Guild Wars 2

Well sPvP thiefs are just bad. I always ask how they manage die when average www thief can fight against 60 players and stay alive.

Valentin. Stealth is broken as hell, you don’t seen anything yet. You will see with the time.

All those players who said “learn to counter and blah blah blah”, they are all thief.

Is true thief need survivability because your low armor/health, the same as another classes, stealth (plus blinds, plus evasions, plus mobility, plus interrupts all of this spammeable) is just too much and too much annoying to fight against. You only can not kill a good thief, you cant leave the combat neither. You need to wait the infinite amounts of attempts the thief come over and over to try to one-shoot you, flee, reset everything and try again, over and over.

The fight need to end in a reasonable time. In every game, with a winner (alive/he continue playing) and loser (dead/unable to play for a x moment or need to restart). This is a game about run away and “morally” win a fight because your enemy fled. And that is so lame.

Welcome to GW2 real pvp, in wvw you will see how broken is this game, not only in stealth.

urieldhynne.2743:

Valentin. Stealth is broken as hell, you don’t seen anything yet. You will see with the time.

All those players who said “learn to counter and blah blah blah”, they are all thief.

Is true thief need survivability because your low armor/health, the same as another classes, stealth (plus blinds, plus evasions, plus mobility, plus interrupts all of this spammeable) is just too much and too much annoying to fight against. You only can not kill a good thief, you cant leave the combat neither. You need to wait the infinite amounts of attempts the thief come over and over to try to one-shoot you, flee, reset everything and try again, over and over.

The fight need to end in a reasonable time. In every game, with a winner (alive/he continue playing) and loser (dead/unable to play for a x moment or need to restart). This is a game about run away and “morally” win a fight because your enemy fled. And that is so lame.

Welcome to GW2 real pvp, in wvw you will see how broken is this game, not only in stealth.

Oh we are talking again about 30/30/30/30/30 build with no cooldowns on weapon swaps, infinite initiative, 20 utility slots, full cleric gear and one shooting ppl. Tried that build, was too easy, felt kinda unfair… nerf plz.

Karolis.4261:

urieldhynne.2743:

Valentin. Stealth is broken as hell, you don’t seen anything yet. You will see with the time.

All those players who said “learn to counter and blah blah blah”, they are all thief.

Is true thief need survivability because your low armor/health, the same as another classes, stealth (plus blinds, plus evasions, plus mobility, plus interrupts all of this spammeable) is just too much and too much annoying to fight against. You only can not kill a good thief, you cant leave the combat neither. You need to wait the infinite amounts of attempts the thief come over and over to try to one-shoot you, flee, reset everything and try again, over and over.

The fight need to end in a reasonable time. In every game, with a winner (alive/he continue playing) and loser (dead/unable to play for a x moment or need to restart). This is a game about run away and “morally” win a fight because your enemy fled. And that is so lame.

Welcome to GW2 real pvp, in wvw you will see how broken is this game, not only in stealth.

Oh we are talking again about 30/30/30/30/30 build with no cooldowns on weapon swaps, infinite initiative, 20 utility slots, full cleric gear and one shooting ppl. Tried that build, was too easy, felt kinda unfair… nerf plz.

Hi thief lover. No, you dont need 30 in every trait line to do that. You can do it with a common perma stealth D/P – X build. With 3 utilities and you can spam a lot with the current initiative pool and regen rate. And you can use blind, interrupts, mobility and perma stealth without waiting for CDs. Just don’t blow up your initiative spamming D#2 and learn to timing.

Valentin.2073:

lol. do you do that? always have someone else beside you to protect you? i wonder who’s gonna cry after you got the nerf you all deserved.

I don’t play my thief anymore. My warrior says “hi” – now vs him, 1v1 you can cry and cry and cry…

Pavel.8531:

Valentin.2073:

lol. do you do that? always have someone else beside you to protect you? i wonder who’s gonna cry after you got the nerf you all deserved.

I don’t play my thief anymore. My warrior says “hi” – now vs him, 1v1 you can cry and cry and cry…

Where you find so bad thief that actually manage dies against condi spec?

