Guild Wars 2

Columba.9730:

50% run speed.

Say wha? More misinformation?

Teamkiller.4315:

Slender, if you’re trying to argue that stealth ISN’T overpowered maybe you shouldn’t start by saying “Hey I just won a 1v7 but it’s because I played smart”.

I’m trying to point out how the majority of the playerbase is relatively terrible. Learn what thieves run with – in this case I had no stun breaker at all, and only one on command stealth (blinding powder – HiS/SoS/BP/caltrop/guild) and I don’t think I was CC’d once beyond the comm’s fears.

Also, there was only 3 or so at a time, I was just there so long fighting a commander tag that more kept coming. Why out of all of them, was I never knocked down, immob’d, feared, stunned while casting my only blatant heal, AOE bled, AOE burned, confuse bombed, cripple spammed? While I was hit with CC, it wasn’t coordinated (random WvW low levels and pugs?) and taken advantage of. With the chaos of WvW combined with using line of sight to block range, stealth builds excel so well, there’s no fix for that sorry.

With the 33% MS in stealth (another misconception – the 50% speed is only so high to compensate for combat speed debuff) I’m able to exploit the chaos much easier when I reposition myself AWAY from the group and only close to my target. This isolates the players who don’t understand staying together will win. There could have been 3 thieves and all the group would have to do is stay close and focus fire.

I don’t understand why the elementalists don’t ride the lightning to me the second I start using sneak attack, or why I don’t get bull rushed instantly, or why I don’t get feared out of my shadow refuge, or why the ranger just stood still while I dropped caltrops on his feet, why the guardians don’t magnet pull me out of refuge, or why I was able to spam cloak and dagger over and over as they never learned to dodge and cripple when I come into melee range, or why the engi’s don’t seem to realize care package stun will end my life, or understanding why aegis as group buff will wreck me, why do people dodge roll when I’m in stealth – the moment after I stealth? (hint: wait 2 seconds and don’t backpedal..)

WvW allows stealth to excel much more noticably than say a guardians group aegis, it’s just so much more rage inducing to everyone when it’s so much more graphic and visible, and thus more crying ensues. Seirously, l2p and use skills to counter the mechanic – whenever I see a stealther I immediately switch to shortbow and immob followed by AOE spam in the likely direction of movement, of which almost always works, use blinds or aegis when they get close for the CnD.

slender.1482:

I don’t understand why the elementalists don’t ride the lightning to me the second I start using sneak attack,

self stun is not fun you know….
And then you say L2p

Its fun how all thieves just say l2p….

WHen they actually have no idea how game works for other classes….and that is the only reason why they think stealth is fair.

Its clearly a l2 kitten ue for thieves not for Others…

LordByron.8369:

slender.1482:

I don’t understand why the elementalists don’t ride the lightning to me the second I start using sneak attack,

self stun is not fun you know….
And then you say L2p

Its fun how all thieves just say l2p….

WHen they actually have no idea how game works for other classes….and that is the only reason why they think stealth is fair.

Its clearly a l2 kitten ue for thieves not for Others…

I play a guardian, first thing I do when a thief stealths near me is 5 on great sword or 5 on hammer contain them and wreck them while they are down. They stealth again, I pop aegis and let him waste his BS then use my util knockdown. Hit him some more. He tries it again, I util immob him, he Shadow refuges, I hammer 4 him out of it. Greatsword 5 again if he is running and I can still catch him. If not, I /laugh as he runs to lick his wounds. Sure I’ll take some dmg, but I survived and I made him pick a weaker target next time.

You play ele? Air attunement is your friend.
Staff 3 and 5 are your CC
Septer 3 will blind, giving you 6 secs of safety.
D/D? press 3 when he stealths and it will stay on until he unstealths. 1 sec stun. 4 if he shadowsteps away to catch him then immediately 5 to knock him down. Earth is also good for D/D. 3 is immob and 4 is knockdown.
focus 5
Lightning hammer 5
Shadow refuge? Lightning hammer 3

Earth and water utility signets immob and chill. Don’t underestimate the power of chill. Thieves hate it. It makes them move slow and 66% increase on a spam spell makes a big difference when timing combos.

The only weapon an ele has that doesn’t have a CC on air attunement is the scepter, but your offhand will.

See thief? Go to air. You might not win, but you will survive.

Thieves are procedural because of the ability to spam spells and use initiative. This is our strength and our weakness. Break our procedure with your own control and fight on your terms. Don’t expect to outburst us. Expect to outlive us.

Hello!

L2P argument again, mhm. As a thief I would say it is very unfair. Don’t trust it, guys.

Anet will do two things in the future, I suppose:
1) they will nerf the stealth;
2) they will boost survivability of the class since without stealth a thief is a dead man walking.

As you see in order to preserve the class a very big revision of its mechanic is needed. This will take time.

Cheers!

zamalek.2154:

Personally I don’t have a problem with stealth, but people are complaining – so something can clearly be improved: like it or not.

Still, the bugs with stealth need to be fixed before anything else happens.

Currently, as i pointed out earlier, the nameplate is bugged and i’m told there is a culling issue.

Game shouldn’t be balanced around the bugs unless we’re absolutely certain the bugs will never be fixed.

Those bugs are the only things that need to change at this exact moment. As they could be all or part of the entire cause of so much frustration.

GW2 Wiki:

Thieves are less powerful in terms of raw strength and durability in comparison to some professions. They must rely on stealth, evasion, surprise attacks, and debilitating and damaging conditions to overpower their opponents. An experienced thief can take on multiple targets but preferably one at a time.

