Guild Wars 2

As long as Thieves have stealth and the best stomp in the game (blind field + stealth), as well as access to high burst damage & mobility…they will remain one of the best classes in SPvP, they can fill some key roles extremely well.

For example, the Rogue class in World Of Warcraft has ALWAYS been a top-tier PvP class for 8 years, simply due to stealth, mobility and stunlock capability. All other classes have gone through an extreme rollercoaster of balance. 8 years. Think about that. GW2 Thief holds similar strengths (sort of).

I am of the opinion that classes with stealth, high damage and “cheap” get-away abilities will always have a guaranteed role in SPvP. I mean christ, look at what Mesmers can do currently.

but i still hear a lot of people claiming that warrior are very powderful wor, how? O_O

Good thieves yes, bad ones no…

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but i still hear a lot of people claiming that warrior are very powderful wor, how? O_O

Warriors are also powerful (if not the best class in the game right now), but this thread is about Thieves :P

Muchacho.2390:

Good thieves yes, bad ones no…

Actually even a bad thief can do alright, more effective than how much “room for being bad” other classes have (except Warrior). Unloading initiative and running away works great against other bad players.

Wintel.4873:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but i still hear a lot of people claiming that warrior are very powderful wor, how? O_O

Warriors are also powerful (if not the best class in the game right now), but this thread is about Thieves :P

aaaah okies!

well, yeah, good thieves can put down my warrior very quickly. >.<

but i think they are okay, because they are supposed to be able to burst down others very efficiently if they are built for that.

i.e. i’m not asking for thieves to be nerfed.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

but i still hear a lot of people claiming that warrior are very powderful wor, how? O_O

Another day, same hotjoiner sandbagging the most OP class in the game.

They may be strong at the very high levels. In the games I play, having 2 thieves on my team is a loss 90% of the time.

You really can’t compare wow rogues to gw2 thieves. Rogues have far more control than thieves, better damage mitigation, and better regen. Thieves can just enter stealth more often.

i join the team with less thieves lol. more than 1 thief is just bad

Excalibur.9748:

i join the team with less thieves lol. more than 1 thief is just bad

Yeah, as soon as I have another Thief in my team I offer to relog on my Warrior. I have about 3 hours played on it compared to the 1800 hours I have on my Thief but am more valuable as a Warrior than I would be as a Thief.

Anyways, Thieves aren’t bad but I wouldn’t compare then to WoW Rogues. The game-modes are just completely different. Stealth isn’t even that great of an asset in sPvP and we can’t exactly stun-lock either (spam Headshot maybe).

Anyway, GW2 doesn’t ask much in terms of player skill when it comes to controlling the toon. Skill in GW2 is 70% situational awareness, 20% class knowledge and 10% character control.

WoW in contrast requires far more class knowledge (various proccs and abilities) and demands more in terms of control (30 buttons + macros sometimes).

Thieves are strong… but not that great imo because we are stuck with one game type: conquest. At the end of the day, tanky warriors with LB or a well played condi engie is MUCH better simply because they can do dmg and hold a point well.

Bhima.9518:

Thieves are strong… but not that great imo because we are stuck with one game type: conquest. At the end of the day, tanky warriors with LB or a well played condi engie is MUCH better simply because they can do dmg and hold a point well.

A large part of holding points is causing unbalanced fights, i.e. 2v1’s or 3v2’s. Thieves are excellent at being that element of surprise more than any other class due to having stealth, mobility and burst.

They also have some of the best get-away tools in the game, I have honestly lost count of how many times I literally EXPLODE a glass thief, bring him down to 10% health, next moment he’s gone and I’m spamming AoE’s everywhere with no luck.
Sure he lost that node – but he was successful in robbing our team of the kill, and went to another node to cause an unbalanced fight there.

Muchacho.2390:

Good thieves yes, bad ones no…

This.

This just in

Teleports are strong in yet another game

Thank you

The only reason why you don’t see more Thieves in this game’s Spvp is because of the game mode. You can’t cap while in stealth therefore you lose the match. It is not due to how weak the class is but how their class mechanics work.

