to other classes.

One last thing, if you happen upon a thief all alone, don’t run from us. Have some dignity and face death head on. You’ll live longer

Thieves NEED to be rebalanced. They are utterly OP as it is. Since the game is still fresh, i was willing to look over this for quite some time but PvP is now flooded with cheap Imba-Thieves and you can’t really tell anyone that is fun any longer.

I don’t care what they nerf about them as long as they take SOMETHING away. We all know they are about burst-damage. Okay fine. But then make them actually vulnerably instead of granting them an untouchable shadow state. Take their cheap anti-condition skills from them. A Ranger has a bloody hard time to circumvent many conditions whereas Thieves can just poof them away with basic skills.

Also, the downed state mechanic is broken for all classes but Thieves especially. It feels like other players have to kill the same rotten Thief 3 times over. Not to mention how they get a stealth kill on players in downed state. Well, as i said, downed state is completely and utterly ridiculous for PvP. Generally speaking. And it isn’t all that fun all around. There are classes with a downright unfair advantage through their downed skills.

Take a Rangers downed skills. A lame dirt throw; a lame interrupt (which is completely superflous because the enemy can IMMEDIATLY resume his death strike); Pet healing with a way too long CD and the general healing. Useless.

@Meikun, utterly OP? please.

they have specific trats/abilities that need tuning.

the fact that you say “i dont care what they nerf about them” should eliminate your entire post from even giving merit to the discussion.

they are about burst damage and mobility. certain specs have too much burst, and maybe too much mobility (different specs)

untouchable shadow state? we have a shadow state? you talking about stealth? its far from untouchable and if your noob enough to run a spec with absolutly no non target required damage moves/aoes or condition damage thats your problem.

however stealth IS bugged atm in favor of the thief and it needs fixing.

we dont have many anti condition skills, in fact thieves are one of the worse off classes for condition removal in a group setting, now in 1v1 its a bit different if they spec accordingly, but it doesnt have the same effect in group play (you know, where the game is balanced around)

lets see execute>teleport>execute>blind invis thingy>execute…ya 3. its probably unbalanced and needs looking at honestly.

stealth kill on downed players however is not unbalanced at all. stability executes are far more effective.

there is definitly some balancing needed for downed state tho.

explain what dirt throw does please? instead of saying its lame. the interrupt does what its supposed to do, your not supposed to solo out with downed state, just help you survive to get a rez…which is another erason thieves might have too strong of a downed state.

everyone has general healing tho

your a whiner, you give no real information other then you not liking X

in this game, any class that is easy to pick up and play and see results will be flooding spvp because there is almost no commitment (create, log on, go to heart of mists, spec up and fight). this provides a unique opportunity for arenanet.

thieves have overpowered skills, overpowered/silly specs. thieves have bugs that favor them. But thief is not as bad as you make it out. i mean you get mad about a glass cannon backstab thief oneshotting you, but its perspective biased, you dont see the other 45 seconds where they make virtually no impact on the fight (its honestly the worst spec for getting glory or even competing). yes the spec needs fixed, but its not omg completly OP like people make it out, its omg completly OP for one target every 45 seconds….yay. not defending it, as its a dumb build anyways, but juszt trying to give perspective to bandwagoning nerf herders

@Wolfe

Yes, utterly OP, you read that part right. I stand by what i said and i do not feel the need to comment any further on something that so many people readily agree upon. As i said, i don’t care WHAT they change about the Thief to tone him down into fair and square territory. That class has advantage over advantage piled upon advantage over other classes. Have you ever seen “sPvP” against a whole team of Thieves? I have. Too many in fact and it’s one of the most ugly things in recent time.

I play a Thief myself as an Alt and i’m the first to agree that the term “glass cannon” doesn’t apply to a Thief at all. It doesn’t die faster than other classes at all. In fact, it dies a lot harder. Plus it has that ridiculous condition/damage burst with the graciously long escape into the shadows heal.

I had some really intriguing fights with my Ranger against other classes that were really thrilling and it didn’t feel like either side had an unfair advantage over the other. Fights with Thieves are never like that.

Other than that, you can take your condescending attitude elsewhere. I stated what i felt wrong with Thieves. Which is what this thread is about. Thankfully, you also seem to realize that they need to be nerfed regardless, however much you want to downplay on it.

