Guild Wars 2

This is thiefs don’t know that we can’t see them due to rendering and culling. I think thiefs think people are just derping or something when they come out of hide and no one notice. So there response is always LTP, kitten how can we learn to play when we cant see you when we should be able to. 99% of the time When I lose to thiefs its simply because for those few seconds they are out of hide they are still completely invisible to me. This is the only reason thiefs are so overpowered. It has nothing to do with the class itself. They simply abuse the game bugs. And they think they are good because they don’t render.

The funny part of this thread is actually the OP.

Who is a D/D Elementalist.Which is the best anti-Thief(any kind of build)

Why are you even get yourself to open a topic when you play the same uber kind or atleast second uber build of the game?

If you are dying to a HS spammer(which is called newbie player between us Thieves) as D/D Elementalist , sorry but either you are using a fail build or you are actually a bad player.

Warlord.9074:

This is thiefs don’t know that we can’t see them do to rendering and culling. I think thiefs think people are just derping or something when they come out of hide and no one notice. So there response is always LTP, kitten how can we learn to play when we cant see you when we should be able to. 99% of the time When I lose to thiefs its simply because for those few seconds they are out of hide they are still completely invisible to me.

Do you actually think we don’t fight with enemy Thieves?Yes my friend we know how culling bug works

Quentin Fields.1295:

The funny part of this thread is actually the OP.

Who is a D/D Elementalist.Which is the best anti-Thief(any kind of build)

Why are you even get yourself to open a topic when you play the same uber kind or atleast second uber build of the game?

If you are dying to a HS spammer(which is called newbie player between us Thieves) as D/D Elementalist , sorry but either you are using a fail build or you are actually a bad player.

Warlord.9074:

This is thiefs don’t know that we can’t see them do to rendering and culling. I think thiefs think people are just derping or something when they come out of hide and no one notice. So there response is always LTP, kitten how can we learn to play when we cant see you when we should be able to. 99% of the time When I lose to thiefs its simply because for those few seconds they are out of hide they are still completely invisible to me.

Do you actually think we don’t fight with enemy Thieves?Yes my friend we know how culling bug works

Right but you know the timing, and can simply hide till they come un hide and play hide and seek, we dont have the ability to play hide and seek.

And buddy that’s why we always defend the idea of “Atleast for couple of matches in sPvP play with a Thief and try to learn the mechanics so that you can learn how to counter them and their weak spots”

Even i myself played more than 10 matches in sPvP with D/D Ele , so that i can learn how counter my counter class as a Thief.

When i play my glass cannon build , if i hit my head to a skillfully D/D Ele , i can’t even have time to stealth myself before he CC me couple times and down me…

I never denied culling is an issue.It’s the biggest issue in this game.And pulling flames on to Thief.Together with culling even when we fight Thief vs Thief it’s an annoying situation.

But flaming on to HS spamming?That already been nerfed and which is called “newbie move” even by us Thieves…It’s so easy to counter with a CC skill…

You can just immobilize a HS spammer and make him waste every single piece of initiation.

Also as i said , the OP is playing the biggest counter for Thieves.He has billions of cc , mobility/escape skills , condi removals like hell.But here he/she is crying on to HS…

That’s just sad.

I hate when people complain about d/d burst thieves because it takes attention away from their other builds which are FAR more broken than d/d glass cannon will ever be.

Thieves are completely kittenedly overpowered, but it isn’t their damage that’s the problem. The frontload could be reduced with the dps spread out a bit more, but overall it’s really not that bad.

As was mentioned earlier, it’s everything else the thief can do that’s broken, and if you ever go up against a thief using one of their far more powerful and annoying builds, you’ll wish every thief was d/d burst.

Quentin Fields.1295:

Highest dps = Glass cannon Warrior
Best mobility : D/D Elementalists (do not mix escape mechanics with mobility)

D/D elementalist has more mobility than an average thief (1 utility + shortbow swap for mobility), but a thief specced for mobility is unmatched.

Warrior being highest DPS is debatable by timeframe, Hundred Blades, for instance, is pretty bad DPS, even if it is great damage-per-button.

Great Idea, let’s nerf the thief because of a few awful players not being able to counter them. Come to the message boards and ask for nerfs that would not only make their lives easier but also seriously hamper pve abilities. I know you want to win against everyone with no effort whatsoever, but you are wanting to completely ruin an entire gaming experience for a class because of your rage over wvw/pvp frustrations. What about all those thieves that dont play any pvp at all that are going to find themselves unable to be viable in pve because you want to essentially remove them from the game? If you want balance try something else, because nobody plays this game the same, period. There will always be someone that can beat your strategy, that’s why you have to adjust your playstyle. But no, you can’t evolve at all and scream for a nerf, not just one, but reams of them, from stealth, to damage, to healing, to steal, to backstab, to daggerstorm, to condition removal, etc etc etc.

