Guild Wars 2

thieves can’t do 1v1 in tournaments.
their purpose is to help teammates.
profit.

@Devolution

That’s not my issues. MY issue is that they are able to 2v1 people and do a total over 40k + in 4 seconds. That is a DPS of 10k. That is absurd. Yeah, some other characters do high damage. But it is usually burst damage. That is what the thief is supposed to specialize in. Burts high damage. Not CONSTANT high damage.

tluv.5821:

@Devolution

That’s not my issues. MY issue is that they are able to 2v1 people and do a total over 40k + in 4 seconds. That is a DPS of 10k. That is absurd. Yeah, some other characters do high damage. But it is usually burst damage. That is what the thief is supposed to specialize in. Burts high damage. Not CONSTANT high damage.

Thieves are inherently bursty, 10k dps over 4 seconds (I really doubt this actually happened btw, even if yall both just stood in pistol whips for the whole quickness period) sounds like quickness, which is on a 60s cooldown i.e. is a burst skill. Once we run our initiative and damage cooldowns down, our damage plummets.

Here is the thing though, me, playing a necro, once your high damage outputs our down, before I could even hit my healing skill, I’m dead. That shouldn’t happen. Not at all. It shouldn’t be, before I even get a chance to heal, when I got the drop on him, that I’m dead. So I have to start my healing casting time BEFORE he even attacks?

tluv.5821:

Here is the thing though, me, playing a necro, once your high damage outputs our down, before I could even hit my healing skill, I’m dead. That shouldn’t happen. Not at all. It shouldn’t be, before I even get a chance to heal, when I got the drop on him, that I’m dead. So I have to start my healing casting time BEFORE he even attacks?

I can’t really understand how you manage to die that fast as a necro. It sounds like you’re not taking advantage of necro’s strengths at all, you have the highest health pool in the game + a profession mechanic that literally acts as an extra health bar. If you go all out glass cannon, of course you’re probably gonna get wrecked by someone who picks the stealthy assassin burst class and builds them in a way that specifically takes advantage of glass cannons, although I’m struggling to think of just how or why you would be THAT glass cannon on a necro.

I’m a condition build necro. And trust me, before I can even cast any of my skills, expect for the number one skill, but even then, only two hits. I’m dead.

tluv.5821:

@Devolution

That’s not my issues. MY issue is that they are able to 2v1 people and do a total over 40k + in 4 seconds. That is a DPS of 10k. That is absurd. Yeah, some other characters do high damage. But it is usually burst damage. That is what the thief is supposed to specialize in. Burts high damage. Not CONSTANT high damage.

Please tell me how Thieves are able to do 40k damage in 4 seconds. Please.

Booya.6127:

tluv.5821:

Here is the thing though, me, playing a necro, once your high damage outputs our down, before I could even hit my healing skill, I’m dead. That shouldn’t happen. Not at all. It shouldn’t be, before I even get a chance to heal, when I got the drop on him, that I’m dead. So I have to start my healing casting time BEFORE he even attacks?

I can’t really understand how you manage to die that fast as a necro. It sounds like you’re not taking advantage of necro’s strengths at all, you have the highest health pool in the game + a profession mechanic that literally acts as an extra health bar. If you go all out glass cannon, of course you’re probably gonna get wrecked by someone who picks the stealthy assassin burst class and builds them in a way that specifically takes advantage of glass cannons, although I’m struggling to think of just how or why you would be THAT glass cannon on a necro.

This man says the truth.
As a Necro you die a bit slower than other professions thanks to Death Shroud.

Zunhar.4079:

tluv.5821:

@Devolution

That’s not my issues. MY issue is that they are able to 2v1 people and do a total over 40k + in 4 seconds. That is a DPS of 10k. That is absurd. Yeah, some other characters do high damage. But it is usually burst damage. That is what the thief is supposed to specialize in. Burts high damage. Not CONSTANT high damage.

Please tell me how Thieves are able to do 40k damage in 4 seconds. Please.

With 13 stacks of might, steal + cloak and dagger + backstab = 20k. Steal from a warrior, and spin in a group = 40k.

Devolution.5716:

wow this has become a whine fest not a “lets make thief balanced and keep in mind that they should be able to kill a class after the nerf but still not do 21k dmg or some crap”

this thread needs to be closed before anet thinks about destroying a class

(playing warrior but this is just to much QQ over 1 class been a little to OP)

This thread was stickied. That can’t happen without a moderator.