About the downed state. If it wasn’t too clear from my previous line of thought i would rather have it trashed for PvP. As such, i strongly feel that those skills are lame, as in, why should a defeated player still deal damage, quite disproportionate damage even, after being defeated. That problem was already brought up so many times. It makes 2v1 or any other multiple matches undesirable because it doesn’t cater to skill but rather to spams and number crunches. More and more players adopt a policy to let the downed player bleed out instead of killing him because of the net gain in time and control. The downed state works well enough for PvE but it creates too much interference for enjoyable PvP matches.

The interrupts are still superflous even if they do what they do, namely interrupt. There’s no point to interrupt the finisher animation if the other guy can immediately resume the strike. Maybe you gain 2 more seconds “alive” in downed state. Which amounts to nothing in a chaotic match. It doesn’t help you get a rez and even IF it magically should happen sometimes, it’s so rare and unlikely that you can easily put that thought on hold.
Other classes have many more skills that make it hard for other players to actually kill them in downed state. That IS an unfair advantage. I took the Ranger because his downed skills are so ridiculous compared to those of a Thief or Mesmer for example.

As for those ominous 45 seconds. This is the point where i have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and even if it is just about the activation time for Pain Response (which is just ONE of a wide variety for a Thieves multi-condition removals). I have never seen ANY Thief who was incapacitated for that long in any conceivable way. Not even after firing off a full burst and the subsequent stealth phase with their Backstab build.

By the way, maybe (just maybe) there is a reason why there’s such a large nerf herd? Just saying.

i dont downplay sir i rationalize, you on the otherhand overexaggerate to a large degree!

and i only condescend when the person themself im replying to condescend, so pot meet kettle.

i personally enjoy the downed state for pvp, it adds another layer of tactics, if they can balance it.

also just cuz hes downed, doesnt mean hes defeated, your using mentality from different games to justify your thinking.

2 more seconds can make the difference in a coordinated team fight, but dont expect dedicated rezzing in hotjoin pvp.

and i agree downed state needs further balancing

the 45 second argument is for a specific backstab build the majority of players are complaining about. it has no real mobility ot survivability, every single one of its ablities and traits are dedicated to damage and upping that backstab. in other words, its crap outside of its big CD’s. it has nothing to do with condition removal

but on condition removal, pain response is a 45 second internal Cd (probably why you thought iw as talking about it) and is uncontrollabvle, if you go to 75% hp with no conditions its waisted, not nearly as powerful as you make out. tho useful

the biggest offender in 1v1 would probably be the ability to remove a condition once every 3 seconds while in stealth (so once per stealth). but again in a group setting it ammounts to a drop in a bucket.

in order for a thief to have decent condition removal they ned to spec survival, not damage (and nobody has complained about a survival thief yet, because theres hardly any out there)

I made a survival build with the xact intention of condition removal and self healing and stealth. it does very low damage but is very hard to stop as well. even with the best of available traits and skills for condition removal, in a group setting conditions still can plague you. but if one person tries to apply long duration conditions of a single type, dont complain if they get removed, many classes do it much more effectively then a thief.

the size of a nerf herd isnt exactly proportional to the severety of the need for balance. rather even if one thing is slightly over the top of anyone else you will get floods of QQ, its the mmo generation, videogames in general.

hell in borderlands 2 with no competitive nature whatsoever people call for nerfs because its “unfair”

stealth needs its bugs fixed

skills that support the high damage backstab build needs looked at

thief (or other players) downed state needs re-adjusting

pistol whip needs a redo as it is right now its gonna either be OP or worthless

and maybe death blossom builds need looking at, tho they are imo easily countered.

Im starting to have nightmares with clic-clic-clic, saw nothing, dead.

Sometimes its bugs and hit you 2 times while invis, frustrating as hell.

Like i said 3 weeks ago, the burst dmg in this game its stupid.

so here again another video showing off the imbalance of the thief in spvp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udk3CEtc7E

hitting low thoughness targets 10-13k
high toughness targets 7-8k.
even the tanky targets die in a blink of an eye… someone might “argument” about cooldowns and so on but please save your time and dont make yourself look stupid. in a serious tournament removing someone from a fight instantly is a big advantage and pretty much imbalanced.

