Guild Wars 2

rickshaw.5279:

Vorpal.4683:

This is why MMO’s should just stop having stealth classes. They are always absurdly overpowered for pvp (invisibility + huge spike damage) while generally not having much in the way of pve utility.

Yes, that 3-4 second window of being invisible yet still taking damage is SOOOOO overpowered. I can see how so many people have trouble with dodging or AoE’ing when they see a thief stealth.

Oh wait…

I forgot the good players that I’m pitted against do exactly that.

Because thives only have 1 stealth skill… yeah right.

I have a Lv2 thief I made just for use in sPvP. I had no idea how to play this class when I first joined the sPvP, but there are raining kills.

Thief is the easiest class to play and it wont change, get over it.

(I only made it to try it, my main char is Guardian which I will use forever and ever)

Thieves are fine. The only reason they seem OP is because of Assassin’s Signet and Haste. Nerf those 2 abilities and the “OMG I got hit for a billion damage” qq will go away.

If they nerf thieves enough that the scrubs who are getting destroyed will be able to kill them, then thieves will be absolutely worthless in PvP against good players.

Thieves have one thing going for them. Take away the burst damage and they will have no use in any aspect of PvP over any other profession. A glass cannon thief gets destroyed in group fights, can’t defend points against multiple attackers, has few support options, and can’t even beat equally skilled bunker players 1 on 1. They’ll be crappy warriors that can stealth every 5 seconds with less HP, less armor, and no way of winning drawn out fights.

Being able to win a 1v1 every 45 seconds against some scrub running around the map by himself is hardly OP.

rickshaw.5279:

I simply don’t have enough time in the day to list every ability I’d love to see nerfed on every class outside of Thief.

Nerf Warrior Adrenaline gain
Nerf Warrior Bunker Builds
Nerf Mesmer Bunker Builds
Nerf Guardian Bunker Builds
Nerf Engineer Bunker Builds
Nerf Rangers some more because they’re not completely useless yet
Nerf Necro’s so they can’t have so many pets in PvP
Nerf Necro conditions
Nerf Mesmer heals
Nerf Guardian heals
Nerf Elemental Bunker Builds
Buff Thief healing

Once that’s done… feel free to nerf Backstab, Mug and Heartseeker.

Sincerely,

- Thieves

You put a good argument against thief balancing. I think you actually represent the mentality of the majority of people who play that class.

/sarcasm off

To sum it up:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes
Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes
Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes
Can thieves Restealth?yes
Can they backstab when they restealth?yes
Can they teleport across the map faster than any class without anyone being able to catch up to them?yes
Can any other class do any of the above? Of course not.

Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.

Can they stomp from stealth? yes. Why isn’t stomping considered an action that breaks stealth? Whats the point of stability of stealth is a free stability ability for a thief?

What has this lead to? Class imbalance with increasing numbers of people playing thieves and neglecting other classes.

Ok..this is this..but are there any bugs thieves exploit? Oh yes..they can leave stealth and attack and still stay hidden to players. That essentially makes them attack from stealth. Please fix this. Its just..silly.. Please don’t make the class balance in this game a joke for other mmo players.

For one of the posters above..please don’t joke around..thieves are not only OP in spvp but in wvw. Even more so in wvw due to the fact they can approach alot of people engaged in something else and then just stealth away after 2 shotting.

The issue is not a L2P. It is a gross imbalance and you can see that imbalance when you have two thieves on the same person. How many here think the majority of players will survive that.

Like any Mmo, stealth classes start out OP -in this case, exceptionally so- and they get balanced. The majority of people who play them are those who play fotm class. Once you balance them, they will simply move on to the next imbalanced class. Only those who are good players will play the class since now it is balanced and they have to work equally as hard as other classes to achieve the same goal.

Reminds me when I mentioned the thief balancing to my friend, he said: ‘I don’t care..i’ll just switch to my mesmer’. Fotm..fotm..

Valhallen.1693:

Thieves are fine. The only reason they seem OP is because of Assassin’s Signet and Haste. Nerf those 2 abilities and the “OMG I got hit for a billion damage” qq will go away.

If they nerf thieves enough that the scrubs who are getting destroyed will be able to kill them, then thieves will be absolutely worthless in PvP against good players.

Thieves have one thing going for them. Take away the burst damage and they will have no use in any aspect of PvP over any other profession. A glass cannon thief gets destroyed in group fights, can’t defend points against multiple attackers, has few support options, and can’t even beat equally skilled bunker players 1 on 1. They’ll be crappy warriors that can stealth every 5 seconds with less HP, less armor, and no way of winning drawn out fights.

Being able to win a 1v1 every 45 seconds against some scrub running around the map by himself is hardly OP.

As always, people who fall victim to this OP class are called ‘scrubs’ and if this class is balanced it is doomed. I can bring you so many threads of simple nonsense from previous MMos where stealth classes claim the same thing and end up being balanced and learning to adapt to pvp like normal classes or they find learning how to actually press more than 3 buttons -or a macro on a keyboard- is too much for them and they move on to another class.

They want to hit for 12K with one button while abusing stealth. No prob, give them a 6K max health pool.

I like it. Good idea sami.

XII.9401:

To sum it up:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes

No. They can 4 button (turn on the computer, launch the game, login, queue, etc., Apply venom, hit 5, hit F1, hit assassin’s signet, get behind the target hit 1 ) down people, but they still need to be finished. A lot of classes can 4 button down people. Only the thief can do it from stealth…scary I know.

Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes

What does this even mean? Stealth lasts 2 seconds most of the time, 3 seconds if traited. If you can close gaps without being seen in 3 seconds most classes can do it to with proper positioning. In other words L2P.

Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes

No. Immobilize and stuns kill thieves like everyone else even when they stealth since they still don’t move. If they use infiltrator’s arrow it’s the same as another class using a blink or teleport.

Can thieves Restealth?yes

This is the most annoying part of the whining that goes on from people who don’t understand thief game mechanics. You can only restealth if you don’t break stealth with an attack. Otherwise you have to wait three seconds because you get the revealed debuff. This is by design. Everytime you see a thief seem to immediately restealth it is because they didn’t attack while stealthed.

Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.

Any action breaking stealth is just silly and would make the point of actually being in stealth fairly pointless.

The issue is not a L2P. It is a gross imbalance and you can see that imbalance when you have two thieves on the same person. How many here think the majority of players will survive that.

It is L2P. You’re complaining about game mechanics you don’t fully understand.

Yeah, well they decided to make stealth bursty in nature. It’s why thief attacks are best coming out of stealth. It’s how we stack bleeds with pistol, backstabbing, daze with the sword. The short cooldown is central to thief getting any kind of dps on par with other classes. Stealth isn’t about positioning, it’s about using it to get our best attacks out. Anet’s design choice for rogue class instead of making stealth last longer for position and ambush. Instead we get shadowstep abilities for that.

Stealth exploiting is becoming ridiculous. Stealth attack, stealth again, insta cross the map with bow. If you dont want to see it, just keep lying yourselves.

This is not only an sPvP problem, its at large in WvW too. A thief can go trotting along solo knowing finewell he can stealth > backstab > steal > heartseeker to kill anyone he chooses. No kiting either, Heartseeker jumps you to them for guaranteed hits.
He can even do this to kill 1 of a group and get away with his almost perma stealth.

Ridiculous class, more broken than any stealther on any game in history, yes even worse than daoc 1.0

I just decided to PvP with my level 25 thief yesterday. I’ve decided that you would have to be crazy to pvp with anything other than a thief. I am absolutely HORRIBLE at thief but I am making two to three times as much glory as I did on any other profession I have tried including my main mesmer.

The nerf bat is definitely coming and I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.

I definitely agree with Rickshaw a few posts above. All of those issues with other classes that he listed are things that need to be dealt with to make pvp more enjoyable for everyone.

uwo.8197:

The skill floor is below sea level.

This.

The skill “ceiling” is really low for the absurd amount of effectiveness. When is it balanced to have builds able to bring down bunker specs in less than 2 seconds from the damage inflicted by 3 connecting hits?

XII.9401:

rickshaw.5279:

I simply don’t have enough time in the day to list every ability I’d love to see nerfed on every class outside of Thief.

Nerf Warrior Adrenaline gain
Nerf Warrior Bunker Builds
Nerf Mesmer Bunker Builds
Nerf Guardian Bunker Builds
Nerf Engineer Bunker Builds
Nerf Rangers some more because they’re not completely useless yet
Nerf Necro’s so they can’t have so many pets in PvP
Nerf Necro conditions
Nerf Mesmer heals
Nerf Guardian heals
Nerf Elemental Bunker Builds
Buff Thief healing

Once that’s done… feel free to nerf Backstab, Mug and Heartseeker.

Sincerely,

- Thieves

You put a good argument against thief balancing. I think you actually represent the mentality of the majority of people who play that class.

/sarcasm off

To sum it up:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes
Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes
Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes
Can thieves Restealth?yes
Can they backstab when they restealth?yes
Can they teleport across the map faster than any class without anyone being able to catch up to them?yes
Can any other class do any of the above? Of course not.

Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.

Can they stomp from stealth? yes. Why isn’t stomping considered an action that breaks stealth? Whats the point of stability of stealth is a free stability ability for a thief?

What has this lead to? Class imbalance with increasing numbers of people playing thieves and neglecting other classes.

rickshaw I couldn’t agree with you more! You’ve pretty much nailed it!

Thieves are broken right now. Why? Because they can kill most players in a reasonable gear before they have a chance to respond. If only one player gets to participate, then it is PvE with captive audience. Thanks no thanks.

Avid Thief player here. Most of this thread is people just complaining about why they got killed in a few hits.

I’ll be the first person to tell you that I’ve maybe hit 10k in structured 1-2 times and that would be full glass cannon spec with around 14k hp on a debuffed foe. Most players get hit for around 4-6k. Another point to make of note is that its extremely difficult to actually LAND a backstab like that. What I dont understand is why people complain incessantly about it. What about some of these other classes that can completely annihilate people just as easily?

HB Warrior? Say what 11k dmg in less than a second, check! How is that any different than a backstab?

How about an engineer that will knock you down so many times you might as well just leave the battle because you spend most of it on the ground. There are no diminishing returns right now… And you take dmg while downed.

Mesmer… are you kidding me? Most OP class in sPvP right now, utterly annoying and has great dps to boot. You get two of these who are good on a team and its game over.

Necro. Essentially have to kill twice, great dmg through dots. Can spec for multiple pets out aka hells army. Fears…

Really I think people perceive thieves to be a lot stronger than what they are. We are a strong class, but the above classes I mentioned are just as strong but in different ways. Learn to counter the class, maybe play a thief for yourself just to know what to do. It will only make you a better player.