They’re obviously looking for feedback about thieves specifically.

Get ready….

just played as thief…
without actually playing seriously the only classes that could stand against me were also thieves or mesmers….
that would explain why half of the players on games lately are thieves
if they dont balance spvp soon it will probably die….

sorrow.2364:

Devolution.5716:

muha almost lvl 80 with my new warrior… srsly nerf thiefs and they become useless it’s only some few buffs to other classes then they can match thiefs.
But at the same time thiefs with 10k crits = deadmeat if they fail just for 1 second.
Also try getting to Rank 10 with 1 class before QQ like kitten, i am doing fine as warrior atm having 0 problems killing thiefs and i can do the same with any other class.
I just need time to adjust myself on how to play the class…..

L2P srsly -Regards Devolutionz

So, you are saying that you have no problem dealing with Thieves with your Warrior?
Wow, who expected that? The easymode profession has no problems with an easymode profession!

Now, make an Elementalist/Necromancer, than go in sPvP. Tell me if you have no problems dealing with Thieves.

dude. stop embarassing yourself… i farm thieves and i play ele. l2p and l2build.

sorrow.2364:

Devolution.5716:

muha almost lvl 80 with my new warrior… srsly nerf thiefs and they become useless it’s only some few buffs to other classes then they can match thiefs.
But at the same time thiefs with 10k crits = deadmeat if they fail just for 1 second.
Also try getting to Rank 10 with 1 class before QQ like kitten, i am doing fine as warrior atm having 0 problems killing thiefs and i can do the same with any other class.
I just need time to adjust myself on how to play the class…..

L2P srsly -Regards Devolutionz

So, you are saying that you have no problem dealing with Thieves with your Warrior?
Wow, who expected that? The easymode profession has no problems with an easymode profession!

Now, make an Elementalist/Necromancer, than go in sPvP. Tell me if you have no problems dealing with Thieves.

I play Necromancer and I annihilate thieves. One of the easiest profs for me to kill, because they’re all gimmick and all do the same thing, be it lotus spam, HS spam or PW (that’s pistol whip for the laymen) spam.

Dodge their initial burst and they’re a free kill.

PS: My necro build has 960ish toughness (D/D Power spec).

where is the patch?
how long it can be?
spvp already full of thiefs, gameplay ruined

Ha, no one believed me when I said a thief could hit 14k crits and here is the proof.

HS has been rightly nerfed, however it’s more about the quickness buff, thief’s get a lot more out of their quickness than most other classes do due to the fact they have no C/D on their skills allowing them to spam that same skill over and over, this is more noticable with pistol whip – it stuns and is spamable, in two seconds you’re dead.

Yes these can be avoided but who’s to say that you’re going to have your 60 second c/d get me out of jail free card every time one of the 4 thiefs tries this on you?
The problem is the lack of C/D (I don’t mean put 5-10 second c/d’s on their skill s, 1-2 seconds just to stop the spamability) and the mechanic of quickness.

Warriors can also achieve what a thief can in a lot of cases, mainly due to quickness it’s the quickness mechanic that is more-so the problem than the classes themselves. And yes, I have a thief and have tested these out for myself, for me it is boring game play, burst them down, gg move on. I prefer to play with the shortbow, it’s a lot more fun. :P

Donate to the PAC

http://qkme.me/3r4yu0

@Nawal
I am sorry but that will not work.

Assassin’s signet, I like the 3 sec daze but also have it grant a couple stacks of might.
Mug= No it is fine as it is, no need to change. Steal has a nice cooldown so it is not like this can be spammed

Quickness= If you mess with quickness with theif, you have to do it for every class, and depending on what you do, you have to do it for the sigils and traits as well for every class. I wouldn’t mind a complete removal of this ability, BUT keep in mind. Pistol Whip builds have a valid excuse for using quickness, and that is sword attack speed for thief is FAR too slow then add in the fact there is an ability with a self root.
What kind of illegal drugs did the dev do that added a self root to a mobility based class? So you mess with quickness, you gotta remove that, and make sword #1 and #3 attack a little faster

Group with thief in sPVP vs. group w/o thief in sPVP group with thief everytime won…..

so thief > whole group

SgtSarcasm.1653:

sorrow.2364:

Devolution.5716:

muha almost lvl 80 with my new warrior… srsly nerf thiefs and they become useless it’s only some few buffs to other classes then they can match thiefs.
But at the same time thiefs with 10k crits = deadmeat if they fail just for 1 second.
Also try getting to Rank 10 with 1 class before QQ like kitten, i am doing fine as warrior atm having 0 problems killing thiefs and i can do the same with any other class.
I just need time to adjust myself on how to play the class…..

