Guild Wars 2

IMPORTANT*** : This thread is a very, very long rant to A-net where I explain in detail my reasons for how thieves are not overpowered. Reading it will take some time but you can always skim through it and go straight to the “solutions” at the end. But I would appreciate it if you could read it all so you can better understand my reasoning… and well I did put a lot of effort and time into assembling this.

So I have been playing on an 80 lvl thief for a long time. From since I can remember there have always been players complaining about how much OP thieves are. I would like to take a stand and talk about this matter as well as the extreme hypocrisy displayed by most of the other professions who claim to be “balanced”.

THIEF: I’d like to start with the thief and say that thieves are good for NOTHING. I don’t want to admit it myself but it is the truth. Nobody wants thieves for dungeons, they are very fragile especially with their specialty weapons: the daggers. In PvP they are practically useless with in zergs because of their extreme lack of AOE skills. They make good roamers though and I will admit that infiltrator’s arrow has gotten me out of trouble more times than I remember. On the other hand, while most classes can hit multiple foes at a time with their basic attack, daggers only hit one. Not to mention the lack of profession specific skills, we only have “steal”. Only our backstabs and the initiative-instead-of-cooldown sort of even things out because let’s admit it, stealth (especially “shadow refuge”) can be easily countered by all the AOE skills other professions usually have at their possession.

WARRIOR: Where to begin? I can’t even believe how people complain about the thief yet an insane dps/defense profession like the warrior is consider “balanced”. Balanced MY kitten So according to arena net’s logic the following skills aren’t OP: “hundred blades”, “whirling axe”, “dual strike”, “final thrust” (I have been hit by final thrust for 11,608 damage, I even have screenshot), “earthshaker” (especially when combined with “berserker stance”) and generally the disabling skills of the the hammer combined with the “merciless hammer” trait, “impale”-“rip” combo (seriously? 2 stacks of torment with 900 range?), the fact that you have 3 disabling skills with hammer/hammer and “healing surge” which refills all of the adrenaline bar. And why the hell do warriors have a 10 seconds cooldown to their profession specific skills when the thieves’ steal has 35?!

ELEMENTALIST: Nothing to say here, really, though they have a very high dps as well as access to a VERY large arsenal of skills, light armor evens things out nicely, just as a “mage” class should be.

RANGER: Again, this is a relatively balanced profession, the damage is good but the medium armor and the fact that melee weapons mostly have a support role (which is the least that can be said about the mesmers) balances the profession.

MESMERS: INSANE damage, especially when combined with their illusions. Just take one mesmer they can make like 3 illusions and bam you have 4 players attacking you at once and you don’t really know who the hell is real. And some of you say that the illusions’ damage is too low but when you have 4 people attacking you at once it doesn’t really matter. Takes the bunshin no jutsu to a whole other level (props to whoever got the reference). In my lvl 80 exotic armor and with 30 points in shadow arts (+300 toughness) and with ~15,500 hp, after just one attack from all 4 I am half dead. Needless to say, the greatsword’s “spatial surge” is, for me, too strong to be a slot 1 skill. I also find it annoying how they get so many boons while giving conditions with the sceptre (and again, slot 1 skill). And why the hell do mesmers get stealths?! I got really annoyed when I found out. And its not that they have like 1 or 2, these guys have like 5 of them. I get it that these guys are mesmers and that’s what they do after all, but in the end they have almost the same number of stealths with us. I find this annoying, stealthing and shadowstepping are supposed to be what separates us thieves from the rest of players.

NECROMANCERS: Marks are very dangerous and when these guys spam all of them on the floor you’ll have real trouble catching up to them. When in groups they can always put them down all at one place and kill you in an instant. Not only that, they have too good a survivability when death shroud. Other than that it isn’t that OP.

GUARDIANS: OK, here’s the thing. When arena net had in mind the creation of this profession, I’m wondering whether they were thinking of making a profession which would be chosen by those who wished to assume the role of the “tank” (thats what the name suggets at least), the one guy clad in super heavy armor who sacrificed damage in exchange for defense. If so they failed miserably and instead of that created a class which is completely overpowered. Why you ask? How about because it’s a profession that combines every sinlge other one. Those guys have heavy armor, TONNES of heals, skills which give them ALL boons, AOE burns and signets and their profession skills are insane. By level one they have a passive that regenerates their health! At a slow rate but still, it makes a large difference since it happens even during battle! And obviously A-net’s all-in-one profession wouldn’t be complete w/o some undeserved extra damage. With the exception of the greatsword and hammer which are actually supposed to deal damage in exchange for the use of a shield all other weapons deal much more damage than supposed to. AND they can use scepters and staves for long range combat. In the end what the hell are they? Healers, dps, tanks, mages… I’ll tell you what they are: O.P. Comparing thieves and guardians, with the addition of all the boons and burns of the latter, the 2 classes have almost equal damage output. FIX IT!

