Guild Wars 2

Try an ele, imo. Only one mention about that here, I believe, and that’s just cus we can only really just drop lots of AoE that even a crippled, one armed blind man could get out of. Don’t even have to do anything fancy like dodging, just move left or right; you got 5 secs before the dmg even starts after all.

Mesmer: When used by a coordinated guild that exploits the rendering issue in conjunction with portals. It can result in half your team being wiped before you even know something is there.

Thief: In those 1v1 situations. Again predominantly issues with rendering and the fact that a thief can remain near invisible as a result and do tons of damage in mere seconds.

I play a thief, and can’t see myself playing any other class. There is no other faster class, period. I’ve played with 10 or so different skill builds and just the basic thief is more mobile than any other class in the game.

(I currently build my thief to be even faster and stealthier than normal, so I usually can outpace other thieves and run away even from other thieves)

The way to balance a thief-like character is so hard, how can you balance out mobility/stealth characters fighting toughness/vitality? It’s just impossible to make a perfect balance.

Currently, the one true balance of the thief is that it is very un-forgiving. You mess up once and you will get insta-pwned, due to the lower base health/armor compared to other melee/~900 range max people.

Also, one must consider that thieves for all their offense and ability to pick and choose their fights, they’re not very “supportive” in nature. They’re opportunists which in their very nature makes them “annoying” to enemies, but in a long, drawn out battle their weaknesses are much more noticeable.

Another interesting thing to note is the initiative system- the best technique for a thief to be effective generally requires spamming something in one quick burst (of speed or damage), but elongated battles again aren’t as effective. Once I’m out of initiative, and i’ve burned a few cooldowns in my utility/heal/steal, I’m generally dying a few seconds later, not able to finish off the target or get away.

tl/dr:
Thieves? Annoying. Overpowered? Perhaps, but not as much as people think.

p.s. seriously, all the posts about “thief abusing mechanics from the non-rendering bull kitty stuff” you need to just shut up and let aNet do their best to fix it. You couldn’t possibly even consider that it’s even harder on thieves than other classes when you have zergs of 100s of invisible enemies? Like I said, a thief is the least forgiving of mistakes. Charging in on what you thought was 1 lone target happens to be 50 bloodthirsty enemies ain’t exactly easy to escape with any thief build

About thieves, you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they’re not there and they’re not taking damage. Just survive long enough on initial burst, toss aoe on the ground and watch said thief appear down on the ground. Thing about glass cannon is, they have no defense and hp. It’s quite fun to get them down actually. I play thief myself, 2892 attack, 42 crit chance, 71 crit damage, 2551 armor, 15,195 HP. I run with power/toughness/vitality build. Short bow is my counter to backstab/pistol whip build.

Exactly what sin said is what i mean. AoE around once they stealth, keep swinging away even if you can’t see them, and you’ll take em down. Or stop traveling alone and feeding us kills :P

Thieves.

Sucks being killed by a player you know is terrible.

Loco.4561:

Thieves.

The fact they can hit you for insane amounts and you don’t even see them because they haven’t rendered (I have lovely fraps footage of being killed by a thief, they don’t render until I’m at about 10% health) and that they can stomp whilst stealthed which means it has NO counter. Needs nerfing.

“A GAME ENGINE BUG is making a class overpowered. Don’t fix the bug, rather NERF THE CLASS!”

Oh god the logic in this thread is simply ASTOUNDING /triplefacepalm

No one should be able to do the kind of damage pulled of by burst builds. And Thieves are on the high-end of the spectrum, even if Stealth worked the way it should without the rendering bug it would still be a retarted mechanic.

A Warrior comming at you with bullcharge + 100b can be spotted a mile away, and dodged. A Thief on the other hand, can get in your neck instantly and invisibly, you dont know that he’s there untill after he started unloading his burst. There is no question which of these is worst.

But again, i think burst builds in general need to a hefty nerfhammer. Starting with Quickness which is just a completely ludicrous ability. Really?! You’re going to give someone +100% dps!? Maybe if people died after an extented fight, maybe. But even without Quickness people can already be dropped pretty fast.

No one should be able to do the kind of damage pulled of by burst builds. And Thieves are on the high-end of the spectrum, even if Stealth worked the way it should without the rendering bug it would still be a retarted mechanic.