1st: the reason thieves dont use perma stealth in spvp is because: locations cant be capped in stealth and crit dmg isnt as high as in wvw ( about 125% max in wvw and ~60% in spvp)
2nd: no risk high reward? what? when a thief makes a mistake, he pays dearly for it, clearly u havent seen any thief miss anything and die because of it. how do u even kill thieves if they are no risk high reward then?
3rd: anet nerfs because of QQers like you are the reason that thieves have no build diversity and rely on perma stealth.
4th: i agree stealth can be annoying, im a thief and i fought against thieves like myself- perma stealth usual d/d build, however its a class mechanic and u cant just nerf or remove it like this.
5th: what about the other classes? look at the post above, his warrior has 2.6k power, 3.6k armor and 21k hp, WTF? we thieves have only about the same power but with 2k toughness and 12k hp.

Weird, i often see thiefs fight solo against bigger groups and seems to me that even if they make lot’s of mistakes they just won’t pay the price.

Satan Blaze.8237:

1st: the reason thieves dont use perma stealth in spvp is because: locations cant be capped in stealth and crit dmg isnt as high as in wvw ( about 125% max in wvw and ~60% in spvp)
2nd: no risk high reward? what? when a thief makes a mistake, he pays dearly for it, clearly u havent seen any thief miss anything and die because of it. how do u even kill thieves if they are no risk high reward then?
3rd: anet nerfs because of QQers like you are the reason that thieves have no build diversity and rely on perma stealth.
4th: i agree stealth can be annoying, im a thief and i fought against thieves like myself- perma stealth usual d/d build, however its a class mechanic and u cant just nerf or remove it like this.
5th: what about the other classes? look at the post above, his warrior has 2.6k power, 3.6k armor and 21k hp, WTF? we thieves have only about the same power but with 2k toughness and 12k hp.

lol, you didnt notice the condition damage and healing power haha, warrior is the preferred class of devs. We cant even talk about warriors.

btw. They need to remake/rework stealth mechanic. Buff the thief in another way. Stealth is just annoying and prone to exploit/abuse, this is a game, games are about fun, you cant design a mechanic too annoying because “is needed”, there are plenty ways to balance the thief survivability, stealth in current state is just a broken one.

They need to remake stealth, not nerf it, remake it. The entire mechanic, add detections and limit the amount of spam of it. And give to the thief the buff they need in compensation.

Junkpile.7439:

Pavel.8531:

Valentin.2073:

lol. do you do that? always have someone else beside you to protect you? i wonder who’s gonna cry after you got the nerf you all deserved.

I don’t play my thief anymore. My warrior says “hi” – now vs him, 1v1 you can cry and cry and cry…

Where you find so bad thief that actually manage dies against condi spec?

From a thief PoV, I can tell that such a warrior would be close to impossible to beat for a Shadow Art Thief. His healing Power and Toughness are so high that our BS will hit him for 3-4k, which will be outhealed in 5s.
Good luck killing him.

Valentin.2073:

i see thieves all over this thread defending their broken class. lmao

i’m sure majority of these thieves dont do spvp at all because they dont have the skill for it. they enjoy running a class in a place that wont require them to use their brains at all (wvw is the only place where they can abuse stealth).

i cant wait for these no-skill braindead players get the nerf they all deserve.

something tells me i was higher ranked than you ever were

urieldhynne.2743:

Satan Blaze.8237:

1st: the reason thieves dont use perma stealth in spvp is because: locations cant be capped in stealth and crit dmg isnt as high as in wvw ( about 125% max in wvw and ~60% in spvp)
2nd: no risk high reward? what? when a thief makes a mistake, he pays dearly for it, clearly u havent seen any thief miss anything and die because of it. how do u even kill thieves if they are no risk high reward then?
3rd: anet nerfs because of QQers like you are the reason that thieves have no build diversity and rely on perma stealth.
4th: i agree stealth can be annoying, im a thief and i fought against thieves like myself- perma stealth usual d/d build, however its a class mechanic and u cant just nerf or remove it like this.
5th: what about the other classes? look at the post above, his warrior has 2.6k power, 3.6k armor and 21k hp, WTF? we thieves have only about the same power but with 2k toughness and 12k hp.

lol, you didnt notice the condition damage and healing power haha, warrior is the preferred class of devs. We cant even talk about warriors.

btw. They need to remake/rework stealth mechanic. Buff the thief in another way. Stealth is just annoying and prone to exploit/abuse, this is a game, games are about fun, you cant design a mechanic too annoying because “is needed”, there are plenty ways to balance the thief survivability, stealth in current state is just a broken one.