LOL its so funny to see people trying to defend the thief class. If you understand the human psychology then you would know it is natural for them to defend something to keep their advantage.

No one would be complaining if this class was balanced in the first place. Why don’t people complain so much about the other classes? As far I can see they are not bad enough to make it to the hot topics on this section! It doesn’t matter what reasons you guys give. As a fact, the percentage of thieves in game has been increasing. You guys keep on giving references on how some of the other glass cannons are just the same. lmao that’s a joke, because they are pretty much dead if they fail, but as a theif? you just simply walk away without a scratch.

I have played all of the classes, and let me tell you the thief class is op. If you want kills you can just spam certain skills. If we are talking about 1v1 then the learning curve for theif is close to flat in comparison to some of the other classes.

The op combination that thief has: invisible + movement gank/escape abilities + high damage + hard to finish off.

Some people think thieves are squishy, but do you know there are other classes with same / less defence without the invisible and/or movement?

If Anet wants GW2 to be a fast food then just leave thieves the way they are. New players who did not play thief and get killed all the time will :

1 reroll a thief
2 go play a different game not so unbalanced.

If you play on the most populated server then you would know so far the number of players are decreasing. Class unbalance may not be the only reason but it is one of the main reasons why people quit. People quit when they dont like something about a game. For example, the class unbalance and the lack of pvp in d3. Very few people are rejoining that game because it is easier to loose player than to attract.

PS: I only use thief in spvp and wvw because they are op. The only time I play other classes are when I actually want to enjoy the other fun parts of this game.

Bottom line, people are NOT stupid, there is a reason why the majority of them play a certain class in pvps.

Original post:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes
Thief Poster above replies:
No. They can 4 button (turn on the computer, launch the game, login, queue, etc., Apply venom, hit 5, hit F1, hit assassin’s signet, get behind the target hit 1 ) down people, but they still need to be finished. A lot of classes can 4 button down people. Only the thief can do it from stealth…scary I know.

My reply:
A weak attempt at sarcasm not to mention inability to defend or reply against what I said. Exactly the mentality of a person happy with 2-3 shotting ppl with 3-4 button spam (or 1 if you have a marco set up).

Original post:
Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes
Reply:
What does this even mean? Stealth lasts 2 seconds most of the time, 3 seconds if traited. If you can close gaps without being seen in 3 seconds most classes can do it to with proper positioning. In other words L2P.

My reply:
Well..you can attack people you see coming at you, cc, knock back and see their attack animation and doge it..can you do that with a thief? No. I also lack your addition of L2P..that is always a great indicator that someone is playing a class that is OP and thinks everyone else on the server needs to L2P. Roll another class and see how you fare against a good thief.

original post
Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes
Above OP thief reply:
No. Immobilize and stuns kill thieves like everyone else even when they stealth since they still don’t move. If they use infiltrator’s arrow it’s the same as another class using a blink or teleport.

My reply (Why can’t I reply to a post, already!):
Mhmm..and how many immoblizes does one have in his/her build? are you suggesting we build our traits and class around immoblizes just to counteract one class?
Lets say this game was thief wars 2 and you had to build your class to do that..how many immoblizes you got to keep the thief perma snared?
No thanks..all the other classes should not pick their build just to counteract one OP class. That is imbalance.

Original post:
Can thieves Restealth?yes
Thief reply:
This is the most annoying part of the whining that goes on from people who don’t understand thief game mechanics. You can only restealth if you don’t break stealth with an attack. Otherwise you have to wait three seconds because you get the revealed debuff. This is by design. Everytime you see a thief seem to immediately restealth it is because they didn’t attack while stealthed.

Every other class’ experience:
Thieves attack me from stealth, dps and restealth again. Its not hard to do since every thief does it. With a thief traited in it, you can barely sneak in a few seconds of fighting before they restealth over and over again. And so what..fight and if it looks bad you run out, stealth and come back to finish an opponent who already burned his cooldowns to try and kill you the 1st time while you have the advantage of having your approach unhindered? Please..

Original post
Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.
Thief wanting to remain OP replies:
Any action breaking stealth is just silly and would make the point of actually being in stealth fairly pointless.

Common sense:
No it is not. The fact that you believe you should stay stealthed while performing all manners of action and abilities is just ridiculous. Stealth should grant you the advantage of approaching unseen or building up to a certain action without being attacked. That is it and that is already a huge advantage. Other classes would kill to have an easily used ability that buys you time to build up for your next heal ability or big cool down. You also want to do that AND remain unseen? Why should you be the only class that stomps and rezzes without being seen? Once you initiate those actions you should be shown and be exposed to the penalty of performing those action just like every other class in the game.

Original post:
The issue is not a L2P. It is a gross imbalance and you can see that imbalance when you have two thieves on the same person. How many here think the majority of players will survive that.
People who play an OP class’ mentality:
It is L2P. You’re complaining about game mechanics you don’t fully understand.

Conclusion:
Again, just to prove what I said, the majority of the people who play an OP class have to say is: L2P. No good replies at all. Its really hard to argue against the truth.

No worries. Judging from your post you will just move on to another OP class. Do you have a mesmer alt? That might actually require some more button pressing, though =(.

vipersfang.7452:

LOL its so funny to see people trying to defend the thief class. If you understand the human psychology then you would know it is natural for them to defend something to keep their advantage.