ENGINEERS: For me what makes engineers stand out for is their access to a large amount of skills. That would make him similar to the elementalist really since both professions are primarily range ones, however engineers can wear medium armor. Not only that but they can also deploy turrets that heal them and others that attack enemies and deal very good damage. Too good if you ask me, but w/e. What’s more is that these turrets also have a fair amount of health as well so you can’t really waste time on destroying one of them, primarily cause the engineer will cram a missile down your throat or use one of his plenty AOE skills. The problem is that these AOE skills really hurt even when you’re stealthed. That’s mostly why I’ve found (and most engineers and thieves will agree with me) that the engineer is a very strong class against the thief.

SOLUTIONS: Fix the guardian, and especially, ESPECIALLY the warrior. Notice how I say fix, not nerf? Good. Because nerf would actually mean that the professions are balanced but their abilities are being decreased. If you want a few examples of nerfing, try the update log of the thief, I assure you there are many there. As for the mesmer I really wouldn’t want to see having their max amount clones reduced because that’s their thing but maybe reducing their efficiency (the clones’) in combat could solve the issue. The engineer should at least have the life of his turrets reduced, and, if I may, also change it so that they can’t wield shields. Not only is it making the profession too tanky for leather armor but also, what the hell is an engineer doing with a shield. The necromancer has way too much life steel and pets. Furthermore I would like to propose having a higher cooldown for the marks and maybe having a higher time gap between the uses. Finally for the thief, the cooldown of “revealed” for WvWvW should be changed back to 3 seconds, and add a few more AOE skills. And I think all of us can agree, these poisons SUCK. I mean seriously who the hell even uses these things? All of them are completely and utterly useless and in my opinion they should have more of a passive effect.

Message to my fellow thieves:
Unfortunately my friends, all of us have been protesting for change but when it is 1 against 7 professions (not to mention 50% of all players are warriors) our chances our far from slim. While the 4 second “revealed” patch is rough, and arena net should be ashamed for picking on us in PvP in general where we were already lower tier… where there’s a will there’s a way. Arena net’s staff aren’t fond of thieves, most players hate them too. But I will not stand for this hypocrisy and I will not sit around while A-net toys with us like we are guild wars 2’s clowns. It’s time to emerge from the shadows of our cloaks, raise our bloody daggers and rusty pistols and demand to be treated with the same respect and seriousness other professions are. So I will NOT accept a statement that says thieves are O.P.!

Can’t speak to other classes, but as an 80 guardian the one thing I will confess to is that the use of a magical weapons is absurd. Staff, scepter and focus do not belong. Guardian weapons should be limited to

- Great Sword
- Hammer
- Sword
- Shield
- Mace
- Torch

That, sadly, does remove almost all (except one ability with the torch that has a moderate cool down) long-range combat for the guardian. Most tank classes (in other MMOs) can use a bow for long-ranged combat, but I’m in agreement with OP that long-range combat is the most obvious sacrifice for a Guardian.

It does also remove our only method for +speed which is with a staff, but again, you’re running around in heavy armor. Deal with it; I’m OK with it.

What I do not agree with is nerf to damage. How much damage you do can vary greatly depending on how you spec/gear. If you want to be somewhat of a meat shield as a Guard, you have just enough DPS to keep a decent amount of aggro.

I can’t take what your talking about seriously. Its like you have not bothered to play or even learn anything about half the stuff your talking about….. This sounds more like a rant then anything.

soooo I will be moving right along.