How about we remove all classes from the game and everyone has just one. No customization allowed for anything but completely cosmetic reasons, maybe just a colour difference only. Everyone has to be the same size, come from the same starting locations, do the same quests, and get the same equipment. Aw heck, let’s just have online Pong, that’s the only way it will really be balanced but you are sooo going to complain if you can’t win that game all the time too. Right side is OP!! NERF!!

Tulisin.6945:

D/D elementalist has more mobility than an average thief (1 utility + shortbow swap for mobility), but a thief specced for mobility is unmatched.

Warrior being highest DPS is debatable by timeframe, Hundred Blades, for instance, is pretty bad DPS, even if it is great damage-per-button.

GS is not the only way Warriors making DPS.

And if a Thief is specced for mobility that means having almost nothing else while D/D Eles have survival plus damage plus mobility.

Quentin Fields.1295:

And if a Thief is specced for mobility that means having almost nothing else while D/D Eles have survival plus damage plus mobility.

Not relevant to who has the most mobility. That said, even taking mobility-emphasized utilities/heal and traiting Acrobatics/Trickery, the thief can bring a lot to a fight with a mobility spec, just not as a glass-cannon assassin.

Korrtz.3510:

Great Idea, let’s nerf the thief because of a few awful players not being able to counter them. Come to the message boards and ask for nerfs that would not only make their lives easier but also seriously hamper pve abilities. I know you want to win against everyone with no effort whatsoever, but you are wanting to completely ruin an entire gaming experience for a class because of your rage over wvw/pvp frustrations. What about all those thieves that dont play any pvp at all that are going to find themselves unable to be viable in pve because you want to essentially remove them from the game? If you want balance try something else, because nobody plays this game the same, period. There will always be someone that can beat your strategy, that’s why you have to adjust your playstyle. But no, you can’t evolve at all and scream for a nerf, not just one, but reams of them, from stealth, to damage, to healing, to steal, to backstab, to daggerstorm, to condition removal, etc etc etc.

How about we remove all classes from the game and everyone has just one. No customization allowed for anything but completely cosmetic reasons, maybe just a colour difference only. Everyone has to be the same size, come from the same starting locations, do the same quests, and get the same equipment. Aw heck, let’s just have online Pong, that’s the only way it will really be balanced but you are sooo going to complain if you can’t win that game all the time too. Right side is OP!! NERF!!

Perma stealth vis a vis culling bugs is pretty inexcusable. I hope they fix it or the screams will get worse.

Tulisin.6945:

Quentin Fields.1295:

And if a Thief is specced for mobility that means having almost nothing else while D/D Eles have survival plus damage plus mobility.

Not relevant to who has the most mobility. That said, even taking mobility-emphasized utilities/heal and traiting Acrobatics/Trickery, the thief can bring a lot to a fight with a mobility spec, just not as a glass-cannon assassin.

I still not agree that even a Thief mobility specced. 2 rolls 1 blink with nicely cooldowns and 3 SB blink with a limit of initiation and lil speed buff from dodges.

D/D Eles have almost constant speed buff with attunement swap + auras + extra buff from heal , blink , lightning 4 with a huge range and speed , lighting 5 as a roll with speed buff , fire 3 for sliding forward.And their cycle is much more faster than Thieves.Cooldown need is shorter.

After using your cooldowned skills you only can SB blink when you got enough ini points.While Eles keep swapping between auras for speed buff and lightning 4 + fire 3 with not long cds.

It has nothing to do with “knowing the timing” of culling or rendering by the way, how would we “know the timing”, we have no kitten idea of when we become visible to YOU, we only know when we are visible to ourselves. Never have I seen the game cull my own character.

Bottom line – every time I’ve been concerned at the damage in my combat log be it from whatever skill you like (100 blades, kill shot, volley – kitten even imagined burden and a dozen other hard hitting skills all classes have) I simply opened my browser, read about them and if I still wasn’t sure of my counter rolled one and for 15 minutes headed to the mists. Then I needed to weigh up how the counter might need to change my spec and then – guess what – I had to FIGHT a lot of those classes. Over and over and over again. It wasn’t easy mode, I had to (gasp) – learn how to play.

Buy you know what I’m used to that, I’m usually the guy in every MMO that picks the most borked class and while the rest of my brethren take to the forums to cry rivers I’m the guy who just gets on with learning to play my class (and every other class) so I can beat them all.

