Guild Wars 2

Terrorsquad.2349:

Jekkt.6045:

Cynz.9437:

people complain about stealth in pvp? wat?

thief went to reset? good… you got point, enjoy your match points~

also i love how people cry “omg thief can reset”…. and somehow forget to mention that the moment thief goes ooc their target is also ooc and gets to heal up…

i think it is hilarious to say that thief doesn’t get punished for failed attack… if anything thieves get punished the most for single mistake in game atm….

you don’t reset as a thief. you sit in stealth until crucial skills are off cooldown, like steal or withdraw, and then you go at it again. or you sit out invul skills in stealth, another gimmick that renders other classes’ defensive skills useless. thieves don’t get punished for single mistakes at all. thieves have on demand teleports that can save their kitten s in most situations and make cc useless if you don’t force the 2 stunbreaks before.

thief is also the only class in the game that is unkiteable as they have teleports that are not tied to cooldowns while other classes’ teleports are on a 30-40s cooldown. so if a thief wants to chase you he will do so and you will not get away most of the time.

the only classes that can face a thief are celestial classes that bring self sustain and a mix of direct damage and condition attrition or guardians because they have the needed aoe damage with good sustain and blocks, this will change though as soon as thieves will be able to run 3 traitlines, in fact thieves with vampire runes can already kill guardians because mist form will save them when they eat a mighty blow combo or get trapped by the ring.

the thief’s class design is broken and to fix it they would have to overhaul the whole class which is obviously not gonna happen.

they learned their lesson with energy ressource or why else do revenants have actual cooldowns on their skills + the energy cost.

I respect you as a player but thats totally wrong in any way possible.
How many games do you have on Thief, I wonder? Can you play it well like it should rotation and mechanically wise?

Thief has a much lower error margin than any cele build + dps guard (in 1v1 and teamfights)

Either you need to consider having a good thief in your team to counter opponent’s thief or you must be doing something wrong.

Never had a problem vs comps with thieves at all, except vs very good thieves & teams, who can actually peel for their Thief.

the only classes that can face a thief are celestial classes that bring self sustain and a mix of direct damage and condition attrition or guardians because they have the needed aoe damage with good sustain and blocks..

If you’re looking at it this way, I think thief has a good amount of counters, considering over 60-70% of the community is running this in teams and certainly 80%+ in ESL/Top Tier play:

• Cele Shoutbow
• Cele Engi
• DPS Guard
• Cele Ele + 2nd Cele Shoutbow
• Thief and/or Mes (instead of Cele Ele or 2nd Shoutbow)

= that’s already 3 to 4 to 5 counterplayers for one single person, which is the opponent Thief

Thieves can’t fight head-on 1v1 for a point vs 90% of the meta builds while most other classes/builds actually can.

If the problem is that thief can disengage too easily, I would honestly say its in your advantage (match-wise)

Some builds have way less counters, really.

pls read this again and again and agin till you got no doubt left on poster is right

Edit: the only one thing that i find dumb on thieves is the d/p #3’ blind duration. it really shoud be lowered to lets say 2 sec.
the spec patch shoudnt include the shadow rejuv+Patience trait merge. imo those 2 should be entierely removed, else they gonne be abused as kitten.

“Teef stelt op evade op blink op burst op speed op”. Let’s just delete the class to feed the vanity of these same guys crying day after day about how broken the class supposedly is.

The only thing the stealth needs is a Reveal upon exiting stealth, even if you don’t attack. That would promote active combat and punish the thief if he cannot land a single hit in. That would result in the “Counterplay” a lot of people are asking for, and also solve a lot of back-to-back stealthing issues in WvW as well.

The thief only seems spammy for a non-thief or a low-end one. I would argue a Hambow pulling the same brainless rotation is more of a spam than a good thief with no set rotations that uses all of the skill set close to their maximum potential.

Ritt.3069:

“Teef stelt op evade op blink op burst op speed op”. Let’s just delete the class to feed the vanity of these same guys crying day after day about how broken the class supposedly is.

The only thing the stealth needs is a Reveal upon exiting stealth, even if you don’t attack. That would promote active combat and punish the thief if he cannot land a single hit in. That would result in the “Counterplay” a lot of people are asking for, and also solve a lot of back-to-back stealthing issues in WvW as well.

The thief only seems spammy for a non-thief or a low-end one. I would argue a Hambow pulling the same brainless rotation is more of a spam than a good thief with no set rotations that uses all of the skill set close to their maximum potential.

Finally a constructive non biased post. +1 to you sir. I would add that the revealed on block and missed attacks would solve this issues entirely.

PS: Maybe tone down that absurd dodges S/D lol.

OH YEAH PLEASE FIX ECTO STEAL VS MESMERS, its ridiculously strong, all boons for x seconds, every 23.5 seconds.

StickerHappy.8052:

Ritt.3069:

“Teef stelt op evade op blink op burst op speed op”. Let’s just delete the class to feed the vanity of these same guys crying day after day about how broken the class supposedly is.

The only thing the stealth needs is a Reveal upon exiting stealth, even if you don’t attack. That would promote active combat and punish the thief if he cannot land a single hit in. That would result in the “Counterplay” a lot of people are asking for, and also solve a lot of back-to-back stealthing issues in WvW as well.

The thief only seems spammy for a non-thief or a low-end one. I would argue a Hambow pulling the same brainless rotation is more of a spam than a good thief with no set rotations that uses all of the skill set close to their maximum potential.

Finally a constructive non biased post. +1 to you sir. I would add that the revealed on block and missed attacks would solve this issues entirely.

PS: Maybe tone down that absurd dodges S/D lol.

OH YEAH PLEASE FIX ECTO STEAL VS MESMERS, its ridiculously strong, all boons for x seconds, every 23.5 seconds.

needs to reveal on block, blind, dodge etc

Thieves are only a problem if you duel or chase them in a match. But if you’re doing what you’re supposed to in a conquest based game, you need to kitten coz thieves should’t be problem. We don’t bring much in team fights. We struggle fighting 1v1 for a point. We can be replaced with yet another cele class.

Anyways, it takes the effort of a full team to win so please leave thieves alone and stop knit picking our profession. Coz you really suck if you think thieves are a problem.

stealth is broken as kitten but #casualwars2 so deal with it.

Terrorsquad.2349:

Rezzet.3614:

Volrath.1473:

Ofc thieves should be punished for missing attacks!! After all, all other professions get punished with conditions for missing their skills right?!… Right?!….

/facepalm

Other professions are indeed punished if they get blinded and miss their skills their skills enter cooldown if other professions use skills on a blocking players their skills enter cooldown , thief is the only profession that has access to easy stealth and shadowsteps and ontop of that a non cooldown system and to top it off their auto attack skills become stealth high damage skills so being auto attack skills means they dont cost initiative thus thief is not being punished in any way .

this thread isnt even asking for thief nerfs but simply make stealth be counterable .

Thieves get punished other ways when non-thieves are not:

• You can stand on point and stay for cleave DPS midst teamfight
• You can contest the point if teammate is low (to keep it yours)
• You have more chances surviving while reviving a downed teammate
• You can pressure a whole point with AoE’s + doom/geomancy sigil
• You have more survivability vs attacks head-on
• You can survive better while performing more auto-attackchains in 1v1 or teamfights
• You can win vs low to average thieves without even noticing he’s trying to attack you (AoE DPS/Condi/Peel)
• You are easier to cleanse/heal compared than a thief midst teamfight
• A Thief can easier be seen useless to your team due wrong rotation (if team has equally good experienced players)
• List can go on and on..

Im sure u can find some things about what Thief can and others not but if you think about it, other burst classes can do lots of things thief can, while this list shows what a thief cannot do reliably while others can (excluding mesmer, ofc)

FYI: people who cannot stop attacking whilst blinded or getting blocked, should be punished with CD’s.. (Stow Weapon FTW)

You list weaknesses that are shared by every other zerker spec in the game; you compare them to sustain builds, used to hold points which is the aim of the main game mode.

The main difference is that other zerker builds will perform way below the standards set by thief unless you want to tell me that there is a single zerker build out there that will be chosen over thief to cover the role of main burst

Still I’m not even asking to nerf thieves all I’m saying is that thief mechanic has no direct counterplay respect to all other professions.