No one would be complaining if this class was balanced in the first place. Why don’t people complain so much about the other classes? As far I can see they are not bad enough to make it to the hot topics on this section! It doesn’t matter what reasons you guys give. As a fact, the percentage of thieves in game has been increasing. You guys keep on giving references on how some of the other glass cannons are just the same. lmao that’s a joke, because they are pretty much dead if they fail, but as a theif? you just simply walk away without a scratch.

I have played all of the classes, and let me tell you the thief class is op. If you want kills you can just spam certain skills. If we are talking about 1v1 then the learning curve for theif is close to flat in comparison to some of the other classes.

The op combination that thief has: invisible + movement gank/escape abilities + high damage + hard to finish off.

Some people think thieves are squishy, but do you know there are other classes with same / less defence without the invisible and/or movement?

If Anet wants GW2 to be a fast food then just leave thieves the way they are. New players who did not play thief and get killed all the time will :

1 reroll a thief
2 go play a different game not so unbalanced.

If you play on the most populated server then you would know so far the number of players are decreasing. Class unbalance may not be the only reason but it is one of the main reasons why people quit. People quit when they dont like something about a game. For example, the class unbalance and the lack of pvp in d3. Very few people are rejoining that game because it is easier to loose player than to attract.

PS: I only use thief in spvp and wvw because they are op. The only time I play other classes are when I actually want to enjoy the other fun parts of this game.

Bottom line, people are NOT stupid, there is a reason why the majority of them play a certain class in pvps.

Pretty nice summary. Common sense.

This is always a good thread to read if your having a down day and need a good laugh. As a Thief, I can’t wait until they nerf thieves to the expectations of the community and we can move onto another class until we eventually just run into WvW wielding rubber chickens that do no damage.

OK, can some one please un-stick this thread now? thieves have been balanced and no longer can burst ppl down. for me as a thief this is a good thing, imo backstab was abusive. I approve of the changes and cant wait to see whats the next thing ppl will whine about, prolly Death Blossom LoL you can remove it if you like i don’t care just give me anything with an evade on it and i’m happy.

Can we now have a sticky on Mesmers and Warriors pls!?

Warriors can dish out ridiculous amounts of dmg in few seconds (unlike thieves) and have lot more HP and Toughness.

Mesmers besides the high burst also have the ability to put someone out of combat for 10 long seconds (like thieves use to do for 1 sec but not anymore) and good luck on finding the right one to hit on.

is it just me, or are 70% of sPvP classes thieves?

Ive been doing a little more pvp recently and have found that A LOT of players are rolling thief for this… like literally my whole team was Thief, Thief, Thief, Mes, Thief vs Thief, Thief, Ranger, Thief, Guard again, and again, and again, day, after day, after day.

I’m not complaining or anything, people can take whichever class they want, but there must be a reason so many people are rolling thief.

djmckie.4876:

there must be a reason so many people are rolling thief.

Because they’re the faceroll class, essentially.

It’s easy to do ok on a thief even if you are an awful player. That is why you see so many thieves in sPVP.

Thieves have a low skill floor, which means they are easy to do well with against run of the mill players. Also, the stealthy/sneaky archetypes are always popular.

Volrath.1473:

OK, can some one please un-stick this thread now? thieves have been balanced and no longer can burst ppl down. for me as a thief this is a good thing, imo backstab was abusive. I approve of the changes and cant wait to see whats the next thing ppl will whine about, prolly Death Blossom LoL you can remove it if you like i don’t care just give me anything with an evade on it and i’m happy.

Can we now have a sticky on Mesmers and Warriors pls!?

Warriors can dish out ridiculous amounts of dmg in few seconds (unlike thieves) and have lot more HP and Toughness.

Mesmers besides the high burst also have the ability to put someone out of combat for 10 long seconds (like thieves use to do for 1 sec but not anymore) and good luck on finding the right one to hit on.

Thieves still need some balancing despite what a thief player says. This thread is here to get feedback and see if the recent balance affected anything -doubt it did since there are other unbalanced abilities-.
Yes, the rest of the holy trinity -thief, guardian and mesmer- need some balancing but the process takes time.
Sadly, its your turn to learn how the receiving end feels. No worries, there is always the macro to spam all your abilities.

care to elaborate? since you show such knowledge about the thieves profession and its OP abilities, which are still op, how OP are they?

Thieves no longer have burst unlike other professions, and its survivability is based on mobility and fleeing. what else is there to nerf? stealth? so that there is no suvivability left and make backstab even harder to land? is that what you want?

Just whine a bit more and you might just get that but then every thief and its dog will be playing the heavy armor class that we do not dare to speak of (since all devs play it).

also thieves playing with macros are noobs since thieves are all about timing and opportunity, each skill/ability has its own time to be used, if macroed, at most of the times they will be wasting skills (initiative) / abilities that would be better used in a different situation.

Honestly there are several broken traits/bugs that effect thief at the moment, but people can only focus on the 1-2 builds they actually have…

Pistol/Pistol thief is completely broken and useless. (Little Damage, a lot of classes can remove whatever goes on them, Blind and do no damage for 6 Initiative… LOL….)

Dagger/Pistol Thief does no damage and is broken and useless.

Pistol/Dagger Thief is completely trollsy and does little damage, only useful in preventing people from capping anything in WvWvW.

Sword/Dagger is useless, its only situational against 1 class, Guardian.

