Guild Wars 2

There is no viable counter to Stealth. To many people read to much into Stealth thinking that random AoE damage counts as a counter, it does not because it doesn’t actually do anything about Stealth itself.

Stealth does one thing, it makes you invisible, nothing more and nothing less. And this has no counter. Nothing to make you aware there is someone in Stealth right next to you, nothing outside of a rahter underpowered and very expensive trap or highly-invested Arrowcart to actually reveal them.

Stealth is the only mechanic ingame that doesnt have a real counter from other players. Stability can be countered in several ways, Stun/Daze can be countered, Lines of Warding (and other nonsense) can be countered. Conditions, direct damage, even Immunity isnt full-proof. Blocking can be countered. Projectiles as a whole.

Everything, except Stealth.

Engis played right destroys thieves.

The damage+survival is insane

Terrahero.9358:

There is no viable counter to Stealth.

…
Stealth is the only mechanic ingame that doesnt have a real counter from other players.

..
Everything, except Stealth.

I fully agree that stealth has no hard counter, but there is in fact another game mechanism, which also lacks a hard counter: teleportation.

You can all it shadowstepping, mesmer portaling, but GW2 has no hard counters for that. There are no skills, nor abilities to prevent an enemy player from teleporting.

Some other games e.g. the good old Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) from 1970s, already had a counter for both:
- see invisibility, invisibility purge (invisibility area denial around you), true seeing
- dimensional anchor (preventing an enemy using extra dimensional travel),
forbiddance (area where teleportation doesn’t work)

One principle of good game design says that every powerful game mechanism should either have a hard counter or be made very scarce / rare. Now everybody knows stealth isn’t rare at all, especially if you are playing something like a D/P thief. And shadowstepping is very common as well with low cooldown e.g. thief sword #2 and mesmer sword #3 (swap).

Currently both game mechanisms are broken. The only way to fix them (without fully removing them):

1. Offer them hard counters (like D&D has), which are as easy and common to use as the skills themselves e.g. if a counter skill/ability requires long activation or has very long cooldown, e.g. 3 minutes, then it won’t be used. Would be problematic since all professions would need them and using some consumable item during hectic combat really isn’t an option when a stealthed thief is already bursting you down.

2. Make those abilities very scarce e.g. very long cooldown (120+ seconds or more). Now this would of course completely kill the thief profession.

3. Somehow reduce their power e.g. stealth doesn’t make you fully invisible, just semi-transparent, stealth also reduces movement speed by 50% and any damage during stealth makes you revealed for 4 seconds. Teleportation skill could be toned by so that everytime you use a teleportation skill you cannot activate any of your skills for 1-2 seconds. This would still keep portal as a very powerful and effective skill, but give enemy team some time to react before the portal bomb.

I think the last option is the best and would require the least amount of programming and balance changes.

Teleportation skill could be toned by so that everytime you use a teleportation skill you cannot activate any of your skills for 1-2 seconds.

I’m fine with that if they give my mesmer two hard counters from gw1:

empathy – target foe loses 10% health whenever that foe uses an attack skill, lasts 10 seconds, 10 sec cool down.
Backfire – target foe loses 25% health whenever that foe uses a spell, lasts 10 seconds, 20 second cool down.

Those are needed as currently, after confusion nerf, there is really no hard counter against spamming.

You don’t “counter” stealth. You can attempt guesswork and defensive play to prevent the Thief from killing you – but you don’t know what he’s actually doing in stealth, which can be anything he wants. Preventing the Thief from killing you is about the best you can hope for against a half-decent Thief that doesn’t overextend.

Unless you are running in a zerg I guess you should also roll Thief. Fight fire with fire, if you want. People will catch on eventually.

Nuke the entire site from orbit.

Try new specs till you find one that works most of the time… no 1 spec should be a 100% counter to anything.

Cottage Pie.6215:

Nuke the entire site from orbit.

They’ll just infiltrator’s shot out of the map.

Master of Timespace.2548:

I’m fine with that if they give my mesmer two hard counters from gw1:

empathy – target foe loses 10% health whenever that foe uses an attack skill, lasts 10 seconds, 10 sec cool down.
Backfire – target foe loses 25% health whenever that foe uses a spell, lasts 10 seconds, 20 second cool down.