CptCosmic.3156:

so here again another video showing off the imbalance of the thief in spvp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udk3CEtc7E

hitting low thoughness targets 10-13k
high toughness targets 7-8k.
even the tanky targets die in a blink of an eye… someone might “argument” about cooldowns and so on but please save your time and dont make yourself look stupid. in a serious tournament removing someone from a fight instantly is a big advantage and pretty much imbalanced.

against high toughness i do almost 8.5k damage. for 20k hp is good but not enough.
but you are right, removing someone from fight instantly is a big advantage. that’s why thieves are so difficult to play, because 90% if you play bad, you are the one removed from the game. and, well, it is all fine, really, i appreciate this build i was looking for in these days (not so glasscannon btw), but 1 good spike every 45(36) secs isnt almost a 4v5 plus “bonus” (thief can kill because of his cds)? in a game where every single second count for the final score, that time with a half-useful thief worth it?
ofc i am meaning tournaments.

Oh hai.

Toughness > HP

My Ranger has 2k Toughness but 15k HP. I blow up glass cannon Thiefs without doing anything.

Gotta love traps

Lets go into detail:

-14k for one hit.
—Thats more than 50% of damage and theres no excuse for this.

-Autotargeting in Guild Wars 2 is flawed and Nerf.
—From GW1 to GW2 the autotargeting has taken a hit (nerfed) where your character can no longer follow your target.
—-Which brings me to this point…. MOVING THE MOUSE LIKE A MANIAC TO KEEP YOUR BACK SAFE! Which is really ridiculous on Anet’s part.

They should fix the autotargeting so thief can concentrate on target that are not autotargeting him/her like GW1.

And by god fix the huge damage they do without any effort.

I wonder how many people in here actually do tourney play with groups that arent random… I dont have any issues with backstab thieves. Im glad Anet dont nerf something because the forum pro is bad at playing in game

So I’m not an expert or even good at the game but I just happened to fight my first few pvp games against a bunch of thieves.

All I can say is what the hell is going on? I see a thief, then he is gone, then I am dead.
It’s just way too confusing to fight. There is a flurry of movement from every direction and I don’t even know which way to dodge.

I am using a Hammer + Mace/Mace support warrior but even skill 5 on hammer didn’t stop me from dying because I just don’t know where the hell the thief is coming from.

I don’t know how insane their damage is but I am pretty sure I was just one comboed every time…kinda a kitteny feeling if anything.

Majiger.9763:

So I’m not an expert or even good at the game but I just happened to fight my first few pvp games against a bunch of thieves.

All I can say is what the hell is going on? I see a thief, then he is gone, then I am dead.
It’s just way too confusing to fight. There is a flurry of movement from every direction and I don’t even know which way to dodge.

I am using a Hammer + Mace/Mace support warrior but even skill 5 on hammer didn’t stop me from dying because I just don’t know where the hell the thief is coming from.

I don’t know how insane their damage is but I am pretty sure I was just one comboed every time…kinda a kitteny feeling if anything.

if your new to the game to any degree any class can seem confusing, the key is to learn about them and there animations either by playing them or just thru time. people complained in beginning of wow that pvp was confusing cuz they didnt know what the other guy was doing, you dont hear that now cuz the players have been at it for so long.

but its a backstab burst build. he has no survivability traits/skills.

he went invisible either with a talent that makes steal (steal teleports to you and “steals” a item that is predetermined by your class, that they can then use later) and go invisible or they cast CnD (has a cast time) and cast steal (doesnt interrupt the cast) to land it, putting them in stealth.

at this point they hit assassins signet, they move to your side/behind you, and they hit backstab.

if backstab was gonna crit for 4k its now probably more like 7k, if it was 8k now its probably somewhere around 13k or more etc.

now that thief, is spent, it has at least 45 seconds until it can do this again. in which time the only thing thats really keeping it alive is the stealth bug.

its dumb and needs addressing, but a good rule of thumb is dont stand still and dont give them your back.

@Webley

I happen to play tournaments and they don’t magically take away the very real OP problems with thieves. Nerfing PW was a good start. Fixing the stealth issues would be the next logical and needed step.