Several Traits are bugged to not apply “boon duration”, a lot of traits are under-powered and don’t make any sense at all, Thieves have some of the lowest “DPS” (not burst damage.) in the game now because they have the lowest pool of time to do damage, it just happens all at once unlike other classes.

Thieves have “ok” traits, but honestly, with the changes to stealth every patch changing duration to be lower and revealed buff to be longer, the class is slowly getting pushed off the edge, just because we were overpowered with a certain build.

vipersfang.7452:

LOL its so funny to see people trying to defend the thief class. If you understand the human psychology then you would know it is natural for them to defend something to keep their advantage.

No one would be complaining if this class was balanced in the first place. Why don’t people complain so much about the other classes? As far I can see they are not bad enough to make it to the hot topics on this section! It doesn’t matter what reasons you guys give. As a fact, the percentage of thieves in game has been increasing. You guys keep on giving references on how some of the other glass cannons are just the same. lmao that’s a joke, because they are pretty much dead if they fail, but as a theif? you just simply walk away without a scratch.

I have played all of the classes, and let me tell you the thief class is op. If you want kills you can just spam certain skills. If we are talking about 1v1 then the learning curve for theif is close to flat in comparison to some of the other classes.

The op combination that thief has: invisible + movement gank/escape abilities + high damage + hard to finish off.

Some people think thieves are squishy, but do you know there are other classes with same / less defence without the invisible and/or movement?

If Anet wants GW2 to be a fast food then just leave thieves the way they are. New players who did not play thief and get killed all the time will :

1 reroll a thief
2 go play a different game not so unbalanced.

If you play on the most populated server then you would know so far the number of players are decreasing. Class unbalance may not be the only reason but it is one of the main reasons why people quit. People quit when they dont like something about a game. For example, the class unbalance and the lack of pvp in d3. Very few people are rejoining that game because it is easier to loose player than to attract.

PS: I only use thief in spvp and wvw because they are op. The only time I play other classes are when I actually want to enjoy the other fun parts of this game.

Bottom line, people are NOT stupid, there is a reason why the majority of them play a certain class in pvps.

If you understood human psychology you would know there’s a lot more to it than that. People also tend to pick out things that support their side of an argument. they are also more likely to remember getting beat than winning and Are prone to exaggerate and distort the more they think about it.

Thieves are, no doubt, strong right now but they aren’t OP. OP gets thrown around pretty loose now, when it used to imply a lot more then tough to beat.
There are been tons of threads posted of experienced thieves giving away their weaknesses, and they have Been honest. T
Thieves are beatable, and have little to offer to the team as a whole other than damage. Those 10k backstabs are usually due to debuffs and boons stacked in favor of the thief.

Well just hit PvP rank 30/Avenger playing just my Thief over the last few weeks. Gosh I don’t know… something 700+ sPvP matches with the class. I’ll weigh in with an honest observation…

Firstly I’d like to state that the quality of players in sPvP at least on my server has increased slightly, at least when it comes to playing on servers 001-100.

With that said… I rocked the “glass cannon” instagib build. This I felt at the time was rather OP as it wasn’t exactly hard to pull off and the players I was up against were not exactly aware of how to manage their classes properly. I used this build for maybe a week until I noticed the other players were getting keener to countering it. It was no longer fun killing another player instantly only to be instantly killed yourself. In sPvP I want to farm points and I don’t believe the “glass cannon” build is where it’s at.

From ranks 15 to 30 I’ve used the same build. This is a 21k hp, 1.2k tough, multiple stealth options, quick stealth cooldowns, healing & condition removal while in stealth, 55% crit chance, 47% crit dmg, bloodlust sigils putting me around 1900 power before swapping out dagger, and swiftness up nearly 100% of my time playing. The dps for all its survivability is pretty decent. I don’t kill players instantly… but I don’t die often. Out of 10 matches my character dies maybe 3 or 4 times total. I am constantly invisible, regaining health and moving around the map in an instant via HS, 25% movement, and swiftness.

Honestly if I were to think the Thief as being OP it would be the build I described being far more OP than the “glass cannon” but I don’t hear complaining as often because I don’t “instantly” kill another player. The fact that one can kill somebody within a few seconds is what pisses people off. But what people overlook is the fact that, the build stops there. That’s all it does… they die, then you die. It has nearly no value other than the fact it makes people mad.

I don’t understand why people are bringing up the argument that the thief is just there to do damage… that is so far from the truth. Stealth is not JUST for the thief, it’s a tool for the WHOLE team. The thief just has to have the knowledge of how to handle it properly to res, finish, heal and conceal. The thief is a useful tool when played properly and of course it will look overpowered when wielded by a good player, all the classes do! Want some tips? Knockbacks… Knockbacks… Knockbacks… we hate them!

Ok, I’ll say it – the tears contained herein are just kittening delicious. Reading post after post of misinformation, hyperbole, denial, and outright lies honestly puts a smile on my face. I’ve never seen a group so bi-polar; so unbelievably lazy they couldn’t be bothered to try to learn to play (example – roll the class your having trouble with and learn it. Example 2, find a buddy who plays said class and duel them in an empty pvp server. That’s all you get for free), but who will fiercely come to the boards to spew their shortcoming anywhere and everywhere to the point where a dedicated thread has to be started.