1)No way to influence the thief ability to gain initiative, you can’t slow it down, block or reduce

2)You can’t interact with the thief once he’s stealthed, that’s basically invulnerability

Here some other good idea that I catched on these forums:

1) Thief becomes partially visible(outlined) if he’kitten while stealthed

2) Thief get revealed if he sit in stealth waiting to regain momentum, without attacking

Thief is in the meta since launch . But you can come with as much arguments as you can , thieves will allways act like the poor underpowered class who is nerfed with no justification since launch . According to them , they are all sooo good that they just adapt to all nerf , all people who complains just need to l2p .

Well the only problem i got with that class is stealth stacking and headshot . The 2sec reveal when you go out in stealth was one of the best bug who had ever happened in this game , they just had to fix it in shadow refuge and it was perfect . Headshot must have his initiative cost increased , Shadow rejunevation need to be changed , it promotes passive playstyle . Anyway it’s been the same complains for 3 years , Anet just don’t care , just look how SA is buffed in hot .

Terrorsquad.2349:

snip

to be precise: i have 1732 hours on my thief and 1225 played matches in pvp. it used to be my main class for the first year of gw2. i would never say that i am a top thief but i do have my experience on it.

i agree that thief has a higher error rate (dp, not sd) than cele or dps guard, that’s exactly the reason why they are used to counter thieves, that’s the reason why they are played and why they are meta. they can hold nodes (even dps guard to an extent) and they can defend themselves against thieves, the main predator in the game. they can defend themselves yes, but they can’t catch it if the thief is good enough so what would be easier than to kill fire with fire? if they have a thief then bring a better thief to kill theirs.

it’s also not a thief’s job to 1v1 celestials if it’s not really needed but rather +1 a fight, kill an enemy squishy, like a mesmer, chase the enemy thief or set up a stealth burst.

even though thief has counters in the meta it is still so good that you can’t afford to not run it. mesmers get hardcountered by thieves but the same applies to them in some extent because of portal play and moa. and again, kill fire with fire, so your thief chasing the enemy thief prevents your mesmer from getting rekt by their thief.

why are other berserker classes not played? in eu we don’t see many fresh airs, static discharge engis and many other berserker builds because they get countered easily, have no or few disengages and bring no utility to the team. obviously most of the time they get countered by thieves.

so how could arenanet solve all of this? by nerfing thief of course (yeah people will come with torches and fork pitches at me now).
some minor stuff that could help: put actual cooldowns on teleport skills. see the revenant teleport “frigid blitz”? it has a 12s cooldown. so a 10 seconds cooldown on shadow shot and a 5-8 seconds cooldown on infiltrators strike would already be enough.
steal also needs to be changed to have a casting time for how strong it is. 1/2 or 3/4 would be fair. headshot needs to cost more initiative as it can be spammed way too often and most of the time a good thief won’t need more than 1 headshot to interrupt a necro heal or a banner anyway. it seems like stealth counters are being put into elite specialisation stuff (dhunter trap).

and now that every thief in this thread hates me, the 2nd possibility to solve the issue which will most likely make everybody happy:

we see how mesmers get countered by thieves (and also celestials) but are still represented in top teams because of the utility they bring (portal, moa, boon strips). now if more berserker classes had crucial utility to bring they would be worth having in a comp even if countered by thieves. obviously other berserker builds also need some tweaks and buffs but what they really lack is team utility.
sadly this is a difficult one in the perspective of a game designer. you can’t give a fresh air aoe stealth or portal to an engi.

bluesmnm.1549:

Learn to play instead of crying

Found the Thief. Salty as usual.

Obviously the OP has only seen thief UI on screenshot.

Non-CD teleports? What?
Thief can go into hiding indefinitely? What? :| Every stealth skill with the exception of the SUPER OBVIOUS shadow refuge is 2 seconds. 3 if you’ve spent 3 points in shadow arts. Which gimps your build in any game mode. (Except in PvE but we are not talking about PvE)
Thief has no cooldowns? Wtf?

Guys most of you are oblivious beyond the point of someone wasting their time answering you.

Thief doesn’t get punished for making mistakes? Oh please … thief is the most punished class for making mistakes. Yes we can teleport woooo /o/ so amazing. But so can elementalist and mesmer while having overall better defenses (distortion, blocks, tougness, counter). OH OH no, it must be the OP stealth right! RIGHT?! Well, guess what happens when a necro or ranger or mesmer or pretty much most of the classes start to CHANNEL skills on a thief. Do you give 2 kittens about whether thief goes into stealth or not? Of course you don’t. “This is how the game works”, right?

And thanks to thief being viable only in berserker amulet, it is paper.
If you can’t wait out for 2 seconds to burst down a thief, I’m sorry to inform you but…

You need to learn to play.

Thief with no utilities is a sitting duck. If you can’t beat a thief with no utilities, you are bad, and you should feel bad.

Once in stealth the thief has to find your back AND smack you, all this in 2 seconds. Hitting on the side or in the face out of stealth is bad and not as painful.

Take that into consideration before the next time you cry.

What a thief has in teleports and stealth other classes have in raw dps, cc, condi or gap closers. Learn to use those maybe? A condi build absolutely wrecks a thief. A trap condi ranger absolutely disables thief and guards a capture point.

Do discuss the fact that thief actually can’t do anything other than burst. Thief traps and venoms are bad and other classes excel at that. Think about that before complaining about nerfs. If anything, certain aspects of thief need huge boost.

Or better yet, make a thief and go ranked.

Here’s a little secret. Most backstabs can be avoided just by using swiftness. MAGIC

You can have all nerfs for thieves all you want…. If thieves get same survival as other classes… aka HP pool of 28K, endure pain, team heals etc. tnks

- can thief sit on point? no
- can’t thief rez other players while being cleaved? no
- can thief stomp? rarely if enemy team is not dumb
- can thief win most 1v1? given same amount of skill and current meta – no
- does thief have amazing condi removal besides being forced into LR which kills thief more than helps? compared to other classes no
- does thief have load of CC that they can chain? not really… you may argue head shot is good but extremely short duration daze that works only if you actually interruped something is hardly CC compared to what CC chain engi for example can pull
- do thieves have amazing range to pew pew ppl from across the map? no
… the list of what thieves can’t do is actually long

Thieves can choose only stealth or exclusively evades, not both for survival…. and stealth is anything but invulneravbility, you can still can die in it pretty quick; not to mention anything 90% of the skills that gives stealth are interruptable and can’t be used while being CCd

Combat wise thieves are anything but amazing actually; only real reason why thieves are still in meta and tourneys is their moblity… really just take it away and class will be obsolete.

Also crying that thieves push other zerkers out is absolute crap pulled out of certain place:
- medi guards are by far stronger in fights
-mesmers just have as good chance to nuke thief
- same goes for about any zerker build out there

Reason why people don’t play those builds is because only pvp mode we had so far was conquest which requires you to sit on point and zerkers just happend to be not that great at it…. think about it, take a thief, defending point vs zerker ranger pew pewing from across the map → thief is dead; take a shoutbow war → he will just laugh at ranger.

Oh and btw, backstab is worthless most of the time because of
- stealth requirement that either takes a lot of ini or long CD
- those skills are actually interruptable leaving you defenseless
- have to be behind target
- has to crit actually
- have to go in melee thus probably taking a lot of dmg as well due to massive aoe spam that is current gw2 pvp
- probably will miss anyway due to abudance of blinds/blocks/invuls
- even if you land it it will be probably measy 3k because of perma prot

Backstab is not killing you, it is sigils and AA actually.

As far as chill affecting ini goes, there is huge thread about it and it was stated already, if chill did affect ini, then thieves would need at 2 ini bars for each weapon slot because ini is global resource and denying ini for thieves is like putting all spells on CDs w/o using them for other classes.

3s reveal on block would just make medi guards even stronger vs thieves and as far as i know they are hardest counter in entire game, i don’t think they need any more help there.

Same goes for 1 sec reveal.