Switch the game mode to death match and I bet you there will be at least 50% Thieves because of stealth (the other 50% will be 45% Mesmer with 5% remaining going to the other classes).

I would say they are very strong, (or OP) builds for thiefs indeed… not all of them are strong though.

Thieves are very hard to play.

Vanthian.9267:

The only reason why you don’t see more Thieves in this game’s Spvp is because of the game mode. You can’t cap while in stealth therefore you lose the match. It is not due to how weak the class is but how their class mechanics work.

I see plenty of thieves in solo queue, but this is why it surprises me. Thief just can’t bunker.

However, saying that just acknowledges how heavily the class relies on stealth. Stealth is too powerful in PvP. It should be a sideshow engage/disengage, not a primary mechanic. If having access to stealth means you can’t be viable in conquest, you’re too reliant on it.

Indeed, thieves in deathmatch would be ridiculous. If it’s ever implemented, thief and mesmer will be nerfed to the ground.

Wintel.4873:

As long as Thieves have stealth and the best stomp in the game (blind field + stealth), as well as access to high burst damage & mobility…they will remain one of the best classes in SPvP, they can fill some key roles extremely well.

For example, the Rogue class in World Of Warcraft has ALWAYS been a top-tier PvP class for 8 years, simply due to stealth, mobility and stunlock capability. All other classes have gone through an extreme rollercoaster of balance. 8 years. Think about that. GW2 Thief holds similar strengths (sort of).

I am of the opinion that classes with stealth, high damage and “cheap” get-away abilities will always have a guaranteed role in SPvP. I mean christ, look at what Mesmers can do currently.

i dont play wow since 2008, but how can u compare rogues to thieves???

1) rogue’s sthealth last till he start fight…so he can position himself and start to fight when he decide to

2) rogue have a LOT of dmg mitigations (cloack of shadows, evasion) that are very strong keeping him alive

3) rogue can stunlock/sap/blind targets, giving him a great game control…

4) most important…WOW HAVE HEALS

The problem with thiefs is, is that they are usually played by trash players. Often thiefs are less useful then elementalists (talking SoloQ) because they have an awefull understanding of their role/build and with those two combined no feeling for the game whatsoever.

One thief good, Two thieves bad.

thieves are an example of a good class,
bad players will do badly, good players will do good, pro players will be godly.

or everyone could just join me in making an ultimate glasscannon spec and spamming Unload with ricochet
its one of those builds that really shouldn’t be as fun (and sometimes effective) as it is XD

Wintel.4873:

For example, the Rogue class in World Of Warcraft has ALWAYS been a top-tier PvP class for 8 years, simply due to stealth, mobility and stunlock capability

Did we play the same wow or what? Rogues tend to be weak at the start of expansions and relatively strong or maybe even top tier at the end. Really far from being top dogs for 8 years though.

In fact they where really weak at the start of MOP, Cata and Wotlk up to a point that
they had the worst representation above 2.2 during those periods.

Until Heartseeker gets tweaked (maybe +1 initiative cost?) there will be a ton of bad thieves running around in full glass spec pressing 2222222222 thinking they are ninjas or something.

Kharr.5746:

Until Heartseeker gets tweaked (maybe +1 initiative cost?) there will be a ton of bad thieves running around in full glass spec pressing 2222222222 thinking they are ninjas or something.

It’s been said 1000 times but ill say it again. If any spec exists that cannot counter 222222 then either the player is awful or the spec needs buffed by anet.

Kharr.5746:

Until Heartseeker gets tweaked (maybe +1 initiative cost?) there will be a ton of bad thieves running around in full glass spec pressing 2222222222 thinking they are ninjas or something.

IMMOBILIZE
trololol

i used to love heartseekers on my longbow warrior (before bow wars became meta),
hit em with Pin Down and watch them waste all of their initiative 2 2 2ing and going nowhere

in order to post in this forum users should be at least rank 20 in spvp xD . . . . joking but true.