My spec is -particularly- weak to backstab-instagib builds. I don’t have any blinds, stuns, Knockdowns or knockbacks. My only AoE cc is centered on me, which isn’t going to help stop the 5→f1→Signet→backstab train. I only have 1291 toughness. They still don’t bother me, because I play a thief. I know -exactly- what to do when I see a D/D thief rushing toward me, and 75% of the time, they’re dead before they know it, and not even stealth + inf arrow retreat will save them. I don’t win em all – mistakes are made, flat out better players will beat me sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. I understand their risk vs reward situation. The moment that steal→CnD misses, they’ve lost. The smart ones will immediately run – congratulations, you won the fight with a dodge roll or AoE blind. Your dodge roll shut down a player for 45 seconds. The dumb ones will press and be on the floor in 8 seconds. The cost of missing their 3 second kill is being killed in 3 seconds – that’s how risk vs reward works.

It’s also a kitten poor spec to bring to a group fight. I’ve had Backstab-instagib thieves drop me in a group fight because I wasn’t on the lookout for them. 90% of the time they run away and I get ressed, or they try to stomp and get floored by my teammates in 2 seconds – they have no toughness, no stability, and all their utilities were blown getting a down; they’re literally a free kill. Even if they escape, they’re useless for 45s to take you out of the fight for 6 seconds. Who won that tilt?

Seriously, from the bottom of my heart – learn to play. Your lack of skill is killing you, and you’re not getting any better coming to the boards to cry your wittle eyes out – it’s just making you look bad, and taking away from time you could spend improving your game.

Playing through the different classes trying to build counter specs to glass stealth thiefs. generally the only way I am able to counter them is with either block or blind.

• This is because of their 1 hit bursts from stealth.

I am only able to attempt to counter them on a couple classes. (outside of being a bunker). The lack of a counter to their playstyle hits certain classes harder than others.

• Out of all the classes I play Ranger has the hardest time countering stealth thieves. Because of a lack of blind that can be used and no access to aegis. The invulnerabilities of ranger get waited out in stealth then you have just burned a 90 sec cd for nothing.
• I have the easiest time dealing with thiefs on a guardian bunker or engineer.

Solution: Why not give more classes access to a stealth removal?

• One thing that strikes me as a clear counter buff is fire combo fields.
• This is amazing in that it gives the anyone with a fire combo field a way to alleviate the pressure by removing stealth in a area.
• At the same time it increases the skill of the thief by avoiding the skill. bad thieves are caught without stealth and killed, good thieves are forced to escape the area and adjust their attack
• It makes no sense for a thief to be stealthed in a fire (no shadows or any places to hide)
• This would give eles with their fire fields, rangers with their torch and flame trap, eng flamethrower wall, and guardian flame field all access to stealth removal.
• Yes this would nerf stealth thiefs
• It is not however a direct nerf to thiefs, its only gives some classes a more reliable counter to a specific buff

http://youtu.be/TQFw4tzyajo

full health – thief blinks in, and 3 shots be before reappearing. Ya they aren’t broken at all!

Thief Venoms/Traps are broken/underpowered.
P/P Thief is broken/underpowered.
S/D is broken/underpowered.

Thieves also have alot of traits that need updated. (several don’t make sense.)
Thieves need a Bleed on Critical Trait added to their precision tree.

D/D / SB thief is fine, every other weapon selection is worthless.

Robomath.3085:

http://youtu.be/TQFw4tzyajo

full health – thief blinks in, and 3 shots be before reappearing. Ya they aren’t broken at all!

Yeah that happened to me last night too. Died before I could even see him. 12k backstab 6k steal.

Not sure how that constitutes good pvp. IMHO its total kitten. If Anet thinks it is going to be an esport or even fun casual pvp, with stuff like this, its fooling itself.

You were REALLY slow…
You should of been paying attention instead of recording that video.

You notice how his DPS went to nothing after he used everything on you?\

Did you not see how fast that thief DIED? he had NO defenses, a breeze killed him… a BREEZE…

The main problem is that stealth gives a player the opportunity to start and end combat at any time of his choosing. That in itself is a class defining ability. Balance that with equal damage and lower durability than all other classes (or less damage and more durability) and you have a somewhat balanced class.

When you combine stealth with extreme damage, you have the making of an OP class. When everyone has to adjust their spec in order to simply survive a single class (not even kill them), most people would rightfully come to the conclusion that there is a problem with balance.

Thieves have poor damage (infact they have on par DPS with necromancer if you want to have DPS comparisons over a minute fight.), they do however have high burst.

Burst can be prevented by doing a lot of things.

If they cannot kill you in that 5 second window, they are dead, they cannot do anything but run away or autoattack you and hope you die.

If you have runes/or submit resources to traits that prevent burst, thieves are MEAT.

Many players ignore this however, and complain instead, because its much easier to fix others then fix themselves.

tOss.9024:

vipersfang.7452:

LOL its so funny to see people trying to defend the thief class. If you understand the human psychology then you would know it is natural for them to defend something to keep their advantage.

No one would be complaining if this class was balanced in the first place. Why don’t people complain so much about the other classes? As far I can see they are not bad enough to make it to the hot topics on this section! It doesn’t matter what reasons you guys give. As a fact, the percentage of thieves in game has been increasing. You guys keep on giving references on how some of the other glass cannons are just the same. lmao that’s a joke, because they are pretty much dead if they fail, but as a theif? you just simply walk away without a scratch.

I have played all of the classes, and let me tell you the thief class is op. If you want kills you can just spam certain skills. If we are talking about 1v1 then the learning curve for theif is close to flat in comparison to some of the other classes.