Regardless of the number of times information is posted here on ways to deal with thieves a lot of people just refuse to listen. Sure it would be great if culling wasn’t an issue, it would be great if you played the most OP class in the game and didn’t have to worry about any other class ever killing you. The first isn’t happening any time soon and unless you get a job as developer at Arenanet neither is the second

For the record, even without a glass cannon build my thief dies all the kitten time. The OPs class excels at killing me, anyone who can channel a skill excels at killing me because stealth doesn’t break channels. Warriors and mesmers can destroy me and often do. They don’t even have to play much above my standard to do it either. Anyone who spends 10 minutes figuring out how a thief works can kill me. Well, possibly not rangers.

It honestly doesn’t matter if thief was designed as 1v1 killing machine because the vast majority of forum posters complaining about other classes are not helping themselves. They want Arenanet to help them instead, and the chances are by the time the dev team cave in and nerf thief for the 4th time the players calling for a nerf will have moved on to the next flavor of the month MMO and will be complaining at whoever is developing that game.

Quentin Fields.1295:

Tulisin.6945:

Quentin Fields.1295:

And if a Thief is specced for mobility that means having almost nothing else while D/D Eles have survival plus damage plus mobility.

Not relevant to who has the most mobility. That said, even taking mobility-emphasized utilities/heal and traiting Acrobatics/Trickery, the thief can bring a lot to a fight with a mobility spec, just not as a glass-cannon assassin.

I still not agree that even a Thief mobility specced. 2 rolls 1 blink with nicely cooldowns and 3 SB blink with a limit of initiation and lil speed buff from dodges.

Thieves can run permaswiftness with Trickery+Acrobatics, and Heartseeker is far better for forward movement than Infiltrator’s Arrow. If you’re pushing full mobility utilities/heal, it is two rolls and two blinks (three with Steal). Movement can be maintained by feeding Roll for Initiative and Steal’s initiative back into Heartseeker between dodges.

Most thieves don’t come close to using everything in their arsenal mobility-wise, but just because the average thief only uses shortbow ports and shadow step doesn’t mean the potential isn’t there.

I’m just gonna throw this out there, but considering the topic is Heartseeker, not how broken is thief. My thiefs base auto attack(1st of the chain) does more damage then my heartseeker if they are over 50% percent health.

Granted im not a glass cannon so my straight up damage is much less than other thieves but it’s not an opener, or even usefull untill they are nearly dead anyway, or decide to run away(which is still questionable as to the worth of the initiative to catch them with it)

Won’t say there is nothing wrong with thief, definitely not as much as people think, but not nothing, but Heartseeker certainly isnt one.

HS is a risky skill for constant using that we can’t actual rely on it in every situation.It has a risk that hitting a mob and stopping us in some parts of the WvW map.Also you can’t freely move yourself with hs left and right while you can do it with blink.

And using steal for blink plus vigor/speed buff is also not reliable since you can’t always find a target on your escaping way to use it.And without targeting , steal is only a speed buff of 10secs , no vigor no blink.

Quentin Fields.1295:

.It has a risk that hitting a mob and stopping us in some parts of the WvW map.

This is not as big an issue as you make it out to be if you have auto targeting off or are running a combat UI mod to mouse aim all skills.

That’s why i actually called it out as “some parts of WvW map”.Even if you close off your auto targeting and a combat UI mod , there are some points that you can’t use HS as escape/mobility power.

Likewise wurm field below Dawns/Cliffside/Cragtop.

Also you can’t use HS as an escape ability while you are stuck in a zerg vs zerg combat.

Edit:

And as an extra for all Thief haters , Anet declared that they gonna buff some aspects of Thieves most likely pistol builds on 12/14 update.

So be ready to put on your condi removals more than ever and be ready to get bursted by Unload ( P/P Dual-wield skill a.k.a. button 3)

Quentin Fields.1295:

The funny part of this thread is actually the OP.

Who is a D/D Elementalist.Which is the best anti-Thief(any kind of build)

Why are you even get yourself to open a topic when you play the same uber kind or atleast second uber build of the game?

If you are dying to a HS spammer(which is called newbie player between us Thieves) as D/D Elementalist , sorry but either you are using a fail build or you are actually a bad player.

Do you actually think we don’t fight with enemy Thieves?Yes my friend we know how culling bug works

So you are saying that because an ability that constantly hits that hard has some sort of counter it should be allowed? You can dodge roll every single ability in the game, so everything has a counter does that mean every ability is perfectly balanced? I have seen lots of people complain about 100 blades and you can’t even move while doing that.. imagine if they gave warrior 100 blades every second while always making the ability rush the target before hand. People would complain about this and then the warriors would say l2p, which is exactly what the thieves do.

