Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if it’s simply a matter that they are easy to notice, if it’s a matter of Korean guilds being fans of the profession, or if they really have taken over WvW, but it feels like almost everyone I meet in WvW, both on the enemy side and on my own team, is a Thief.

Does anyone else have noticed this? Any idea what is causing it?

Same here, I see ridiculously huge number of thieves in WvW, and hardly see a good ones among them.

They are the most OP class in WvW at the moment, so that’s why…

Stealth abilitity is powerful in WvW because generally people are increadibly unobservant. Stealth to the back of a pack and shoot them from behind and most people dont even notice till they are about to go down.

Also I suppose it might vary from server to server, as I dont notice more thieves than any other class, probably even less. We had about 30 people in our guild online last night and I believe we had 4 thieves total.

vodnik.5891:

They are the most OP class in WvW at the moment, so that’s why…

I’d consider a well played mesmer to be far more dangerous than most thieves.

That said, I don’t think I’ve seen a large increase in the number of thieves.

I know I play my thief(first toon) more than my ranger(second toon) simply because all the random “Out of Range” and “Obstructed” errors frustrate the hell out of me. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably play them equally, but that simply isn’t the case.

Paranoid.9542:

Stealth abilitity is powerful in WvW because generally people are increadibly unobservant. Stealth to the back of a pack and shoot them from behind and most people dont even notice till they are about to go down.

Also I suppose it might vary from server to server, as I dont notice more thieves than any other class, probably even less. We had about 30 people in our guild online last night and I believe we had 4 thieves total.

its not that they don’t notice, its that you don’t kittening render. Stealth is completely broken in WvW currently and I personally rolled an alt to avoid abusing it. IMHO anyone using stealth in WvW is just as bad as the kittens who glitch into Bay Keep.

@Shadow Phage

I agree with mesmers being more dangerous. But the difference of course being a mesmer must be “well played” to be dangerous. Whereas any idiot can figure out a thief.

They are very OP, hence the enormous popularity. They are the reason I no longer do sPvP. How the thief made it past beta as broken as they are is well beyond me.

Overpowered yes. Overpopulated yes.

Thieves are the most OP class there is right now. My ele was one shot last night for 14k. Brought back memories of a Inf popping out of stealth in DAOC.

Kam.8109:

@Shadow Phage

I agree with mesmers being more dangerous. But the difference of course being a mesmer must be “well played” to be dangerous. Whereas any idiot can figure out a thief.

They are very OP, hence the enormous popularity. They are the reason I no longer do sPvP. How the thief made it past beta as broken as they are is well beyond me.

A lot of the over-poweredness comes from the rendering issues around stealth. If they properly flashed back into existence once stealth ended, quite a few problems would be alleviated. I say this because most classes (if not all) have builds that are capable of downing another player in under 5 seconds; the difference being you actually see that freight train coming from most other classes/builds.

Which leads into a related subject of extreme burst: Quickness.

Seriously needs to be toned down. The damage compression it provides is simply too great for the drawbacks in most every case, in my opinion.

Burl.9567:

Thieves are the most OP class there is right now. My ele was one shot last night for 14k. Brought back memories of a Inf popping out of stealth in DAOC.

Double post time!

14k HP is base. I don’t mean to be rude, but complaining about getting 1-2 shot in a glass cannon build (you’d almost have to be for that hp) is kind of…meh. If de-stealthed targets rendered properly (see my previous post), you’d be able to 1-2 shot any glass cannon thief you saw. Provided you survived their burst or were not their target.

Kam.8109:

@Shadow Phage

I agree with mesmers being more dangerous. But the difference of course being a mesmer must be “well played” to be dangerous. Whereas any idiot can figure out a thief.

So, can you explain me why there are so many worthless lvl80 thieves in WvW that can’t do anything to anyone and just dying non-stop? I have played WvW for a long time and have seen a good thieves by myself only couple of times.

Macovan.3650:

So, can you explain me why there are so many worthless lvl80 thieves in WvW that can’t do anything to anyone and just dying non-stop? I have played WvW for a long time and have seen a good thieves by myself only couple of times.

Um… I dunno what you’ve seen, and honestly don’t care. I could go out on a limb here and say you play a thief, but, well…. see the previous sentence.