I think d/p thief is fine and the only thing it needs is maybe the reveal upon leaving stealth (it happened during that bug, and aside from shadow refuge, was completely fine)

However, is no one bothered by the fact that s/d sword #2 can go through LoS? That is really the only thing about thieves that bothers me in general. s/d spam evades plus safety of porting to you and back while you can’t even LoS them is extremely frustrating. I know that s/d isn’t as good as d/p in meta atm, but it just feels wrong they can do that and ignore LoS in so many spots because the port seems to work through the same pathing as LB port and shadowstep

Madisonlee.9641:

I think d/p thief is fine and the only thing it needs is maybe the reveal upon leaving stealth (it happened during that bug, and aside from shadow refuge, was completely fine)

However, is no one bothered by the fact that s/d sword #2 can go through LoS? That is really the only thing about thieves that bothers me in general. s/d spam evades plus safety of porting to you and back while you can’t even LoS them is extremely frustrating. I know that s/d isn’t as good as d/p in meta atm, but it just feels wrong they can do that and ignore LoS in so many spots because the port seems to work through the same pathing as LB port and shadowstep

then other classes shouldn’t be able to receive heals or use other blocks upon using heal or block… sounds fair~

Also the other thing that is a bit problematic about thieves is that they shape the meta; I think every class and spec revolve around what can survive a thief sneaking up on you; its not that d/p thief for example does -so- much more damage than say a shatter mes or lb ranger, it’s that they do it when you aren’t expecting it because of stealth. So naturally most zerker specs have been pushed out of meta, as you can see with whats happening to shatter mes because of thief. The only other prominant zerker is medi guard….the only one that annihilates thieves

I love playing thief but I think it’s a bit unhealthy that they single handedly shape the meta

Cynz.9437:

then other classes shouldn’t be able to receive heals or use other blocks upon using heal or block… sounds fair~

I don’t think the reveal is necessary, but those suggestions are stupid comparisons lol

Madisonlee.9641:

Also the other thing that is a bit problematic about thieves is that they shape the meta; I think every class and spec revolve around what can survive a thief sneaking up on you; its not that d/p thief for example does -so- much more damage than say a shatter mes or lb ranger, it’s that they do it when you aren’t expecting it because of stealth. So naturally most zerker specs have been pushed out of meta, as you can see with whats happening to shatter mes because of thief. The only other prominant zerker is medi guard….the only one that annihilates thieves

I love playing thief but I think it’s a bit unhealthy that they single handedly shape the meta

frosty would disagree with you, he nukes most thieves on his mesmers~
how is reavealed upon leaving stealth is fine? did you even think about pve for a sec?

ravenmoon^
please give us a more biased opinion.

shadow shot has no cooldown, it costs initiative yes but you can use it right again
shadow shot – enemy teleports away to kite – shadow shot, see why it’s unbalanced? you make a utility teleport that is usually on a 35-40s cooldown useless.

stealth by leap is 3+1 not 2+1…

and yes, thief has no actual cooldowns on the weaponskills, cooldowns here mean that you need to time when you want to use a specific skill, not that you need initiative. so what does that actually mean? on a fresh air ele you have a blind on a 8s cooldown and a daze on a 25s cooldown. need your daze? use it, then you can’t use it for another 25 seconds.
on thief you use your daze and if you need it just a second after again you can use it without having to wait any single second, see the difference?

thief gets punished the least for making mistakes out of all the dps classes (excluding medi guard because of the heals). you miss a skill? no problem because it doesn’t go on a long cooldown and even if you want to take initiative as a cooldown the cost of skills is usually not higher than 5-6 seconds worth of initiative.

thief is both viable as berserk and also as condition with the only difference that the condition thief needs more stealth and is therefore not desired in a game mode that makes stealth capping impossible. i saw plenty of condi thieves in stronghold and they seemed to work out very well.

what kind of argument is this? every class without utility skills is a sitting duck. but not every class can go in stealth without utilities.

landing a backstab is not as hard as you wanna make it sound, in fact the areas that trigger the “back” of backstab apply to more angles than the “not back” part…

so you wanna say that thief doesn’t have damage and gap closers? and condi builds generally wreck all berserk builds, i have yet to come across a build that has enough condi cleanse to “yolo” something like a condi engi or condi ranger.

as if 50% of the other classes’ utility skills were not completely useless or niche.
think about it before complaining. thief doesn’t need “huge boosts” at all, thief needs to get finally balanced by either putting it down to the level of other roamers or by powercreeping them up to the level of thieves.

more than 2 years and the excuses why thieves are oh so fragile are still the same while the problems that this class brings are also still the same.

Cynz.9437:

frosty would disagree with you, he nukes most thieves on his mesmers~
how is reavealed upon leaving stealth is fine? did you even think about pve for a sec?

I told you it’s unnecessary, I was just throwing it out there ( as when I played d/p through that reveal bug, it literally had -no- effect on me whatsoever lol aside from the broken SR)

And I never said thief was destroying zerkers 1v1, I said they are sneaking up on low armor zerk specs and destroying them whilst they are mid fight. Essentially a thief’s job isn’t to 1v1, it’s to sneak up on people with ports and stealth and pick them off.

So yes, many mes, rangers, wars, etc who play zerk can 1v1 a thief. That doesn’t change the fact that they shape the meta.

Madisonlee.9641:

Cynz.9437:

frosty would disagree with you, he nukes most thieves on his mesmers~
how is reavealed upon leaving stealth is fine? did you even think about pve for a sec?

I told you it’s unnecessary, I was just throwing it out there ( as when I played d/p through that reveal bug, it literally had -no- effect on me whatsoever lol aside from the broken SR)

And I never said thief was destroying zerkers 1v1, I said they are sneaking up on low armor zerk specs and destroying them whilst they are mid fight. Essentially a thief’s job isn’t to 1v1, it’s to sneak up on people with ports and stealth and pick them off.

So yes, many mes, rangers, wars, etc who play zerk can 1v1 a thief. That doesn’t change the fact that they shape the meta.

conquest shapes the meta not thieves; give stronghold some time and you will see change in meta

revealed bug was huge in pve/wvw…. you can’t just ignore other parts of the game

@Jekkt.6045:
- you are welcome to spam shadow shot all you want, but i think after 3-4 uses you will be sitting at empty bar unable to use anything (including stealth) but AA for a while… it is not like using shadow shot costs nothing and ini costs are low

- also depends where you teleport; shadow shot like any other thief weapon has 900 range and can be actually LoSd… classes that have teleport utility on 30+ sec have different ways of surival than thieves, if those classes indeed had short CDs on port they would have to take huge hit to survival… you can’t just compare 1 spell from prof A to prof B

- eles also have 4 spell bars, thieves lock themslf out of any spells automatically the moment they used initiative; do eles lock themself out of phoenix by using water? not really…. once again eles work differently, you can’t just take 1 spell from one class and compare it to other…. how about ele heals? how about invul? you know i could do exactly same thing: omg thieves are so weak eles have invul and thieves don’t!!!!!

- as far as using same skills repeatly, if you think about most thief weapon skills by themself are not THAT strong actually for that very reason; you have to combine them to make them effective hence why “spamming” in some sense is necessary… and once again “spamming” same skill punishes thief at the same time denying them other skills; it is not like they are not taking any risk by using head shot twice in a row

- once again missing skills and spamming locks you out of other skills which are often essential for survival…. cool i just spammed shadow shot 3 times in a row and now i can’t stealth and w/o utilities i am dead… how is it not punishing?

- many classes can run zerker, condis and bunker at that… (see wars) so what? how is it relevant to thieves being strong or not?

- other classes don’t have to go in stealth … you forget about HP pools, about passive heals and traits (see auto endure pain), F1-F4 skills??? wepon skills that give them blocks?? let’s just ignore those for the sake of argument?

- if you think backstab is not hard to land in mid of team fight on moving target and actually hit fo decent amount… you are my guest to show me how it is done…. the reality is, you will be spending most of the match in downstate if you actually tried to do it vs any decent team

- as far as i know thief can’t “yolo” condi ranger or condi engi… unless those are afk

- oh yeah utilities… let’s talk about thief traps… what you didn’t know they existed??? 90% of thieves in pvp all run same utitlies (refuge, inf signet, shs) SINCE LAUNCH…. are you srsly implying that thieves got such a huge varierity as far utitlies go?

- thieves are not weak but they are not as amazing as peoplke make it sound, as i posted before only thing that secures them spot in pvp teams is their mobility due to nature of conquest… take it away and nobody would play thieves. As far as other classes go, why play zerker when i can play cele and be more effective at holding points and in team fights?