Those are needed as currently, after confusion nerf, there is really no hard counter against spamming.

GW1 had better game design. It had hard counters for everything, except for shadowstep, which had 3/4 s after cast delay. I think GW2 should have a similar aftercast delay after using any teleportation skill.

GW1 had a thing called hex removal. GW2 doesn’t have them, so introducing hexes like backfire and empathy would be completely overpowered. Besides 25% health per spell casting. To my memory backfire did 133 dmg with 14 points in domination magic. 4×133 = 532 <— that is pretty kitten low full health for a GW1 pvp character. Backfire was also notoriously slow skill to activate and GW1 had much more interrupts than GW2. So what you are suggesting is hopefully just a joke, since it would be totally imbalanced in GW2.

Counter to stealth is well timed dodge and counter to thief running is well timed stun. However you need near perfect timing for both . That means any skill lag will screw it up. On the other hand thieves does not require perfect timing to use stealth as a tool.
Stealth is by far the most powerful skill in game in the hands of not just thief but also mesmers.

Bringing down yaks without much fear of counterplay is definitely a bit gamey but to be honest it’s pretty low on the totem pole of things that need attention in WvW.

The only setup in the game with enormous access to stealth is D/P, and it’s balanced around sPvP where being able to reset or stay perma-stealthed is of little real value. The game modes should’ve been balanced separately from the start.

The day people will stop complaining and just learn to play or learn to live with it..

If only -.-

Seriously, they have hardly any other defense. Get over it. Burst them back. Or just start playing smart and learn to use the force, evading them as they come in for the strike(it really isn’t that difficult. Just get your timing right and know how long they have before their stealth wears off, they normally try to hit in the last 2 seconds or so.)

Get over it please, stop complaining.

Regards.

I would gladly learn to play against something that requires skill.
Regards.

Clearly you need to acquire some skill.

play smart.
time your skills.
use your brain.

that’s how you counter stealth.
i know i know, the regular forumwhiner is very unfamiliar with those 3 things.

Here’s a few ways to actually counter stealth:

- If your autoattack has an attack chain the chain will progress when you hit a thief in stealth.
- Stealths from non d/p thieves will always be the same duration. Look at their build and see whether they have a 3 or 4 second (traited) stealth. Time your blocks / evades accordingly.
- Stealthing as a d/p thief costs a lot of init. If you interrupt a d/p thief as they try their first heartseeker through a smoke field they have no choice but to blow a utility or sit there and die.

There is one common strategy used against thieves that doesn’t counter stealth though, so make sure not to use it:

- Cry about stealth being OP on the forums and continue to use a glassy build with no stunbreakers.

zastari.1730:

Here’s a few ways to actually counter stealth:

- If your autoattack has an attack chain the chain will progress when you hit a thief in stealth.
- Stealths from non d/p thieves will always be the same duration. Look at their build and see whether they have a 3 or 4 second (traited) stealth. Time your blocks / evades accordingly.
- Stealthing as a d/p thief costs a lot of init. If you interrupt a d/p thief as they try their first heartseeker through a smoke field they have no choice but to blow a utility or sit there and die.

There is one common strategy used against thieves that doesn’t counter stealth though, so make sure not to use it:

- Cry about stealth being OP on the forums and continue to use a glassy build with no stunbreakers.

How I will counter these methods as a Thief:

-If someone hits me in stealth, I change directions. Now he has to guess where I went, which is almost impossible except in very cramped areas (so, not WvW). You will get one or two hits off then flail in the air like blind person.

-Wait 4 seconds, see you waste your block/dodge, then either CnD off a random monster or use the D/P combo for a bit more stealth. Now I attack, and you just wasted your defensive ability on nothing.
-Alternatively, spam Backstab because for some reason getting blocked doesn’t take me out of stealth (seriously, why?)

-If you interrupt me as a D/P Thief, the smoke field is still there. As long as I am still able to use Heartseeker before it fades, I can still stealth. You have to forcibly keep me from using a finisher for 4 seconds, which is longer than most CC abilities. Besides, there are lots of utility skills that give stealth, all with medium-length cooldowns. I personally use HiS, Blinding Powder, and SR and it’s nearly impossible to keep me from stealthing at any point (except when revealed, obviously)

-Strangely enough, Heartseeker can be used to damage someone and still gain stealth. Yet it is not so with the Engineer’s Acid Bomb (Elixir Gun #4). Even more oddly, even if you immobilize the Thief, Heartseeker will still grant stealth, making the most common control ability somewhat useless against the build.