The best way to beat these classes is to play them and understand how the other person thinks when running this class. There are so many times I run into mesmers that run 3 clones at all time. While choosing 1 of 4 randomly isn’t really effective, I played that build of MESMER and can tell which is the player by mere observation and movement. Not that hard to counter. Same thing with THEIF when they go invisible it’s all about knowing what and where their likely to attack. I’ve dodge rolled out of plenty of back stabs with really just knowing when, and I never played thief. As for GUARDIAN, the magic weapons fit it perfectly, just not to what your used to I guess. The staff is great for wvw might stacking and support. The focus is great for healway builds and so in. ELEMENTALIST does not have good DPS unless you run full zeeker which will get you killed half the time and their health is at the bottom of the food chain. ENGINEER makes me laugh the hardest, the turrets are abysmal. If they place one down simply leave its target area and challenge the engi there they can’t move them without a cd. And their health is not decent, any form of aoe destroys them in seconds. The healing turret is the only reason the engineer is viable besides bunker builds. The other heal is a kit that actually isn’t to bad but much more complicated to go through and the other is a rng mess. The NECROMANCER is supposed to have control over conditions and the marks successfully provides that. Death shroud is the necros main source of survivability due to their lack of outright damage. The WARRIOR is a really tough opponent in the right hands and is the easiest to master. Though they hit kittence you get them low they start to fall apart. They lack the ability to recover easier then guardians, engineers, and elementalist so you basically have to survive longer then they do not to hard if you no what your doing. I feel your main problem is that each class has its one niche in this game. Wether it be eles attunments, theives stealth, guardians runes, necromancers deathshrouds etc. each class is like this for diversity and efficiency. Can I condition necro beat a condition clearin engineer? No. Can a condition cleaning/bunker engineer beat a zerker warrior? No. Can a zerker warrior beat a tank Guardian? No. Can a tank gaurdian beat a shatter Mesmer? No. Can a shatter Mesmer beat a aoe elementalist? No. Can a staff aoe elementalist beat a stealth thief? Can a stealth thief beat a condition grenade engineer? No. Of course all these NOs are actually maybes. No one class is guaranteed a better chance at killing other opponents. Just master your class and build and deal with the fact there’s always going to be someone better than you. If you get hit for 11K health their obviously running full seeker and are taking a lot more damage then usual anyways. Kill them before they kill you. So please stop with all this over powered BS. You simply lack the skills to defeat those that are more skilled and are better adapted to the game than you.

For a thief; – Attack on thief on purpose, as the O.P. seems to have a kitten for them.
Invis – Drop condition + Regen
Get behind your target
press 1 – do 10,000-15,000 Damage (Depending on Debuffs on your target)
Wait 2.8 Seconds, Invs again and repeat until target is dead.
Single target mastery – sure no AOE in that. But IMHO theifs shouldn’t be the masters of single target AND AOE.

Mesmers;
3 Clones (or 2 Clones and 1 Illusion)
Clones do what, 5% of your characters Damage? They are there for Shatter skills and enemy displacement/confusion. Illusions are what do Mesmers Damage on that front.
If you are taking 50% of your health as damage from a mesmer you are not evading enough (on Dagger you have #2,#3 + Dodge rolls to evade some/most of the damage from a Mesmer, and you can Invs).

Guards/Elementalists – IMHO are fine as is. they are support roles (primarily) that can be built out as power houses (with the right ideas behind them). But as you build into power you give up defensive abilities. And such, basically the player has to make a choice here.

Warrior – mixed feelings on this. But a warrior is supposed to be insanely powerful. Hence the name of the role. Maybe shave 10% off their damage over all would help. But then you have the freaking annoying hammer builds with continuous Stun builds (oh what fun). So Dunno what to really say there.

Necro/Eng/Ranger – Never played them, So Cannot comment

Talyn.3295:

I can’t take what your talking about seriously. Its like you have not bothered to play or even learn anything about half the stuff your talking about….. This sounds more like a rant then anything.

soooo I will be moving right along.

I agree. I read the stuff for ranger, engineer and elementalist, rolled my eyes and I’m just gonna move along now.
Joke thread.

This has got to be a joke. I play an Engineer so i thought i’d first see your thoughts on that and sorry to say it but what a load of kitten.

Turrets “to good”. You do realize they are very bugged and practically broken right? Not scaling, underperforming by a wide margin, requiring 4 diffirent traits from 3 diffirent traitlines, broken overcharge, long cooldowns, paper-armor, the list goes on.

Its like you are litterally pulling random stuff out of thin air to make everyone but your own profession (Thief, who would’ve guessed…) seem like an overpowered demi-god, not shying away from flat out lying.

woox.9568:

WARRIOR: blah blah blah “whirling axe” blah blah blah…

I’m sorry, what?