I didn’t say that D/D Eles are counter for HS my friend.

D/D Elementalists are the total counter of Thieves atm.That’s a known thing.

And most of the Thieves actually , when they see a D/D Ele passing by they try to avoid a fight.

Because with well placed AoEs , some bunch of CCs , in combat mobility and big survival from all protection buffs/heals/regens/condi removals. , D/D Eles are the biggest nightmare for Thieves.

Also since D/D Eles can keep constantly damaging air , even if a Thief is under stealth they get lots of damage and because of the D/D Eles mobility it’s getting so hard to position youself and deal your backstab and stuff for a Thief.

You keep saying D/D eles counter thieves as if that’s some indisputable fact. There are more builds than glass cannon thief, and the more utility and heal focused thieves are just insane. They heal themselves even faster than ele’s can, and more often since all they have to do is stealth to heal, and properly built thieves can stealth any time they want to. They don’t have the huge burst dps, but they can certainly either wear the ele down over time (a long time), or stalemate the fight with both sides healing too much to die.

The only fact is that a thief will NEVER die unless they let themselves. Maybe some bad d/d thief who is just spamming heartseeker will, sure, but any decent thief is 100% unkillable. They won’t win every fight, but just about, and even if they lose, they still won’t die unless they decide to be nice and give away the kill.

stealth and burst mechanics MUST be removed from game permanently, asap
not nerfed – removed
but seems, already to late, people start leaving game

dreztina.4820:

You keep saying D/D eles counter thieves as if that’s some indisputable fact. There are more builds than glass cannon thief, and the more utility and heal focused thieves are just insane. They heal themselves even faster than ele’s can, and more often since all they have to do is stealth to heal, and properly built thieves can stealth any time they want to. They don’t have the huge burst dps, but they can certainly either wear the ele down over time (a long time), or stalemate the fight with both sides healing too much to die.

The only fact is that a thief will NEVER die unless they let themselves. Maybe some bad d/d thief who is just spamming heartseeker will, sure, but any decent thief is 100% unkillable. They won’t win every fight, but just about, and even if they lose, they still won’t die unless they decide to be nice and give away the kill.

I’m asuming that you don’t play a Thief from your words.

The builds you are talking about are Condi Thief builds.Which are depending on their condi damages and mild heals.

You can’t wear down a D/D Ele as you say coz they have a nice condi removal setup on their traits.And no my friend a Thief can’t overheal a well built D/D Ele since they can heal themself to full hp within seconds by changing to water attunement and using couple skills there with the right build.Also “IF” Ele isn’t a bad player , Thief can’t run away.Ele can chase you and catch you or can CC you and won’t even let you run away.Your only actual option is shadow refuge but with a lil timing luck if Eles knockback from lightning 5 is not on cd , Ele won’t let you stay on shadow refuge so you won’t be stealthed anymore.

Please atleast don’t flame my words if you don’t actually know about the build you are talking about which is i use %90 of the time.

I’m sorry, but I get the feeling you’ve never seen something like a S/D thief played to its full potential. I have, and it was probably the single strongest opponent I have ever seen in all the wvw I’ve done.

S/D nerfed hard so that they can’t constant daze anymore whilst they can’t actually hit hard like old days neither.Sorry you won’t be seeing much of em , atleast not good ones mate.

I was actually playing S/D in sPvP/tPvP but not anymore.

Anymore tricks in your pocket to beat me?

People still complain about thiefs? They are by far the easiest class to kill. If I see a thief, that’s my first target.

Krathalos.3461:

sceptus.9415:

- 1) ANY profession, immune to stopping a stomp (finishing off a downed player) should have that changed – especially stealth while stomping.

- 2) Stealth should have a diminishing cooldown after used once.

- 3) Culling should be properly fixed in relation to the thief class

1) This is pretty funny. Every class has a way to stomp without interruption, save from stomping a Thief (although teleports work), Elementalist, or Mesmer.

Let’s just go through the list, shall we?

Elementalist: Can stomp in Mist Form or with Stability, completely invulnerable in Mist Form
Guardian: Can stomp with Stability, immune to CC, still takes damage
Mesmer: Can stomp with both Distortion and stealth, completely invulnerable with Distortion, can still be interrupted while in stealth
Thief: Can stomp in stealth
Ranger: Can stomp with Stability, although I wouldn’t recommend it, as it requires an elite
Warrior: Can stomp with Stability or Invulnerability
Necromancer: Can stomp with Stability
Engineer: Can get Stability or Stealth from Toss Elixir S, unsure if they can stomp with Elixir S itself

So, in actuality, stealth is the weakest form of stomping. Invulnerability is obviously the best, with Stability in second. Immune to CC is better than just not being visible. Nerf all classes, buff all downed states. Downed states aren’t OP enough yet.