Most of these ‘Thief counters’ are not actually counters if the Thief player has any idea of what to do.
(And technically they are just counters to the Thief class, not the stealth mechanic itself).

Sunflowers.1729:

zastari.1730:

Here’s a few ways to actually counter stealth:

- If your autoattack has an attack chain the chain will progress when you hit a thief in stealth.
- Stealths from non d/p thieves will always be the same duration. Look at their build and see whether they have a 3 or 4 second (traited) stealth. Time your blocks / evades accordingly.
- Stealthing as a d/p thief costs a lot of init. If you interrupt a d/p thief as they try their first heartseeker through a smoke field they have no choice but to blow a utility or sit there and die.

There is one common strategy used against thieves that doesn’t counter stealth though, so make sure not to use it:

- Cry about stealth being OP on the forums and continue to use a glassy build with no stunbreakers.

How I will counter these methods as a Thief:

-If someone hits me in stealth, I change directions. Now he has to guess where I went, which is almost impossible except in very cramped areas (so, not WvW). You will get one or two hits off then flail in the air like blind person.

-Wait 4 seconds, see you waste your block/dodge, then either CnD off a random monster or use the D/P combo for a bit more stealth. Now I attack, and you just wasted your defensive ability on nothing.
-Alternatively, spam Backstab because for some reason getting blocked doesn’t take me out of stealth (seriously, why?)

-If you interrupt me as a D/P Thief, the smoke field is still there. As long as I am still able to use Heartseeker before it fades, I can still stealth. You have to forcibly keep me from using a finisher for 4 seconds, which is longer than most CC abilities. Besides, there are lots of utility skills that give stealth, all with medium-length cooldowns. I personally use HiS, Blinding Powder, and SR and it’s nearly impossible to keep me from stealthing at any point (except when revealed, obviously)

-Strangely enough, Heartseeker can be used to damage someone and still gain stealth. Yet it is not so with the Engineer’s Acid Bomb (Elixir Gun #4). Even more oddly, even if you immobilize the Thief, Heartseeker will still grant stealth, making the most common control ability somewhat useless against the build.

Most of these ‘Thief counters’ are not actually counters if the Thief player has any idea of what to do.
(And technically they are just counters to the Thief class, not the stealth mechanic itself).

Okay cool, so you can respond to these and now we have an actual fight going instead of me just standing there and dying like most of these people who sit there and whine about thieves. FWIW, if I daze your hs in a smoke field, you’re dead on my build. I can immobilize, mind wrack, and blurred frenzy most thieves for 13k-14k before they even have the ability to hs again.

zastari.1730:

Okay cool, so you can respond to these and now we have an actual fight going instead of me just standing there and dying like most of these people who sit there and whine about thieves. FWIW, if I daze your hs in a smoke field, you’re dead on my build. I can immobilize, mind wrack, and blurred frenzy most thieves for 13k-14k before they even have the ability to hs again.

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. A lot of the so-called ‘counters’ to stealth is just misinformation from Thieves who are bad players, when in truth there are very few ways to actually counter Stealth.

These ‘counters’ have been repeated so many times that people think it’s true. Think about it – one of the most common ‘counters’ that people use all the time is “just hit the air he is still there”. It’s so obvious that the Thief can just change directions and avoid any more damage, but this piece of ‘advice’ keeps circulating. (Edit: It works on a Thief who is downed, I guess.)

If you daze me in the smoke field, I have no doubt that I will die if hit by your entire combo. So will any other glassy character. The difference is that if I don’t die, I just stealth and you never see me again. Nobody else can do that, since they are still visible and you can chase them down to kill them.

Thief is still undoubtedly the worst character for PvE. Noone wants them for any dungeons.

Sunflowers.1729:

Nobody else can do that, since they are still visible and you can chase them down to kill them.

He’s a mesmer, he can’t chase down the pieces of poo dolyaks drop.. They’re soooooo slow.

Excalibur.9748:

Thief is still undoubtedly the worst character for PvE. Noone wants them for any dungeons.