L2P srsly -Regards Devolutionz

So, you are saying that you have no problem dealing with Thieves with your Warrior?
Wow, who expected that? The easymode profession has no problems with an easymode profession!

Now, make an Elementalist/Necromancer, than go in sPvP. Tell me if you have no problems dealing with Thieves.

I play Necromancer and I annihilate thieves. One of the easiest profs for me to kill, because they’re all gimmick and all do the same thing, be it lotus spam, HS spam or PW (that’s pistol whip for the laymen) spam.

Dodge their initial burst and they’re a free kill.

PS: My necro build has 960ish toughness (D/D Power spec).

So because your ok in a single spec, Thief’s insta gibbing other Necro spec’s is ok?

the community crying for thieves need nerf because they play 8v8 is so sad.
8v8 is just there to spend time pvping. if you need balancing stuff, go tournaments and cry about classes there.

“hue hue i want to pown everyone while i am eating, watching tv, but they stomped me. but i have 500 armor and 10k hp, i should be better. not fair, nerf nerf”

go play tournaments before starting these lame fights about nerfing stuff.
ridiculous

SgtSarcasm.1653

I play Necromancer and I annihilate thieves. One of the easiest profs for me to kill, because they’re all gimmick and all do the same thing, be it lotus spam, HS spam or PW (that’s pistol whip for the laymen) spam.
Dodge their initial burst and they’re a free kill.
PS: My necro build has 960ish toughness (D/D Power spec).

I do play D/D Power build too ( 1182 toughness ) and If I’m unprepared/don’t have my stunbreak up, I have very tough job “dodging” the burst, and if by any chance he succed in reseting the fight before I had time to kill him I’m most of the time dead.
Playin’ in tPvP against good thieves. Could you give me some advice do you have a stream?

Play a thief and have never in my 25 ranks of sPvP or 100+ hours in WvW hit someone for a crit of over 7k yet I still manage to kill every person I fight 1v1 unless it’s a mesmer who actually knows what they’re doing and isn’t playing a mesmer just because it’s mesmer. I have 90% crit damage and my backstab consistently hits 6-7k crits if I’m lucky, so probably doing something wrong.

Go equip berserkers, 30/30/0/0/10 ogre runes, assassins signet + another signet, basilisk venom and then come back.

I should start by saying that I almost exclusively play a thief in pvp (I gave up on my Necro for the time being).

My build is a backstab build. I am not glass cannon. I have 30 points in Vitality (for stealth traits). I use double dagger and bow (for when I can’t safely get close… also fairly effective against mesmers). With daggers, I use 3 skills… only. 1 for damage, 2 to finish (if necessary), and 5 to get into stealth. All of my utility skills put me in stealth (except for speed signet to help backcap).

To the point, I have a hypothesis that the state of thief is the single most problematic function to balance in the game. It has completely skewed the ability to balance.

My thoughts: I believe thieves are the reasons Guardians seem so good in PvP. They are almost the only class (aside from mesmers) that really gives me hell in a fight. I think they are fairly counterable by various condition builds, but due to the ubiquity of thieves, guardians seem artificially strong (If they are OP, my guess is they are only barely OP).

I think thieves make Necros (my first main) and eles specifically, but the other classes as well, seem weaker than they are. Necros and eles are ridiculously easy to kill. At best, they are forced to disengage and it is my choice as to whether I follow or not. In this sense, I think they likely need some tuning, but I believe the strength of the thief vs these classes complete with the absurd numbers of thieves in any given match, necros and eles feel terribly weak.

I have no real opinion on mesmers as they relate to the thief. I find them super difficult to kill, and I have found I am best just disengaging and going elsewhere.

Another big problem with thieves I experience constantly is the steal—>whirlwind—→dancing daggers routine.