A Warrior comming at you with bullcharge + 100b can be spotted a mile away, and dodged. A Thief on the other hand, can get in your neck instantly and invisibly, you dont know that he’s there untill after he started unloading his burst. There is no question which of these is worst.

But again, i think burst builds in general need to a hefty nerfhammer. Starting with Quickness which is just a completely ludicrous ability. Really?! You’re going to give someone +100% dps!? Maybe if people died after an extented fight, maybe. But even without Quickness people can already be dropped pretty fast.

Hey, let’s just ignore the fact that this “dodgable” 100b warrior has heavy armor and 24h health with an offense spec, whereas the thief has only 14k. Also that a thief can most likely only land a single backstab if you dodge backwards.
Sounds legit.

The only thing I agree is quickness NEEDS to be nerfed. They nerfed pistol whip to a point where it’s now worse than sword auto-attacks. When PW was in fact not the freakin problem, quickness is. Quickness makes viable skills imbalanced, and a 100% DPS increase is beyond crazy.

gaspara.4079:

The burst thieves that everyone is complaining about tend to run around alone looking for enemies running around alone. Simple solution for you, stop running around by yourself and and use some teamwork. WvWvW is meant to be a team endeavor if your getting bursted by thieves its because your running solo.

You know people do get caught on their own running back to a group/team… So what are you supposed to do? Wait till you get 5 freinds to run back with you so that a thief can’t appear and melt your face before you can react. Thives can still take on groups of 2 or 3 players and still get out alive.

I’m going with what appears to be the consensus: Thief

Jennaissance.2195:

No one should be able to do the kind of damage pulled of by burst builds. And Thieves are on the high-end of the spectrum, even if Stealth worked the way it should without the rendering bug it would still be a retarted mechanic.

A Warrior comming at you with bullcharge + 100b can be spotted a mile away, and dodged. A Thief on the other hand, can get in your neck instantly and invisibly, you dont know that he’s there untill after he started unloading his burst. There is no question which of these is worst.

But again, i think burst builds in general need to a hefty nerfhammer. Starting with Quickness which is just a completely ludicrous ability. Really?! You’re going to give someone +100% dps!? Maybe if people died after an extented fight, maybe. But even without Quickness people can already be dropped pretty fast.

Hey, let’s just ignore the fact that this “dodgable” 100b warrior has heavy armor and 24h health with an offense spec, whereas the thief has only 14k. Also that a thief can most likely only land a single backstab if you dodge backwards.
Sounds legit.

The only thing I agree is quickness NEEDS to be nerfed. They nerfed pistol whip to a point where it’s now worse than sword auto-attacks. When PW was in fact not the freakin problem, quickness is. Quickness makes viable skills imbalanced, and a 100% DPS increase is beyond crazy.

I’ve noticed it’s pretty hard to kill (or simply damage) when you’re half way into casting by the time their burst damage has downed you. What do you suppose we do to that?

Thieves, I’m a Mesmer and can at times beat them, but they run away or call friends when they start losing

Invisible thieves gets my vote. It’d gotten so annoying that I actively target thieves that are visible for revenge.

Mesmer working with an organized group, thief solo.

The perma invisible issue is a technical problem that Anet has to fix. If you are near the zerg then yea Thieves are just broken no doubt about it. That’s why I try to stay away from zergy stuff but sometimes it’s unavoidable.

Thieves for sure… not counting the free hits till they get rendered they also get the ability to channel the finisher while stealthed when the opponent is downed.

Thiefs, They are, no matter what any thief will tell you, completely OP in PvP right now and in WvW with the rendering issue, I routinely die to completely invisible foes ou in the field. So kitten annoying.

It wierd, as the amount of stealth thieves that have killed me in the 3500 kills I have achieved in WvW is about 5% or less

Ranged classes and Gap closing Warriors are the biggest for me and the occasional falling off a cliff when running away

Id have to say a quickness Ranger or Warrior and a good Ele are my worst fears as a thief

Mesmers…. I cant get them, but they cant get me either

When im up on a wall eles/mesmers/necros usually get me and the occasional cluster bomb from another thief

hardest classes for me as a thief to deal with 1on1 on the ground…. Guardian and Warrior with shield that knows what they are doing

thiefs are really really easy for me, but that maybe because I play one and know how to take one down

as far as invisible players.. The only time i really get that is when entire zergs are taking 5 seconds to render

Thieves are the worst if you’re alone, they stealth to you so you can’t see them coming, and immobilize and down you within seconds, then stealth again so you don’t know when they’re finishing you, then you’re dead and you look around and see them running off into the distance, looking for their next victim. Even if you’re fast enough to stop them, they can just stealth away while you’re standing there with your skills on cooldown. But when they actually stick around instead of running away, I have a lot of fun fighting them.