Joking right?

Warrior. You know most of their burst skills, you need to stand still to make them go trough
Mesmer. Err illusions are supposed to be strong in damage, and besides, you ever stealth as a thief?
Ranger. Played it for hint achievement only, so cannot comment, but when I fought them they are weak.
Elementalist. Have same base HP pool as thief and got light armor. Full zeker ele will die in one backstab.
Guardian, never tried, cannot comment. But it’s a boon support tank dps style with low HP.
Engineer. I have tried this class but the turrets are not OP, they’re broken just as Terrahero.9358 said.
Necromancer, not that familiar with the class, no comments.
Thief. It’s a kitten noob class they perma stealth all time during a battle, and everytime I get close to a win, they just kitten away and reset their HP.

I can say the same as a mesmer agaist the thief. How op every class is, but I’m pretty sure every class has a “OP” build.

Take a stunbuild warrior for example.
He will try to stun you and switch to a more “burst” weapon, like this example

1 tank warrior with stun build, he has one main set of hammer or mace/shield, and then a GS for dps.
he will stun the heck out of you. And then DPS with 100b. It will work on most zerker build, but as I am a support. I can tell. They are kitten useless.

I can be stunned, attacked for 100b and then heal myself and I’m back at 100%, sure then he will do next burst, blah blah blah, just evade and use utilities.

I fought 2 stunlock warriors for 15min this way, until allies arrived. It’s more a l2p issue than something is OP in this case.

//as it is to 99% of the cases in these kind of threads.

If something needs a fix it’s the thief in this case. l2p I say again, or play another build.

Have a nice day.

Talyn.3295:

I can’t take what your talking about seriously. Its like you have not bothered to play or even learn anything about half the stuff your talking about….. This sounds more like a rant then anything.

soooo I will be moving right along.

so how about you read what i said? I made it perfectly clear at the beginning that this is a RANT. so thanks for stating the obvious

Tom Gore.4035:

woox.9568:

WARRIOR: blah blah blah “whirling axe” blah blah blah…

I’m sorry, what?

most of these are extremely overpowered warrior skills. I am sorry for not explaining more clearly what every skill does but i mostly wanted to give emphasis to the amount of the skills. Furthermore it should be relatively easy for the average warrior to understand the skills im talking about

woox.9568:

Tom Gore.4035:

woox.9568:

WARRIOR: blah blah blah “whirling axe” blah blah blah…

I’m sorry, what?

most of these are extremely overpowered warrior skills. I am sorry for not explaining more clearly what every skill does but i mostly wanted to give emphasis to the amount of the skills. Furthermore it should be relatively easy for the average warrior to understand the skills im talking about

Then you should listen to a warrior player, like me, when I say that whirling axe does less damage than our axe auto-attack.

EDIT: Oh look they have increased the damage by 50% in sPvP. Woot! Still don’t see anyone using this, though.

woox.9568:

Talyn.3295:

I can’t take what your talking about seriously. Its like you have not bothered to play or even learn anything about half the stuff your talking about….. This sounds more like a rant then anything.

soooo I will be moving right along.

so how about you read what i said? I made it perfectly clear at the beginning that this is a RANT. so thanks for stating the obvious

Well, lots of your stataments are nor true.
1 thing is correct, some classes/builds are OP, Anet already said they will shave here and there.
They also have to fix skill/runes bugs, but again, and I don’t think the anet team is good enough for this, they know a lot of things are broken, but they don’t know how to fix them.

UnknownFreak.2805:

Warrior. You know most of their burst skills, you need to stand still to make them go trough

Be realistic, in PvE you can finish your hundred blades 90% of the times without being hit by a single mob and we are not talking about 1-2k more damage compared to other dps skills, but 10k+ more!
In HotW a warrior can easly hit 25k with hundred blades. This is what I call OP.

never ever touch my necro, make thiefs more powerful but don’t even think about nerfing or making my necro weaker.
i tried the thief ad they suck, i have to run away half the time and the other half i am in downed state/died.

i know thieves are weak but nerfing (yes, i said the horrible N-word) a different profession just because one profession is inferior to others is not the solution.
ether buff the profession or remake it, don’t change 7 profs just for 1 prof’s benefit.

Pfffhahahaha.

“I’m not OP! L-Look at their stuff! THEY’RE The OP ones! Please, please don’t nerf me! I don’t want to be a ranger!”