2) It already does. Revealed keeps thieves from going back into stealth for three seconds.

3) Completely irrelevant to the thief class. This is the game as a whole. All classes that can stealth or all abilities that teleport you quickly can abuse the culling glitch. Stealth is not a thief-only mechanic.

LAWYERED!

I’m still waiting the for the day that people will understand the biggest culling issue isn’t Thieves/Stealth but Mesmer’s Portal Bombs.

Mesmers have 3 s stealth with long cool downs. Not perma stealth.

As a necro specced for toughness/condition damage I dont have survival problems against thieves. They cannot kill me BUT quite often i cannot kill them either unless they`re dumb enough to step into one on my aoe`s. Theoretically i should be able to atleast get some dots running, but because of anets crappy engine issues a normal fight is kinda like this:
- i start taking damage out of nowhere, usually loosing about 10k hp by the time the thief renders
- i place like 3-4 bleeds
- i try to cast an aoe cripple, a spell which is not instant and has a cast time
- thief vanishes before i finish casting
- i start placing marks on the ground hoping he will land in one
- fight resets
Now you may think this is balanced or whatever, however, i mostly manage to survive those lame combos by speccing heavily into defence. Not all classes/specs have this luxury.
You guys keep mentioning D/D eles, but you seem to forget that you can SEE where the elementalist is going and what it is doing. A d/d ele requires quite a bit of work to be effective compared to a thief and its not abusing the lame culling bug.
As a small experiment i went into wvw last night (i play on the Far Shiverpeaks server) and wrote down which classes i encountered.
Out of the first 20 people, 11 were thieves. Is it normal ? You judge this yourself.
Imho a solution to this would be to make stealth break on a certain amount of damage. A lot of other mmo`s are using this mechanic and it works fine.
As for mesmer portal bombing, the fix should be rather simple, let only the mesmer`s party use the portal or limit the number of people that can go through. This will prevent zergs from doing the garbage many call “strategy” atm.

To me the higher the damage a Heartseeker hits me, the happier I become knowing he’d be my food. To be honest I have no trouble with glass-cannon classes as a Necromancer, running a Power/Toughness/ xx build. When I’m in the thick of battle and I see a sudden drop in HP I’d check my combat log and say to my party mates “Ooo… 9K Heartseeker?” Then I move on. And I have 3xxx armor…

I’m not saying “oh I eat thieves for breakfast, I’m on top of the food chain” no. I’m just saying that there’s give and take, and there are risks running with a build that just shreds people with heartseeker damage. TBH I feel that the strongest 1 v 1 that went against me was an elementalist, some Maguma Commander I waited to clear my borderlands north camp before we 1 on 1d (I asked guildmates and passers-by mto stay out of it. And it wasn’t dps that made the elementalist stand out. Was from some guild called pelican lezbianz or something. (I lost after a 5 minute battle where I realized halfway I forgot I was equipping a wrong off hand and had to fight with just my staff…. but I know that ele would have beaten me anyway)

I’ve mained a D/D Ele since BWE1, and thief is my #1 alt.

In a nuthell, I find thief is pretty well-balanced versus D/D and S/D Eles but rather OP vs staff Ele. I made the thief to better counter them on my Ele but to my surprise I found I really enjoyed playing her as well.

In regards to the topic, yes of course HS is an OP skill and every thief knows it or they aren’t being honest. Yes it’s useless vs > 50% targets but the combination of really high damage plus gap closing plus spammable makes it easily one of the strongest skills in the game.

I think the dmg multipliers should be reduced and an evade added to the leap to add a bit more of a skill element to using it. Something like 1.2x at 25-50% and 1.5x at <25% instead of current 1.5x at 25-50% and 2x at <25%.

I mostly play a Warrior and my issue with the Thief (beyond the incredible burst damage) is that they have too many escape options. If a Thief and I approach each other in the open then maybe it’s a 50/50 outcome (and you would hope that from balance), but if it looks like I win then they just head off, heal up and come back. That means we start again; and I have to keep winning just to stay alive as there is no way that I can catch them or outrun them.

The only way I have to actually and finally win is to burst them down before they escape; in any given round any Thief worth his salt will run as soon as it looks like he is losing that round.

There is the case that you can build to defeat Thieves but is it reasonable for us to all be built to combat one class?