Thieves not rendering from stealth properly, had this happen to me yesterday.

Kyte.3986:

tl/dr:
Thieves? Annoying. Overpowered? Perhaps, but not as much as people think.

Yes, Yes we are. I have a thief (was 80 a week and a half – 2 weeks after release don’t remember when I hit 80) had full exotics for a while now farmed for skins after that I have every exotic weapon a thief can use and tried every build.

I just rolled an Ele and didn’t realize the true difference between the two classes, but then I hop back on my thief for raids and it becomes instant easy mode.

Honestly imo the only builds that are not over powered are the pistol dagger condition build (although the rendering out of stealth does make it seem OP a tiny bit) or short bow builds (although pistol whip is a little closer to being balanced with the reduced damage I can still crit for 9k (more if they have vulnerability stacks) with 1 pistol whip)

Thief became boring to me go stealth pistol whip, pistol whip, stealth again, use thieves guild, rinse and repeat. It’s like that for almost every build, use one -2 (or 3 if you count thieves guild which I only use on 1v2’s or higher) skills and get results. Although my Ele is harder to play (and arguably a little under powered, up for debate but small buffs and bug fixes are needed) I get much more satisfaction from playing her.

Kyte.3986:

I play a thief, and can’t see myself playing any other class. There is no other faster class, period. I’ve played with 10 or so different skill builds and just the basic thief is more mobile than any other class in the game.

Actually, that is not true. A Dagger/Dagger Aura elementalist is faster and has more mobility (running mist form/lightning flash of course). A number of my guildies did speed races, Thief vs D/D Ele and the Ele won each time, it was close but the Ele still won. And I outrun thieves on my ele in WvW all the time

Webley.1295:

Tijo.9857:

Thieves not rendering got my vote… going from 100% to 20% to an invisible foe = broken

Who here knows the mechanics of stealth and thief? Im judging no one above.
The first hit from stealth is pretty much always for free and invisible and usually a backstab or backstab combo.

A fully geared backstab that takes down another glass cannon with no toughness and no orbs and has the HP of a rabbit (or under lvl 80) is perfectly normal.

There are to many glass cannons saying they die to quickly…… thats the issue. Glass cannon is the thiefs favorite prey

the problem is related to thieves (and mesmers to a lesser extent) not rendering until several seconds after that stealth has worn off. in fact oftentimes even with enemy nameplates on you’ll not see their red text pop up for even longer than that.

it’s an issue with the game, not the class itself. however i can see how in small scale pvp thief burst is an issue that anet is going to have to either address or create a counter to if they wish to pursue the esport route.

I don’t have a lot of issues with the class design even they are really annoying, but I can deal with that. Now, rendering issues… I hope Anet will fix that, and I won’t have any more complaints.

Thief is most annoying not just due to abilities, but because many are useless to their team. Just running around the map trying to be an assassin. These types should go to sPVP if they want to 1v1 or small scale combat. Individual kills matter next to nothing to the larger fight.

Stealth is just about always a poor decision in a game if they want to achieve quality balance.

Thieves always start strong on every mmo and then they get nerf real hard. I wouldn’t be surprise it happens in gw2 as well. My vote goes for the thief as the most annoying profession in wvw, in spvp and in dungeons by constantly getting downed.

Thief, Only for the render issue.

Just fought a thief 1v1 who was trying to take my supply camp
" I got this.. "
Nukes me, Goes invis, Nukes me again, Still Invis.
Renders and dances on my body
wat.jpg

Thieves, remove them from the game

I’d say the “Commander” class is the most annoying one to deal with in WvW.

Thieves, and Eles are a far second.

Also, The thieves that just spin into a group of enemies and run out after their spin runs out only to repeat the cycle minutes later.

Lol

Webley.1295:

Casia.4281:

Webley.1295:

Tijo.9857:

Thieves not rendering got my vote… going from 100% to 20% to an invisible foe = broken

Who here knows the mechanics of stealth and thief? Im judging no one above.
The first hit from stealth is pretty much always for free and invisible and usually a backstab or backstab combo.