That’s not the point of this thread. GS Warriors are amazing in dungeons, but you don’t see so many of them in WvW.

WvW, sPvP, and PvE (dungeons, fractals, dynamic events.etc) all require different things so different classes are stronger in those areas. It just happens that the way that Thieves are designed favors a game mode where being able to fight/disengage at will is invaluable.

Doesn’t mean that being bad for dungeons means Thieves are bad at WvW.

ChroNoS.6978:

Sunflowers.1729:

Nobody else can do that, since they are still visible and you can chase them down to kill them.

He’s a mesmer, he can’t chase down the pieces of poo dolyaks drop.. They’re soooooo slow.

And that’s the problem. Nobody can catch a Thief if they lose because of stealth that is a) very strong and b) has no counters (not to mention lots of mobility while in stealth). As a roaming Thief in WvW, there are only two outcomes to an engagement:

1) I win (hooray! I must be so skilled)
2) I can’t win for whatever reason, but manage to run away and avoid any penalty.

Sunflowers.1729:

Excalibur.9748:

Thief is still undoubtedly the worst character for PvE. Noone wants them for any dungeons.

That’s not the point of this thread. GS Warriors are amazing in dungeons, but you don’t see so many of them in WvW.

WvW, sPvP, and PvE (dungeons, fractals, dynamic events.etc) all require different things so different classes are stronger in those areas. It just happens that the way that Thieves are designed favors a game mode where being able to fight/disengage at will is invaluable.

Doesn’t mean that being bad for dungeons means Thieves are bad at WvW.

ChroNoS.6978:

Sunflowers.1729:

Nobody else can do that, since they are still visible and you can chase them down to kill them.

He’s a mesmer, he can’t chase down the pieces of poo dolyaks drop.. They’re soooooo slow.

And that’s the problem. Nobody can catch a Thief if they lose because of stealth that is a) very strong and b) has no counters (not to mention lots of mobility while in stealth). As a roaming Thief in WvW, there are only two outcomes to an engagement:

1) I win (hooray! I must be so skilled)
2) I can’t win for whatever reason, but manage to run away and avoid any penalty.

WvW counts as PvE. Any change you make to them for WvW directly affects their performance in PvE, and they’re already the worst in PvE.

Excalibur.9748:

WvW counts as PvE. Any change you make to them for WvW directly affects their performance in PvE, and they’re already the worst in PvE.

The recent confusion and retaliation nerfs showed that WvW can be changed without affecting PvE.

A thief with nerfed stealth is just a free kill in WvW.

Excalibur.9748:

A thief with nerfed stealth is just a free kill in WvW.

Not saying stealth should be nerfed, just pointing out that WvW can be changed without affecting PvE.

Excalibur.9748:

A thief with nerfed stealth is just a free kill in WvW.

Yeah, let’s not forget Thieves have (one of) the highest mobility in the game and has a decent amount of evading abilities

Besides, nobody is suggesting that stealth is totally removed and replaced with nothing. Obviously, stealth is the main form of a Thief’s defense (the other being able to move around like a crazed raccoon on drugs) and simply removing it would be stupid. However, the whole point of a nerf is to reduce the power of something.

And like someone above said, WvW is not the same as PvE. There are also nerfs that can be done that will affect one and not the other – such as making stealthed enemies still visible as a faint shimmer (just an example)

Stealth isn’t too far from balanced. The problem is that stealth can serve as an amazing offensive AND defensive skill. So, maybe building in a ‘tradeoff’ for being in stealth that doesn’t nurf its utility for the thief, but allows players to better use their existing ‘soft’ counter-AOE.

Every class has access to AOE, and that can do damage to stealthed players. One possibility is to increase (slightly, say by 10%) the damage that a thief takes while in stealth. This gives us a chance to finish off thieves we have on the run, but isn’t too penalizing.

It wouldn’t affect their burst or use of stealth as an offensive tool. This would prevent ‘zerg-surfing’ and make it much more difficult for a thief to 1vMany.

Excalibur.9748:

A thief with nerfed stealth is just a free kill in WvW.

That is because they mostly run glass cannon builds. If they had less stealth, they would have to use more skill and probably run more defense like other professions need to do.