Highlie.7641:

You must be talking about EU?
there is like 10 thieves in N/a

theres like 2 rangers na
1 necros na
7 engis na
5 mesmers na
5guards na
5 wars na
6 eles na

yes there are a lot of thieves

Cynz.9437:

You can have all nerfs for thieves all you want…. If thieves get same survival as other classes… aka HP pool of 28K, endure pain, team heals etc. tnks

- can thief sit on point? no
- can’t thief rez other players while being cleaved? no
- can thief stomp? rarely if enemy team is not dumb
- can thief win most 1v1? given same amount of skill and current meta – no
- does thief have amazing condi removal besides being forced into LR which kills thief more than helps? compared to other classes no
- does thief have load of CC that they can chain? not really… you may argue head shot is good but extremely short duration daze that works only if you actually interruped something is hardly CC compared to what CC chain engi for example can pull
- do thieves have amazing range to pew pew ppl from across the map? no
… the list of what thieves can’t do is actually long

we are talking about berserker classes here, none of them have 28k hitpoints and none of them can sit on a point. other classes would gladly give up their pew pew and cc if they could get similar stuff that thieves have. and while you cry that you are “forced” into the berserker role other classes that would love to play a viable berserker build are also not able to do so.

you can even take a look at the current metabuilds and you will see how some classes/builds struggle for a place in the meta. thieves never had this problem and in fact have 2 very viable builds.

warrior – shout celestial
ele – dd celestial
ranger – delete
necro – delete
mesmer – shatter
engi – rifle celestial
thief – dp or sd
guard – medi

Cynz.9437:

conquest shapes the meta not thieves; give stronghold some time and you will see change in meta

revealed bug was huge in pve/wvw…. you can’t just ignore other parts of the game

conquest indeed shapes it’s meta, as will SH shape it’s own meta. That doesn’t mean something else can’t also shape the meta…lol..Thieves have the biggest impact on meta because the other specs and classes are basing their builds upon what can survive a thief’s surprise onslaught. basically get cele or get dead, was a quote I read somewhere; or play a medi guard lol

I find it funny that everyone is crying about stealth burst from thief, but no word about the fact mesmer can do the same and hit even harder. Thief indeed does get punished. Have you ever played a thief? Do you know how much initiative it costs to stealth and then restealth if you cannot do your burst because of blocks/invuln?

Have you ever thought about that thief is the only melee zerker specs and it doesn’t have Blurred frenzy, distortion, obsidian flesh, mistform, signet of stone…etc.?

It’s also hilarious that people say thief counters all zerker specs, but you’re okay with the fact dps guard does the same and counters thieves, too?

Anyways, fresh air, power ranger and zerker warrior are not pushed out of meta because of thieves. It’s because those specs just sucks, which is even enhanced in conquest. The only class that could complain is mesmer, which is getting buffed insanely. Maybe go to the subforums for those classes and try to suggest how to make them better so they can compete with thieves.

Btw, saying ‘’Other professions are indeed punished if they get blinded and miss their skills their skills enter cooldown’’ made my day. Time to stop using your Entangle when you’re blinded.

You will see a mesmer coming. They have 1 port on a medium CD and their stealths only last so long, have medium CDs, and are usually not wasted for sneaking up on people as they are much needed escape mechanisms.

Thieves have infinite stealth and ports until they reach their desired targets.

Laraley.7695:

I find it funny that everyone is crying about stealth burst from thief, but no word about the fact mesmer can do the same and hit even harder. Thief indeed does get punished. Have you ever played a thief? Do you know how much initiative it costs to stealth and then restealth if you cannot do your burst because of blocks/invuln?

Have you ever thought about that thief is the only melee zerker specs and it doesn’t have Blurred frenzy, distortion, obsidian flesh, mistform, signet of stone…etc.?

It’s also hilarious that people say thief counters all zerker specs, but you’re okay with the fact dps guard does the same and counters thieves, too?

Anyways, fresh air, power ranger and zerker warrior are not pushed out of meta because of thieves. It’s because those specs just sucks, which is even enhanced in conquest. The only class that could complain is mesmer, which is getting buffed insanely. Maybe go to the subforums for those classes and try to suggest how to make them better so they can compete with thieves.

Btw, saying ‘’Other professions are indeed punished if they get blinded and miss their skills their skills enter cooldown’’ made my day. Time to stop using your Entangle when you’re blinded.

stealth burst is a different topic but mesmer stealth is actually on a longer cooldown. nobody ever said that this is not unbalanced.

thief doesn’t need this stuff because
2 stun breaks (and teleports), stealth and withdraw > invuls on a 50s cooldown
oh and i see many thieves with mist form

dps guard doesn’t counter all berserk specs, in fact dps guard can easily be kited after judge’s is on cooldown. thieves already kill dps guards and will do even better after the trait changes. the only berserk specs that really gets the short end of the stick against dps guard is power necro because it’s even less mobile and very weak to cc.

i already stated why other builds are not part of the meta, because they don’t add anything useful. mesmer gets beaten by thief too but mesmer brings portal and moa.

yes if you waste your entangle because of a blind then it’s stupid.
but on thief you can be stupid with most of your skills and you still won’t get punished as hard for it.

Jekkt.6045:

ravenmoon^
please give us a more biased opinion.

shadow shot has no cooldown, it costs initiative yes but you can use it right again
shadow shot – enemy teleports away to kite – shadow shot, see why it’s unbalanced? you make a utility teleport that is usually on a 35-40s cooldown useless.

stealth by leap is 3+1 not 2+1…

and yes, thief has no actual cooldowns on the weaponskills, cooldowns here mean that you need to time when you want to use a specific skill, not that you need initiative. so what does that actually mean? on a fresh air ele you have a blind on a 8s cooldown and a daze on a 25s cooldown. need your daze? use it, then you can’t use it for another 25 seconds.
on thief you use your daze and if you need it just a second after again you can use it without having to wait any single second, see the difference?

thief gets punished the least for making mistakes out of all the dps classes (excluding medi guard because of the heals). you miss a skill? no problem because it doesn’t go on a long cooldown and even if you want to take initiative as a cooldown the cost of skills is usually not higher than 5-6 seconds worth of initiative.

thief is both viable as berserk and also as condition with the only difference that the condition thief needs more stealth and is therefore not desired in a game mode that makes stealth capping impossible. i saw plenty of condi thieves in stronghold and they seemed to work out very well.

what kind of argument is this? every class without utility skills is a sitting duck. but not every class can go in stealth without utilities.

landing a backstab is not as hard as you wanna make it sound, in fact the areas that trigger the “back” of backstab apply to more angles than the “not back” part…

so you wanna say that thief doesn’t have damage and gap closers? and condi builds generally wreck all berserk builds, i have yet to come across a build that has enough condi cleanse to “yolo” something like a condi engi or condi ranger.

as if 50% of the other classes’ utility skills were not completely useless or niche.
think about it before complaining. thief doesn’t need “huge boosts” at all, thief needs to get finally balanced by either putting it down to the level of other roamers or by powercreeping them up to the level of thieves.

more than 2 years and the excuses why thieves are oh so fragile are still the same while the problems that this class brings are also still the same.

Waste 8+ initiative (if u spam that) to come at me, and i’ll bury you. No initiative thief is bad. You should feel bad for ever suggesting spamming shadow shot is a thing. Spamming shadow shot is like spamming heartseeker. Only noobs do it and it is not a thing. Also the range is not 1200. So not that great. Its like a normal leap, not really a teleport…

If we are going to talk about ele vs thief, please shut up. Ele has 20 weapon kills that provide defense, cc, condi, damage and support, thief has 5 and initiative bar that is for both weapon sets. Fresh air gets instant cooldown refill. They also have blocks and blinds and toughness. Thief has none of that (except blind). You actively mitigate damage, thief doesn’t. If you don’t get this concept, don’t post here any further.

I play various classes, and I yet have to be intimidated by a thief. I don’t play ele because in every MMO i hate casters. They feel lame to me. Gw2 is no exception, but I have every other profession. Never picked my build with the thought of thief around. Push swiftness and wait 2 seconds….not a rocket freaking science…

Jekkt.6045:

Laraley.7695:

I find it funny that everyone is crying about stealth burst from thief, but no word about the fact mesmer can do the same and hit even harder. Thief indeed does get punished. Have you ever played a thief? Do you know how much initiative it costs to stealth and then restealth if you cannot do your burst because of blocks/invuln?

Have you ever thought about that thief is the only melee zerker specs and it doesn’t have Blurred frenzy, distortion, obsidian flesh, mistform, signet of stone…etc.?

It’s also hilarious that people say thief counters all zerker specs, but you’re okay with the fact dps guard does the same and counters thieves, too?