Why do they get 100 percent evasion and stability on stolen whirlwind?

Then stability and projectile reflect on daggers?

All the while doing damage. There’s nothing you can do apart from try and run away for the whole duration of both.

Warrior whirlwind doesnt give you stability OR evasion, you can take damage/be stunned. So why does the thief get both those added in?!?

phaeris.7604:

Another big problem with thieves I experience constantly is the steal—>whirlwind—->dancing daggers routine.

Why do they get 100 percent evasion and stability on stolen whirlwind?

Then stability and projectile reflect on daggers?

All the while doing damage. There’s nothing you can do apart from try and run away for the whole duration of both.

Warrior whirlwind doesnt give you stability OR evasion, you can take damage/be stunned. So why does the thief get both those added in?!?

They get a better version of fear when stealing from a necro as well. Why does a Thief get a aoe 3sec fear when they steal from a Necro’s (who started out as the only Prof to have fear, and it was going to be only ours) and the Necro only gets a 1sec fear?

just pointing out necro’s fear is instant and mesmer has 3 secs cast time. but i agree . they should rework some steal skills.
30/30/0/0/10 thieves has only 14k hp, try to random hit when they stealth, or try to put some stack of bleed and they will die in 2 secs.
putting 2 signet in utility means you have no so many skills to stealth, so the thief is in danger if targeted.

Quickness is a huge problem. Many many many times I’ve been dropped instantly by thief. This is especially true when you’re fighting someone and you have, let’s say, 60% HP, you go for a heal, instant kill from a thief. Quickness+2 pistol whips back to back is two stuns and 14k damage in a blink of the eye. They also lead it with 4k steal and immobilize.

The other problem with thief is the thief guild elite which makes it really hard to handle an already very damaging, stealthing opponent.

Angry Flying Squirrel.3041:

phaeris.7604:

Another big problem with thieves I experience constantly is the steal—>whirlwind—->dancing daggers routine.

Why do they get 100 percent evasion and stability on stolen whirlwind?

Then stability and projectile reflect on daggers?

All the while doing damage. There’s nothing you can do apart from try and run away for the whole duration of both.

Warrior whirlwind doesnt give you stability OR evasion, you can take damage/be stunned. So why does the thief get both those added in?!?

They get a better version of fear when stealing from a necro as well. Why does a Thief get a aoe 3sec fear when they steal from a Necro’s (who started out as the only Prof to have fear, and it was going to be only ours) and the Necro only gets a 1sec fear?

Most steal abilities are insane versions of normal abilities.

On other note…. I am surpised ANet has put quickness in the game in its current form.
In GW1 we had max +33% attack speed boost, which used to stack up to +50% (if you used 2 attack speed boosting abilities), which was used by IWAY teams (IWAY + frenzy). That was deemed too overpowered so it was nerfed to not stack.

Then we get GW2 and lo and behold, 100% attack speed boost…. haven’t you learned your lesson in GW1 Anet?

And it doesn’t just make attacks faster, but also stomps (and maybe even rezes).
100% faster actions simply has the potential to make a lot of things broken.

2 dodges are not enough for 4 auto-aiming Heartseekers.

-33% attack speed boost, which is equal to +50%. The old IWAY was -50%, which was equal to the current quickness. This is not to say current quickness is very fun; it is not.

“4 auto-aiming heartseekers”, huh. Heartseeker hits like a backstab on a 25% health opponent, which is to say 6-7k crit. Half that on full health. Basically, heartseekers aren’t even dangerous until you’re already near to death. Assuming you dodge half of them by just rolling your forehead on the keyboard, I can’t see how it’s a problem that you can die to thieves if they play well and capitalize on your mistakes.

This thread has made me feel like I should go make a 24k hp paper armor character and take screenshots of my deaths.

if you just dodge 2 HS you won the fight. thief has lost half of his initiative for zero damage, and if you are more than 50% hp you basically have outplayed him.

losing to 1 (one) HS thief in tourney (don’t count 8v8 zerg as skilled pvp), should force you to improve your ability , not force anet to nerf thief. noone is perfect, everyone should blame himself if he die, not opponents.

Shukran.4851:

if you just dodge 2 HS you won the fight. thief has lost half of his initiative for zero damage, and if you are more than 50% hp you basically have outplayed him.

losing to 1 (one) HS thief in tourney (don’t count 8v8 zerg as skilled pvp), should force you to improve your ability , not force anet to nerf thief. noone is perfect, everyone should blame himself if he die, not opponents.