Yeah, doesn’t do that much damage.

Go ahead and nerf heartseeker. Only noob thieves with no skill spam it anyway.

Kirito.8796:

Yeah, doesn’t do that much damage.

Let me point out that you were being attacked by a thief as well as an elementalist, warrior and mesmer, the latter two having impressive might and vulnerability stacking capabilities.

Pray.3120:

Kirito.8796:

Yeah, doesn’t do that much damage.

Let me point out that you were being attacked by a thief as well as an elementalist, warrior and mesmer, the latter two having impressive might and vulnerability stacking capabilities.

I had no vuln stacks.

style.6173:

People still complain about thiefs? They are by far the easiest class to kill. If I see a thief, that’s my first target.

And that’s the problem, you never see (competent) thieves. I don’t mind warrior dps, because they can’t instantly disappear with 4 different escape options and they can be kited. Once they engage they are in it to win it.

I rolled a thief alt on my wife’s account and have been wvw with her and I can honestly say it is MUCH more powerful than my fully exotic geared Engineer. I die less and kill more, I can’t even imagine how good they are fully geared out.

Kirito.8796:

Pray.3120:

Kirito.8796:

Yeah, doesn’t do that much damage.

Let me point out that you were being attacked by a thief as well as an elementalist, warrior and mesmer, the latter two having impressive might and vulnerability stacking capabilities.

I had no vuln stacks.

Fun fact: Being <50 % HP is like having 20+ stacks of vulnerability when facing a thief thanks to low-HP damage traits. A high-armor low-HP profession like guardian is much more likely to hang out in the 0-50 % range where thieves (at least most of the ones using heartseeker) are most potent. People are more than willing to drop some condition removal when they hit 20 stacks of vulnerability, but so much more hesitant to eat a heal to stay above 50 % when it gives the same effect. HP % is part of the thief fighting meta as much as anything else.

Elthurien.8356:

Go ahead and nerf heartseeker. Only noob thieves with no skill spam it anyway.

I concur, take it away please nerf it into oblivion it will have no impact what so ever on competent thieves who have the imagination to look at sensible wvw builds.

if I see a heartseeker spamming thief I will quite happily stand on the spot and just aoe the hell out of the area as frankly if he hits hard he’s going down in 2-3 hits anyway.

Bunzy.8674:

ashleydoll.8563:

Dude, I have my reasons to dislike Thieves in their current incarnation, as do a lot of people, but Heartseeker is not part of the problem.

Multiple chances to stealth, heal and reset the fight or simply run away so easily are why Thieves are problematic. Their damage is actually fine. The problem is having built-in failsafes to the Thief class which allow them to compensate for poor playing ability, it’s genuinely unfair to survive their initial burst from stealth, beat them in the aftermath and then have them just disappear for a ridiculous amount of time while they heal up and then get to attack you again. When you look at the total package of the Thief, they actually have the best survivability in the game, best single target burst damage, best single target CC and best/most escape abilities (Ele escape is close but it doesn’t involve them going completely invisible, so at least you get to see where they are running). I used to play a Guardian in many different builds and after playing a Thief for a while, I can say I feel safer on my glass cannon Thief than I ever did on my bunker Guardian.

Also try not to do what so many people do which is blame a Thief for jumping them in the middle of a fight with a backstab combo. It didn’t matter that it was a Thief, it mattered that you got jumped in the middle of a fight, any class jumping into your 1v1 would have killed you. The constant crutch of fight resets are what make Thieves stupidly unfair, because it is entirely possible for a Thief to do their job out of initial stealth, they don’t actually need as much invisibility as they have access to. This makes Thief players, whether they’re skilled or not, way too aggressive and gutsy, the supposedly squishy assassin class shouldn’t be brazenly attacking someone in a group, groups should deter them. But as it stands, you will commonly see a Thief try to jump another squishy even if they’re rolling with a few of their guild mates, because the Thief knows if it fails, he can just leave. Since there is no risk involved in these ambushes, it means the balance is off, the Thief class should be entirely about risk vs reward.

Stealth in general is a bad mechanic in MMOs. In every MMO I’ve played that involved any amount of long term stealth abilities, the classes that had them were always either overpowered or underpowered, it is incredibly hard to balance classes around this mechanic. Anet chose to stick with this cookie cutter assassin mechanic and now GW2 is yet another game where the Thief/Rogue/Assassin/whatever class will probably never see proper balance.

My thread is about heartseeker not about any other thief related problem you might have. please keep on topic.