I see tons of thieves in WvW. I let out a huge sigh when I walk up to a fight and immediately see 3+ dagger storms.

Shadow Phage.9084:

Burl.9567:

Thieves are the most OP class there is right now. My ele was one shot last night for 14k. Brought back memories of a Inf popping out of stealth in DAOC.

Double post time!

14k HP is base. I don’t mean to be rude, but complaining about getting 1-2 shot in a glass cannon build (you’d almost have to be for that hp) is kind of…meh. If de-stealthed targets rendered properly (see my previous post), you’d be able to 1-2 shot any glass cannon thief you saw. Provided you survived their burst or were not their target.

The problem is a thief doesn’t get hit.

You can play the glass cannon card all you want but go watch a thiefs pvp that abuses stealth, Slic is a good example. A glass cannon taking 3+ players at 80 at the same time screams imbalance.

As soon as you start laying down damage its bam stealth, heal, cond dmg, stealth. Fastest class in game highest end regen rate gives them the ability to avoid damage very easily when one of their many broken stealth skills is down.

A thief is not hard to kill but the wide variety of avoidance they get makes it nearly impossible to get them unless they are just bad.

Being killed in 2 seconds at will… yes overpowered. Don’t say dodge.

If Whirling Axe granted Stability, reflected projectiles and lasted for what seems like 2 freaking minutes, then sure Thieves might be balanced with everyone else.

Whirling blades is simple enough to deal with. Walk up (preferably dodge up) to them and hit them with a sword, it dosn’t do any more damage in melee then at range, and somebody not panicking the moment they use that seems to be a really good way to get the thief to panic instead.

The problem as others said is the rendering. Ambush by a glass cannon thief in WvW? It’s death.

1 to 2 seconds for the kitten thief to actually render and become target-able after their stealth drops, 0.3 seconds average human reaction time. Anything that’s not built defensive as all hell, is either dead or took so much damage for the fight to already be decided. Most of thief OP is from the rendering bug and the thieves are happily using that bug to it’s full potential.

Being able to invis, in a game without a see-invis buff/ability, is ridiculous in PVP.

That said, I have a thief alt of my own. If you can’t beat ’em…

You can still hit them in invis if you started a channel skill before they vanished or if your good at guessing their movement.
the important thing to remember is, EVERYONE is a spy…

Greiger.7092:

The problem as others said is the rendering. Ambush by a glass cannon thief in WvW? It’s death.

1 to 2 seconds for the kitten thief to actually render and become target-able after their stealth drops, 0.3 seconds average human reaction time. Anything that’s not built defensive as all hell, is either dead or took so much damage for the fight to already be decided. Most of thief OP is from the rendering bug and the thieves are happily using that bug to it’s full potential.

If they cant fix the rendering bug, they should apply a self-debuff upon de-stealthing that prevents any pvp attacks from dealing dmg for 1-2 seconds.
Additionally, they should increase the “revealed” debuff time by 1-2 seconds so they cant dissappear immediately after they do render.

Most of you never played a thieves, so it is understandable on this frustration. But if you know the mechanism of stealth, it is really easy to counter/avoid them. The most important thing to avoid from getting owned by a thieves is to have a good awareness of your surrounding.

Still, rendering is a huge issue atm. Especially in a big fight where projectiles flying from all direction without you seeing the person doing it.

Pro tip: Evasive thieves are the best tanks in the game.

Most of the roaming teams I meet are entirely made by thieves, from 2 to 5 of them. I have seen a team on my own server using the group stealth skill to ambush people. Again, I don’t know if it’s because Koreans really like them, but I keep seeing them more than any other profession when fighting War Machine, The Last Empire, and so on.

Buzzcrave.6197:

Most of you never played a thieves, so it is understandable on this frustration. But if you know the mechanism of stealth, it is really easy to counter/avoid them. The most important thing to avoid from getting owned by a thieves is to have a good awareness of your surrounding.

Still, rendering is a huge issue atm. Especially in a big fight where projectiles flying from all direction without you seeing the person doing it.

Ranged condition thief with, vit and tough…. let me know how well you counter that when we can just lay down conditions and if you do manage to hit us we can just stealth heal and then start laying more conditions before you even can target us again.

And a good thief will counter your blind tracking, just pointing out the obvious.