They need to remake stealth, not nerf it, remake it. The entire mechanic, add detections and limit the amount of spam of it. And give to the thief the buff they need in compensation.

i somewhat agree with you, but think about it, remaking the entire mechanic is akin to remaking the entire class, hell, the thief was built around stealth, to remake stealth is to remake the thief i guess. the amount of work it would need will be huge, idk if anet is going to do that. and relating to the other posts above where thieves couldnt stealth during fights, im going to take WoW as an example, i was playing a rogue at the time i was playing rogue, i guess the reason why rogues couldnt stealth repeatedly during fights was because of an entirely different playstyle for the WoW rogue:
the rogue could fight any class toe to toe, even warriors, stealth was only needed as an opener, thieves here cant do this

Op thiefs are weak and easy kill I am noob war and I faceroll almost all thiefs I run into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbG1TCNxVY welcome to WvW and l2p.

hihey.1075:

From a thief PoV, I can tell that such a warrior would be close to impossible to beat for a Shadow Art Thief. His healing Power and Toughness are so high that our BS will hit him for 3-4k, which will be outhealed in 5s.
Good luck killing him.

I have 1.1k hours on thief… and I know this build both can’t lose vs thieves and can win easily, if I time things right. I specially slot “fear me” for thieves, pressure them a bit, they heal, then we fight a bit more and if they haven’t caught up that it’s time to run, they are forced to use SR as a last resort(they use SS for the 1st pin down/flurry) to clean some condis+regen. Fear me > pin down > combustive shot. Dead.

Satan Blaze.8237:

urieldhynne.2743:

lol, you didnt notice the condition damage and healing power haha, warrior is the preferred class of devs. We cant even talk about warriors.

btw. They need to remake/rework stealth mechanic. Buff the thief in another way. Stealth is just annoying and prone to exploit/abuse, this is a game, games are about fun, you cant design a mechanic too annoying because “is needed”, there are plenty ways to balance the thief survivability, stealth in current state is just a broken one.

They need to remake stealth, not nerf it, remake it. The entire mechanic, add detections and limit the amount of spam of it. And give to the thief the buff they need in compensation.

i somewhat agree with you, but think about it, remaking the entire mechanic is akin to remaking the entire class, hell, the thief was built around stealth, to remake stealth is to remake the thief i guess. the amount of work it would need will be huge, idk if anet is going to do that. and relating to the other posts above where thieves couldnt stealth during fights, im going to take WoW as an example, i was playing a rogue at the time i was playing rogue, i guess the reason why rogues couldnt stealth repeatedly during fights was because of an entirely different playstyle for the WoW rogue:
the rogue could fight any class toe to toe, even warriors, stealth was only needed as an opener, thieves here cant do this

Arenanet wouldn’t going to change anything. Maybe they will apply some minor nerf or detections (like hunters buff) but not too much. Is like you said, the whole class was built around stealth, that is the problem.

IMO, wow has a lot, far better stealth mechanic, the enemy actually can see you if you stay too close in front of him, and that is great, actually require skill by the thief for sneak around and positioning, you can stealth in combat but very limited, you need to play smart, sometimes i feel GW2 like a spamfest. But wow has another core mechanic, with trinity, etc.. Arenanet tried some different, for me with more bad points than good ones. But is my opinion. The most unbalanced point for me is the prone of this game to broken builds or exploits/spam some mechanics.

Another thing is thief used to build full zerkers (or almost full), and rely on permastealth, evasion etc… to have high survivability AND high damage. I know about a lot of class what if you build full zerker for high damage you have really low survivability and never can hold a fight vs 4 or 5 enemies like thief does. Thief dont used to build many defense because they “lose a lot of damage” well, is the same for everyone, you cant have everything, unless you play a warrior.

thats how things are, the more ppl qq, the more anet will do some slight changes which will mess up things for us thieves. ppl qq’ed about s/d, anet nerfed it, now nearly no one uses it except maybe in spvp. and yet they complain about build diversity while they nerf our non-stealth reliant builds.
and yes full zerk thieves rely on stealth and dodges for survival, we simply do not hav the same hp or armor as warriors

D/P is still busted. Almost every player knows it and most will even admit it. I main a thief and know it. No weapon set should have spammable daze, stealth, teleport, two blinds and a back stab. D/D at least requires the player to close into melee to pull off stealth and doesn’t have a built in blind, teleport or daze.

My suggestion from another post is to remove Heartseeker from D/P and replace it with Death Blossom or Twisted Fangs. This way they can still use the leap finisher to stealth but with a big cooldown and locking those builds into D/D D/P which limits utility.