Anyways, fresh air, power ranger and zerker warrior are not pushed out of meta because of thieves. It’s because those specs just sucks, which is even enhanced in conquest. The only class that could complain is mesmer, which is getting buffed insanely. Maybe go to the subforums for those classes and try to suggest how to make them better so they can compete with thieves.

Btw, saying ‘’Other professions are indeed punished if they get blinded and miss their skills their skills enter cooldown’’ made my day. Time to stop using your Entangle when you’re blinded.

thief doesn’t need this stuff because
2 stun breaks (and teleports), stealth and withdraw > invuls on a 50s cooldown
oh and i see many thieves with mist form

dps guard doesn’t counter all berserk specs, in fact dps guard can easily be kited after judge’s is on cooldown. thieves already kill dps guards and will do even better after the trait changes. the only berserk specs that really gets the short end of the stick against dps guard is power necro because it’s even less mobile and very weak to cc.

All I can say to this: Well, mesmers already kill thieves and will do even better after the trait changes. It’s the completely same thing.

In that case I can say all class has an access to stealth, so stop complaining and use those runes.

Jekkt.6045:

Cynz.9437:

You can have all nerfs for thieves all you want…. If thieves get same survival as other classes… aka HP pool of 28K, endure pain, team heals etc. tnks

- can thief sit on point? no
- can’t thief rez other players while being cleaved? no
- can thief stomp? rarely if enemy team is not dumb
- can thief win most 1v1? given same amount of skill and current meta – no
- does thief have amazing condi removal besides being forced into LR which kills thief more than helps? compared to other classes no
- does thief have load of CC that they can chain? not really… you may argue head shot is good but extremely short duration daze that works only if you actually interruped something is hardly CC compared to what CC chain engi for example can pull
- do thieves have amazing range to pew pew ppl from across the map? no
… the list of what thieves can’t do is actually long

we are talking about berserker classes here, none of them have 28k hitpoints and none of them can sit on a point. other classes would gladly give up their pew pew and cc if they could get similar stuff that thieves have. and while you cry that you are “forced” into the berserker role other classes that would love to play a viable berserker build are also not able to do so.

you can even take a look at the current metabuilds and you will see how some classes/builds struggle for a place in the meta. thieves never had this problem and in fact have 2 very viable builds.

warrior – shout celestial
ele – dd celestial
ranger – delete
necro – delete
mesmer – shatter
engi – rifle celestial
thief – dp or sd
guard – medi

i am sure some thieves would like to play bunker but they just suck at it, your point?
condi thief is garbage in conquest, stop calling it viable

- wars can play zerker fine actually, cele is just better
- ele can play zerker just fine, cele is just better… at least zoose was doing more than fine on s/f glass ele when nobody played eles~
- ROM on power ranger would disagree~
- i see a lot of power necros lately, your point?
- mesmer shatter isn’t zerker?
- engi is probably only class which has not so great glass build but frankly other builds are just sooo suprior i don’t even know why bother with one; i wouldn’t play it even if thieves and mesmers didn’t exist in game

classes struggle for spot in meta because:
- it is 5v5 and we have 8 classes, someone will be left out one way or other
- conquest either reuires being extremely tanky and doinmg a lot of dmg or be extremely moblile and do a lot of dmg; some classes are just better at it hence why people choose those classes

Cynz.9437:

Jekkt.6045:

Cynz.9437:

You can have all nerfs for thieves all you want…. If thieves get same survival as other classes… aka HP pool of 28K, endure pain, team heals etc. tnks

- can thief sit on point? no
- can’t thief rez other players while being cleaved? no
- can thief stomp? rarely if enemy team is not dumb
- can thief win most 1v1? given same amount of skill and current meta – no
- does thief have amazing condi removal besides being forced into LR which kills thief more than helps? compared to other classes no
- does thief have load of CC that they can chain? not really… you may argue head shot is good but extremely short duration daze that works only if you actually interruped something is hardly CC compared to what CC chain engi for example can pull
- do thieves have amazing range to pew pew ppl from across the map? no
… the list of what thieves can’t do is actually long

we are talking about berserker classes here, none of them have 28k hitpoints and none of them can sit on a point. other classes would gladly give up their pew pew and cc if they could get similar stuff that thieves have. and while you cry that you are “forced” into the berserker role other classes that would love to play a viable berserker build are also not able to do so.

you can even take a look at the current metabuilds and you will see how some classes/builds struggle for a place in the meta. thieves never had this problem and in fact have 2 very viable builds.

warrior – shout celestial
ele – dd celestial
ranger – delete
necro – delete
mesmer – shatter
engi – rifle celestial
thief – dp or sd
guard – medi

i am sure some thieves would like to play bunker but they just suck at it, your point?
condi thief is garbage in conquest, stop calling it viable

- wars can play zerker fine actually, cele is just better
- ele can play zerker just fine, cele is just better… at least zoose was doing more than fine on s/f glass ele when nobody played eles~
- ROM on power ranger would disagree~
- i see a lot of power necros lately, your point?
- mesmer shatter isn’t zerker?
- engi is probably only class which has not so great glass build but frankly other builds are just sooo suprior i don’t even know why bother with one; i wouldn’t play it even if thieves and mesmers didn’t exist in game

classes struggle for spot in meta because:
- it is 5v5 and we have 8 classes, someone will be left out one way or other
- conquest either reuires being extremely tanky and doinmg a lot of dmg or be extremely moblile and do a lot of dmg; some classes are just better at it hence why people choose those classes

In all honesty, zerker ele, warrior, ranger…is not really fine. It’s not because playing cele is better, it’s because they’re close to being completely useless. Zoose was playing zerker ele, but I wouldn’t say he was fine. Each time someone tries to play fresh air against some decent team, they get destroyed. But it’s definitely not because of thieves, it’s because the specs is trash.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Jekkt.6045:

ravenmoon^
please give us a more biased opinion.

shadow shot has no cooldown, it costs initiative yes but you can use it right again
shadow shot – enemy teleports away to kite – shadow shot, see why it’s unbalanced? you make a utility teleport that is usually on a 35-40s cooldown useless.

stealth by leap is 3+1 not 2+1…

and yes, thief has no actual cooldowns on the weaponskills, cooldowns here mean that you need to time when you want to use a specific skill, not that you need initiative. so what does that actually mean? on a fresh air ele you have a blind on a 8s cooldown and a daze on a 25s cooldown. need your daze? use it, then you can’t use it for another 25 seconds.
on thief you use your daze and if you need it just a second after again you can use it without having to wait any single second, see the difference?

thief gets punished the least for making mistakes out of all the dps classes (excluding medi guard because of the heals). you miss a skill? no problem because it doesn’t go on a long cooldown and even if you want to take initiative as a cooldown the cost of skills is usually not higher than 5-6 seconds worth of initiative.

thief is both viable as berserk and also as condition with the only difference that the condition thief needs more stealth and is therefore not desired in a game mode that makes stealth capping impossible. i saw plenty of condi thieves in stronghold and they seemed to work out very well.

what kind of argument is this? every class without utility skills is a sitting duck. but not every class can go in stealth without utilities.

landing a backstab is not as hard as you wanna make it sound, in fact the areas that trigger the “back” of backstab apply to more angles than the “not back” part…

so you wanna say that thief doesn’t have damage and gap closers? and condi builds generally wreck all berserk builds, i have yet to come across a build that has enough condi cleanse to “yolo” something like a condi engi or condi ranger.

as if 50% of the other classes’ utility skills were not completely useless or niche.
think about it before complaining. thief doesn’t need “huge boosts” at all, thief needs to get finally balanced by either putting it down to the level of other roamers or by powercreeping them up to the level of thieves.

more than 2 years and the excuses why thieves are oh so fragile are still the same while the problems that this class brings are also still the same.

Waste 8+ initiative (if u spam that) to come at me, and i’ll bury you. No initiative thief is bad. You should feel bad for ever suggesting spamming shadow shot is a thing. Spamming shadow shot is like spamming heartseeker. Only noobs do it and it is not a thing. Also the range is not 1200. So not that great. Its like a normal leap, not really a teleport…

If we are going to talk about ele vs thief, please shut up. Ele has 20 weapon kills that provide defense, cc, condi, damage and support, thief has 5 and initiative bar that is for both weapon sets. Fresh air gets instant cooldown refill. They also have blocks and blinds and toughness. Thief has none of that (except blind). You actively mitigate damage, thief doesn’t. If you don’t get this concept, don’t post here any further.