Went into wvw with a level 2 thief, managed to get in, almost take someone down and get out without dying in a huge m^mob fight. Tend to have worse luck surviving with my main (warrior).

My main is a thief LMAO. And I rolled one in beta and headstart, before its what everyone else was doing, thats why I say that, because I dont get hit. I can sit there and bleed you and dodge any and everything you throw at me and then if you do manage to get in close and hit me, i just stealth evade out heal up and keep laying on the bleed.

You cant hit what you cant see, you can try and guess but we aren’t blind easy to dodge attacks stealthed…..

Denial much?

Namu.5712:

My main is a thief LMAO. And I rolled one in beta and headstart, before its what everyone else was doing, thats why I say that, because I dont get hit. I can sit there and bleed you and dodge any and everything you throw at me and then if you do manage to get in close and hit me, i just stealth evade out heal up and keep laying on the bleed.

You cant hit what you cant see, you can try and guess but we aren’t blind easy to dodge attacks stealthed…..

Denial much?

Lie much. Clearly you don’t play thief just by your lack of knowledge on the class. Your ^50 exponential exaggeration would be like me saying “Eles are overpowered they have 40k hp, can do 30k AOE crits in 1 ability”

Knyx.5926:

Namu.5712:

My main is a thief LMAO. And I rolled one in beta and headstart, before its what everyone else was doing, thats why I say that, because I dont get hit. I can sit there and bleed you and dodge any and everything you throw at me and then if you do manage to get in close and hit me, i just stealth evade out heal up and keep laying on the bleed.

You cant hit what you cant see, you can try and guess but we aren’t blind easy to dodge attacks stealthed…..

Denial much?

Lie much. Clearly you don’t play thief just by your lack of knowledge on the class. Your ^50 exponential exaggeration would be like me saying “Eles are overpowered they have 40k hp, can do 30k AOE crits in 1 ability”

Not the same at all actually.

Prove me wrong, I can prove you wrong. you cant do the same though can you?

I have no pvp videos but heres someone that proves the point perfectly. Slic is a great pvp’er in all games hes played, and he normally plays the assasin type class in general so this isn’t a strike at him.

But he shows the severe imba of the thief in its current form.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEWOGcU61ng&list=PLdRu-1piROblxmQL9HcyqJKzgITtf9TTg&index=5&feature=plpp_video

Knyx.5926:

Namu.5712:

Knyx.5926:

Namu.5712:

My main is a thief LMAO. And I rolled one in beta and headstart, before its what everyone else was doing, thats why I say that, because I dont get hit. I can sit there and bleed you and dodge any and everything you throw at me and then if you do manage to get in close and hit me, i just stealth evade out heal up and keep laying on the bleed.

You cant hit what you cant see, you can try and guess but we aren’t blind easy to dodge attacks stealthed…..

Denial much?

Lie much. Clearly you don’t play thief just by your lack of knowledge on the class. Your ^50 exponential exaggeration would be like me saying “Eles are overpowered they have 40k hp, can do 30k AOE crits in 1 ability”

Not the same at all actually.

Prove me wrong, I can prove you wrong. you cant do the same though can you?

Straw man much kid.

You are the one who made the obviously incorrect and exaggerated statements, not me. So YOU are the one who has to prove it. Obviously you are young since you don’t even know the basics of an argument. Not to mention the “I am always right and you are wrong” attitude.

Here I will play the same game as an attempt to communicate with your pre-pubescent mind;
1+1=8
Prove me wrong!

What did i exagerrate? I said its about impossible to hit and lock down a decent thief… is that exaggerated? no its not they have several abilities to stealth they have the most mobility of any class in the game which makes dodge projectiles and other things much easier their ability to not take damage while producing damage is unmatched you cant say that about any other class, except maybe a mesmer, but a mesmer can be locked down if you know which one is real.

Your clearly mad perhaps you should calm down a bit and come back and reply with some actual substance.

And I never said they did amazing damage I said the thief has the ability to avoid damage while keeping steady damage on their enemy or enemies with a cop out option if it gets rough, no lie and no exaggeration. Again not sure why you are raging or even fighting about it with me when I showed you a perfect example of someone using game imperfections to their advantage in a build. You cant deny that. Well you can but doesn’t mean your right.