A thief must rely on stealth because thieves, compared to other professions, have few to no ways to gain Protection, Stability, Regeneration, Aegis, Fury, Might, Retaliation, Vigor.

The only way we can have a boons is using steal on mesmers or with some traits, which requires a dedicated build.
Moreover we wear medium armor and we have the lowest life pool.

If there are a lot of players that have not problems with stealth and you think it is greatly OP, maybe it’s really a L2 kitten ue.
Otherwise I cannot understand how is it possible that someone has no problems with something so overpowered and unbalanced.

Instead of repeating for the millionth time “thieves are OP” or “thieves are unbalanced” try to explain me how so many people can counter them and have no problems with stealth nor thieves in general.

Rashagal.5867:

…..

we are talking about balance here…

No offence but your presumption of being able to teach players to use an elementalist is clearly wrong and shows you some lack of pratical experience at least with the class.

Moreover the issue we are discussing are different:

1) you have a GC build you cannot react a thief…plain and simple…..
A class that can build GC and make many other builds unviable expecially light one.

2) surviving a GC burst should result in GC Death……while with thief this doesn t happen…he still has plenty tool to escape and reset the fight….

This means unbalance.

-A class that won t pay for mistake
-A class that doesn t take in account opponent skill unless it is built against it

Those are basic concept in balancing that thieves obviously doesn t respect.

LordByron.8369:

….

just your opinion.

LordByron.8369:

Rashagal.5867:

…..

we are talking about balance here…

No offence but your presumption of being able to teach players to use an elementalist is clearly wrong and shows you some lack of pratical experience at least with the class.

Moreover the issue we are discussing are different:

1) you have a GC build you cannot react a thief…plain and simple…..
A class that can build GC and make many other builds unviable expecially light one.

2) surviving a GC burst should result in GC Death……while with thief this doesn t happen…he still has plenty tool to escape and reset the fight….

This means unbalance.

-A class that won t pay for mistake
-A class that doesn t take in account opponent skill unless it is built against it

Those are basic concept in balancing that thieves obviously doesn t respect.

Classes that don’t pay for mistakes? Do you mean like elementalists suiciding into zergs only to mistform through tower doors, bandage, and do it all over again?

Perhaps you mean a class that that don’t take into account opponent skill like Killshot warriors that run with a zerg and deal 15k dmg, taking out a GC before he can even render the enemy?

Surviving a GC burst and not being able to kill that GC? Like when that killshot or 100b warrior hits me and leaves me with 100hp and I have to stealth and run because I cant kill him since one auto attack would finish me? Or perhaps the D/D earth elementalist that stacks bleeds on me when, as a GC thief, I only have 1 condition remove on my bar, forcing me to use it and run to safety?

A class that can build and make other classes unviable? Like a bunker guardian that can outlive any other class if they use their CC and utilities correctly? Or the bunker elementalists that could outrun from any other class to safety?

I also play ele, but I’m not 80. However, I WvW with her, and he rarely dies to thieves, I stick close to my team and use air to control them so my team can beat them down for me.

Attune to air, gaining heavy damage and control abilities.

That’s from the wiki, and it works. I am just pointing out that there are ways to control a thief that generally lead to success. Trying to out damage them is not usually successful, especially as an elementalist. You say its not my place to try to teach people how to play an elementalist. Truth be told I haven’t taught anyone how to play ele. I’ve taught them how to play against a thief. I just used ele as an example because the class was brought up as if nothing could be done.

Stealth lasts 3-4 seconds. Unless they initiate with shadow refuge, you will see them coming to initiate. Yes, it happens fast, but if you keep your eyes on them you will know when they are going to come in on you before they do it. Its no different than a 100b or killshot spec warrior, you have to pay attention to them so you know when it is coming. Culling is an issue here. Hopefully things will get better once this is solved.

As for not being able to react to a GC as another GC. That the entire purpose of glass cannons. Whoever gets the drop on the other usually wins. That’s like trying to complain that a tanky thief cant out tank a bunker guardian. Its sort of their wheelhouse.

Rashagal.5867:

Classes that don’t pay for mistakes? Do you mean like elementalists suiciding into zergs only to mistform through tower doors, bandage, and do it all over again?

Cool lets see….are you that guy complaining in ele forum i bet…
As i said unless you are on tier 8 that tactic means almost 0 risk (true) and compltely 0 rewards…

risk if having smart opponent to immobilize your VAPOR form
But in the meantime you cannot even complete a single skill before dying.

If you knew what you are talking about you wouldn t even try to argue with that because if you are defending a tower you just go ooc equip your staff and do something.

D/D ele is horribad in and outside Towers.
They are decent only in openfields mostly ONLY in small scale fights because with current www status and confusion fields you cannot even try to rush in enemy zergs….

You just carefully try to hit their side or rear hoping to catch a couple of players offguard and distract them.

After AoE cap, D/D ele is just not good against zergs….

Perhaps you mean a class that that don’t take into account opponent skill like Killshot warriors that run with a zerg and deal 15k dmg, taking out a GC before he can even render the enemy?

that may be the case….
The fact stealth is not balanced doesn t means the rest of the game is….

Surviving a GC burst and not being able to kill that GC? Like when that killshot or 100b warrior hits me and leaves me with 100hp and I have to stealth and run because I cant kill him since one auto attack would finish me?

see above..

