Guild Wars 2

Ending argument, both sides in a fight between the two classes have their strengths and weakness, its all about the player behind them that makes the major difference. You could tell a thief player to use venoms but wouldnt mean that they know how to use them against an experienced d/d ele.

Dagger dagger ele is the spammer class #1. You just spam skills till no tomorrow… If you screw up, switch to water, and again spam, spam spam those heals and remember to jump while doing it!
Thief at least needs precision since you are quite exposed if you miss your cloack and dagger.
Sorta like the abilities noob tube and martyr in a certain famous arcade shooter: with the noob tube you at least have to aim.

Spaming heals in water? Jumping while spaming skills? Ehm, lol. Thats not possible. Ele doesnt have spamable skills besides anytimers which are completely garbage. All skills are on huge cooldowns.

Sure, you can just waste all your powerful skills like earthquake, backdraft, churning earth and cleansing wave, then RTL away. But you’ll kill exactly nothing.

Korgov.7645:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Demented Lemur.7861:

Right now i believe it bit difficult to tell if stelth needs a nerf the main reoson that thiefs are so well with stealth is because of culling we need to see if theifs are still just as powerful once thats fixed if they are stilled overpowered increase revaled timer so that they can’t restelth themselves because i honestly play theif and know that i have 3 seconds of revealed time and i usually never see thief after he damages for even second once they attack so culling maybe the main issue. I play conditon thief so dont jump on my back about it

I can answer that for you. In tournaments, thieves are average at best because when they attack, they come out of stealth. There’s also less opportunity for endless kiting, but I think the main thing is that revealed debuff actually works in tournaments.

Isn’t it also so that Thieves do less damage in tournaments?

Is there less targets in tournaments, meaning TAB retargetting is more effective?

Do all players in tournament have same level and reasonable toughness so that thief cannot just burst a target down with opener alone?

One of the complaints in WvW is green arrow players getting repeatedly 1-shotted by thief and thief escaping. Sure any profession can succeed killing a lowbie, but our team would have a chance to hunt him down and kill him back. Either right after the kill or before if the enemy was discovered hovering just outside spawn point.

I complained of being one hit by thiefs in the past too. So I picked up the thief as my main. I do not believe its possible for a thief to one hit anyone other than another thief. I have the highest possible crit build and the highest crit I have seen is 13k. And this is with a full GC build where you only have 10k health and there are multiple classes that can one hit you.

In all honesty I see a GC thief as a “high risk-medium rewards”build. Why I still run my thief this way is because I feel I can outplay a majority of the players in WvW with any class. And to point out, I recently have had to change my thief and Ive gone back to my Necromancer as the current servers are kind of forcing me to do it because of the tactics they implement and GC thief is not as beneficial. I could always switch out my thief build, but the reality is I would be contributing less than with my Necro right now so Ill play whats needed.

Being visible for 3 secs minus culling is far from “high risk”, bro.

teg.1340:

Spaming heals in water? Jumping while spaming skills? Ehm, lol. Thats not possible. Ele doesnt have spamable skills besides anytimers which are completely garbage. All skills are on huge cooldowns.

Sure, you can just waste all your powerful skills like earthquake, backdraft, churning earth and cleansing wave, then RTL away. But you’ll kill exactly nothing.

llolollolol. You just don’t know how to play D/D ele if you don’t spam. Seriously, go watch that video from that Aurora Glade ele Riez.
There:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0EbWDWcQo&feature=player_embedded

My brother plays an ele too and he spams like hell as well because “it’s effective” and because “I can”. (Poor keyboard!)

As you can see in this video – this ele is destroying 3 (!!!!) Thiefs simultaneously !!!!

Reduktion.5791:

As you can see in this video – this ele is destroying 3 (!!!!) Thiefs simultaneously !!!!

Well he’s a very good player tbh, though, I still think d/d ele is the only class that can really pull off stuff like that. Other classes would run out of skills / initative.

Master of Timespace.2548:

llolollolol. You just don’t know how to play D/D ele if you don’t spam. Seriously, go watch that video from that Aurora Glade ele Riez.
There:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0EbWDWcQo&feature=player_embedded

My brother plays an ele too and he spams like hell as well because “it’s effective” and because “I can”. (Poor keyboard!)

Spaming skills to me means facerolling the keyboard. That doesnt make a good d/d ele. Sure you use skills all the time, but look at this video. He has a pretty good timing at using his powerful skills at the right time. This is crucial to playing d/d ele. Each attunement has a few low cooldown skills which are indeed spamable. But the rest is on huge cooldowns. You definitely dont want to waste those skills in the wrong situations.