@ namu since you have lost the ability to read what you type

“As soon as you start laying down damage its bam stealth, heal, cond dmg, stealth. Fastest class in game highest end regen rate gives them the ability to avoid damage very easily when one of their many broken stealth skills is down.”

Thats from you btw.
That is an exxageration
Using words like “Impossible” is also an exaggeration. Still waiting on the evidence.

Perhaps you should step away and perhaps go back to school, so you can enter an argument with some substance.

I think a fairly straightforward answer is at the bottom of this:

PvE carebears rarely roll thief/assassin type characters.

Fairly even class distribution = More thieves than other classes in WvW.

Though honestly I haven’t noticed this in my server’s WvW population, thieves are fairly uncommon.

I play a Thief and i have to tell you it was rough at the start. I actually had to practice my key bind combination its not that easy to hit 4 or 5 key-binds in such a short time.(at least for me) I am totally burst spec and yes i have a lot of success. But i only have 10800 health and die very quickly. It is not as easy as you would think. Yes i have huge dmg numbers but all it takes is 1 evade or dodge and i have to try run and wait another 45 secs to try again its the drawback of my build and most of the people i see complain are not even 80. My 80 ranger can almost do the same burst dmg from range. My advice is if you want to beat a thief play one you will find the weakness. As far as the stupid rendering thing that gets me killed just as much as it helps me in big fights nothing like hitting someone then 4 secs later realizing your in a crowd of 20

Shadow Phage.9084:

Burl.9567:

Thieves are the most OP class there is right now. My ele was one shot last night for 14k. Brought back memories of a Inf popping out of stealth in DAOC.

Double post time!

14k HP is base. I don’t mean to be rude, but complaining about getting 1-2 shot in a glass cannon build (you’d almost have to be for that hp) is kind of…meh. If de-stealthed targets rendered properly (see my previous post), you’d be able to 1-2 shot any glass cannon thief you saw. Provided you survived their burst or were not their target.

No it’s not.

Base is more like 11k. With 20 in water traits (+200 vit) and my gear having mostly power/tough/vit I have around 15k hp.

Namu.5712:

You can play the glass cannon card all you want but go watch a thiefs pvp that abuses stealth, Slic is a good example. A glass cannon taking 3+ players at 80 at the same time screams imbalance.

As soon as you start laying down damage its bam stealth, heal, cond dmg, stealth. Fastest class in game highest end regen rate gives them the ability to avoid damage very easily when one of their many broken stealth skills is down.

A thief is not hard to kill but the wide variety of avoidance they get makes it nearly impossible to get them unless they are just bad.

This is pretty off the mark. Slic’s build is actually very tanky with 20 points in toughness and healing and 20 points in vitality. As with any class, this investment into survivability takes away from damage – for example there is absolutely zero investment in Precision. With this build you do not instagib opponents, but wear them down through clever positioning and smart use of abilities – yes including stealth. Slic kills several players because he is far better than they are. They don’t know how to counter stealth. They tend to throw themselves at him one at a time instead of holding off and attacking as a group. They don’t cleanse conditions or haven’t specced into it. They attack his pets instead of him – hell they even attack neutral mobs instead of him!

Also in these type of videos you will rarely get to see the fails. You think he is a godmode thief in every single encounter?

Final points:
If someone build glass cannon, they will die quickly. You can’t have top damage with good survivability.

Stealth is not god mode. You will and do get hit while in stealth by players who know what they’re doing. And no, you don’t require AoE to do this, merely a brain.

I’m playing a thief now in WvW, she’s low level, but there are at least two things I love about her. Perma runspeed without having a secondary weapon set I don’t particularly like. I enjoy shortbow and I even get the little portal with that.

But the main reason is, I seem to get more kills with her than with my other toons, including my ranger, who is longbow and can stand back and rain down arrows on enemies with relative ease.

Considering I have over 1300 kills and less than 200 badges and intend to buy a full set of gear with badges, I need all the kills I can get.

Plus the sound effects are pretty nice.

Hi,

I play thief since first BTW. I play pvp matchs for learning other professions to make sure to kill them easily in WvW. My highest alt is lvl 12 and I have 4XX hours played.

*It is not about how good I am or how awesome I can be. It is simply for presenting myself.