I play various classes, and I yet have to be intimidated by a thief. I don’t play ele because in every MMO i hate casters. They feel lame to me. Gw2 is no exception, but I have every other profession. Never picked my build with the thought of thief around. Push swiftness and wait 2 seconds….not a rocket freaking science…

i see, discussing something with you really makes no sense after all.

Laraley.7695:

Cynz.9437:

Jekkt.6045:

Cynz.9437:

You can have all nerfs for thieves all you want…. If thieves get same survival as other classes… aka HP pool of 28K, endure pain, team heals etc. tnks

- can thief sit on point? no
- can’t thief rez other players while being cleaved? no
- can thief stomp? rarely if enemy team is not dumb
- can thief win most 1v1? given same amount of skill and current meta – no
- does thief have amazing condi removal besides being forced into LR which kills thief more than helps? compared to other classes no
- does thief have load of CC that they can chain? not really… you may argue head shot is good but extremely short duration daze that works only if you actually interruped something is hardly CC compared to what CC chain engi for example can pull
- do thieves have amazing range to pew pew ppl from across the map? no
… the list of what thieves can’t do is actually long

we are talking about berserker classes here, none of them have 28k hitpoints and none of them can sit on a point. other classes would gladly give up their pew pew and cc if they could get similar stuff that thieves have. and while you cry that you are “forced” into the berserker role other classes that would love to play a viable berserker build are also not able to do so.

you can even take a look at the current metabuilds and you will see how some classes/builds struggle for a place in the meta. thieves never had this problem and in fact have 2 very viable builds.

warrior – shout celestial
ele – dd celestial
ranger – delete
necro – delete
mesmer – shatter
engi – rifle celestial
thief – dp or sd
guard – medi

i am sure some thieves would like to play bunker but they just suck at it, your point?
condi thief is garbage in conquest, stop calling it viable

- wars can play zerker fine actually, cele is just better
- ele can play zerker just fine, cele is just better… at least zoose was doing more than fine on s/f glass ele when nobody played eles~
- ROM on power ranger would disagree~
- i see a lot of power necros lately, your point?
- mesmer shatter isn’t zerker?
- engi is probably only class which has not so great glass build but frankly other builds are just sooo suprior i don’t even know why bother with one; i wouldn’t play it even if thieves and mesmers didn’t exist in game

classes struggle for spot in meta because:
- it is 5v5 and we have 8 classes, someone will be left out one way or other
- conquest either reuires being extremely tanky and doinmg a lot of dmg or be extremely moblile and do a lot of dmg; some classes are just better at it hence why people choose those classes

In all honesty, zerker ele, warrior, ranger…is not really fine. It’s not because playing cele is better, it’s because they’re close to being completely useless. Zoose was playing zerker ele, but I wouldn’t say he was fine. Each time someone tries to play fresh air against some decent team, they get destroyed. But it’s definitely not because of thieves, it’s because the specs is trash.

indeed, i don’t disagree here. fresh air doesn’t add anything useful for your team, you need babysitting all the time, you dont bring much utility other than swirling winds and you need to play it with a 150% effort while other builds don’t even have to invest 50% to do as good. thief is not the only culprit, that’s not what i’m trying to say, it’s just a part of the problem.

Jekkt.6045:

Laraley.7695:

Cynz.9437:

Jekkt.6045:

Cynz.9437:

You can have all nerfs for thieves all you want…. If thieves get same survival as other classes… aka HP pool of 28K, endure pain, team heals etc. tnks

- can thief sit on point? no
- can’t thief rez other players while being cleaved? no
- can thief stomp? rarely if enemy team is not dumb
- can thief win most 1v1? given same amount of skill and current meta – no
- does thief have amazing condi removal besides being forced into LR which kills thief more than helps? compared to other classes no
- does thief have load of CC that they can chain? not really… you may argue head shot is good but extremely short duration daze that works only if you actually interruped something is hardly CC compared to what CC chain engi for example can pull
- do thieves have amazing range to pew pew ppl from across the map? no
… the list of what thieves can’t do is actually long

we are talking about berserker classes here, none of them have 28k hitpoints and none of them can sit on a point. other classes would gladly give up their pew pew and cc if they could get similar stuff that thieves have. and while you cry that you are “forced” into the berserker role other classes that would love to play a viable berserker build are also not able to do so.

you can even take a look at the current metabuilds and you will see how some classes/builds struggle for a place in the meta. thieves never had this problem and in fact have 2 very viable builds.

warrior – shout celestial
ele – dd celestial
ranger – delete
necro – delete
mesmer – shatter
engi – rifle celestial
thief – dp or sd
guard – medi

i am sure some thieves would like to play bunker but they just suck at it, your point?
condi thief is garbage in conquest, stop calling it viable

- wars can play zerker fine actually, cele is just better
- ele can play zerker just fine, cele is just better… at least zoose was doing more than fine on s/f glass ele when nobody played eles~
- ROM on power ranger would disagree~
- i see a lot of power necros lately, your point?
- mesmer shatter isn’t zerker?
- engi is probably only class which has not so great glass build but frankly other builds are just sooo suprior i don’t even know why bother with one; i wouldn’t play it even if thieves and mesmers didn’t exist in game

classes struggle for spot in meta because:
- it is 5v5 and we have 8 classes, someone will be left out one way or other
- conquest either reuires being extremely tanky and doinmg a lot of dmg or be extremely moblile and do a lot of dmg; some classes are just better at it hence why people choose those classes

In all honesty, zerker ele, warrior, ranger…is not really fine. It’s not because playing cele is better, it’s because they’re close to being completely useless. Zoose was playing zerker ele, but I wouldn’t say he was fine. Each time someone tries to play fresh air against some decent team, they get destroyed. But it’s definitely not because of thieves, it’s because the specs is trash.

indeed, i don’t disagree here. fresh air doesn’t add anything useful for your team, you need babysitting all the time, you dont bring much utility other than swirling winds and you need to play it with a 150% effort while other builds don’t even have to invest 50% to do as good. thief is not the only culprit, that’s not what i’m trying to say, it’s just a part of the problem.

I don’t think thief is the part of the problem honestly. I feel like people blame the spec because it’s been constantly in the meta. For conquest, it’s one of the best things you can take as a dps spec, it offers so much to the team. But if you think about it, it’s not like the spec is easy to play, completely the opposite. Mastering a thief takes time and effort and till you do that, you’re just a liability for your team. I don’t think crying for nerfs is the solution, though because there is nothing wrong with thief essentialy, just the fact it’s good against zerker specs.

I believe people should start seeing differently and ask for appropriate buffs to classes that have issues to even get into meta. As you said, those classes have nothing to offer to the team. Would they be picked up if thief didn’t exist? Probably not. It would most likely end up mesmers taking the spot and the issue would still remain. Teams don’t even have to choose what to use now, because all these specs are just bad and utterly useless.

i know, that’s why i said in my first post after i listed the possible nerfs for thieves that it would actually be better (and make more players happy) and more interesting to bring other builds to thief’s level instead of trying to nerf the thief and breaking the class in the process.

at the moment it’s this: again, shatter mesmer gets beaten by thief but is still taken because of the utility. but! other classes don’t have utility so why even take them?

even if they would beat thief (hello pu condi mesmer, signet ele, mace sword carrion warrior) would not be taken because they are useless in other situations and basically just stupid 1v1 builds.

what arenanet needs to do is make those builds, preferably berserk builds for celestial classes and celestial builds for berserk classes (or even cleric and rabid/carrion) appealing for a team. condi spirit or survival ranger might be strong in a 1v1 situation but is close to useless in a teamfight (the same applies to power ranger).

classes need distinct mechanics that add something to the whole picture. this is also the reason why they’re ruining d/d ele atm because they remove what’s appealing for the team.

it’s really really hard, i have to admit that and it would certainly take me a long time to figure something out for all the classes that would make them desireable in a 5 man team.

Uhg all your arguing is pointless, no amount of buffing or nerfing classes is going to change anything.

The -only- reason why thief has a huge impact on meta and forces other classes to spec with thieves specifically in mind is because they stealth and port endlessly and that gives them the benefit of catching people off guard mid fight and ganking them off 1 by 1.

Mesmer somewhat also causes this issue but you usually see them coming and hence the opponent can prepare accordingly for counterplay so it isn’t as big of an issue.

It should be glaringly obvious that currently all successful meta specs are ones that can’t easily be picked off by a thief surprise stabbing them in the butt.