Thieves are considered “strong” at the moment for one reason – trickery. The ability to counter stability with Sleight of Hand and Bountiful theft is very strong – so strong in fact, 2 (at least) top players have already suggested nerfing it somewhat.

Other than that, they’re decent roamers, but are currently kind of locked into D/P due to the issues (of varying severity) with every other weapon option.

how dare thieves be viable in pvp…oh noes

You can’t really compare Thief to Rogue. It’s just different mechanic. When Rogue has more combat tricks, CC, it doesn’t rely on instant burst. You have to build up your combo points and then decide how to spend them. It’s also a thing that Rogue doesn’t rely on stealth that much. Managing resource and timing cooldowns is pretty much all what rogue is about.

Thief is another concept. It doesn’t have any considerable damage mitigation beside dodging and evading all the way. It’s strenght comes from instant, very quick burst which doesn’t need much preparation and quick disengages/stealth.

To be honest, I’d like to see the Thief taking some better things from Rogue’s design, such as less rely on stealth, but more on actual fight. More quick running and usage of various movement effects rather than strict easy-mode teleporting directly to the target. Less focus on spamming evades, maybe a little bit more control with the cost of instant damage, more building-up damage.
Just make it something more than stealth, open, couple hits, disengage/stealth repeat combos.
Let them stay in the battlefield more and support allies with unique stuff. What stuff? Well, maybe something like:

Combat Awarness
For next X seconds you’re immune to critical damage. Gain 10 energy every time you evade an attack. After Awarness ends, lose all remaining endurance and suffer from Weakness for Y seconds
And make it able to affect allies in small radius when traited.
Risk/Reward ooldown concept. Sounds interesting for me

Qaelyn.7612:

They may be strong at the very high levels. In the games I play, having 2 thieves on my team is a loss 90% of the time.

I played team queues last night and we got matched up against Caed’s team a few times. They were running 2 thieves. We got absolutely spanked.

Yeah I dunno what’s so bad about 2 thieves at higher levels of play, if they coordinate that’s basically 2 targets that you won’t account for when running into a fight.

I think it’s because thieves are harder to play effectively which is why people in this thread were previously mentioning how many not-so-great thieves there are out there… Caed and Magic Toker are extremely good thieves (arguably the best) so that’s an exception.

Hi there, I main a thief and am a rather “hardcore tpvper”,

And from the looks of your post you have little to no experience with

1. Thief
2. Tpvp

As you said, Thieves can just run away, while this is true, if they are running they are not capping a point, killing anyone therefore being 100% useless to the score of a game.(Same goes with them being stealthed) On top of that, you are complaining about their high damage? If they didn’t have some of the highest damage in the game, they would have to stay in a fight for a substantial amount of time, in doing that they take damage….A thief that takes damage is a dead thief.

Now thieves need some small tweaking balance wise, but as far as mechanics they are in a great place and where every class should be. As many have said if you are a bad player, you will be bad at thief, and if you are good, you are great at thief. And if you are getting killed by someone smashing 2 with their nose than this is a L2P issue, not balance. There are many counters to thief, which can turn the fight completely in your favor, these are blind, immob, CC, damage, and toughness…… Thats a lot.

To anyone that says thief is unbalanced, join a soloQ and only press 2, see how you fare.

Wintel.4873:

Yeah I dunno what’s so bad about 2 thieves at higher levels of play, if they coordinate that’s basically 2 targets that you won’t account for when running into a fight.

My point proven exactly, you have little to no experience with Tpvp.

i still see it like this if in soloQ you have 50% chance of winning and you have a thief in your team your chance of winning just went down -5% to 45% if you have an elementalist another -5% now your chance is only 40% so GG

Wintel.4873:

Yeah I dunno what’s so bad about 2 thieves at higher levels of play, if they coordinate that’s basically 2 targets that you won’t account for when running into a fight.

Two thieves on a team are bad because they can’t hold a kittening node.

If the team isn’t kittened, which most people in tpvp are (most know nothing about good rotations), then the team with more than one thief will probably lose.

“My point proven exactly, you have little to no experience with Tpvp.”

^ This.