Now, as a mesmer, I really have no problems with thieves as they are. I beat them far more often than I lose to them. At best I’ll end up trading off deaths with them if they are very good or they will have to run away. If they run, no big deal to me since that means what ever objective I was trying to accomplish is going to be successful.

Nordic Natedog.4360:

That is because they mostly run glass cannon builds. If they had less stealth, they would have to use more skill and probably run more defense like other professions need to do.

“They would have to use more skill?” Did you actually mean to say “more access to Protection and forms of Invulnerability?”

Warrior: Enure Pain, Defy Pain and Shield Stance, only class in Heavy Armor+High HP categories
Guardian: Renewed Focus, multiple sources of Protection
Ranger: Protect Me, multiple sources of Protection
Engineer: Gear Shield, multiple sources of Protection
Ele: Mist Form, multiple sources of Protection
Necro: don’t even have to specify durability here
Mesmer: distortion, clone spawning, multiple sources of Protection

Feel free to verify that Thief has essentially zero access to either of these categories:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection

edit: wrong thread

Just roll with the zerg if you don’t think you can win a duel with a thief that abuses stealth.

Not all builds are supposed to be good at 1v1.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drink

Obtained from Elixir Bottle and Elixir of Heroes environmental weapons or by stealing from pirates.

So they are pirates+ninjas+assassins+thief…

Excalibur.9748:

Just roll with the zerg if you don’t think you can win a duel with a thief that abuses stealth.

Not all builds are supposed to be good at 1v1.

There is no non-Thief build that is better at roaming than a Thief. Nobody can disengage like a Thief can.

Sunflowers.1729:

Excalibur.9748:

Just roll with the zerg if you don’t think you can win a duel with a thief that abuses stealth.

Not all builds are supposed to be good at 1v1.

There is no non-Thief build that is better at roaming than a Thief. Nobody can disengage like a Thief can.

And..??

That’s the only thing they can do. Roaming is pretty pointless…

Excalibur.9748:

And..??

That’s the only thing they can do. Roaming is pretty pointless…

Roaming isn’t pointless at all. If you think it is pointless, you aren’t doing it properly.

-Kill Dolyaks
-Follow zergs
-Delay reinforcements to a siege
-Provide invaluable information to your server.

Edit: Obviously it is less influential than a 50-man zerg. But that’s 50 people, and the roamer is just one person.

Sunflowers.1729:

Excalibur.9748:

And..??

That’s the only thing they can do. Roaming is pretty pointless…

Roaming isn’t pointless at all. If you think it is pointless, you aren’t doing it properly.

-Kill Dolyaks
-Follow zergs
-Delay reinforcements to a siege
-Provide invaluable information to your server.

Edit: Obviously it is less influential than a 50-man zerg. But that’s 50 people, and the roamer is just one person.

What’s the point of following zergs..?

There is no way you can delay reinforcements if you’re just by yourself.

I guess scouting is okay, but that is pretty boring….

Xirin.8593:

Warrior: Enure Pain, Defy Pain and Shield Stance, only class in Heavy Armor+High HP categories
Guardian: Renewed Focus, multiple sources of Protection
Ranger: Protect Me, multiple sources of Protection
Engineer: Gear Shield, multiple sources of Protection
Ele: Mist Form, multiple sources of Protection
Necro: don’t even have to specify durability here
Mesmer: distortion, clone spawning, multiple sources of Protection

Feel free to verify that Thief has essentially zero access to either of these categories:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

Thieves have superb access to stealth, evade and dodge. In many cases they are 100% damage mitigation. Protection is 1/3 damage reduction of direct damage, but condition damage is still in full effect thus condition pressure wins over most bunkers.
But if you dodge or evade an attack you get 0 damage. Evade is built into many thief weapon skills e.g. flanking strike, disabling shot and death blossom.

E.g. take the following acrobatics traits: vigorous recovery (III), quick recovery (IX) and quick pockets (XII). And use two sets of weapons with sup. sigil of energy and use Withdraw as your healing skill. You will get very good heal every 15 s, evade, almost permanent vigor and all movement related conditions get cleansed as well. Feline grace recovers you 15% endurance and each weapon swap gives you 50% endurance back + 3 initiative. That build gives you so much initiative that you can spam your weapon skills non-stop and dodge like no tomorrow. Even better you can take uncatchable trait from the trickery line, to leave caltrops every time you dodge, for very good non-stop bleed+cripple spam. There are also some very easy to play thief builds to give you good healing, condition removal and constant spammable stealth.