^i agree d/p is very annoying to fight however anet cant do what u suggested, this defies the weapon → skills mechanic and will perhaps destroy d/p build, then u will see only d/d thieves everywhere

Stealth is not the issue here. D/P is. This weapon set need to go, simple as that. Don’t kitten stealth just because one weapon set make stealth look OP please! Most people are asking a nerf that will make all thief build to be not viable, when by just nerfing D/P will make the “permastealth”/“Stealth spammers” problem to go away.

My suggestion is remove thief class from the game becouse i can’t farm it when i run with my dear blobbyfarmingtrain. Since they can escape from me i can’t get the lootbag, and i cannot be forced to l2p just becouse if i’m in the zergtail i’m too “glassy” with my random zergy build, so why delete only d/p set when you can delete a whole class?
I like the breaindead metagame so pls devs delete thieves! so ppl like me can be strong enough while capturing a tower.

Buzzcrave.6197:

Stealth is not the issue here. D/P is. This weapon set need to go, simple as that. Don’t kitten stealth just because one weapon set make stealth look OP please! Most people are asking a nerf that will make all thief build to be not viable, when by just nerfing D/P will make the “permastealth”/“Stealth spammers” problem to go away.

It’s mostly how Black Powder on Pistol offhand works which makes it OP. IMO they should just change it so it drops the blinding field on the target hit by it. There, you can’t spam stealth with it because you need a target hit for it, and it still keeps the useful blind on it. That alone drops the spammability of stealth in combat significantly, and fixes MOST of the complaints of OP stealth. CnD would then become the main source of stealth spam, but that’s far easier to deal with considering they have to be right next to you to pull it off.

mrmadhaze.8706:

My suggestion is remove thief class from the game becouse i can’t farm it when i run with my dear blobbyfarmingtrain. Since they can escape from me i can’t get the lootbag, and i cannot be forced to l2p just becouse if i’m in the zergtail i’m too “glassy” with my random zergy build, so why delete only d/p set when you can delete a whole class?
I like the breaindead metagame so pls devs delete thieves! so ppl like me can be strong enough while capturing a tower.

No!!!! : (

Leave the thief with perma stealth because some people need to have and abuse of a free-out-of-combat “cleartarget” card every time without CD or restrictions to try and try over and over the same spamfest d#2 and BS until they can kill someone in the middle 3 guys hitting at the air trying to hit a perma invisible (with high mobility) enemy and pin him while stealth. If not, i need to learn to play like every other class!! Imagine that! if the enemy actually can target me for more than a second! that going to be crazy!

….

tbh the best thiefs i fight against (a lot of duels and roaming) dont abuse or use permastealth, just timing theirs dodges, interrupts, evasions and blinds, they use stealth but no that much, a real good thief dont need perma steatlh to kill. The best thief i fight against dont even go to stealth. He was too good timing interrupts and blinds.

Pro tip don’t run a glass nerf gun ranger and thieves are usually just an annoyance in wvw that you either kill or destroy in a few seconds and they run away.

I agree that Thieves should have all stealth nerfed into oblivion. While we do that, give them heavy armour as well. Also, make sure they regen 1400HP every second and give them a base 20k hitpoints. Why not go ahead and stack them up with buffs too? </obvioustroll>

Stealth is survival in WvW.

In an area where you are by yourself, trying to pick off the tail of a zerg, a zerg which consists of 25 or more people, you *must* use stealth to survive. This is typically true for the other classes as well. Thieves just do it better.

Keep in mind, the typical Thief life pool is about 15k hitpoints. They are in medium armour, and they typically have very few, if any, defensive buffs. The stealth hitpoint regen is meh. The only real advantage to it is that you end up being in stealth more often. So, even in small number and 1v1 combat, the Thief can go down quick if you can catch them. Being slippery is really the only defence.

For some more obvious trolling:

While we’re on the topic of OPdednessessess, what about Warriors with immobilize spamming and one-shot kills.

Let’s not forget the Mesmer with all their illusions. I mean, a zerg of 7 Mesmers should create orange swords in combat.

Eles heal and damage way too much. Pairing an Ele’s Static Field with a Mesmer’s Null Field should be addressed. Remove both skills completely.

Guardians give way too much stability and regen. All those boons should be nerfed.

Engineers can setup for bunker way too well. That needs to be addressed by removing all those little things they throw on the ground.

Necros need to have their condition damage nerfed big time. I mean, come on, no one should be able to stack every condition in the game on you, even if that is kinda the point of the class and they are about as squishy as a gummy bear.