BTW: Non of the opponents shown in this video ever dodged a single churning earth. Its pretty obvious they doesnt really have a clue about eles.

Wait. Did someone actually say that thief is a high risk class?

ROFL!

I think confusion needs a buff. Hell I think mesmer need a buff. Let’s give them the ability to apply agony.

Reduktion.5791:

As you can see in this video – this ele is destroying 3 (!!!!) Thiefs simultaneously !!!!

Those thieves need to learn 2 play. They need to make an ele and learn how to counter them…

No one is saying some ele builds are not over powered also. What we are saying is that thieves are over powered and the thief community is doing every thing they can to keep it that way.

Please don’t confuse stealth being broken/overpowered with thieves themselves being OP.

It just needs to be fixed in WvW, the class isn’t dominating in spvp.

Dralor.3701:

Please don’t confuse stealth being broken/overpowered with thieves themselves being OP.

It just needs to be fixed in WvW, the class isn’t dominating in spvp.

Correct. The only real problem is the frequency of stealth that is available. Frequency of stealth isn’t an issue in sPvP since you can’t cap points while stealthed.

nekos.2584:

Reduktion.5791:

As you can see in this video – this ele is destroying 3 (!!!!) Thiefs simultaneously !!!!

Those thieves need to learn 2 play. They need to make an ele and learn how to counter them…

No one is saying some ele builds are not over powered also. What we are saying is that thieves are over powered and the thief community is doing every thing they can to keep it that way.

That’s because we get a whole bunch of laymen making suggestions that would ruin thieves. Things that would be equivalent to, make it so Eles can’t use Boons, or make it so Mesmers can’t use clones or phantasms. Other classes ardently defend themselves too from similar claims against them. Thieves and Mesmers probably take the most heat because they’re based around deception and trickery. The thing is, unlike the classes, thief’s defense is almost completely based around not getting hit and keeping pressure off. Most other classes are based around being able to withstand hits. To add to the reasons Thieves defend thier stealth, all thier weapon set that have access to stealth (with the exception of condition D/D) revolve around attacking from stealth. And that’s over half thier weapon sets. So those sets are attacked on all fronts when stealth nerfs are suggested.

Oozo.7856:

Dralor.3701:

Please don’t confuse stealth being broken/overpowered with thieves themselves being OP.

It just needs to be fixed in WvW, the class isn’t dominating in spvp.

Correct. The only real problem is the frequency of stealth that is available. Frequency of stealth isn’t an issue in sPvP since you can’t cap points while stealthed.

Unfortuatly, P/D and S/D are based around using their stealth attacks as much as possible.

Xsorus.2507:

Ralathar.7236:

Xsorus.2507:

the game isn’t really designed like the way he’s suggesting, Its an excuse used in every game that’s had stealthers

“Well, Such and Such stealther is meant to be amazing in 1v1”

Completely ignoring that my Stealth can do 1vsX and do much better then other classes as well

Actually the game this is templated after, Dark Age of Camelot, did just that. Stealth in that game quite literally had next to no escapes, tiny ranged damage, and no aoe ability. Also low mobility and though could perma stealth they could not stealth in combat and damage popped them.

Thieves in this game are capable of everything.

Stealthers in DAOC were such a different beast then this game…Its amazing that over time Developers have actually took a solid concept of the Stealth in DAOC, and completely made it worse all around balance and gameplay wise.

At least when they did Warhammer Online they improved on the Stealther Concept.

Though Stealthers were a bit more powerful then their DAOC counterpart, Stealth was much weaker over all in comparison to make up for it.

Both of you are wrong on so many levels regarding Stealth on DAoC.

1) Infiltrators had 2.5 spec points, meaning they could have more higher level skills then any other class in the game. If you combined that with the autotraining feature they became walking machines of death before the Revamp of RA’s in New frontiers.
(I was a Team Lead for several years with DAoC I know the internal fighting that went on, that crap people posted on VN and the herald was propaganda by Sanya Thomas and Matt Frior)

1b) Saracen was the best race for infiltrator, period. High Dex race with a Dexterity 75% / 25% strength weaponskill ratio was wrong.

1c) Dragonfang pre nerf was a 9 second stun, post nerf was a 5 second stun off of a evade. Really? evade 5 (add dodger 2 which was cap evasion, but most didnt use it) meant that once every 15 seconds you had a 5 second stun coming at you. Hibernia pierce had one, think the name was widow<something) had it at 24 or 29 in pierce.