There is no topic. Heartseekers fine its only good when the target got less hp. Sure you can spam it but it dosent do much above 50% hp and you are an ele, you can easily kill a thief and plus you are a D/D ele lol why you even here? D/D eles slaughter ppl if a squishy thief is being a problem then you are doing something wrong.

Ashley has said the real problems on thieves. Their dmg is fine and very easy to counter. Its just the extra seconds they get from the culling issue on stealth. Hell sometimes you dont even see whats attacking you when a thief comes in from stealth. Some people know how to exploit the culling pretty bad lol.

Kaleygh.1524:

As a necro specced for toughness/condition damage I dont have survival problems against thieves. They cannot kill me BUT quite often i cannot kill them either unless they`re dumb enough to step into one on my aoe`s. Theoretically i should be able to atleast get some dots running, but because of anets crappy engine issues a normal fight is kinda like this:
- i start taking damage out of nowhere, usually loosing about 10k hp by the time the thief renders
- i place like 3-4 bleeds
- i try to cast an aoe cripple, a spell which is not instant and has a cast time
- thief vanishes before i finish casting
- i start placing marks on the ground hoping he will land in one
- fight resets
Now you may think this is balanced or whatever, however, i mostly manage to survive those lame combos by speccing heavily into defence. Not all classes/specs have this luxury.
You guys keep mentioning D/D eles, but you seem to forget that you can SEE where the elementalist is going and what it is doing. A d/d ele requires quite a bit of work to be effective compared to a thief and its not abusing the lame culling bug.
As a small experiment i went into wvw last night (i play on the Far Shiverpeaks server) and wrote down which classes i encountered.
Out of the first 20 people, 11 were thieves. Is it normal ? You judge this yourself.
Imho a solution to this would be to make stealth break on a certain amount of damage. A lot of other mmo`s are using this mechanic and it works fine.
As for mesmer portal bombing, the fix should be rather simple, let only the mesmer`s party use the portal or limit the number of people that can go through. This will prevent zergs from doing the garbage many call “strategy” atm.

As a necro with staff and axe/focus user myself, I face the exact same scenario with thieves like you did. They won’t be able to kill me, but most of the time I can’t kill them either. They escape fast!
Necro sure have a lot of aoe but they all have cast time. Not quick enough to trap thieve’s stealth and mobility which is quite frustrating. Necro marks laying need to plan ahead with cast time usually but with stealth I can just random guess and lay them.

Tulisin.6945:

Kirito.8796:

Pray.3120:

Kirito.8796:

Yeah, doesn’t do that much damage.

Let me point out that you were being attacked by a thief as well as an elementalist, warrior and mesmer, the latter two having impressive might and vulnerability stacking capabilities.

I had no vuln stacks.

Fun fact: Being <50 % HP is like having 20+ stacks of vulnerability when facing a thief thanks to low-HP damage traits. A high-armor low-HP profession like guardian is much more likely to hang out in the 0-50 % range where thieves (at least most of the ones using heartseeker) are most potent. People are more than willing to drop some condition removal when they hit 20 stacks of vulnerability, but so much more hesitant to eat a heal to stay above 50 % when it gives the same effect. HP % is part of the thief fighting meta as much as anything else.

I have a level 80 thief, I know all that. I never once stated that I cant fight glass cannon thieves. In all honesty I find them to be the easiest class/build to kill. I just thought that seeing as this is a thread talking about the damage of heartseeker, I’d post some numbers. But thankyou for your concern.

I have both a Guardian and a Theif.

I run in a small group for wvw and my main partner is a d/d ele.

My guardian can hit for 4-6k AoE attacks and eat people’s lunch all day long yet no one screams about that. My Thief hits for slightly more vs one target and people cry on the forums. My guard does not have the escape me mechanics that my thief does for sure but he is tankier and can stay in the fight longer and hurt more people well throwing might out to party members the whole time. Both of them are fun and play differently. That’s what I would call balance.

Now my buddy? He is as Tanky as my guard and does as much damage too and has the mobilty of my thief. So is he op? No because one good imobilize or a well time kill shot drops him too.

My point is that right now I don’t really think any class is overpowered. All of them have a weakness you just need to find it. I also feel that when culling gets fixed most people’s problems with Thief will go away.

Last statement. Be careful who you asked to get nerfed because the whine train my focus on you next (looking at you d/d ele)

Samhayn.2385:

Be careful who you asked to get nerfed because the whine train my focus on you next (looking at you d/d ele)

This isn’t really a fair statement. As much as people complain about it, the ANet developers have demonstrated that they don’t really nerf to community sentiment. Most game developers don’t, in fact, despite what everyone says.