Did I miss any? Oh yea, Rangers. We can leave them alone. Since everyone else would be nerfed, the Ranger would now be on equal level with the rest.
</obvioustroll>

To sum it up... learn to play better and/or change your build. WvW is not sPvP, so do not expect it to be. QQing about "______ class does ______ and it makes me mad" doesn’t fix the problem. The problem is you. Many other people have little, to no, problem killing Thieves. Even with all the stealth tricks. Try playing Thief more in WvW for yourself. You said you already know them in sPvP, so it shouldn’t be too much of a leap. To know a class is to know its weaknesses.

Nalia Ironstar.5470:

the Thief can go down quick if you can catch them. Being slippery is really the only defence.

I dont know the rest, but i am talking about PERMA stealth, no being slippery.

There is no risk at all, you can try anything and if you fail you just go to stealth all the time you need until you try it again.

Nalia Ironstar.5470:

To sum it up… learn to play better and/or change your build. WvW is not sPvP, so do not expect it to be. QQing about “______ class does ______ and it makes me mad” doesn’t fix the problem. The problem is you. Many other people have little, to no, problem killing Thieves. Even with all the stealth tricks. Try playing Thief more in WvW for yourself. You said you already know them in sPvP, so it shouldn’t be too much of a leap. To know a class is to know its weaknesses.

[/quote]

The same for perma stealth thief. Learn to play without PERMA stealth. You have blind, interrupts, evasions, mobility, and stealth. Why you need to rely ONLY in spam stealth every second? That is JUST annoying as hell. Is pretty frustrating even if you dont die, throw blind hits to the air for more than 5 min until the thief just get bored.

I have a thief, i dont play with it, but i leveled it up from level 2 to 80 in wvw only (i dont do pve), i know how and how much you can survive for that perma stealth and heavy evasion/mobility interrupts and blinds.

You can complain about a lot of others classes, and you might be right, i have a warrior, i play a lot my warrior and that class need a huge nerf. But this is not a warrior post. This is a perma stealth post.

I find it somewhat amusing that the PvE’ers are talking kitten about Valentin. He’s a pretty well known tPvP’er.

At least be constructive instead of just spouting the “L2P” or “Get used to it” nonsense. Try not to get so personal about it for once, think objectively.

I don’t think the point is “nerf stealth,” it’s more akin to “rework thief.” It really depends on Anet’s design philosophy and whether or not they think the thief is in a good place. Many people find the thief unfun to fight. However, if Anet intended thieves to be extremely unfun to fight, then they it’s their game and we just have to find another game to play if we don’t like it.

However, if that’s not intended design, I can lay out why I think the class is unfun to fight and how it can be improved for both the thief and the person playing against him.
—-
So let’s talk about stealth.

Most stealths are…

Extremely difficult to interrupt. Blinding Powder, Last Refuge, Shadow Refuge, traited Steal are all extremely quick or instant cast. Tricks like Smoke Field -> Combo finisher are also generally very safe to use without fear of being interrupted. You’re standing in a blind field, after all. This means that interrupting, or preventing stealth is a nigh impossible task. In a fight, a thief WILL be able to stealth if he wants to, and you won’t be able to stop him. Even if you interrupt one, he will quite possibly have another few up his sleeve, and those will be instant cast.

Now we’re assuming the thief has entered stealth, since it’s very difficult for us to stop him from entering it. Once they’re in stealth, what is the thief’s opponent going to do? Pretty much the only two things to do are

-Just walk away
-Spam autoattacks and AoE and hope he walks into them

This is problematic to me on several levels. Is it fun? Is it rewarding? Is it effective? The answer to those questions is no for many people.

Let’s change topic for a moment and move onto couterplay. Good examples of skills with counterplay would be Frenzy and Unload. The warrior’s Frenzy makes him a serious threat for awhile, but he also takes a lot more damage too. Played cleverly, you can use his own skill against him. The thief’s Unload deals quite a bit of damage over time. It’s a very powerful skill, and just needs to be spammed to deal damage. However, it can be kited, since the range is quite short. Since it’s a projectile, it can be reflected, and it can be interrupted due to the long cast time. You have multiple options to deal with those skills.

Skills with poor counterplay options typically fall in the realm of invulns and stealths. Defy Pain, Distortion, Blinding Powder, and Decoy.

These all share many things in common. They’re all instant cast, so they can’t be interrupted. They provide extremely powerful effects. And they can’t be removed, since they’re not boons. And once they’re applied, there’s not much you can do. For invuln, you hope you applied a lot of conditions before they went invuln. For stealth, you spam AoE and hope you hit something. Counterplay to any skill should never be limited solely to just “wait it out,” and “hope you hit.”