BTW, this is hardly a matter of L2P. Even burst damage should not result in a 3 second death in a game that is supposed to be fair and competitive. A thief has to suffer from choice and consequence, where the choice is to gamble a burst assault and suffer from retaliation. However, retaliation is seriously hampered by bugged stealth and over the top condition removal, quickness/haste, evade. You name it. 2v1 with a thief among them is a death sentence since you will completely use up your entire defensive arsenal on that one alone. Even if you manage to down both or even one of them, you’ll just be shredded by the downed attacks.

But yeah, i do understand why people would like to argue in favour of a cheesy profession. After all, who would like to get their nukes taken from them? Mesmers and Guardians have taken a huge hit recently. And those profession weren’t nearly as much under criticism.

Thief here, I think the solution is quite obvious; Don’t get killed by thieves.

We’re definitely not OP. We’re just a really good niche class for killing people who don’t know how to not die to thieves. Against people who simply don’t die to thieves, we aren’t OP at all.

So learn to play, learn to not get killed by thieves, and then utilize not getting killed by thieves. All you have to do to beat thieves is not lose, simple as that. You all complaining need to get some skills because thief takes a lot of skill to hit hard with, especially pistol whip, heart seeker, and backstab builds, those builds are the hardest to play in GW2.

I never played any class except thief but I already know that thief takes the most skill to play so I should be allowed to hit hard and if you don’t even have enough skill to not die from thieves then you deserve to die to my superior skill.

Meikun.4531:

@Webley

I happen to play tournaments and they don’t magically take away the very real OP problems with thieves. Nerfing PW was a good start. Fixing the stealth issues would be the next logical and needed step.

BTW, this is hardly a matter of L2P. Even burst damage should not result in a 3 second death in a game that is supposed to be fair and competitive. A thief has to suffer from choice and consequence, where the choice is to gamble a burst assault and suffer from retaliation. However, retaliation is seriously hampered by bugged stealth and over the top condition removal, quickness/haste, evade. You name it. 2v1 with a thief among them is a death sentence since you will completely use up your entire defensive arsenal on that one alone. Even if you manage to down both or even one of them, you’ll just be shredded by the downed attacks.

But yeah, i do understand why people would like to argue in favour of a cheesy profession. After all, who would like to get their nukes taken from them? Mesmers and Guardians have taken a huge hit recently. And those profession weren’t nearly as much under criticism.

you exaggerate, you talk of the mythical 30/30/30/30/30 traited thief with lots of condition damage as well as power and crit.

and over the top condition removal? most of the other classes can do it better, now a thief could make a specific build (ive made it before) to maximize condition removal, it also has very little damage (again, you use the fabled 30/30/30/30/30 traited thief).

however i do agree with you on points, stealth needs the bugs fixed, PW was nerfed in a way that was detrimental to PVE (unless PW thieves were doing much more damage then they should have in pve).

yes the current glass cannon build backstab thief (not every backstab thief runs this build, but its most popular) needs to be addressed.

however ive said it once and ill say it again, nerfing backstab base damage will just further push thieves into glass cannon builds because a normal build will do such low damage vs its survivability as to be not worth it.

you wanna nerf this one hit wonder spec that only works evey 45 seconds on one target? take a look at the traits that make it so powerful, and assassins signet.

actually bunker guardians and phantasm mesmers were much stronger in pvp then a backstab thief. a backstab thief owns someone outright once every 45 seconds, a bunker guardian can survive against a entire team, and a phantasm mesmer can kill more often then a backstab thief.

its hyperbole honestly, people are complaining about a build that arguably has the least effect on pvp then any other spec in the game. a spec that kills once every 45 seconds. if you cant kill them or survive them when they have absolutly no defensive traits/utility skills outside there heal then you suck. they dont have infi dodges (has 2 actually), they have low armor and low hp, half the time the build doesnt even have a stunbreaker!

now yes its damage is out of line, and needs addressed as its a dumb build in general. but to say its effective in group pvp is not true.

Well … if backstab also gets a nerf (thanks to the nonskilled flamers) what are we thieves going to be useful then? … there is nothing but Burst we can do because we die in seconds if we’re getting catched thanks to ANets PW nerf that makes D/D with Backstab the ONLY viable Build with dmg left there for us!