If you honestly think its that easy to beat a thief, you need to experiment more with yours. Skilled thieves go in and out of stealth and stay at a distance from you so often that you can’t really find them long enough to do much.

As I’ve said before, stealth mechanic is broken and thieves are currently reaping the benefits of it. They’re visually unavailable to other players when coming out of stealth (at least in WvW) and that’s a big no-no when you only need 3 seconds to re-stealth.

I foresee an increase to the “Revealed” effect. Probably needs to be 10 seconds.

uncop.5073:

-33% attack speed boost, which is equal to +50%. The old IWAY was -50%, which was equal to the current quickness. This is not to say current quickness is very fun; it is not.

33% is 33%…50% is 50%. They’re different. They’re also different in how they increase attack speed. Currently, Quickness reduces attack duration by 50%. That’s effectively “Double Attack Speed”. Frenzy in GW1 increased an attack speed number by 33%.

Which is effectively this; assuming 1 attack per second in both games:

• GW1: 33% faster = 1.33 attacks per second
• GW2: 50% quicker animation = 2 attacks per second (the time it takes to do one attack reduced by HALF)

Way different. Math hurts. (Pun intended )

Redscope.6215:

Shukran.4851:

if you just dodge 2 HS you won the fight. thief has lost half of his initiative for zero damage, and if you are more than 50% hp you basically have outplayed him.

losing to 1 (one) HS thief in tourney (don’t count 8v8 zerg as skilled pvp), should force you to improve your ability , not force anet to nerf thief. noone is perfect, everyone should blame himself if he die, not opponents.

If you honestly think its that easy to beat a thief, you need to experiment more with yours. Skilled thieves go in and out of stealth and stay at a distance from you so often that you can’t really find them long enough to do much.

As I’ve said before, stealth mechanic is broken and thieves are currently reaping the benefits of it. They’re visually unavailable to other players when coming out of stealth (at least in WvW) and that’s a big no-no when you only need 3 seconds to re-stealth.

I foresee an increase to the “Revealed” effect. Probably needs to be 10 seconds.

well i answered to someone who talked about “HS spam”. also, you can focus on the tournament rules: you win if you reach 500 points which are easier if you hold “nodes”. a thief who just go in&out stealth, won’t hurt so much the “node” holding. but it is some kind of strategy.
i should improve better on stealth thief btw :P

Shukran.4851:

Redscope.6215:

Shukran.4851:

if you just dodge 2 HS you won the fight. thief has lost half of his initiative for zero damage, and if you are more than 50% hp you basically have outplayed him.

losing to 1 (one) HS thief in tourney (don’t count 8v8 zerg as skilled pvp), should force you to improve your ability , not force anet to nerf thief. noone is perfect, everyone should blame himself if he die, not opponents.

If you honestly think its that easy to beat a thief, you need to experiment more with yours. Skilled thieves go in and out of stealth and stay at a distance from you so often that you can’t really find them long enough to do much.

As I’ve said before, stealth mechanic is broken and thieves are currently reaping the benefits of it. They’re visually unavailable to other players when coming out of stealth (at least in WvW) and that’s a big no-no when you only need 3 seconds to re-stealth.

I foresee an increase to the “Revealed” effect. Probably needs to be 10 seconds.

well i answered to someone who talked about “HS spam”. also, you can focus on the tournament rules: you win if you reach 500 points which are easier if you hold “nodes”. a thief who just go in&out stealth, won’t hurt so much the “node” holding. but it is some kind of strategy.
i should improve better on stealth thief btw :P

Tournaments and sPvP are definitely played differently and won differently than WvW, that is true. Which is probably why they’ve stickied this thread in the sPvP subforum.

They know WvW thieves have a much easier time than almost any other class but they want to keep the discussion in the context of sPvP so as to not make any changes that would make him a useless tournament team member.

At least that’s my limited understanding of this odd single-class sticky thread.

As well as a few other classes thief is one of the most complained about in spvp (strangely not that much in tpvp). But ive seen it get to a absurd degree on here, to the point where it honestly felt like the forum was filled with nothing but thief hate and every aspect of them was considered overpowered.