Or perhaps the D/D earth elementalist that stacks bleeds on me when, as a GC thief, I only have 1 condition remove on my bar, forcing me to use it and run to safety?

So you get hit by the most predictable skill in the game with huge flashing red circle and the ele standing still or 4 seconds…..and you manage to escape….

As i said exactly (true you can TP ONCE ….but evading means that you don t take no bleed and no damage at all)

Thief doesn t pay for mistakes….

A class that can build and make other classes unviable? Like a bunker guardian that can outlive any other class if they use their CC and utilities correctly?

Can he kills you? oh they are a counterbuild and they can ’t ?

How cute

EXACTLY AS I SAID…….

Or the bunker elementalists that could outrun from any other class to safety?

nice try…..thief is faster, and yet they nerfed mobility…
They can jump IN or jump OUT not both as a thief.

Also again….can they kill you?
No?

Exactly again……..

I also play ele, but I’m not 80. However, I WvW with her, and he rarely dies to thieves, I stick close to my team and use air to control them so my team can beat them down for me.

Attune to air, gaining heavy damage and control abilities.

that is nonsense like the old ele description….ele was capable of unleash massive damage….

Was so ridiculous they changed description of elementalists XD

What are we talking of? your personal misconception of elementalist?

Ele have possible the lowest damage around professions…that is why many eles go bunker.

That’s from the wiki, and it works.

Yes please me tell me how 1400 to 3000 damage i can deal with a balanced ele using all skills of air attuenement, can be considered huge damage

I am just pointing out that there are ways to control a thief that generally lead to success.

your assumptions were flawed…..
i ’ll stop here……

A good thief won t die against almost any class….i know the class is o beginner friendly that there are really few…..

(and don t think i m talking about you….i don t know how you play thief i just can tell you don t know anything about ele).

Rashagal.5867:

As for not being able to react to a GC as another GC. That the entire purpose of glass cannons. Whoever gets the drop on the other usually wins. That’s like trying to complain that a tanky thief cant out tank a bunker guardian. Its sort of their wheelhouse.

No this is just a design flaw most commonly discussed in most PvP and fighting game.
Unreactable should equal low damage. (this according to many famous pvp/fighting games developers….)

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

I’m trying to point out how the majority of the playerbase is relatively terrible.

This is a self contradicting statement. The Majority of the playerbase will be average. They will be somewhere around the median. That’s kinda how statistics work. You could say the majority of the human population is stupid, but that’s equally untrue because the the majority of the human population is average, at ~100 IQ.

And to be honest, you need not point out that the majority of the playerbase is terrible to support why stealth isn’t OP. It does nothing for your argument. Nothing at all.

Don’t really care about your build because I won’t be able to know what you have equipped. For all I know you could just double stunbreak or condition cleanse my CCs with your shadowstep.

Also, there was only 3 or so at a time

Of course, because winning a 1v3 multiple also clearly supports your argument better than winning a 1v7 that your class isn’t OP and the mechanics are not?

While I was hit with CC, it wasn’t coordinated (random WvW low levels and pugs?) and taken advantage of. With the chaos of WvW combined with using line of sight to block range, stealth builds excel so well, there’s no fix for that sorry.

of course, because you need multiple people coordinating their crowd control cooldowns in order to defeat a single thief, that definitely supports your argument that stealth isn’t OP. Yes, to beat a thief you need X players all coordinating a specific skill to kill one guy. Not even kill really, just to pressure him and not die yourself. Yes, absolutely.

…solates the players who don’t understand staying together will win. .

Again, because you need multiple players to defeat a thief. That clearly supports your argument that stealth isn’t OP. Again, I’m being sarcastic. Again, no, I personally don’t think stealth is OP but I think you using this argument is as silly as bananas being eaten by snakes.

I don’t understand why …

I’ll answer why.

1) Culling. They can’t see you as you exit stealth because of rendering issues. A lot of players don’t realize they need to spam tab in order to target a thief that’s left stealth.

2) Lack of knowledge about the thief class. This is probably the killer; to play against MOST other classes you don’t really need to know the specifics of what they can do. To play against thief you need to know more about their class than you need to know about other classes, for instance. Not saying this is a bad thing, but rather it would explain why a lot of nubs don’t counter you EXACTLY how YOU think they should counter just because you’ve been on the receiving end of it. Unlike you, they lack experience, but they are being punished disproportionately by fighting an enemy they have absolutely no idea what to do against. If they were fighting against a warrior for example, it’d be a much different situation because they can actually damage the freakin’ warrior and the moves are all telegraphed pretty clearly.

For example, the first time I ever fought a thief was on my glass cannon ranger. I got downed 3 times and would have died horribly if a Guardian nearby wasn’t there to save me (impressively, he also killed the thief and revived me 3 times while doing so. I wasn’t much help, that is to say, almost none at all). This marked the FIRST time I did research on a class that I had not yet played. Why? Simply because I didn’t need to know how to beat a warrior as a ranger, or etc. But thief? Yes I did.

3) A lot of people don’t have on demand launches or fear effects equipped, and those that do often have pretty long cooldowns associated with it. I for one on my guardian do not possess them. Other than that, you can’t really do much to a thief who has shadow refuged other than spamming your autoattack.

4) Again, the reason they let your cloak and dagger hit them probably has something to do with the fact that they wasted their dodges earlier trying to avoid your earlier burst. Cloak and dagger + backstab combo can be spammed with impunity every few seconds. Even if a thief misses the C&D they can just try again instantly. Time to next C&D with 0 initiative? 7-8 Seconds untraited. That’s the cooldown of my shortest primary weapon skill on my guardian.