If they nerf the burst they at least need to make some other abilities useful and mostly they need to increase the base Health and Armor…

And who ever plays some decent tPvP will already have noticed that most premade teams just got 1 Thief and he isn’t the troublemaker there (thanks to endless bunker setups with 2 Guardians, Health regen Eles and Engineers)

And as I said … ANet did nerf PW … so

S/P … is almost useless now because it hardcore lacks in dmg
P/P … never has been an option since it’s just useless if you don’t play against scrubs
D/P … pretty much useless because it just has no burst besides Autoattacks
S/D … I don’t know if there is a weapon set out there that could be more useless
P/D … almost as useless as the S/D is -.-
D/D … THE ONLY viable build left since it does what an assassin is supposed to do … it bursts and if you fail your burst you’re pretty much useless for 45 seconds not to mention the burst almost never makes someone die (again thanks to hardcore bunkers)

I did LOVE to play PW the more tanky way with a knights amulet since the dmg still was nice. But now we NEED to play Glass cannon so that we still can do something.

but hey …. maybe it’s just another game where the Thief/assassin/rogue class gonna be nerfed to the ground until no one will play it anymore because there are so many flamers out there flooding the forums with “NERF NERF NERF .. OP OP OP …”

while i agree that the way they nerfed PW was incorrect, i disagree that its a useless weapon set.

P/P struggles cuz its auto/sneak are at odds with unload and bodyshot sucks

D/P is a amazing support build that excels in 1v1 and group interruption. and blackpowder+HS=stealth if you want to backstab someone.

Some people swear by S/D, tho its not a playstyle i understand, flanking needs attention

P/D a lot of people swear by it for a safer condition damage thief

D/D glass cannon build isnt a good build from a competitive standpoint anyways

you’re right it’s not useless since you can support your team with Dazes and you can avoid dmg with the PW evasion. But if you compare the dmg of the PW with the dmg of the D/D there only is D/D left and if I’d like to do ALMOST equal dmg to the backstab I’ll have to play my S/P as a Glass Cannon with just 15k HP … I don’t really like to be Glass cannon but it seems like ANet wants the Thief to be one.

And as you see there … if you want to get the best dmg there only is D/D left. Peronally I don’t really like that because I’d much more like to roll around with some other sets to have fun since only D/D to be viable becomes boring as hell :/

how does D/P not do as much damage as D/D? they both have access to backstab, a way to stealth.

also keep in mind that yes we are supposed to be bursty, but that doesnt mean the burst we do right now is where anet wants us either.

sure D/P got backstab but it’s much harder to land a backstab with this build since you don’t have CnD.

And yeah they might not want us to be as we are right now … but they at least should make all other weapon sets attractive then so that we can run other things that might be interesting.

Umweltplakette.2109:

sure D/P got backstab but it’s much harder to land a backstab with this build since you don’t have CnD.

And yeah they might not want us to be as we are right now … but they at least should make all other weapon sets attractive then so that we can run other things that might be interesting.

the only way is to blinding powder and HS inside it so u go stealth. but it is a great initiative waste…but if they could fix that weapon set, i would use it forever.

/shrug, between my minor trait in critical strikes, and two majors in shadow arts i dont run out of initiative, tho i also dont spam BP>HS for backstabs either.

I really don’t care which one they choose, either balance thiefs or fix stealth.

It’s been enough time now…

god forbid yall l2p. there are plenty of hard counters to a glass cannon thief. In tPvP i run into them all the time. Glass Cannon thiefs punish bad players, and thats why this thread is 7 pages long. The ones that know how to play are kicking kitten in tPvP and not crying on the forums.

@Weapon X – vid or ur full of kitten.

Tired of all of these l2p people coming in and saying this. I have to believe all of them are thieves scared kittenless that their class is gonna get nerfed. As stated many times before: the game mechanics of stealth in combination with the initiative model and the high damage value for abilities make the thief overpowered.

@ EnochDagor, I’m not scared at all. I play a multiude of classes including the so called UP Ele D/D. What i’m defending is the class its self and what it is intended to do with the tools availble. the 150% signet is what needs the nerf, not Pistol whip(lol) or backstab.

and why do i need to provide a video, if this is so easy mode, how about you post a video of you stomping your way though some tPVP with a glass canon build. Hell do it with 5 thiefs since we are so easy mode, should be a face roll.

I’ll make a video of me going up against good players and show you how they counter the thief, and after playing one. I could prolly do it on any class.

@ Weapon X

There are some classes that just can’t counter a decent thief.