Id like us all to take a step back and instead of shouting L2P, your bad, or any other vitriol at eachother, we try to look at each claim and analyze it to find a mostly unbiased finding. Ill start by listing each claim i can think of off the top of my head, along with a counter point that you can either debate or agree to.

in turn anyone who puts up a claim ill either debate (politely) or agree to.

Claim: Stealth is overpowered
Counter: Stealth is bugged, mostly in favor of the thief. it has revealed debuff issues (the 3 second debuff that prevents a thief from re-stealthing immediatly). it has rendering issues (rogue not appearing but becoming targettable right away, only being visible for about a second, then going back into stealth). and hackers (theres quite a few at the moment not just on thieves). My counter is this, lets fix these stealth bugs before trying to gut stealth itself. fixing these bugs alone would amount to nerfs to stealth. however, if stealth was still over the top from a unbiased perspective, i do have a couple ideas

idea 1: atm a thief can chain stealth avoiding the revealed debuff at the expense of CD’s, this seems…well…cheesy. it doesnt take much skill or forethought to do it, and provides a advantage that the current stealth system tries to avoid to a extent. making it so the revealed debuff applies and puts you out of stealth after your timer runs out, so as being unable to chain stealth would be an idea

idea 2: the shadow arts minor trait increases stealth time by 1 second (to 4 seconds most of the time) ive seen people say 4 seconds too long, i dont agree but lets say im biased here, make it so this talent also increases the revealed debuff by 1 second? just an idea, not set in stone

Claim: Backstab builds are OP
Counter: there is a very specific build out there using very specific talents, it is a glass cannon backstab build to the fullest idea…and its largely unfun. every 45seconds to a minute this thief can nearly oneshot anyone, and is then a paperweight for the rest of that time. this spec, is unbalanced, and needs to be addressed. however, simply nerfing backstab damage will not address a core issue i think must be brought up. at the moment every thief builds glass cannon, nerfing backstab wont stop this, it will just make glass cannons weaker while making non glass cannons weaker still. resulting in…all thieves still playing soley glass cannons! rather, the adjustments should be laid out thru the traits and skills, things like assassins signet and signets of power are big offenders. naturally changing anything in pvp can have an effect on PVE and must be considered to a point.

Claim: haste is OP
Counter: this isnt thief specific tho thieves have access to 3 quickness effects, one of which is profession specific and is a on use ability. To put it short, i agree, haste and other quickness effects make a fast paced game woefully gibtastic. it is fun attacking fast yes, but it needs adjusting clearly

Claim: Pistol Whip is OP
Counter: This one is tricky for me, and i dont even use the weapon set (dislike the slow autoattacks /shrug). coupled with quicknesss effects its absolutly unbalanced. without quickness PW has to be accompanied with another skill everytime its used in order for it to land. it has to be paired with immobilizes, stuns, roots, etc, otherwise the current form of pistol whip just doesnt cut it, anyone with half a brain could completly avoid it. But obviously there is a fine line from it being unreliable to it being OP. People have suggested changing PW and i think its probably the easiest method. turn the stun to a 1/4 second daze (effectively a spell interrupt) so it doesnt stun, remove the self root.

Claim: thieves have too much burst!
counter: lots of classes have “too much burst” at the moment. but yes there are certain specs (talked about already) and certain skills (also discussed already) that can contribute to this feeling, and its not entirely unfounded. Thieves are supposed to be bursty yes, but there has to be a balance between bursty, and too much burst. I think when things like quickness effects and the backstab glass cannon build are looked at, along with PW’s black and white tendency, we can come back to this and discuss it again, as once those are looked at, thief damage overall will certainly go down.

These are just the ones from the top of my head, im sure there are more, please feel free to debate my counters, add new information to the existing topics, or add you own claim that you have personally or you see a lot. I will keep track of this thread in my free time in hopes to provide polite debate. I hope you can do the same and not troll this well intentioned thread.

Redscope.6215:

uncop.5073:

-33% attack speed boost, which is equal to +50%. The old IWAY was -50%, which was equal to the current quickness. This is not to say current quickness is very fun; it is not.

33% is 33%…50% is 50%. They’re different. They’re also different in how they increase attack speed. Currently, Quickness reduces attack duration by 50%. That’s effectively “Double Attack Speed”. Frenzy in GW1 increased an attack speed number by 33%.