Hey, guess how often endurance refills? Half a bar every ten seconds. Lolol.

Cloak and Dagger also looks a lot like autoattack. It’s extremely hard to predict dagger moves like that because the dagger’s small and the thief hardly moves his body while executing it.

5) The wait two seconds part is misleading. A lot of stealths have different times. It can be traited for 1 second longer, so the backstab could come anytime between 1 and 3 seconds. Thieves can simply waited till after you dodged before attempting the backstab. Or they could do other things, like spamming their autoattack on you till you’re at 50% health and followup with heartseeker. the point is, you expect US to expect all thieves behave like a robot and do this at certain times, try to guess your timing. Um, no.

WvW allows stealth to excel much more noticably…

You’re preaching to the choir buddy. Check my posting history, I’ve defended thieves as not being OP from day 1 of when I joined the forums. What I’m arguing is your silly choice to say “I won a 1v7 with a thief. Those players were bad except for the competent commander. I killed them all tho. Thieves aren’t OP, I’m just good.” We could do without the inflated egos.

You want to give people advice or support your argument? Why don’t you regale us with a story about how another class destroyed you in a 1v1 fair situation and how other people can emulate it without it being superbly lucky of him or doing something very obscure. But of course, that would make you look bad (I noticed that in your first post all the mentions of you losing or possibly losing have something to do with being outnumbered, in which case the vast majority of players would automatically lose on other classes)

slender.1482:

Seirously, l2p…

The only people who need to “l2p” are those who don’t understand why thieves (and with a different mechanic Eles) are unbalanced in WvW.

In open type PvP risk vs reward is a fairly fundamental concept, thieves break that concept pretty badly in WvW because the combination of stealth + mobility and the way stealth is implemented in GW2 – multiple in-combat stealths + no reveal on damage makes escape far, far too easy and the balance of risk vs reward is just way off.

I have a thief, ele, mes, necro & engy at 80, and the difference between them in WvW in regard to risk vs reward is huge, I can virtually be as sloppy as I want on my thief, it doesn’t matter if I go into a 1v1 or 1v2 without checking around for other enemies if other people turn up 90% of the time I can escape, compare that with my necro or engy and it is a totally different story.

The same thing goes for being outplayed, losing on my thief, generally no problem, again 90% of the time I’m gone, necro/engy most of the time I rightly face the consequences, risk vs reward.

The thief in GW2 is possibly the most OP thief/rogue class I have ever played in an MMORPG (in WvW), in most games they recognize having a get of jail free card is very powerful as it essentially breaks the PvP concept of risk vs reward, so you typically get one in-combat stealth on a very long cooldown (several mintues), where as in GW2 I get numerous in-combat stealths, it is just mind boggingly bad design.

Outside of risk vs reward, there would be less complaints over it, if the class actually had a high skill floor, but it doesn’t it has a very low skill floor and what is worse it puts the skill emphasis on the target rather than the thief, hence the hordes of clueless bads who make up 90% of thief players, will try to defend the broken mechanics.

But then I guess as it is blatantly obivous the classes were designed for tPvP, and that WvW was “just for fun”, it is no surprise that some classes are pretty game breaking in WvW.

Sylosi.6503:

The only people who need to “l2p” are those who don’t understand why thieves (and with a different mechanic Eles) are unbalanced in WvW.

no are those writing l2p those in more need to l2p atually…

Its the saddest excuse of people that cannot reply with facts.
Infact after the last nerf the only thing D/D ele may have of OP is focus 4 (possibly a bug).

You can just do few skirmishes…..but stay far away from zergs and sieges…

I explaine dwhy a lot….i don t want to repeat….
It has a lot to do with aoe nerfs and current mesmer/necro fields meaning you just want to stay ranged.

D/D lacks the range to deal with that and with zergs….and cannot stealth nor switch weapon.

If you play with experienced www players D/D is never optimal unless you are running behind fleeing enemies.

To me thief is a solo roamer good at scouting and cherry picking (he can also find his spot in a group).
If you are the noob that was AFK and you are going to join your group it’s only your bad and it is correct that a thief will crush you in the way.
WvW isn’t 1v1 nor 1v2 … it’s created for parties. 5 – 10 – 15 ppl playing together (and also the zerg)
So please stop crying, you are really becoming ludicrous.

So stuped that player can stealth midle off a attack, that should be imposible, at least add so as long as you get damage you cant stealth, so tick damage and all most be removed before you can stealth. (if you have tick damage and stealth you get unstealth when tick damage you)

Shadow.3475:

So stuped that player can stealth midle off a attack, that should be imposible, at least add so as long as you get damage you cant stealth, so tick damage and all most be removed before you can stealth. (if you have tick damage and stealth you get unstealth when tick damage you)

That’s essentially saying “make it so this class can’t defend while being attacked” or better yet in P/D’s case, “make all damage dazes this class”.

Dual.8953:

Shadow.3475:

So stuped that player can stealth midle off a attack, that should be imposible, at least add so as long as you get damage you cant stealth, so tick damage and all most be removed before you can stealth. (if you have tick damage and stealth you get unstealth when tick damage you)

That’s essentially saying “make it so this class can’t defend while being attacked” or better yet in P/D’s case, “make all damage dazes this class”.

he obviously never played as a thief otherwise he’d be aware of the blasphemy he wrote.