The op combination that thief has: invisible + movement gank/escape abilities + high damage + hard to finish off.

Some people think thieves are squishy, but do you know there are other classes with same / less defence without the invisible and/or movement?

If Anet wants GW2 to be a fast food then just leave thieves the way they are. New players who did not play thief and get killed all the time will :

1 reroll a thief
2 go play a different game not so unbalanced.

If you play on the most populated server then you would know so far the number of players are decreasing. Class unbalance may not be the only reason but it is one of the main reasons why people quit. People quit when they dont like something about a game. For example, the class unbalance and the lack of pvp in d3. Very few people are rejoining that game because it is easier to loose player than to attract.

PS: I only use thief in spvp and wvw because they are op. The only time I play other classes are when I actually want to enjoy the other fun parts of this game.

Bottom line, people are NOT stupid, there is a reason why the majority of them play a certain class in pvps.

If you understood human psychology you would know there’s a lot more to it than that. People also tend to pick out things that support their side of an argument. they are also more likely to remember getting beat than winning and Are prone to exaggerate and distort the more they think about it.

Thieves are, no doubt, strong right now but they aren’t OP. OP gets thrown around pretty loose now, when it used to imply a lot more then tough to beat.
There are been tons of threads posted of experienced thieves giving away their weaknesses, and they have Been honest. T
Thieves are beatable, and have little to offer to the team as a whole other than damage. Those 10k backstabs are usually due to debuffs and boons stacked in favor of the thief.

I’m simply stating a fact. As I was saying, I have played every class in the game. And I see thieves as the top class in pvp. Why do thieves have a higher chance to beat others? This is the question. In a fair fight each party should have the same chance to win. Not all thief players are top players, yet they are winning the most fights.

“strong right now” could be interpreted as op in another person’s view. So in your view they may not be defined as op. However according to the majority of the other players they are op. That is why we see so many people writing posts about how op they are on the forums. How the majority define something makes it a norm. In this case, op as that is how almost everyone else call it.

Thieves team fight may not be the best, but certainly not the worst. Aoe, single target burst are still there. What changed is that they are hated so people target them first Why and who’s to blame for that? I have seen a lot of posts of thief players giving away their weaknesses. Yes, but here is a question. Why should other classes be extra cautious when facing a thief? For example, turning up their speakers just for this one class’s skills.

One combo burst kill is just too easy with this class. After that I can just pop a stealth and walk away. Guess who has the most stealth skills in game?

I don’t really care if Anet does what to this game. But so far their pvps are unbalance. I have many characters so I don’t need to pick a side. Just my objective view.

Daecollo.9578:

Thieves have poor damage (infact they have on par DPS with necromancer if you want to have DPS comparisons over a minute fight.), they do however have high burst.

Burst can be prevented by doing a lot of things.

If they cannot kill you in that 5 second window, they are dead, they cannot do anything but run away or autoattack you and hope you die.

If you have runes/or submit resources to traits that prevent burst, thieves are MEAT.

Many players ignore this however, and complain instead, because its much easier to fix others then fix themselves.

Seeing that you have made so many post defending thieves and sharing your infos I can only assume you play one?

“Thieves have poor damage” – with runes and traits thieves have high % add on damage atking from side/behind those are not minor add ons.

“Burst can be prevented by doing a lot of things” – that sure explains alot

“If they cannot kill you in that 5 second window, they are dead” – they kill ppl in 1-2 hits thats under 2sec. and no they are not dead if they cant kill under 5 they pop their stealth one after another.

Guess what, after popping the x number of stealth and walking away away from battle they can just wp back.

This is why I urge everyone to make a thief at least when that happens everyone is on the same level. Nobody has any advantage over anyone else end of story.

Volrath.1473:

care to elaborate? since you show such knowledge about the thieves profession and its OP abilities, which are still op, how OP are they?

Thieves no longer have burst unlike other professions, and its survivability is based on mobility and fleeing. what else is there to nerf? stealth? so that there is no suvivability left and make backstab even harder to land? is that what you want?

Just whine a bit more and you might just get that but then every thief and its dog will be playing the heavy armor class that we do not dare to speak of (since all devs play it).

also thieves playing with macros are noobs since thieves are all about timing and opportunity, each skill/ability has its own time to be used, if macroed, at most of the times they will be wasting skills (initiative) / abilities that would be better used in a different situation.

I’m not sure 2 shotting people in under 1 second with 3 buttons is skil.. Oh btw, the recent nerf with the halloween patch did nothing. Thieves are still killing people under 1 second.

And oh..for the person saying other classes should have stealth removal abilities..just..wow..your solution to an OP class is to work on ALL the other classes?

I have a simpler one..balance thieves so that they are on an equal playing ground. We are paying customers here to enjoy the game..we are not spending time and money for the enjoyment of a few individuals such as yourself.

Play an elementalist or an engineer and try and achieve the same results as a thief and try and escape from a fight like one when things go bad then come post here.

I’m playing an agility, trickery, shadow arty thief right now and I must say those are challenging. Damage is actually low and survivability mediocre, but I feel it’s more rightuous.

With my warrior i can nuke down ppl in 2 seconds and i hear very little compleint about it and on my Engi, rarely a thief can kill me by itself you must be doing something wrong.

As for eles, the glass canon ones are wet paper, not just for thieves, warriors, rangers and mesmers for example can easily destroy them.

I guess you need to spec and gear a little smarter, cuz your obviously doing it wrong.