A fully geared backstab that takes down another glass cannon with no toughness and no orbs and has the HP of a rabbit (or under lvl 80) is perfectly normal.

There are to many glass cannons saying they die to quickly…… thats the issue. Glass cannon is the thiefs favorite prey

I assume you play a thief, and therefor haven’t noticed it.
Spvp and wvw are different. Loading issues in mass pvp, and even when alone if the wvw world is lagging a bit, mean you don’t render after you break your stealth. 4-5s of “loading” invis every time you break your stealth.
Its an issue of visual culling and lag. Again, even with SSD here. There is often a large delay, or as mentioned server side culling.

Yes I play a thief, and Ive killed 3000 people in WvW, a large part of them thiefs. And I didnt use stealth in my build. (Withdraw and RoI)

I have not noticed a rendering issue when killing thiefs that use stealth so must be something your end

Ive only died once from a thief in under two seconds: He used a back stab combo on me but was still able to get him to 5% health in 2 moves before i dropped in about a second flat as i saw him first and took the first move

Looked on youtube… No videos of this rendering issue either and no posts by dev acknowledging it. And lets be fair to Anet…. They acknowledge the issues players have raised pretty well

yes 90% of the player base says the same exact thing but you stand there and say kitten must be you lol.

Its no coincidence that everyone says the same thing….. oh right except for people that play thieves of course.

Denial is strong with this one.

Remove the stealth crap and thieves aren’t bad to fight at all… because gasp you can actually hit them and see them lol.

PS: I play a thief and it happens all the time, I can tell ill be in stealth and even though im out on my screen they are still trying to figure out where I am a few seconds after stealth ended. Broken mechanic is broken.

Thieves easily. The go to class for players with no actual skill.

1st thief too overpower
2st mesmers ~

SausageStorm.4293:

lol dem Thieves

Webley.1295:

Tijo.9857:

Thieves not rendering got my vote… going from 100% to 20% to an invisible foe = broken

Who here knows the mechanics of stealth and thief? Im judging no one above.
The first hit from stealth is pretty much always for free and invisible and usually a backstab or backstab combo.

A fully geared backstab that takes down another glass cannon with no toughness and no orbs and has the HP of a rabbit (or under lvl 80) is perfectly normal.

There are to many glass cannons saying they die to quickly…… thats the issue. Glass cannon is the thiefs favorite prey

I build a Tanky Warrior and still die pretty fast to Thieves, but I guess the next thing you’ll argue is my player skill isn’t it. Don’t know why people defend something that’s clearly broken.

Yeah, the highest burst class QQing about the class that has the 2nd highest burst.

RANGERS!!! So annoying with their bows that do non existant damage, and their OP pets!!

lmao….but seriously

Thieves obviously. Can’t wait for the long overdue nerf!

Thieves or Mesmers
I’m a thief and I hate thieves =(
I think if they fixed the bug with stealth atm it would cure a lot of it up.
Also any one trick pony crit builds.
Like Gsword warriors, Bullrush, quickness, hblades, lawl.
Hey… I play a warrior too…
Maybe I just don’t like myself?

Webley.1295:

Casia.4281:

Webley.1295:

Tijo.9857:

Thieves not rendering got my vote… going from 100% to 20% to an invisible foe = broken

Who here knows the mechanics of stealth and thief? Im judging no one above.
The first hit from stealth is pretty much always for free and invisible and usually a backstab or backstab combo.

A fully geared backstab that takes down another glass cannon with no toughness and no orbs and has the HP of a rabbit (or under lvl 80) is perfectly normal.

There are to many glass cannons saying they die to quickly…… thats the issue. Glass cannon is the thiefs favorite prey

I assume you play a thief, and therefor haven’t noticed it.
Spvp and wvw are different. Loading issues in mass pvp, and even when alone if the wvw world is lagging a bit, mean you don’t render after you break your stealth. 4-5s of “loading” invis every time you break your stealth.
Its an issue of visual culling and lag. Again, even with SSD here. There is often a large delay, or as mentioned server side culling.