One final note. Every single profession has access to protection, e.g. taking
4x runes of Lyssa (random chance, but seems to happen quite often, I have played many hundreds ours using Lyssa build!)
4x runes of the grove
4x runes of the Earth
or 6x runes of the Forge.

Thief can also steal boons using larcenous strike.

But like I wrote:
stealth/dodge/evade > protection > armor+toughness

So basically guardian is in general more durable than warrior. They have same base armor. Guardian has as low base health as thief, but protection + aegis wins over warrior’s higher health pool. But non-stop dodging + evade can win over what guardians have. Just looks at this video thieves vs guardians:
http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming/c/2281957

Deniara Devious.3948:

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

All WvW guilds: please replace your bunker Guardians with Thieves. Your success is guaranteed (disclaimer: success not guaranteed).

Deniara Devious.3948:

Xirin.8593:

Warrior: Enure Pain, Defy Pain and Shield Stance, only class in Heavy Armor+High HP categories
Guardian: Renewed Focus, multiple sources of Protection
Ranger: Protect Me, multiple sources of Protection
Engineer: Gear Shield, multiple sources of Protection
Ele: Mist Form, multiple sources of Protection
Necro: don’t even have to specify durability here
Mesmer: distortion, clone spawning, multiple sources of Protection

Feel free to verify that Thief has essentially zero access to either of these categories:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

Thieves have superb access to stealth, evade and dodge. In many cases they are 100% damage mitigation. Protection is 1/3 damage reduction of direct damage, but condition damage is still in full effect thus condition pressure wins over most bunkers.
But if you dodge or evade an attack you get 0 damage. Evade is built into many thief weapon skills e.g. flanking strike, disabling shot and death blossom.

E.g. take the following acrobatics traits: vigorous recovery (III), quick recovery (IX) and quick pockets (XII). And use two sets of weapons with sup. sigil of energy and use Withdraw as your healing skill. You will get very good heal every 15 s, evade, almost permanent vigor and all movement related conditions get cleansed as well. Feline grace recovers you 15% endurance and each weapon swap gives you 50% endurance back + 3 initiative. That build gives you so much initiative that you can spam your weapon skills non-stop and dodge like no tomorrow. Even better you can take uncatchable trait from the trickery line, to leave caltrops every time you dodge, for very good non-stop bleed+cripple spam. There are also some very easy to play thief builds to give you good healing, condition removal and constant spammable stealth.

One final note. Every single profession has access to protection, e.g. taking
4x runes of Lyssa (random chance, but seems to happen quite often, I have played many hundreds ours using Lyssa build!)
4x runes of the grove
4x runes of the Earth
or 6x runes of the Forge.

Thief can also steal boons using larcenous strike.

But like I wrote:
stealth/dodge/evade > protection > armor+toughness

So basically guardian is in general more durable than warrior. They have same base armor. Guardian has as low base health as thief, but protection + aegis wins over warrior’s higher health pool. But non-stop dodging + evade can win over what guardians have. Just looks at this video thieves vs guardians:
http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming/c/2281957

all i can say is:

you don’t know much about pvp and your constant whining is starting to get embarrassing.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Master of Timespace.2548:

I’m fine with that if they give my mesmer two hard counters from gw1:

empathy – target foe loses 10% health whenever that foe uses an attack skill, lasts 10 seconds, 10 sec cool down.
Backfire – target foe loses 25% health whenever that foe uses a spell, lasts 10 seconds, 20 second cool down.

Those are needed as currently, after confusion nerf, there is really no hard counter against spamming.

GW1 had better game design. It had hard counters for everything, except for shadowstep, which had 3/4 s after cast delay. I think GW2 should have a similar aftercast delay after using any teleportation skill.

GW1 had a thing called hex removal. GW2 doesn’t have them, so introducing hexes like backfire and empathy would be completely overpowered. Besides 25% health per spell casting. To my memory backfire did 133 dmg with 14 points in domination magic. 4×133 = 532 <— that is pretty kitten low full health for a GW1 pvp character. Backfire was also notoriously slow skill to activate and GW1 had much more interrupts than GW2. So what you are suggesting is hopefully just a joke, since it would be totally imbalanced in GW2.