There always has to be some class to complain about i guess. There have been many complaints about classes being imbalanced/overpowered.
There is the bulls charge frenzy 100b warrior.
There is the D/D ele who doesnt die.
There is the Bunker guardian who doesnt die.
There is the Bunker Engineer who doesnt die.
There is the Mesmer who can run full glass cannon setups and still survive thanks to a combo of clones and stealth.
And than there is the thief who can permastealth.

I’m sure i forgot a whole bunch of “Overpowered” builds.

My point is, a LOT of classes have their “Overpowered” builds. Instead of complaining about each one, embrace each one of them, and be glad that there is a reason to play a certain class. If there would not be anything that is highly efficient (I prefer that term over “overpowered”) than it wouldn’t be that much fun to play at all.

I personally play a Shatter mesmer on a glass cannon setup mostly, and while I probably win 9/10 1v1 situation regardless of what class they play, I have lost to almost every class aswell. Everything can be countered, you just need to know your enemy.

I think, every class should have a skill that follows thief into stealth.

Oh wait, autoattack chaining.

Channeled skills like rapid fire and volley do it. Binding blade does it as well. Mesmer pets attack when the thief exits stealth automatically. So do spirit weapons and engineer turrets. Rangers have traps. Necromancers have marks and their own pets. Elementalists have extreme mobility as well as a ton of unblockable aoe.

I think I covered just about every class there. No, these actually AREN’T the limits of what other classes can use to hard counter a burst thief attacking from stealth but these are options. I only listed a few. You can try to list the rest.

Its just hard to admit if these or thus player was better prepared for some situation where player xy died thanks to a thief. So one thread after another begins.
Thiefs mostly builded only for 1vs1 situations and soloroaming. If you specialize any other profession – stealthed or unstealthed – for soloroaming, you can handle it.
I think the most people are forgeting that if they are killed by thiefs who waiting between the point where you spawn and where is your goal (the bulk), doing so, because they are specialized on other circumstances!

So try out stealth-abilitys in spvp and you will see it is going nicely.

Thiefs are born to highway robbery! Please accept this allimportant fact of thief as a profession and stealth as an ability to do that.

Daendur.2357:

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

Where does it state that its intended that thieves never die 1:1?

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

Where does it state that its intended that thieves never die 1:1?

A good anything won’t die to any class. Least in a 1v1 environment.

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

Where does it state that its intended that thieves never die 1:1?

in every concept ANet wrote about thieves.
even so it is not true and there are a lot of players that can deal with a thief and kill him, the fact that you can’t doesn’t mean that no one can.

I think majority of people get upset at the thief ability to reset a fight pretty much whenever they want.

I think being able to reset a fight is ok for a class which relies on their escape utilities for survival, but not all the time. It removes the kind of choices other classes have to make when it comes to picking fights. In a way, playing a thief is like playing an elementalist during keep defense. You can’t lose.

Or better said, you can lose, but you really have to make a lot of mistakes. People don’t like the fact that elementalists can just go banzai in the middle of a zerg in front of the gates, get downed and vapor form to safety. Every time.

Same with thieves. As a thief, you know you have your way out which works 90% of the time, so you can afford to just go in.

Now, I understand the reasoning behind such a class, as being able to harass means also being able to survive retaliation from much stronger forces. Just accept that people will loathe you for it, and that there shall be much /dancing on your corpses when we do manage to stomp you dead. :p

Here’s the thing you cannot “fix” stealth until culling is fixed, right now due to culling a stealth ability that usually last 1-2 sec last 3-4 sometimes longer if there are more players in a given area. Only current way to "fix this would be to remove stealth completely, which quite honestly is not the right answer to the issue.

Now I encourage all those who say “omg thief’s, stealth, OP, please nerf both” and do some spvp, I know its not for everyone but its a great tool in learning how to counter classes and situations you are having a hard time with. The big thing I found when doing this is stealth and thieves are merely an annoyance in an environment without culling, sure they still hit hard because 95% of thieves play glass cannon but otherwise with a few alterations in gear and maybe traits you can easily survive their burst and be able to effectively counter, toughness > thieve’s!

My main character now is a Necro after playing Thief for the first few months after release and with my build and gear setup its very rare I get killed by a single thief, most times when I get jumped I have time to counter and usually send them running away, to me thats a win! Right now thanks to culling Thieves have it ezmode in Wv3 but it definitely can be countered, the game is so centered around burst builds and zergs its easy pickings for a thief coming in and out of stealth, again adding a little defense into your builds and gear goes a long way.

Deadcell.9052:

Here’s the thing you cannot “fix” stealth until culling is fixed, right now due to culling a stealth ability that usually last 1-2 sec last 3-4 sometimes longer if there are more players in a given area. Only current way to "fix this would be to remove stealth completely, which quite honestly is not the right answer to the issue.

Now I encourage all those who say “omg thief’s, stealth, OP, please nerf both” and do some spvp, I know its not for everyone but its a great tool in learning how to counter classes and situations you are having a hard time with. The big thing I found when doing this is stealth and thieves are merely an annoyance in an environment without culling, sure they still hit hard because 95% of thieves play glass cannon but otherwise with a few alterations in gear and maybe traits you can easily survive their burst and be able to effectively counter, toughness > thieve’s!

My main character now is a Necro after playing Thief for the first few months after release and with my build and gear setup its very rare I get killed by a single thief, most times when I get jumped I have time to counter and usually send them running away, to me thats a win! Right now thanks to culling Thieves have it ezmode in Wv3 but it definitely can be countered, the game is so centered around burst builds and zergs its easy pickings for a thief coming in and out of stealth, again adding a little defense into your builds and gear goes a long way.