Case in point: The most recent round of nerfs to thieves made D/D insta-kill assassin type builds comparatively better while nerfing thief control/defensive builds despite community sentiment being almost wholly focused against the former and there not being many complaints about the latter.

Quentin Fields.1295:

dreztina.4820:

You keep saying D/D eles counter thieves as if that’s some indisputable fact. There are more builds than glass cannon thief, and the more utility and heal focused thieves are just insane. They heal themselves even faster than ele’s can, and more often since all they have to do is stealth to heal, and properly built thieves can stealth any time they want to. They don’t have the huge burst dps, but they can certainly either wear the ele down over time (a long time), or stalemate the fight with both sides healing too much to die.

The only fact is that a thief will NEVER die unless they let themselves. Maybe some bad d/d thief who is just spamming heartseeker will, sure, but any decent thief is 100% unkillable. They won’t win every fight, but just about, and even if they lose, they still won’t die unless they decide to be nice and give away the kill.

I’m asuming that you don’t play a Thief from your words.

The builds you are talking about are Condi Thief builds.Which are depending on their condi damages and mild heals.

You can’t wear down a D/D Ele as you say coz they have a nice condi removal setup on their traits.And no my friend a Thief can’t overheal a well built D/D Ele since they can heal themself to full hp within seconds by changing to water attunement and using couple skills there with the right build.Also “IF” Ele isn’t a bad player , Thief can’t run away.Ele can chase you and catch you or can CC you and won’t even let you run away.Your only actual option is shadow refuge but with a lil timing luck if Eles knockback from lightning 5 is not on cd , Ele won’t let you stay on shadow refuge so you won’t be stealthed anymore.

Please atleast don’t flame my words if you don’t actually know about the build you are talking about which is i use %90 of the time.

A well played thief will not lose to a Ele. Likewise, a well played D/D Ele will not lose to a thief. However, if both players are commited to the fight and stay to the bitter end. The condition thief has the advantage over the D/D Ele while the D/D Ele has the advantage over the burst D/D thief after the stun break.

ive played various 3d mass pvp games since about 13 years pretty nonstop and my judgement is thief needs fixing. either make him a homing-missile-style truckload of damage dealer and prevent the stealthing-at-all-times. or make him stealth and get away from anything and not do tons of damage. both at the same time is ridiculous. I mean it can happen when people who design classes dont pvp a lot themselves, but at some point when we are 3 months in, half the pop rerolled thief, everything is full of thieves, the whole forum is full of thieves-op posts.. at this point its getting ridiculous, Anet.

zhifu.8659:

Quentin Fields.1295:

dreztina.4820:

You keep saying D/D eles counter thieves as if that’s some indisputable fact. There are more builds than glass cannon thief, and the more utility and heal focused thieves are just insane. They heal themselves even faster than ele’s can, and more often since all they have to do is stealth to heal, and properly built thieves can stealth any time they want to. They don’t have the huge burst dps, but they can certainly either wear the ele down over time (a long time), or stalemate the fight with both sides healing too much to die.

The only fact is that a thief will NEVER die unless they let themselves. Maybe some bad d/d thief who is just spamming heartseeker will, sure, but any decent thief is 100% unkillable. They won’t win every fight, but just about, and even if they lose, they still won’t die unless they decide to be nice and give away the kill.

I’m asuming that you don’t play a Thief from your words.

The builds you are talking about are Condi Thief builds.Which are depending on their condi damages and mild heals.

You can’t wear down a D/D Ele as you say coz they have a nice condi removal setup on their traits.And no my friend a Thief can’t overheal a well built D/D Ele since they can heal themself to full hp within seconds by changing to water attunement and using couple skills there with the right build.Also “IF” Ele isn’t a bad player , Thief can’t run away.Ele can chase you and catch you or can CC you and won’t even let you run away.Your only actual option is shadow refuge but with a lil timing luck if Eles knockback from lightning 5 is not on cd , Ele won’t let you stay on shadow refuge so you won’t be stealthed anymore.

Please atleast don’t flame my words if you don’t actually know about the build you are talking about which is i use %90 of the time.

A well played thief will not lose to a Ele. Likewise, a well played D/D Ele will not lose to a thief. However, if both players are commited to the fight and stay to the bitter end. The condition thief has the advantage over the D/D Ele while the D/D Ele has the advantage over the burst D/D thief after the stun break.

Well if the Ele is running a 3 cantrip removal build along with Ether Renewal, a condition thief will not kill him if they fight for 3 days straight. Likewise if the thief is built properly, the Ele will not kill him either.

Hello every one,

There is already a thread dedicated for the thief here : The thief and its gameplay – Your feedback

Therefore this one is now closed.

Thank you.