Of course it’s a joke, but so are the #1 spamming blobs.

Feel free to verify that Thief has essentially zero access to either of these categories:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection

The funny thing is that whenever I’m fighting a class that’s supposed to have protection, that class doesn’t have it but I do. Strange, isn’t it?
Also, invulnerability is just differend name for evasion. :P

you do not kill competent thieves . You survive less or more , or on the rare occasion you run away…

Xirin.8593:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

All WvW guilds: please replace your bunker Guardians with Thieves. Your success is guaranteed (disclaimer: success not guaranteed).

In my terminology survivability = not dying.
I am not claiming that thief can soak up as much damage as a bunker guardian, but getting out of the harms way e.g. using shadowstep, evades and stealth = surviving.

If a fight goes bad, which happens often, guardian has much weaker chances of getting out alive if his entire team gets wiped.

Xirin.8593:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

All WvW guilds: please replace your bunker Guardians with Thieves. Your success is guaranteed (disclaimer: success not guaranteed).

Most WvW guilds don’t run “bunker Guardians” (‘bunkering’ has a specific meaning which holds zero relevance to WvW), it’s a pretty poor attempt at a riposte anyway since Guards are taken in large part for their passives/boon-sharing.

People that think that they need damage mitigation to have good defense do not understand how to actively avoid damage properly. If you are good and have a build that isn’t 100% offense you should be able to avoid 80%-90% of damage in the game. Even if you are glass cannon you can still avoid the lion’s share of it.

I run glass cannon ele with a staff in zerg vs zerg battles and typically survive even when multiple melee get on me. In fact about the only thing that CAN reliably down me if I play right is glass cannon thieves because they can down me near instantly. That’s not even a matter of my build, my Engineer with 2,500+ armor and 20k+ health has been downed in under 3 seconds by a single thief multiple times before.

Sadly for those thieves I almost always do quite alot of AOE damage and so I rally nearly every time and then, since most thieves are terrible, I blow them up or nearly blow them up before they react and escape.

Those that play sPVP know exactly how much damage is avoidable when you can see it coming and you have limited numbers potentially damaging you. This is that much more important in large battles when even stray damage can easily kill you on a glass build.
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Also I see alot of defensive skills listed, but what about Shadow Return? Even post fix it’s one of the best defensive skills in the game usable while stealthed to completely lose the enemy.

Dolyaks should detect invisible enemies.

BOOM problem solved.

Or ANet can make reliable stealth counters

wish.1027

1v1 fighting sounds fun. Add me and we can do it sometime.

About farming NSP… I was on my guardian til you guys decided that since it took more than 3 of you to fight me and win youd just zerg me every time I was anywhere with 10+ people, so I switched to my thief so you couldnt. Its your own fault. But really, it just sounds like you’re mad Oozo.

Hah. Will do.

I’ll let you know when I hit 80. You definitely need an attitude adjustment, that’s for sure.

Or you could all just stop crying.

Deniara Devious.3948:

In my terminology survivability = not dying.
I am not claiming that thief can soak up as much damage as a bunker guardian, but getting out of the harms way e.g. using shadowstep, evades and stealth = surviving.

If a fight goes bad, which happens often, guardian has much weaker chances of getting out alive if his entire team gets wiped.

Then why did you quote me in the first place? The two main points of my post were 1) Invulnerability and 2) Protection. These are abilities that give durability in the absence of Stealth.

Once other classes run out of dodges, they still have access to Protection / Invul / Blinks. Thieves only have access to Blinks and Stealth. If you can’t understand why Stealth exists for Thieves, then I’m not sure what to say.

shimmerless.4560:

Most WvW guilds don’t run “bunker Guardians” (‘bunkering’ has a specific meaning which holds zero relevance to WvW), it’s a pretty poor attempt at a riposte anyway since Guards are taken in large part for their passives/boon-sharing.

Bunker specifies the build type and the terminology has spilled-over from sPvP, regardless of its original meaning. Plenty of people run Bunker-style builds in WvW, especially on Guardian, Ranger, Engi, D/D Ele, etc.