Sure in the context of guardian/thief/mesmer-fest that is most games, the thiefs probably seem completely balanced. On my thief (I play a stealth build with some toughness and health), I find I am better off leaving memser’s alone, and only engaging guardian’s when their health dips low enough I can easily burst them (once they get rolling, Guardians get tough for me to stop).

I can take most engineers so long as the boundaries of the fight are not dictated (like on a point). I can take almost every necro. Eles that build for damage go down fast. Eles that build for survivability are gnats. Warriors aren’t bad so long as I don’t eat 100 blades. Rangers generally fall, but good ones can give me a run for it.

All in all, I would say the game is moving toward balanced. That said, the squishies need to be a tad less squishy or thieves need to do a tad less damage. As a thief it is fun as hell knocking some poor necro’s life down with a huge backstab. As a necro… it is a lot less fun.

I do think at this point that some of the QQ is no longer warranted. I think the thief nerfs have been well measured and well thought-out.

I would also like to add tha it doesn’t help the thief’s cause that every time they take a needed nerf the entire thief forum lights up with insults about how every other person in the game needs to l2p.

HSS was hitting for too much. PW was hitting for too much.

@QSpec, i agree.

I have yet to find a class that cant hard counter my thief. It all depends on the person controling the class. Its hard to say that one is easier to kill than the other, because everyone plays them differently. But when im in a hot join and some scrub just stands there….he is gonna be my primary target until he quits. nothing personal, but i would expect the same treatment.

And i completly agree that Backstab should not be hitting for 10k+, but its not back stab thats doing it. Its the signet+trait that are the real issue. and if they nerf the ability and not the utility….you will see a huge falling out. Both in PVE, PVP and WvW.

And why the hell was PW nerfed and not100b? (Yes, i play a warrior too, so my opinion is unbiased)

Thief killed me in less than 4 seconds. Had 26k hp. Imbolized, poisoned and bled me, all while being stealthed. I couldn’t even get one spell off. That is OPed.

tluv.5821:

Thief killed me in less than 4 seconds. Had 26k hp. Imbolized, poisoned and bled me, all while being stealthed. I couldn’t even get one spell off. That is OPed.

Well this post sums it up, folks. ANET, please use this as a template to nerf the Thief. They have damage, imobilize, poisons, and bleeds. NERF THIS kitten NOW.

tluv.5821:

Thief killed me in less than 4 seconds. Had 26k hp. Imbolized, poisoned and bled me, all while being stealthed. I couldn’t even get one spell off. That is OPed.

Let me guess, he was perma-stealth, was dual wielding greatswords, used pistol whip and backstab at the same time that each applied 12.5 stacks of bleeds and poison then ran off without taking any damage

Anet, please nerf dual wielded greatsword thieves.

Weapon X.5163:

@QSpec, i agree.

I have yet to find a class that cant hard counter my thief. It all depends on the person controling the class. Its hard to say that one is easier to kill than the other, because everyone plays them differently. But when im in a hot join and some scrub just stands there….he is gonna be my primary target until he quits. nothing personal, but i would expect the same treatment.

And i completly agree that Backstab should not be hitting for 10k+, but its not back stab thats doing it. Its the signet+trait that are the real issue. and if they nerf the ability and not the utility….you will see a huge falling out. Both in PVE, PVP and WvW.

And why the hell was PW nerfed and not100b? (Yes, i play a warrior too, so my opinion is unbiased)

I can’t speak to 100b. I have never played it. I have only been its recipient, so I would be biased.

But to your point, I agree about backstab. This is what I meant by working on PR instead of defending cheese. Backstab isn’t the problem. I run a toughness/backstab build. It hits hard, but it isn’t out of this world damage and is beatable by someone better than me.

The build in the video. So instead of defending the “insta-kill if your dodge is down” build, we should be defending backstab as a skill.

ACTUALLY, as far as I saw, he was using a bow when I died. But that was when I was downed. I couldn’t even get my number 2 skill off when I was downed, which is fear.

tluv.5821:

ACTUALLY, as far as I saw, he was using a bow when I died. But that was when I was downed. I couldn’t even get my number 2 skill off when I was downed, which is fear.

I hope they nerf the SB from stomping you out before your brain has time to send signals to your fingers.