1v1 thief is perfectly fine. Problem is when you are say a zerker necro/ele/ranger/mes/ whatever pewpewing in your safe positioning and suddenly kahblam you’re dead from the theif that just snuck up on you and you might not have full health with CDs ready to fend him off.

This problem will probably always exist if the stealth mechanic itself exists.

you name the solution yourself: builds that can’t easily be picked off by a thief surprising them.

and i will say it again, even if thief kills you, as long as you bring enough utility to the team that makes you worth babysitting you can still be viable. if you’re useless and a liability nobody will want you.

and you’re basically dead against everything that comes after you when your stuff is on cooldown.

If it were up to me stealth on any class should never have been implemented and thief should of been given some other playstyle.

Stealth poisons competitive PVP in ever MMO I’ve played. (and I play both stealth and non stealth classes, no bias here)

But removing it isn’t an option. And I haven’t thought of any good ways to solve the problem. Nerfing thieves certainly isn’t the answer. I would think just eliminating stealth stacking and make thief stealth similar to mesmers would help immensely. Also fix the kitten s/d ignoring of LoS sword #2

If they change stealth in any way make it the same for all classes not only thief. It was said before and I think that this is a good fix for the situation:
Make stealth break and apply revealed on miss/blind/block. If someone predicts your stealthed attack that person should get rewarded for it and spamming attacks mindlessly in stealth till something hits really should get punished.

Madisonlee.9641:

If it were up to me stealth on any class should never have been implemented and thief should of been given some other playstyle.

i even said this back when i played thief mainly. instead of stealth they should have given the thief an f2 skill that activates the old assassin stance “flashing blades”:

Elite Stance. (5…25…30 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block while attacking. Block effect: 5…17…20 damage to your attacker. a couple of seconds without the damage part baseline but traitable. could even give him stuff like alacrity when using this.

smoke bomb could have been a smoke field that damages on use and shadow refuge could have been a field that gives you boons when you stand in it, like condi cleanse, regen, protection and stability.

“Punish thieves on block / blind / invuln” because being able to block / invuln for the entire duration of thief stealth heal, stealth on steal, used stolen item stealth isn’t enough … thieves obviously need to be forced out of stealth either by duration or reveal due to your mechanic suggestion that way they will be utterly useless and destroyable by even mediocre players running some Cele build and then the majority of players will be happy, wink wink nudge nudge.

If we’re going to add more nerfs to thieves, then how about chewing on this … imagine a thief with the ability to go invulnerable for a few seconds to compensate for their forced reveals instead of only asking for nerfs? Or how about a thief with the ability to perma block? How about both!? Imagine a thief with the ability to truly mitigate damage instead of simply stealth and repositioning, because unlike this thread seems to suggest, stealth is not god mode.

All I really see in this thread is players whining and asking for fixes that would do nothing but make thieves the easiest to kill garbage in the game instead of actually gaining some skill themselves or even learning to play thief and seeing for themselves how “OP” it is. Because obviously, if a class can beat you, then it’s OP because you’re of course the most amazingly pro PvP players of all time that there ever was and that shouldn’t ever happen!

Seriously, lrn2play issues all over. Asking for reveal on stealth running out AND reveal on block / blind / invuln should they backstab and do nothing to you? You can literally wait out a good bit of thief stealth with invulnerability / block / whatnot else. I love how people mention “thieves just wait in stealth until CD’s reset blahblahblah” but … fail to fairly mention that their own CD’s are recharging as well, I guess the people who claim that either don’t use their own skills at all, or somehow thieves being in stealth freezes time itself for the other player and their skills stop recharging while only the thief gets CD recharge.

How about a thief using Shadow Arts in conquest to heal up & keep you in combat? Chances are you were actually beating it down and it hid and has to heal for a long time if not just run away and reset or just leave entirely, while you happily sit on point and the thief is doing nothing for it’s team while just hiding in stealth. Just because the thief didn’t die doesn’t mean it’s unbeatable, it just means it escaped before it did and would have died because they are mobile, it’s what they do, otherwise they really would be trash.

But obviously it needs more counter play beyond the nerfs to reveal and thief traits already, not to mention the fact some classes can force reveal on the thief which ultimately means that thief is most likely dead anyway. (Also, I haven’t seen anyone calling out thieves as OP mention that at all, but then again I can only stomach so many tears, so I didn’t read this entire thread thoroughly.)

But no, there’s obviously not enough counter play to stealth … for players who are full of themselves whilst they aren’t actually that good at this game. These threads will pretty much forever exist, beyond just thief / stealth issues.

tbh most of the thief pov posts are always so extremely bad and try to make them look like the biggest victims of all the classes…

remove stealth from weaponskills and you can get your invul right away, other classes have invuls aswell and nobody ever complains about it.

so you call s/d random dodging something else than actively mitigating damage?

obviously against thieves it’s always l2p because every thief is a pro mlg hero

yeah and now compare your cooldowns to other classes’ cooldowns, withdraw on a 15s cooldown and when other classes go invul for 4-5 seconds they have a 50-70 seconds cooldown on it.

the best one is this one though:

How about a thief using Shadow Arts in conquest to heal up & keep you in combat? Chances are you were actually beating it down and it hid and has to heal for a long time if not just run away and reset or just leave entirely

try and do that on a necro and you’ll see how fast this living punching bag is and how well he can disengage or reset a fight. oh and a dead necro can’t do anything for his team either.

stealth might not be god mode but stealth + mobility is definitely better than the majority of other class mechanics.

Stealth should be capped to 5 secs even as a group stealth . Because logically speaking stealth does have counter play if its a short duration stealth , you can use some cooldowns and be prepared, but if the thief or the stealthed group just waits and spikes you down from a mile away because of infinite stealth then I see no counterplay. Same for 1v1 when thief uses refuge. And I main thief so not biased, perma stealth has always been stupid in this game and it even ruins the thief v thief 1v1. That’s why I never do wvw , because I know other thieves will just sit in stealth for a century until they heal back up and try again.
Basically long stealth duration its what dosent have any counter play. Short stealth duration is balanced that’s why nobody QQ about mesmers except lordsicky.

Jekkt.6045:

#1: please give us a more biased opinion.

#2: thief gets punished the least for making mistakes out of all the dps classes.

#3: you miss a skill? no problem because it doesn’t go on a long cooldown and even if you want to take initiative as a cooldown the cost of skills is usually not higher than 5-6 seconds worth of initiative.

#4: on thief you use your daze and if you need it just a second after again you can use it without having to wait any single second, see the difference?
.

#1: you did right now. hint: your post shows enormous baised factors good Sir! pls face the fact. also make sure if you want to make kittenefull suggestion you shoud at least master the spec you are talking about.

#2: i cant really see why some people think thisway. all thieves got MELLE bursts so, if you want to do decent damage you need melle range, which doesnt allow any mistakes with a grassy class.

#3: you shoud never see initiative as cooldown becouse it isnt. its much more like ‘mana’ in other MMOs which is required to cast abilitys. luckyly other classes dont have to bother with mana meenagement couse theyr skills run without it, the ones of the thif got do not. even in other games if you dont use your mana wisely you gonna be drained out and find yourself dead in a second (much reference to bad GW1 monks etc..). still think that missing skills does not hurt thieves?

#4: 4 + 4 = 8 | 15 – 8 = 7 < 6 + 3 (by 2) so this means thief cant even fkln try to OP!!!!ASDASD stealth for 2 seconds considering he was on full initiative beforhand (which is really unlikely). here is a totally awesome moment for you to kill him/force big cooldowns

E: cheers && have a fun day

glock.6590:

Stealth should be capped to 5 secs even as a group stealth . Because logically speaking stealth does have counter play if its a short duration stealth , you can use some cooldowns and be prepared, but if the thief or the stealthed group just waits and spikes you down from a mile away because of infinite stealth then I see no counterplay. Same for 1v1 when thief uses refuge. And I main thief so not biased, perma stealth has always been stupid in this game and it even ruins the thief v thief 1v1. That’s why I never do wvw , because I know other thieves will just sit in stealth for a century until they heal back up and try again.
Basically long stealth duration its what dosent have any counter play. Short stealth duration is balanced that’s why nobody QQ about mesmers except lordsicky.

thank you for your honest opinion without a “l2p” attitude.

i can agree on shadow ref. the biggest problem with it is that while the thief sits in stealth you do not know when he is coming at you during those 15 seconds. on some classes you can pop aegis or run away or go in stealth too, but not everybody can do that.

reducing shadow refuge to a 6s stealth with 2 pulses, 3s per pulse, and no reveal when you get kicked out of it anymore would be fair if you ask me.

arenanet reducing stealth duration is not gonna happen though, take a look at the new prismatic understanding, it will double the duration of all mesmer stealth skills

Thief is not the weakest class. Thief has aces against any other berserker player, but they are by far not OP or kitten like most of you try to put.