Something to keep in mind is that ANet has made changes (nerfs) to the thief in sPvP in an effort to create balance. The same changes have not been implemented in WvW.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree that sPvP is the best training ground for learning a class, just know that there are differences mostly because ANet cares about balance in sPvP more than anywhere else.

EDIT: So hard to tell tone in a post like this, so let me make it clear :P I agree with the above quote that culling is the main culprit here, but I’d also like to see the same balance that was brought to sPvP come to WvW. I also come from T8 though, so perhaps I want the same balance because I see more 5v5 (or less) encounters than higher tiers.

Daendur.2357:

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

Where does it state that its intended that thieves never die 1:1?

in every concept ANet wrote about thieves.
even so it is not true and there are a lot of players that can deal with a thief and kill him, the fact that you can’t doesn’t mean that no one can.

Show me exactly where they claimed this.

Sylosi.6503:

slender.1482:

Seirously, l2p…

The only people who need to “l2p” are those who don’t understand why thieves (and with a different mechanic Eles) are unbalanced in WvW.

In open type PvP risk vs reward is a fairly fundamental concept, thieves break that concept pretty badly in WvW because the combination of stealth + mobility and the way stealth is implemented in GW2 – multiple in-combat stealths + no reveal on damage makes escape far, far too easy and the balance of risk vs reward is just way off.

I have a thief, ele, mes, necro & engy at 80, and the difference between them in WvW in regard to risk vs reward is huge, I can virtually be as sloppy as I want on my thief, it doesn’t matter if I go into a 1v1 or 1v2 without checking around for other enemies if other people turn up 90% of the time I can escape, compare that with my necro or engy and it is a totally different story.

The same thing goes for being outplayed, losing on my thief, generally no problem, again 90% of the time I’m gone, necro/engy most of the time I rightly face the consequences, risk vs reward.

The thief in GW2 is possibly the most OP thief/rogue class I have ever played in an MMORPG (in WvW), in most games they recognize having a get of jail free card is very powerful as it essentially breaks the PvP concept of risk vs reward, so you typically get one in-combat stealth on a very long cooldown (several mintues), where as in GW2 I get numerous in-combat stealths, it is just mind boggingly bad design.

Outside of risk vs reward, there would be less complaints over it, if the class actually had a high skill floor, but it doesn’t it has a very low skill floor and what is worse it puts the skill emphasis on the target rather than the thief, hence the hordes of clueless bads who make up 90% of thief players, will try to defend the broken mechanics.

But then I guess as it is blatantly obivous the classes were designed for tPvP, and that WvW was “just for fun”, it is no surprise that some classes are pretty game breaking in WvW.

Good post.

The design is bad. Restealthing in combat over and over and over is a terrible way of designing a stealth class.

Just my opinion, there either needs to be a stealth detection mechanism added so when a stealthed creature is nearby there is at least a chance of detecting him, or they simply need to restrict how long a thief can be stealthed for….ie, in every rolling 60 second period there isonly 15 seconds you can be stealthed.

Neither option removes stealth from the thief. You can still use it to either initiate the attack or to get away depending on your preference and playstyle..you just can’t stealth in combat over and over and over and over and over and over and over without any risk of being spotted, or any end to the stealthing.

It seems the people who are complaining about stealth just don’t know how to counter it. Do you not realize that you still take damage while stealthed?

Maybe the people who are complaining about stealth should go play a thief to a reasonable level, then see how it is.

I think the problem is a lot of people don’t know how to fight a thief, or don’t want to do it.
Fighting a thief is more than just a mere “he does this, I’ll do that”; you have to use your brain and actually think about what he will do.
I read the need to base your actions upon prediction is wrong and creates thieves’ OPness, but I think prediction is just the ability of reading a fight, must be used in every situation (not only against thieves) and it’s the difference between a good player and an average one.
To be able to predict what your opponents are going to do, is what makes you win an inc, even (especially) speaking about groups fights.
Every monkey can press a button 1 when the green light turns on and button 2 when it goes off. Luckily gw2 is more than that.
As a thief, if I don’t predict when a warrior’s going to frenzy-100b me I’ll be dead, and it’s not a matter of “but you can see it” because when you see it it’s too late.
My point is that fighting a thief can be hard, they are not “free kills” and ppl hate that; this does not mean they are overpowered because even a bunker guardian is not a free kill, nor a d/d ele and so on.
So please, next time you’ll find a thief don’t think “omg a thief, I can’t kill him” just try to be smarter and make him do some mistakes, I’ll assure you he will pay for them.

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

Columba.9730:

Daendur.2357:

LordByron.8369:

A good thief won t die against almost any class….

works as intended.

Where does it state that its intended that thieves never die 1:1?

in every concept ANet wrote about thieves.
even so it is not true and there are a lot of players that can deal with a thief and kill him, the fact that you can’t doesn’t mean that no one can.

Show me exactly where they claimed this.

i won’t do Google’s job.

Renovatio.2504:

It seems the people who are complaining about stealth just don’t know how to counter it. Do you not realize that you still take damage while stealthed?

Maybe the people who are complaining about stealth should go play a thief to a reasonable level, then see how it is.

This has been covered many times. You will rarely kill a stealthed thief unless he is predictible. Being able to see your enemies movement while cloaking yours is extremely powerful in an open world setting – it gives infinite juking potential. I’m sorry to say, if you die in stealth from enemies throwing blind aoe and auto attacks, you are bad.