Which is effectively this; assuming 1 attack per second in both games:

• GW1: 33% faster = 1.33 attacks per second
• GW2: 50% quicker animation = 2 attacks per second (the time it takes to do one attack reduced by HALF)

Way different. Math hurts. (Pun intended )

I do not understand where we disagree except that you didn’t know that GW1 attack speed boosts reduced attack duration (which the big fat minus sign denotes). The current quickness makes attacks 2x faster or reduces attack duration by 50%, whatever floats your boat. GW1 IWAY warriors also reduced attack duration by 50%, making their boost stacking equal to quickness.

Good job making yourself look like an kitten for no reason at all!

wow claimed every single aspect of thief op. basically:

Claim: thief OP
counter: remove thief from the game

some time after:
Claim: mesmer OP
counter: remove mesmer from the game.

and so on…

The problem with thieves is the mechanic encourages button mashing and doesn’t really have a tradeoff in 1v1 because talents allow you to basically ignore the cost of spamming abilities for long enough to kill anyone in almost any circumstances.

There’s a reason the whines about thief are mostly 1v1. The class mechanic is just badly set up. I am not sure there is much that can be done to fix it because it’s fundamentally badly thought out. The only real solution is to do what wow did and slowly move the thief away from a meaningful initiative system and towards more stable, less bursty dps.

uncop.5073:

Redscope.6215:

uncop.5073:

-33% attack speed boost, which is equal to +50%. The old IWAY was -50%, which was equal to the current quickness. This is not to say current quickness is very fun; it is not.

33% is 33%…50% is 50%. They’re different. They’re also different in how they increase attack speed. Currently, Quickness reduces attack duration by 50%. That’s effectively “Double Attack Speed”. Frenzy in GW1 increased an attack speed number by 33%.

Which is effectively this; assuming 1 attack per second in both games:

• GW1: 33% faster = 1.33 attacks per second
• GW2: 50% quicker animation = 2 attacks per second (the time it takes to do one attack reduced by HALF)

Way different. Math hurts. (Pun intended )

I do not understand where we disagree except that you didn’t know that GW1 attack speed boosts reduced attack duration (which the big fat minus sign denotes). The current quickness makes attacks 2x faster or reduces attack duration by 50%, whatever floats your boat. GW1 IWAY warriors also reduced attack duration by 50%, making their boost stacking equal to quickness.

Good job making yourself look like an kitten for no reason at all!

So what you’re saying is GW1 mechanic for IAS is the same as GW2.

While I’d beg to differ, I can at least say this: 33% is not 50%. If they both work the same way, GW2 is still faster.

I don’t see what you’re not getting.

Yukishiro.8792:

The problem with thieves is the mechanic encourages button mashing and doesn’t really have a tradeoff in 1v1 because talents allow you to basically ignore the cost of spamming abilities for long enough to kill anyone in almost any circumstances.

There’s a reason the whines about thief are mostly 1v1. The class mechanic is just badly set up. I am not sure there is much that can be done to fix it because it’s fundamentally badly thought out. The only real solution is to do what wow did and slowly move the thief away from a meaningful initiative system and towards more stable, less bursty dps.

so your claim: thieves initiative system encourages button mashing
Counter: The problem isnt that it encourages, its that it allows. a smart player will realize hes more effective not spamming. The problem is the spammer player can still play his way and see a reward for his/her “effort”. its a problem, one that i am sadly not equipped to deal with. your suggestion would cause a massive re-write of thieves tho so if it does happen i dont think it will for a very long time.

your assumed claim: initiative regens too fast (when traited), as a result the thief class is not penalized for spamming as he essentially never runs out of initiative

counter: Is ini supposed to have the drawback of being unable to use moves just because the person “spammed” them? this is tricky honestly, i have no information that anet intends this, but lets say they do. the only way i can think of solving it is putting in a scaling factor to skills, everytime you use a skill back to back its ini cost increases. use HS, spend 3, use HS again, spend 4, etc. This should result in actual penalty for spam play without penalizing a good player too much.

edit: now that i think about it that would fix both issues, that would be very good!