I for one don’t appreciate any of these zero-counterplay skills existing in the game. It’s not just the thief that’s a problem, it’s just that thief is the only class that can slot so many instant-cast gamechangers in one build. I don’t want to see Elementalists using mist form and traiting for mist form and also having a an instant cast mist form each time they swap to a certain attunement. Would it be effective? That’s debatable. Would it be annoying and unfun with zero counterplay? Yes.

I’d much rather have a stealth that has counterplay. Give us a way to remove stealth when the thief is in stealth. Or make much shorter stealth durations, or remove stealth stacking from the game entirely, so that each stealth can only have the base duration from each individual skill, or give most stealths longer cast times so they can be interrupted before going in.

In return, you could make sneak attacks more powerful since they’d be harder to pull off. You could make stealth durations longer to punish people who weren’t able to interrupt the longer cast times. Oh, and you could give the thief more support, ranged and AoE options as well so stealth spam wouldn’t be the most popular build. Where’s my P/P matrix gunner? It doesn’t exist because P/P is so much less effective than going into stealth and fishing for backstabs.

The idea is to keep the thief at the same power level but make him less cancerous to fight. And it’s not just the thief, I’d prefer every class was stripped of spammable invulns and stealth, and had them replaced with more interesting skills and mechanics.

Aegael.6938:

I don’t think the point is "nerf stealth," it’s more akin to "rework thief." It really depends on Anet’s design philosophy and whether or not they think the thief is in a good place. Many people find the thief unfun to fight. However, if Anet intended thieves to be extremely unfun to fight, then they it’s their game and we just have to find another game to play if we don’t like it.

However, if that’s not intended design, I can lay out why I think the class is unfun to fight and how it can be improved for both the thief and the person playing against him.
---
So let’s talk about stealth.

Most stealths are...

Extremely difficult to interrupt. Blinding Powder, Last Refuge, Shadow Refuge, traited Steal are all extremely quick or instant cast. Tricks like Smoke Field -&gt; Combo finisher are also generally very safe to use without fear of being interrupted. You’re standing in a blind field, after all. This means that interrupting, or preventing stealth is a nigh impossible task. In a fight, a thief WILL be able to stealth if he wants to, and you won’t be able to stop him. Even if you interrupt one, he will quite possibly have another few up his sleeve, and those will be instant cast.

Now we’re assuming the thief has entered stealth, since it’s very difficult for us to stop him from entering it. Once they’re in stealth, what is the thief’s opponent going to do? Pretty much the only two things to do are

-Just walk away
-Spam autoattacks and AoE and hope he walks into them

This is problematic to me on several levels. Is it fun? Is it rewarding? Is it effective? The answer to those questions is no for many people.

Let’s change topic for a moment and move onto couterplay. Good examples of skills with counterplay would be Frenzy and Unload. The warrior’s Frenzy makes him a serious threat for awhile, but he also takes a lot more damage too. Played cleverly, you can use his own skill against him. The thief’s Unload deals quite a bit of damage over time. It’s a very powerful skill, and just needs to be spammed to deal damage. However, it can be kited, since the range is quite short. Since it’s a projectile, it can be reflected, and it can be interrupted due to the long cast time. You have multiple options to deal with those skills.

Skills with poor counterplay options typically fall in the realm of invulns and stealths. Defy Pain, Distortion, Blinding Powder, and Decoy.

These all share many things in common. They’re all instant cast, so they can’t be interrupted. They provide extremely powerful effects. And they can’t be removed, since they’re not boons. And once they’re applied, there’s not much you can do. For invuln, you hope you applied a lot of conditions before they went invuln. For stealth, you spam AoE and hope you hit something. Counterplay to any skill should never be limited solely to just "wait it out," and "hope you hit."

I for one don’t appreciate any of these zero-counterplay skills existing in the game. It’s not just the thief that’s a problem, it’s just that thief is the only class that can slot so many instant-cast gamechangers in one build. I don’t want to see Elementalists using mist form and traiting for mist form and also having a an instant cast mist form each time they swap to a certain attunement. Would it be effective? That’s debatable. Would it be annoying and unfun with zero counterplay? Yes.

I’d much rather have a stealth that has counterplay. Give us a way to remove stealth when the thief is in stealth. Or make much shorter stealth durations, or remove stealth stacking from the game entirely, so that each stealth can only have the base duration from each individual skill, or give most stealths longer cast times so they can be interrupted before going in.