I chuckle every time I use stealth to get away from a sticky situation and watch how silly it looks when I see enemies attacking air, until I realize how silly it is fighting stealth when I’m not on my thief. A post mentioned risk vs reward, and steath having no hard counters creates little risk when engaging and disengaging from any encounter.

Just put the CnD with a 20 sec cooldown on the stealth. You will be able to use the skill when you want but only will give stealth 20 sec after the first use. That way you will use it when you realy need.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Just put the CnD with a 20 sec cooldown on the stealth. You will be able to use the skill when you want but only will give stealth 20 sec after the first use. That way you will use it when you realy need.

why not 1 minute ? or better once a day … it will be so precioussss

Can you guys stop using sPvP as an example – maybe I can say that since 4 Warrior 1 Mesmer outputs the highest damage in dungeons, that makes such a composition overpowered in WvW too? Does that make it clear how bad of a comparison it is?

sPvP is based around holding points with very small numbers of people. WvW is not. If you fight a thief in sPvP and he is unable to kill your fully bunker build, you win cause you have successfully defended the point. If the same thing happens in WvW it is at best a draw, unless you both happen to be solo with no NPCs (which is extremely rare) in a supply camp or something.

sPvP has limited stat distributions which limits thief burst and makes it so there is a minimum amount of tankiness that everyone possesses.

Sure both are ‘PvP’ but so is costume brawl. That’s PvP too and nobody uses it as a comparison.

Edit: If I need to concentrate very hard to beat any thief (but still beat him!) but can destroy any other class (including other D/D elementalists) with half the effort, how is that not a sign that the thief is OP?

Sunflowers.1729:

Can you guys stop using sPvP as an example – maybe I can say that since 4 Warrior 1 Mesmer outputs the highest damage in dungeons, that makes such a composition overpowered in WvW too?

indeed it is.

Sunflowers.1729:

Edit: If I need to concentrate very hard to beat any thief (but still beat him!) but can effortlessly destroy any other class how is that not a sign that the thief is OP?

not every thief, just the good ones. and you cannot “effortlessly destroy any other class” just the bad ones.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Just put the CnD with a 20 sec cooldown on the stealth. You will be able to use the skill when you want but only will give stealth 20 sec after the first use. That way you will use it when you realy need.

P/D and S/D thieves need stealth every 3 seconds. Without it P/D becomes worthless and S/D becomes completely outclassed by S/P. Neither set has a burst, and without stealthing, they’ll be stuck auto-attacking for 20 seconds.

/Sarcasm on/
The fact is anyone like fighting a guy/girl stealt 80% of the time. Culling or not
/Sarcasm off/

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

Columba.9730:

Perma stealth, highest dps in the game, +50% run speed. How is this balanced?

Sounds pretty good if it were true / accurately represented.

“Perma Stealth”
Some builds can chain stealth for very high uptime, but it’s not permanent and a thief in stealth is a thief not doing damage, otherwise they pop out with revealed debuff. If they are actually attacking someone from stealth, they can only have about 50% uptime of stealth at best – usually less. If they are chaining C&D on ambient mobs as stealth naturally wears out to get nearly permanent stealth, they aren’t actually hurting you are they?

“highest dps in the game”
This one is just categorically wrong. “Dps” usually is associated with sustained damage over time. Generally, initiative regen limits thieves to the low end of classes for dps, which is part of why they are lackluster in PvE. Even if you look at it in terms of burst damage, there are other classes that can numerically burst for more. If you had instead something like “safely delivered burst in PvP” or something like that, you’d be onto something.

“50% run speed”
There’s a trait that provides this while in stealth only, however it doesn’t work in combat and scales down to 33%, which is the same as folks running swiftness. Most people don’t even take the trait because it’s not good. Realistically, a fighting thief can at best hope to just run lots of swiftness like everyone else, but has fewer avenues available to accomplish it. More commonly, lots of thieves just run Signet of Shadows for +25% speed, which isn’t as good as perma-swiftness that a lot of classes have convenient access to.

Daendur.2357:

I think the problem is a lot of people don’t know how to fight a thief, or don’t want to do it.
Fighting a thief is more than just a mere “he does this, I’ll do that”; you have to use your brain and actually think about what he will do.
I read the need to base your actions upon prediction is wrong and creates thieves’ OPness, but I think prediction is just the ability of reading a fight, must be used in every situation (not only against thieves) and it’s the difference between a good player and an average one.
To be able to predict what your opponents are going to do, is what makes you win an inc, even (especially) speaking about groups fights.
Every monkey can press a button 1 when the green light turns on and button 2 when it goes off. Luckily gw2 is more than that.
As a thief, if I don’t predict when a warrior’s going to frenzy-100b me I’ll be dead, and it’s not a matter of “but you can see it” because when you see it it’s too late.
My point is that fighting a thief can be hard, they are not “free kills” and ppl hate that; this does not mean they are overpowered because even a bunker guardian is not a free kill, nor a d/d ele and so on.
So please, next time you’ll find a thief don’t think “omg a thief, I can’t kill him” just try to be smarter and make him do some mistakes, I’ll assure you he will pay for them.

Nice try, but still not exactly true. Every class can be good that depends on players behind the toon. However, thieves get an immense buffer to this and even if you counter properly they still most of the time —get away-- leaving the player that, by rights of being better, frusterated that in reversed roles they would be stomped.

amiable.4823:

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

This happened in DAoC as well. The ranger/hunter/scout class had a passive ability allowing them to detect stealth. They further had a usable ability with a cooldown that made stealth obsolete to them for a short period. Sorry, dont remember the names but w/e.