Robomath.3085:

http://youtu.be/TQFw4tzyajo

full health – thief blinks in, and 3 shots be before reappearing. Ya they aren’t broken at all!

1.You are clicker
2.Slow as a slug
3.Crap build

This is your main problem

Next time use normal build with “Protect Me” ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Protect_Me%22 ) no this glass cannon crap and macro on 6-0 button.

Robomath.3085:

http://youtu.be/TQFw4tzyajo

full health – thief blinks in, and 3 shots be before reappearing. Ya they aren’t broken at all!

about 5 seconds in the video, you clearly have your attention drawn to the thief (trying to click on him). Note how he raises his arm in the air, and pulls down? There’s only one ability that causes that animation, and if you knew your opponent, you’d be moving your hand to your stunbreaker at that moment, not after you get stabbed three seconds later.

So why is this not sticky anymore?

Vorpal.4683:

Fade.5904:

This thread is ridiculous
You change the thief in the microcosm that is sPvP and kill it for WvW and PvE.
Ive seen it happen in every MMO i can remember.
Stealth class gets nerfed because of PvP and in PvE the same players who called for the nerf wont entertain a stealth class in their group because ‘they bring nothing to the team’

This is why MMO’s should just stop having stealth classes. They are always absurdly overpowered for pvp (invisibility + huge spike damage) while generally not having much in the way of pve utility.

At least GW2’s thieves aren’t lacking in the utility department.

It is not the stealth per se. It is the combination of stealth. huge burst damage which is easy to apply and a plethora of escape abilities which makes such classes so hard to balance.

As if a kind of assassin class couldn’t be made in a different way than having huge frontloaded damage. Sometimes I wonder why devs never seem to learn and history is repeating itself. Actually I’d soooo like to have a chat with a dev about such classes (in general not necessarily about GW2’s thief class) in general and why they always insist on designing them exactly THAT way.

On the other hand, maybe they need this class which caters to people who expect and need such a class one way or the other.

The way nightcapping is ruining wvwvw for me, thieves are ruining pvp…

Atleast i got exploring and jumping puzzles left!
WOHO!

This thread is ridiculous.

Every time, in any online game, when something is a little bit too powerful, then the people who play that class/champion/whatever it is in that game, will defend it to the end of time. Most people will swear all day that something isn’t too strong and shouldn’t be nerfed. It’s completely ludicrous.

You can see it in any online game. In LoL people will spend all day defending a champ that they play that’s OP. Hell even when Xin Zhao was released the people who played him insisted that he wasn’t OP. No, he was completely broken.

Thieves give way too much reward for how easy they are to play. And yes, I have a thief. They are too strong, get over it.

Stealth-breakers and/or the ability for allied teammates to see damage applied to a stealth ed character should be added already. That won’t fix all the problems with stealth but its a start………..

Entire stealth mechanic in this game is worse than any other game i’ve played that had a stealth mechanic. Why?

1.) other games have reliable/consistent forms of healing support. This is how you counter stealth + burst assassins in other games; with burst healing/shields from teammates. This is not viable counter play to gw2 stealth with how healing works

2.) you gave thief too many escape options. this makes stealth exponentially more powerful. Thief has alot of movement displacement/gap closers/distancers that are essentially impossible for melee’s to fight against. So not only is the target stealthed forcing you to pick a random direction to attack, but the target gets to use a plethora of distance-creating skills to further separate himself from you. Hell, even the dodge ability is enough to cover the gap between re-stealths.

3.) time between stealths is too short (3 seconds) Combine this with #2, and even a glass cannon thief can reliably escape.

4.) basically impossible to coordinate targeting against a stealth. Even if you get lucky and pick the correct direction to attack the stealthed character, your teammates don’t know; all they see is you attacking air. I see alot of people say “throw down AoE noob”. This is semi-valid. Throwing down AOE does help you apply some damage, but most AoE’s deal damage over time, so you will only apply a small amount of damage before the thief walks out of it. A small amount of semi-random damage is better than trying for complete random damage i guess, but its not a solution.

For stealth breaker, either add this functionality to already existing abilities, or add it as a function of receiving damage (for example if a stealthed character recieves more than 20% of their current HP in damage while stealthed, this breaks stealth – would be harder to de-stealth a healthy target, but easier to on a weakened target) Make damage applied to stealth characters visible to all.

It shouldn’t take more skill to defend yourself from a thief than it takes to play the class itself.

Currently, all other classes need to spend hundreds of hours playing a thief until you are good enough to recognize the sound and animation they make before a stealth attack, not to mention, anticipate correctly when and where the attack will take place. You also have to hope that there are no other sounds around you or you may miss the stealth/backstab sound. Next we can’t use our stun breaker on anyone else because we have to make it ready to use if a thief attacks. We then have to be ready at all times to execute the stun breaker in .1 seconds after we hear the correct sound and hope that it actually breaks the stun. In the meantime, we will just ignore everyone else. We then have to execute an evasion in .1 seconds to get ourselves out of backstab range and swing wildly in the air in all directions hoping to hit something. If somehow the thief misses and only takes 3/4 of our health with other attacks, we have to get down on our knees and pray that he has used all his initiative, stops attacking and stealths away, never to come back until our stun breaker is back up.

In order to play a thief, one has to complete level 1, purchase the correct armor/weapon, copy a backstab build and practice pressing 3 buttons as fast as possible.

Yeah, the balance seems fine!