Endless teleports? Please … blow initiative and utilities to teleport around and you are sitting duck. What can you do with low initiative and utilities in reuse? Absolutely nothing, that’s what you can do. Pray for your passive traits to trigger on time. That’s all you can do

And please, the guy above that played thief 2 years ago. You do realize the fact that thief has been nerfed almost exclusively on every patch every since. Did this thought ever cross your mind? When was the last time you saw pistol whip thief owning everything in 2 attacks? The player skill bar in thief is super high. A single mistake can get you killed. Don’t twist it around because it is a fact. The thief has no blocks so if they kitten up and you know how to press anything other than auto attack, you win.

Also your last post clearly show how bad you are. There is a window in flanking strike animation where you can absolutely destroy the thief. And the thief can do nothing about that.

Again, learn to counter it and wait it out.

I love fighting S/D thieves. You just have to bait them spam #3 like losers and soon after they are sitting ducks because guess what. No initiative. It is vital to thief’s survival. More so than heals to be honest.

Also there will always be a class that runs faster than the others. Take that away and warriors or mesmers will happily take that spot. Would you complain about them then? Or you’ll chill when everybody moves like a turtle and they remove dodging, because clearly dodging speeds you up for a second, thus unfair …

MadVisions.4529:

Jekkt.6045:

#1: please give us a more biased opinion.

#2: thief gets punished the least for making mistakes out of all the dps classes.

#3: you miss a skill? no problem because it doesn’t go on a long cooldown and even if you want to take initiative as a cooldown the cost of skills is usually not higher than 5-6 seconds worth of initiative.

#4: on thief you use your daze and if you need it just a second after again you can use it without having to wait any single second, see the difference?
.

#1: you did right now. hint: your post shows enormous baised factors good Sir! pls face the fact. also make sure if you want to make kittenefull suggestion you shoud at least master the spec you are talking about.

#2: i cant really see why some people think thisway. all thieves got MELLE bursts so, if you want to do decent damage you need melle range, which doesnt allow any mistakes with a grassy class.

#3: you shoud never see initiative as cooldown becouse it isnt. its much more like ‘mana’ in other MMOs which is required to cast abilitys. luckyly other classes dont have to bother with mana meenagement couse theyr skills run without it, the ones of the thif got do not. even in other games if you dont use your mana wisely you gonna be drained out and find yourself dead in a second (much reference to bad GW1 monks etc..). still think that missing skills does not hurt thieves?

#4: 4 + 4 = 8 | 15 – 8 = 7 < 6 + 3 (by 2) so this means thief cant even fkln try to OP!!!!ASDASD stealth for 2 seconds considering he was on full initiative beforhand (which is really unlikely). here is a totally awesome moment for you to kill him/force big cooldowns

E: cheers && have a fun day

1. i might have a rude tone in my posts but i always give objective feedback when it comes to balance. i also have 1200 played matches on my thief with 1700 played hours on it, i’m not a random kid raging because i lose against thieves, even less because i play d/d ele as my main so i will not lose against thieves in 99% of the cases.

2. many classes have their burst in melee range but if they mess up they can’t run away as well. that’s a big deal for a dps class.

3. i said missing skills on a thief won’t hurt as much as on other classes and you have to manage your cooldowns on every class and with every build. if you spam all your stuff off cooldown you might come into a situation where you would have needed skill X to blind/escape/whatever but sadly it’s still 20 more seconds on cooldown. on thief this is by far not as punishing, again i’m not saying that it is not punishing at all.

4. when people are going for skills like consume conditions or banner they will already be in a defensive position so it is highly unlikely that they just decide to go for you, and even if they do your team will still be able to protect you or you might still have a shadow step or withdraw up. good thieves will also keep their steal for such situations, wether you interrupt somebody with headshot you can get 3 initiative from steal back or you interrupt with steal and you won’t have to use any initiative at all.

cheers and have a fun day too.

D/D eles are the first to die on an S/D thief xD I suppose you really are crying

P.S: Also, shadow shot is blockable skill, so is headshot. And they cost initiative nonetheless. Don’t twist it around. If you block Cloak & Dagger, the thief does not stealth. Boom, there goes 6 initiative.

Also with all the AoE that goes around in Gw2 sPvP nowadays, going melee is extremely difficult. So most thieves run capture points and leave the fighting to the classes with 20k+ HP. The good ones at least.

Thief is not meant to be hit…do y’all plan to add a visible(lol) invulnerability that is as frequent as stealth and what of evades(lol)? I’ll riot if that happens before necro gets proper scaling defense. Those “nerf” suggestions don’t apply to every/usual scenerios O.o .

nerf stealth and everyone will play perma evade…. don’t see how it fixes anything~
nerf evades, everyone will jump on mesmer….
nerf mesmer, everyone will jump on guardian….

why not just delete all classes, make new one with 2 skills: one attack and other block
yay balance~

how is missing skill is not punishing thief? if i don’t blind earthshake, i am dead
if i don’t blind lich, i am dead
if i don’t interrupt ele dragon breath, i am dead
thieves don’t have luxery to take beating as much as other classes do hence why they have stealth or evades…
not to mention the wasted initiative…. if any other class misses their spell, they still have other they can use… if thief misses and runs out of ini he can’t use ANYTHING….

also amount of games played on thief is not really saying much, you could have farmed skyhammer…. try to fight top teams on a thief w/o using same spell twice and w/o using stealth and then tell me how it went for you

Ravenmoon.5318:

Thief is not the weakest class. Thief has aces against any other berserker player, but they are by far not OP or kitten like most of you try to put.

Endless teleports? Please … blow initiative and utilities to teleport around and you are sitting duck. What can you do with low initiative and utilities in reuse? Absolutely nothing, that’s what you can do. Pray for your passive traits to trigger on time. That’s all you can do

And please, the guy above that played thief 2 years ago. You do realize the fact that thief has been nerfed almost exclusively on every patch every since. Did this thought ever cross your mind? When was the last time you saw pistol whip thief owning everything in 2 attacks? The player skill bar in thief is super high. A single mistake can get you killed. Don’t twist it around because it is a fact. The thief has no blocks so if they kitten up and you know how to press anything other than auto attack, you win.

Also your last post clearly show how bad you are. There is a window in flanking strike animation where you can absolutely destroy the thief. And the thief can do nothing about that.

Again, learn to counter it and wait it out.

I love fighting S/D thieves. You just have to bait them spam #3 like losers and soon after they are sitting ducks because guess what. No initiative. It is vital to thief’s survival. More so than heals to be honest.

Also there will always be a class that runs faster than the others. Take that away and warriors or mesmers will happily take that spot. Would you complain about them then? Or you’ll chill when everybody moves like a turtle and they remove dodging, because clearly dodging speeds you up for a second, thus unfair …

i still played my thief when pistol whip was in use before it got nerfed. by that time i was already multiclassing though.
it’s the fact that you can use the same skill multiple times if you need it whenever you want it. obviously it’s not gonna help you in any way if you just blow all your initiative on a skill spam.

try playing an s/d thief using flanking strike only every 15 seconds and you will see what i mean. many s/d thieves don’t even use their 4 or 5 skill on that weaponset (this is anet’s fault because those skills, especially dancing dagger, suck).

why do you think pistol whip was nerfed in the first place? because people just spammed it and still did fine. after the pistol whip nerf thief has not been nerfed anymore as far as i know but even got buffed with air/fire sigils (this is accessable for every class though but increases the damage of a fully defensice s/d by a lot and is very good on the fast dagger auto attacks) and even got buffed with panic strike.

the skill floor on thief is very low, you can totally suck on it and still deal a decent amount of damage, similar to how power ranger and medi guard work. the survivability is a different thing but even then thief has many get-out-of-jain cards. and a single mistake can kill many dps classes, not only the thief.

and why do you even come with stuff like “bad thieves spamming this and that”? what do i care about bad players? it’s not them that make it strong but the good ones.
it’s the same for bad shoutbows, bad rifle engis and bad d/d eles, why would you balance around the bad ones.