Shukran.4851:

wow claimed every single aspect of thief op. basically:

Claim: thief OP
counter: remove thief from the game

some time after:
Claim: mesmer OP
counter: remove mesmer from the game.

and so on…

yes that is the mindset and mood i got from the forums earlier. sad to say, however, lets not clutter this thread with unhelpful information.

Thief just has poor design IMO. It promotes skill spamming due to the high intiative costs on all other skills but the AA and even more so the spammables that everyone cries about. The class is extremely one dimensional as well – just deliver heavy burst. I’ve yet to see a thief play effectively without speccing for heavy front-loaded dmg – though I have seen plenty try.

The class design as a whole strikes me as counterintuitive to the design goals Anet had for PvP.

hackks.3687:

Thief just has poor design IMO. It promotes skill spamming due to the high intiative costs on all other skills but the AA and even more so the spammables that everyone cries about. The class is extremely one dimensional as well – just deliver heavy burst. I’ve yet to see a thief play effectively without speccing for heavy front-loaded dmg – though I have seen plenty try.

The class design as a whole strikes me as counterintuitive to the design goals Anet had for PvP.

i take it your not into reading the main body? either way. I addressed the initiative system, specifically the aspect your addressing.

the class does have some bleed builds, mainly death blossom and pistol mainhand.

to a good degree a thief just doesnt perform well without speccing heavy burst which is also a problem.

but lets go to your claim

Claim: the design of the thief class is counterintuitive to Anets design goals of pvp (aka. they do too much damage?)
counter: Anet said they want fights to be fast paced, part of fast paced is dying quickly. tho quickly is a subjective term, its entirely possible (and with some specs certain) that thief has too much burst, tho they should have some so long as that maintains one of the “things” anet designed the thief around. burst and mobility.

now if your instead talking about the way ini works…i addressed that already.

ok, i agree that game allow spamming and spamming is still too effective against a lot of players. but i don’t know if anet wants to rework a class.
so assuming the mechanic remains, what can be add to “balance” thief without make it weak?
because you know. we have 5 weaps skills, but only is effective and AA damage is not so high compared with hp and armor.

Shukran.4851:

ok, i agree that game allow spamming and spamming is still too effective against a lot of players. but i don’t know if anet wants to rework a class.
so assuming the mechanic remains, what can be add to “balance” thief without make it weak?
because you know. we have 5 weaps skills, but only is effective and AA damage is not so high compared with hp and armor.

while there are many possible avenues im sure we can take to “fix” the spam issue, i did come up with one that i outlined earlier in this thread. basically, when you use the same move backtoback it increaes its ini cost. 3 ini HS>4 ini HS>5 ini HS etc

this will penalize spamming while still allowing a thief to use a skill back to back if its worth the increased cost.

Wolfe.3097:

hackks.3687:

Thief just has poor design IMO. It promotes skill spamming due to the high intiative costs on all other skills but the AA and even more so the spammables that everyone cries about. The class is extremely one dimensional as well – just deliver heavy burst. I’ve yet to see a thief play effectively without speccing for heavy front-loaded dmg – though I have seen plenty try.

The class design as a whole strikes me as counterintuitive to the design goals Anet had for PvP.

i take it your not into reading the main body? either way. I addressed the initiative system, specifically the aspect your addressing.

the class does have some bleed builds, mainly death blossom and pistol mainhand.

to a good degree a thief just doesnt perform well without speccing heavy burst which is also a problem.

but lets go to your claim

Claim: the design of the thief class is counterintuitive to Anets design goals of pvp (aka. they do too much damage?)
counter: Anet said they want fights to be fast paced, part of fast paced is dying quickly. tho quickly is a subjective term, its entirely possible (and with some specs certain) that thief has too much burst, tho they should have some so long as that maintains one of the “things” anet designed the thief around. burst and mobility.

now if your instead talking about the way ini works…i addressed that already.

I was actually claiming that the theif design is too narrowly focused on heavy dmg and heavy dmg only. which is fine to a degree, except that the heavy dmg is promoted through the use of only a couple skills instead of all five/ten and that is mostly due to the initiative costs on other skills except for the ones that end up in the death report regularly – which is why people cry about them, they’re the most visible. Why are they the most visible? Because they’re the most affordable and efficient to use.

IMO nothing spammable should hit hard in this game and conversely, classes shouldn’t be limited to spamming to be effective either.

And no I didn’t read the main body. L2Concise/Consolidate please