In return, you could make sneak attacks more powerful since they’d be harder to pull off. You could make stealth durations longer to punish people who weren’t able to interrupt the longer cast times. Oh, and you could give the thief more support, ranged and AoE options as well so stealth spam wouldn’t be the most popular build. Where’s my P/P matrix gunner? It doesn’t exist because P/P is so much less effective than going into stealth and fishing for backstabs.

The idea is to keep the thief at the same power level but make him less cancerous to fight. And it’s not just the thief, I’d prefer every class was stripped of spammable invulns and stealth, and had them replaced with more interesting skills and mechanics.

thiefs are weak and easy kill I am noob war and I faceroll almost all thiefs I run into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbG1TCNxVY l2p.

vincecontix.1264:

thiefs are weak and easy kill I am noob war and I faceroll almost all thiefs I run into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbG1TCNxVY l2p.

Stop advertise your awful video. That thiefs are pure noobs.

Aegael.6938:

I don’t think the point is “nerf stealth,” it’s more akin to “rework thief.” It really depends on Anet’s design philosophy and whether or not they think the thief is in a good place. Many people find the thief unfun to fight. However, if Anet intended thieves to be extremely unfun to fight, then they it’s their game and we just have to find another game to play if we don’t like it……………>

<———————The idea is to keep the thief at the same power level but make him less cancerous to fight. And it’s not just the thief, I’d prefer every class was stripped of spammable invulns and stealth, and had them replaced with more interesting skills and mechanics.

Nice analysis. I agree with you in everything, but i don’t think remove the time stack from stealth is going to help, the main problem is in D/P #5/#2 combo in addition with all the others ways to stealth. And as you said, instant cast you cant interrupt.

Stealth in the current state is toxic for the game, unfun and frustrating to play against.

Something alike happen with PU mesmer, with the great amount of clones and stealth.

no point to take Cynz seriously

he has been defending his permastealth for an age now

Ps : they just need to adjust to the same in spvp … nothing more than that …

i like open field in wvw more than spvp but … class balance in spvp is way better than wvw.

Liza.2758:

no point to take Cynz seriously

he has been defending his permastealth for an age now

Ps : they just need to adjust to the same in spvp … nothing more than that …

i like open field in wvw more than spvp but … class balance in spvp is way better than wvw.

I dont do spvp, what is the difference in stealth there besides they cant capture or hold a point?

does permastealth exist? almost u get to see the thief for like 1.5 seconds
is it annoying? yes

but
stealth is like the least of the problems in wvw. thieves have been doing that for ever and it used to be complete perma stealth before culling was removed. i have gotten used to it by now. the only thing that bugs me atm is the endless war/glass ele trains and the massive cc spam

thanks for all the feedback, guys. i hope anyone who has the power to make changes would read this thread. this mechanic abuse is ruining a lot of people’s fun in playing wvw.

urieldhynne.2743:

Liza.2758:

no point to take Cynz seriously

he has been defending his permastealth for an age now

Ps : they just need to adjust to the same in spvp … nothing more than that …

i like open field in wvw more than spvp but … class balance in spvp is way better than wvw.

I dont do spvp, what is the difference in stealth there besides they cant capture or hold a point?

people who usually abuse stealth are almost useless in spvp/tpvp (PU mesmers and perma-stealth thieves). you cant afford to try kill a bunker that long by going in and out of stealth while your other teammates are getting ganked at another node.

D/P is just the most versatile round weapon-set around the only thing it doesn’t have is Cleave. It is a forgiveable set to run and has easy access to stealth along with a Blind Field, but it is not the main problem it is also how there is so many ways to access stealth in addition along with running certain traits that Regen’s your Health.

Shadow Arts IMO is an extremely valuable trait-line unlike Acrobatics even with Feline Grace if you run a stealth build as opposed to an evade build which they’ve since nerfed to an extent.

Anyway in PvP you have a 4s Reveal which they reverted in PVE/wvw after much outcry, I’m not sure they can break that back without breaking some builds though.
As mentioned though Stealth was truly annoying when culling was around, the problem people have is with those high power/crit builds along with stealth.

urieldhynne.2743:

Liza.2758:

no point to take Cynz seriously

he has been defending his permastealth for an age now

Ps : they just need to adjust to the same in spvp … nothing more than that …

i like open field in wvw more than spvp but … class balance in spvp is way better than wvw.

I dont do spvp, what is the difference in stealth there besides they cant capture or hold a point?