Mayhem.1935:

amiable.4823:

Make utility googles reveal stealthed players… There you go, the engineer becomes useful as a class (anti-stealth) and stealth has a an effective hard counter but requires specialization to use. May want to add a similar utility to necros as well.

This happened in DAoC as well. The ranger/hunter/scout class had a passive ability allowing them to detect stealth. They further had a usable ability with a cooldown that made stealth obsolete to them for a short period. Sorry, dont remember the names but w/e.

I’m not sure how I feel about a passive stealth detection ability (like a signet) but an active stealth detection ability seems totally appropriate. (In most games there is actual passive stealth detection based on proximity and facing). The problem with the current meta is that stealth lacks any hard counters whereas most other abilities do (boon stripping, immobilizes, gap closers, etc…) The result is that classes that stealth (thieves, mesmers) tend to dominate in WvW (along with Elementalists with their terrific mobility) because classes that can dictate the terms of engagement will always dominate open field fights. The way you handle this is giving other less used/powerful classes a hard counter, but make them give something up for that counter (in this case a utility or even an elite slot). Make the ability have a relatively long cd (30-45 seconds) so that if it used at the wrong time and you are unable to down the thief you lose the ability long enough for the thief to counter.

These abilities become very useful when most of your opponents are stealthers, but handicap you against other classes. So as the meta gradually re-aligns you need to weigh the pro’s and cons of using a slot on such a specialized ability. Now it would be a no brainer because there are about 2 thieves/mesmers for every other character type in WvW, but introducing a hard counter might even up those ratios.

Sunflowers.1729:

sPvP is based around holding points with very small numbers of people. WvW is not. If you fight a thief in sPvP and he is unable to kill your fully bunker build, you win cause you have successfully defended the point. If the same thing happens in WvW it is at best a draw, unless you both happen to be solo with no NPCs (which is extremely rare) in a supply camp or something.

And WvW is based around holding points (objectives) with very large numbers of people. Thief happens to be even worse at that comparatively than with very small numbers.

Yet so many people want to be terribly worried about what happens when they run around solo, even when it has very little impact on contributing to a win.

Daeqar.8965:

Sunflowers.1729:

sPvP is based around holding points with very small numbers of people. WvW is not. If you fight a thief in sPvP and he is unable to kill your fully bunker build, you win cause you have successfully defended the point. If the same thing happens in WvW it is at best a draw, unless you both happen to be solo with no NPCs (which is extremely rare) in a supply camp or something.

And WvW is based around holding points (objectives) with very large numbers of people. Thief happens to be even worse at that comparatively than with very small numbers.

Yet so many people want to be terribly worried about what happens when they run around solo, even when it has very little impact on contributing to a win.

Completely untrue. GC thief? Equip a short bow in a tower/keep/castle and go to work dropping long duration posion fields and cluster bombs for 3-7k at a rather rapid pace. Thieves like to make other players believe they are bad at keep defense to make up for being unopposable in open settings. Just stop lying. Listen, i play p/d +d/p in open world, but if i want to attack/defend a tower, i toss on a Shortbow and GET TO WORK.

Sylosi.6503:

The only people who need to “l2p” are those who don’t understand why thieves (and with a different mechanic Eles) are unbalanced in WvW.

In open type PvP risk vs reward is a fairly fundamental concept, thieves break that concept pretty badly in WvW because the combination of stealth + mobility and the way stealth is implemented in GW2 – multiple in-combat stealths + no reveal on damage makes escape far, far too easy and the balance of risk vs reward is just way off.

I have a thief, ele, mes, necro & engy at 80, and the difference between them in WvW in regard to risk vs reward is huge, I can virtually be as sloppy as I want on my thief, it doesn’t matter if I go into a 1v1 or 1v2 without checking around for other enemies if other people turn up 90% of the time I can escape, compare that with my necro or engy and it is a totally different story.

The same thing goes for being outplayed, losing on my thief, generally no problem, again 90% of the time I’m gone, necro/engy most of the time I rightly face the consequences, risk vs reward.

The thief in GW2 is possibly the most OP thief/rogue class I have ever played in an MMORPG (in WvW), in most games they recognize having a get of jail free card is very powerful as it essentially breaks the PvP concept of risk vs reward, so you typically get one in-combat stealth on a very long cooldown (several mintues), where as in GW2 I get numerous in-combat stealths, it is just mind boggingly bad design.

Outside of risk vs reward, there would be less complaints over it, if the class actually had a high skill floor, but it doesn’t it has a very low skill floor and what is worse it puts the skill emphasis on the target rather than the thief, hence the hordes of clueless bads who make up 90% of thief players, will try to defend the broken mechanics.

But then I guess as it is blatantly obivous the classes were designed for tPvP, and that WvW was “just for fun”, it is no surprise that some classes are pretty game breaking in WvW.

You would have a good point in WvW were a 1v1 or similarly small arena style game mode.

Instead, the advantage of low risk mobility just translates to making functionally good scouts or behind line dolyak killers while classes with better/more team oriented builds are better suited to handling the real objectives. Running around looking for stragglers to gank doesn’t contribute much at all to winning nor does it even produce as much reward (bags) as playing with a team.

I love when thieves start claiming that Balance isn’t needed in PvP because World vs World is all about taking keeps/towers grin