Increase PW by at least 5% again. The change negatively affects PvE as well. If you want to manage PW and Quickness, you manage Quickness. You don’t implement punitive decreases meant to appease forumites. 15% is managable, if you play well but it does represent a notable decrease in damage potential for the S/P set. Be it in PvP or PvE.

If PW gets nerfed, HB gets it too. Because it’s the same situation. And really, the solution is not to reduce damage to begin with but to decrease the over reliance on Haste or Frenzy by making it more costly, both in terms of penalties for useage and minor decreases to the speed.

The bottom line is that there’s better ways to go about certain changes. Ways that can help balance things across multiple classes. And this is just one example of a "solution to a problem that had no elegance.

Something like stealth? Well, you fix it by having damage break it unless heavily traited for (to stop, say, a tick of bleeding doing it). At the end of the day, though, solutions should be smart on the part of developers. Not reactionary.

People are being disingenuous with the whole “you don’t see thieve in Tpvp”…. because you did use to see them.. until…..

…..everyone ran bunker builds.

Nerfing thief’s in PvP will nerf us in PvE as well, which the PW nerf hit us hard in pve, but still.
Also, in PvP, we have no defense, no sustained damage, and if our 5 misses, then your out 6 over half your ini, and even more defenseless. We have to rely on that 1 skill to hit, and to hit hard. If it doesn’t hit hard enough, they recover, and out last us. So why don’t you try playing a thief, before QQ’ing.
On a side note, in the thief description it tells you that we are a master at 1v1, and if they nerf BS as well, we won’t be able to 1v1 anything unless were condition, and if I wanted to play condition, I would play a ranger or necro. So please bugg off when it comes to nerfing thiefs. TY!

@Chrisp – they said that I (an elementalist) give up physical toughness for the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack. Don’t believe what ya read m8. Believe the thief took this from us. Jez sayin.

CptCosmic.3156:

so here again another video showing off the imbalance of the thief in spvp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-udk3CEtc7E

hitting low thoughness targets 10-13k
high toughness targets 7-8k.
even the tanky targets die in a blink of an eye… someone might “argument” about cooldowns and so on but please save your time and dont make yourself look stupid. in a serious tournament removing someone from a fight instantly is a big advantage and pretty much imbalanced.

how unfair is this that it takes my ele much more effort and time to be able to try to do the same damage as this thief in this video. On most of his kills, he does about 15k-20k to someone in like 1-2 secs. It takes my eles 5 sec just to cast a spell that does 6k damage. If I want to do 15k damage to someone, it would probably take at least 10 secs with the chance of my combos getting avoide or missed.

To all of those who said the thief sacrifice their surviablitity for this “1-shot” spec, that’s not true. I have personally dueled a thief with this spec at least 10 times and I can tell you that his surviability is still a lot better than a lot of classes even with glass canon spec. One time I got the thief down next to nothing but he steatlhed and came back almost full life and instant gibbed me from 15k heatlh to nothing in 1 sec….it’s just kitten

I don’t think I ever get one shotted by a rogue class in any game besides this one. No rogue ever one shot me in wow. A rogue in wow can try to do massive damage to me in beginning but I can recover quickly and once he pops out, I can still outsmart him and kill him. Or you can try to pop the rogue out by spamming aoe. In this game, you can’t really spam any spells since everything has a cooldown so it makes it even more impossible to pop out the thief meaning he will always get the initiative on you.

To all of those who said the thief sacrifice their surviablitity for this “1-shot” spec, that’s not true. I have personally dueled a thief with this spec at least 10 times and I can tell you that his surviability is still a lot better than a lot of classes even with glass canon spec. One time I got the thief down next to nothing but he steatlhed and came back almost full life and instant gibbed me from 15k heatlh to nothing in 1 sec….it’s just kitten

If its THE glass cannon backstab build then he has 2 dodges and stealth. One isnt any different then other classes (dodge). and the second is bugged, extending the duration of his/her stealth effect (not actually but effectively) by 2 seconds or more, meaning you only get about 1 second or so to really see and attack him (this is a problem with rendering and i hope it gets fixed).

but lets say he has 10k hp (probably more like `14k but im giving you benefit of the doubt). that spec typically does not have points in shadow arts, it maxes out poison and critical strikes and probably 10 in trickery for the buf you can get thru steal there.

so he has no +healing, no traits that aide with healing, in fact he has at most 2 healing effects, his heal utility, and shadow refuge.