4s reveal instead of 3s, and Backstab among other moves isn’t as powerful due to them having nerfed it in sPvP.

thief might be the easiest class to play using a berserker amulet both in spvp and wvw. try playing a zerker ranger, ele, mesmer, necro, or guard and see how well you fare.

Valentin.2073:

thief might be the easiest class to play using a berserker amulet both in spvp and wvw. try playing a zerker ranger, ele, mesmer, necro, or guard and see how well you fare.

^ This, and complain a lot about the only source of survivability is perma stealth because they are squishy (and they build FULL zerker) when they have plenty skills to avoid damage (blinds, evasions, interrupts, stealth) without CD.

urieldhynne.2743:

Valentin.2073:

thief might be the easiest class to play using a berserker amulet both in spvp and wvw. try playing a zerker ranger, ele, mesmer, necro, or guard and see how well you fare.

^ This, and complain a lot about the only source of survivability is perma stealth because they are squishy (and they build FULL zerker) when they have plenty skills to avoid damage (blinds, evasions, interrupts, stealth) without CD.

Oh don’t get me started on those guys…one of our team got tired of a single permastealth thief and let down a stealth trap, they hit it and folded almost instantly…to 3 people. I stepped in an enemy’s stealth trap and survived the entire reveal while fighting off 3 people…because I evaded, teleported, used blinds, the normal stuff we can use to actually avoid taking damage. It helps that I’m also running a regen build, but regardless, it points to how well we CAN survive without stealth. Not once did I drop below the 40% health threshold.

Stealth shouldnt behave as a thieves main profession mechanic, but it does, so they abuse it. Steal needs to be buffed defensively, or some sort of defense added to the traitlines. Probably wont happen but that is what thieves need.

all of you guys keep going “nerf stealth,nerf stealth”
if they nerf stealth, what happens after? we already have nearly no build diversity, i guess every thief will roll a warrior then. no more thieves in wvw, only warriors will be seen

Satan Blaze.8237:

all of you guys keep going “nerf stealth,nerf stealth”
if they nerf stealth, what happens after? we already have nearly no build diversity, i guess every thief will roll a warrior then. no more thieves in wvw, only warriors will be seen

It’s simple…thieves start speccing for some toughness and actually start living for a long time without abusing stealth. It’s not as hard as the D/P stealth spammers like you to believe.

frans.8092:

Valentin.2073:

… i know how to deal with them 1v1 but it still takes a huge amount of effort from me.

Translation; you want easy free lootbags like the other whiners.

By other whiners I take it you mean thieves who whine non stop loudly and spuriously when anyone mentions stealth ?

urieldhynne.2743:

vincecontix.1264:

thiefs are weak and easy kill I am noob war and I faceroll almost all thiefs I run into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbG1TCNxVY l2p.

Stop advertise your awful video. That thiefs are pure noobs.

If thieves were so OP then that noob thief should have won like everyone claims happens.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Satan Blaze.8237:

all of you guys keep going “nerf stealth,nerf stealth”
if they nerf stealth, what happens after? we already have nearly no build diversity, i guess every thief will roll a warrior then. no more thieves in wvw, only warriors will be seen

It’s simple…thieves start speccing for some toughness and actually start living for a long time without abusing stealth. It’s not as hard as the D/P stealth spammers like you to believe.

simple? speccing to live a long time without stealth greatly decreases our damage, and without this damage, we’re pretty useless as the stealth spammers as you say are roamers, and roaming becomes pretty useless if u cant kill your target.
we arent warriors who can dish out tons of damage with tons of armor and tons of hp huh

Satan Blaze.8237:

we arent warriors who can dish out tons of damage with tons of armor and tons of hp huh

Nope, but unlike warriors, thieves have permanent stealth, permanent evasions, and perma vigor dodges. Which counts as effective hit points. But of course that flew over your head being an advanced skill level and all.

thaooo.5320:

Satan Blaze.8237:

we arent warriors who can dish out tons of damage with tons of armor and tons of hp huh

Nope, but unlike warriors, thieves have permanent stealth, permanent evasions, and perma vigor dodges. Which counts as effective hit points. But of course that flew over your head being an advanced skill level and all.

I do wish i had all those benefits you listed. teach me how to get them all plz

Perma Stealth, Perma Evasions and Vigor? Where do I get that if I’m not a hax0r thief after they nerfed Vigor? Feline Grace is not OP in any way.. and it just returns a little endurance.

Stealth spam thief is the right build if you have no skill, you can make lots of mistakes and still be able to kill 90% of builds.

But the real question is just one : Why do people keep playing like this ? only quaggans know.