Thief is a tricky class, I was frustrated many times trying to nailed down my combo but this is not a debate on if the thief is op or not. A 14k dmg in your back inside a pvp match is something that you can expect. Specially a crunchy squishy dps light armor(with no stats on armor. If for that reason, everyone plays thief in pvp, it is fine I don’t have to do dungeons or build our WvW with them

In WvW I do not see an “unbalanced” population. Yes you can expect to be killed (finished off) by a thief. The class is meant to do this job and this is why people likes to play thief. It is not unfair, OP or a KS we simply wait for that, we try to annoy people(it seems working ^.^) to catch them out of position.

It is a skill game, people plays characters that they feel comfortable with. Even if any class in gw2 are meant to accomplish almost every role (dps, support, tank, what ever you want) I can certainly say that people who are playing thief likes to kill. Keep in mind that you are playing against players not against a single thief. I will not debate on what good thiefs are or what should be nerfed. I guess the best is the one that you like to play.

But if you fear Back Stap or Hearth Seeker, I’ve seen way more nasty build on thief, some that you can’t even imagine if you had never open thief’s traits. Worst if you never played this game as a group. Planning and strategy makes even small group deadly like hell. One thing is sure, if you guy complain about the fact that you are that man with tha big red crosshair over is head because you are “too” good(seriously it is a possibility), bah sorry, a whole team can be planning to get you out of the fight and it probably finish off with a thief finishing you off.

Thief is extremely easy to counter. If you’re getting rolled by thief, think of yourself more than the class you’re up against. If you’re not built for 1v1 like an assassin glass cannon build is, you really shouldn’t expect to win. Ever since playing a thief, I have yet to die to one 1v1. The only real complaint against thieves that I understand is Pistol Whip + Haste, since you’re killed before you have time to react. That problem lies with Quickness and not the thief, however.

Thief lacks a lot of break stuns, especially if they’re stacking stealth like people seem to claim. Because of this, CC shuts them down harder than pretty much any other class. See a thief, focus it and move on. This is the same for every assassin class in every game. Assassins will always pubstomps, and those pubs will always complain on the forums instead of try to fix the problem.

Grumpdogg.6910:

If Whirling Axe granted Stability, reflected projectiles and lasted for what seems like 2 freaking minutes, then sure Thieves might be balanced with everyone else.

If Whirling Axe did all that, it would be an elite skill, just like Dagger Storm. But it’s not, and it’s just a regular offhand ability with a 20 second CD. Also, it’s 8 seconds. That’s not very long.

If people didn’t act like Dagger Storm was the deadliest thing in the world and run away from it or switch to ranged (I laugh when I see someone do this), it’s really easy to kill a thief using it. They might have Stability, but it’s very easy to just focus and kill them. Of course, bad players think they will be instantly killed if they get close and instead switch to ranged, just to get killed by themselves. Daggers themselves don’t do a lot of damage, so one player literally is enough to stop a thief using Dagger Storm. I do it myself all the time.

@Macovan.3650 Don’t let the door hit you….

Namu.5712:

But he shows the severe imba of the thief in its current form.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEWOGcU61ng&list=PLdRu-1piROblxmQL9HcyqJKzgITtf9TTg&index=5&feature=plpp_video

Effing ridiculous! Any time his opponentS (always more than 1, wish i could do that with my class), start to do damage he just stealths and evades until he’s off c/d…. such a cheesy class.

Kam.8109:

@Macovan.3650 Don’t let the door hit you….

Seems like the door has hit you to the head really hard at your not so distant childhood…

According to this Video, Mesmers are purely OP too:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAQhfYY0YMI

Nerf! And warriours are OP, nerf! Elemetalists are even more OP, nerf!

http://www.gw2-key.com/epic-elementalist-pvp-double-dagger-guild-wars-2/

Overpowered and overpopulated. Actually had a meaningful conversation last night about stopping WvW or even GW2 altogether (since WvW was a huge selling point for us) with some of the guild leaders.

The stealth issue is a MAJOR issue. They are also still overly bursty despite the Pistol Whip nerf. Pistol Whip was one of the least used abilities I’ve seen and was not really an issue.

Evry1 has stealth now in WvW !!!!
Unless they tab you and hit 1 they cant see you