our strongest heal has a cast time and puts us in stealth (obvious animation, you didnt try to interrupt it?). it heals for about 5-6k hp and has a HoT that i dont think will put it past 8k total.

i know on my thief when i use my deathblossom build (14k hp) it heals about half of my health (tho i tend to use a diff heal in that spec usually)

so if he has maybe 10k hp and blows 2 cooldowns he can go from near death to full. im pretty sure any thief will have more hten 10k hp tho, my low hp build only dropped to 14k like i said. my current build thats 10 deadly/30crit/30shadow with knights amulet and berzerkers jewel is at 19k hp.
then shadow refuge, without +healing its about 250 a tick i believe? and only heals so long as he stays inside that big circle (that you can see btw)

and damage doesnt pop a thief out of stealth, stealth is supposed to last 3 seconds even if you get hit or not, only coming out early if the thief takes offensive actions (uses a skill or attacks)

basically if he has 10k hp, his heal will heal for percieved more since he has such low hp.

coupled with stealth bugged the way it is, he has effectively more survival then he should.

Chrisp.6924:

Nerfing thief’s in PvP will nerf us in PvE as well, which the PW nerf hit us hard in pve, but still.
Also, in PvP, we have no defense, no sustained damage, and if our 5 misses, then your out 6 over half your ini, and even more defenseless. We have to rely on that 1 skill to hit, and to hit hard. If it doesn’t hit hard enough, they recover, and out last us. So why don’t you try playing a thief, before QQ’ing.
On a side note, in the thief description it tells you that we are a master at 1v1, and if they nerf BS as well, we won’t be able to 1v1 anything unless were condition, and if I wanted to play condition, I would play a ranger or necro. So please bugg off when it comes to nerfing thiefs. TY!

This is what I am talking about. The issue isn’t BS. Those of us that play thief know this. The issue is the multipliers stacked onto BS, as someone else has already pointed out. We should be working hard to show this in these forums (along with other non-cheese, viable builds).

Also, as I pvp only with my thief, I do feel for you guys. You are right. Nerfs in pvp directly hit thieves in pve. That said, thief is currently unbuffable for pve as the reverse holds true. Any buffs in pve are likely to affect pvp. Unfortunately, pve for thieves will likely get worse before it gets better.

But instead of being advocates for the thief, we end up looking disingenuous. Your post for example mentions how terrible thieves are in defense. This is flat wrong. Thieves have excellent defense. Stealth is arguably the best defensive skill in a game. Losing a fight generally means getting away intact which cannot be said for any other class in the game. The only situation in which thieves have terrible defense is if they stand there roshambo’ing another class.

Moreover, thieves sustain is actually quite formidable… especially granting how often we get to use weapon skills (spoiler alert: more than other classes). And yes, if your skills miss, you are probably pretty hosed (ignoring for a second that we can run away via stealth/bow teleport). But, doesn’t that hold true for any other class?

Good defense coupled with amazing offense dashed with a touch of best mobility in the game makes thieves rough to deal with.

sorry dodge>all for defensive skills

stealth drops target, prevents re-aquisition of target, it doesn not lessen damage, it doesnt avoid damage. its power comes with how often it can be used, but in terms of power, its far from being best…even moreso when its rendering issues are fixed.

i also constantly see this “and the thief just runs away” really? the way this game works if he ran away YOU WON, you got hte point, prevented it from being taken, you freaking won. maybe i play thief differently, most of the time i dont get away from a fight.

our mobility is supposed to be best, tho we pretty much need a high ini regen build with a specific signet and specialize that spec further into more dodges and take a specific signet for dodging to lay any claim to having best mobility.

i rank it like this

defense=bugged due to stealth issues, tho if we considered it fixed id say a thief not specced defensively is slightly better off then another low hp/armor class not specced defensively, right now its bloated tho. if specced defensively we can be fairly good tho, considering how good dodging is in this game.

offense=in some ways too much, tho if you dont build a go for broke glass cannon build id say we have good damage, you do need to spec and gear for it tho, i went a sustain build, did very poor damage.

mobility=again, if we take specific traits and at least 2 signets, we have great mobility, tho we really need to take those specifics to lay claim to best mobility.

heres the thing tho, no thief will have all that, at most they might get 2 of it.