Yes I play a thief, and Ive killed 3000 people in WvW, a large part of them thiefs. And I didnt use stealth in my build. (Withdraw and RoI)

I have not noticed a rendering issue when killing thiefs that use stealth so must be something your end

Ive only died once from a thief in under two seconds: He used a back stab combo on me but was still able to get him to 5% health in 2 moves before i dropped in about a second flat as i saw him first and took the first move

Looked on youtube… No videos of this rendering issue either and no posts by dev acknowledging it. And lets be fair to Anet…. They acknowledge the issues players have raised pretty well

Stop being delusional. I get hit up to 5 or 6 times before the thief actually appears. Everyone knows stealth and portal have rendering issues except you apparently.

Most of the people here crying on rendering, yet they want classes to be nerf. I found this funny.

1. mesmers…. fkn broken class

I find mesmers to be more annoying than thieves. Thieves don’t really bother me too much.

The Pets… uhh I get so sick of the 8 bazillion pets all over the place that give absolutely no credit then they die. Ranger pets need a shorter max leash.

Also, those floaty Guardian greatsword pets because they cant be damaged.

I’m not surprised that almost of all votes are saying the two Stealth classes(Thief & Mesmer) are the most OP in WvW. Doesn’t this happen in all MMO’s, the stealth classes come out of the gate OP and then they eventually get nerfed so the game doesn’t turn into Stealth Wars 2.

Easily thieves. Perma run speed bonus so you can’t run away, nor chase. High damage with stealth and the current issues around invisible enemies makes them too much at the moment. If the invisible enemies issue were to be fixed, it’d be a much closer call between the thief and the mesmer. As it stands, thief.

Thieves. If I cant see you for 95% of the fight then its OP. Im betting there will be a nice nerf coming to them soon. Mesmers are annoying but seem to be fair.

Mesmers…

Unless they have map completion. I love that little gold star letting me know which one is real and which one is not :P

None of the classes if there wasn’t the rendering issue

Thief as it is now.
Even though I don’t die to them.
Killing them is usually impossible as they are invisible pretty much the whole fight due to the rendering issue
(If you don’t kill them, they will keep coming back again and again to try and kill you)
Once their burst fails it’s just impossible to punish them for the fail attempt as they can port/stealth away and come back to retry.

This basically leads to thieves being a total pest, as they can keep on trying (even with many other team members around you) without ever being punished for their fail attempts

Example would be
Having a thief hang around a supply camp for ages killing anyone that comes there, or just run away, wait for his skills/ini, come back and try again over and over even when 3~8 people chase him is just BS
In this particular case it took 6 people spamming all CC/movement skills they had to chase down a thief over the span of 1/4 of the map before he went down after he blew up all his initiative earlier on fail ganks

How’s that working properly?
All the thieves cry fail ganks cost us our life, while in reality, fail ganks just mean you as a thief port away recover and try again.
As a thief you only die when you as a player fail, not from a failed initial kill attempt.
Which leads to skilled thieves that abuse the rendering issue be utter annoyance beyond the capability of any other class.

Now when/if the rendering issue is ever gone (there will be a lot less thieves) the actually skilled thieves now that never die will be comparable to the current baddies that sometimes die in a gank attempt

Thieves. Rendering issue aside, their mixture of burst damage, stealth and absurd movement speed is already overpowered (25% passive +heartseeker? lolol). Thieves still need some significant nerfs to bring them in line with other classes. And of course, until the rendering issue is fixed they will be ultra overpowered regardless.

Mesmers are very strong 1v1, but they can’t just appear behind you and kill you in 1 second. It is possible to run away from a mesmer. Not so with a theif. They could probably stand some tweaks to a few skills like portal, but they aren’t completely broken.

Oh my lord thieves. Mesmers too but.. thieves… they stay invisible way too long. You can’t do anything because you can’t outrun them, and you can barely hit them when they’re critting you to kingdom kong, then they run when you actually start winning. and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s too easy for them to run in, kill/escape. Mesmers have annoying clones but some good aoe and observation should do the trick, but when there’s like 4 mesmers together it’s fun fun fun… especially when you finish off the wrong one in the confusion

Thieves.

Really JUST thieves. I don’t find other classes to be annoying. I’d like to see “portal bombing” restricted but that’s not remotely as annoying on a minute-to-minute basis as thieves.

I’d love to see population trends. I bet thieves started out as maybe 6% of the population and now are more like 20%.

By the time they do their update in February, I expect we will simply all be thieves.