Nightshades, 2.2 spec points. Extremely high growth rates on abilities to offset low strength of races. (Hence why Celt and later shar were not allowed to become nightshades until years after the majority left)

Shadowblades, 2.2 spec points. Was forced to spec slashing. (Myself, Sabranic and the Sblade TL convinced them before ToA to allow sblades to equip spears on internal testing (Not pendragon server, Uther) and it was stupid the damage they did. A 2h spear Perforate artery was hitting for 1100+ against Hibernia Scale. Matt Jacobs, Pete Waterman and Matt Frior all 3 screamed overpowered and Mackey (I will be blanked, if I let midgard overpower anyone again).

I can also tell you the classes they all played, only Sanya Thomas played Midgard and she played a Healer. (mend/pac)

So please, please stop comparing this game to DAoC. You guys know nothing about DAoC except what someone else told you. You ran around in stupid 8 man gank groups farming stupid zergs with overpowered realm abilities. It wasnt skill then, and it isnt skill now.

And before you say “you must have been a zergling” Wrong, I played with Bedlam on Galahad/Hibernia and Midgard. How many of you had a free subscription with Mythic since Shrouded Isles? I did all the way until Darkness Rising when I quit and turned over my account back to Mythic per the contract. I know more about the inner workings of that horribly managed company then most of you can fathom.

Imagine for a moment that heart seeker delt 1 damage and applied a cripple or something. Still an amazing gap closer worth its initiative cost just with significantly less cheese. This type of finisher belongs in the sword main hand and certainly not the already high damage dagger.

Lebannen.8325:

Both of you are wrong on so many levels regarding Stealth on DAoC.

1) Infiltrators had 2.5 spec points, meaning they could have more higher level skills then any other class in the game. If you combined that with the autotraining feature they became walking machines of death before the Revamp of RA’s in New frontiers.
(I was a Team Lead for several years with DAoC I know the internal fighting that went on, that crap people posted on VN and the herald was propaganda by Sanya Thomas and Matt Frior)

1b) Saracen was the best race for infiltrator, period. High Dex race with a Dexterity 75% / 25% strength weaponskill ratio was wrong.

1c) Dragonfang pre nerf was a 9 second stun, post nerf was a 5 second stun off of a evade. Really? evade 5 (add dodger 2 which was cap evasion, but most didnt use it) meant that once every 15 seconds you had a 5 second stun coming at you. Hibernia pierce had one, think the name was widow<something) had it at 24 or 29 in pierce.

Nightshades, 2.2 spec points. Extremely high growth rates on abilities to offset low strength of races. (Hence why Celt and later shar were not allowed to become nightshades until years after the majority left)

Shadowblades, 2.2 spec points. Was forced to spec slashing. (Myself, Sabranic and the Sblade TL convinced them before ToA to allow sblades to equip spears on internal testing (Not pendragon server, Uther) and it was stupid the damage they did. A 2h spear Perforate artery was hitting for 1100+ against Hibernia Scale. Matt Jacobs, Pete Waterman and Matt Frior all 3 screamed overpowered and Mackey (I will be blanked, if I let midgard overpower anyone again).

I can also tell you the classes they all played, only Sanya Thomas played Midgard and she played a Healer. (mend/pac)

So please, please stop comparing this game to DAoC. You guys know nothing about DAoC except what someone else told you. You ran around in stupid 8 man gank groups farming stupid zergs with overpowered realm abilities. It wasnt skill then, and it isnt skill now.

And before you say “you must have been a zergling” Wrong, I played with Bedlam on Galahad/Hibernia and Midgard. How many of you had a free subscription with Mythic since Shrouded Isles? I did all the way until Darkness Rising when I quit and turned over my account back to Mythic per the contract. I know more about the inner workings of that horribly managed company then most of you can fathom.

Alright you want to play some, I’m up for that

A. infils with 2.5 Spec Points, Incredibly powerful no doubt, But based on the timeline a Shadowblade at the start of the game was incredibly powerful Because you could One shot with Two hander and remain stealthed, Since was eventually nerfed down and Infils became top dog after a while, Dragonfang was incredibly powerful… and if you didn’t have Purge you were boned probably 100% of the time before the revamp of RA’s. However if you had Purge you could kill the Infil just like you could kill the other thieves at the time…..To bad Purge was on bloody 15 Min timer back then.

B. Nightshades were powerful against other Stealthers because of their Class RA (Viper)….

C. Shadowblades Left Axe PreNerf, Nuff said.

now that we got that out of the way..

I know nothing about DAOC except what someone else told me?

I played the game since Beta 2….I was around with Plow got Thanes nerfed because moronic Scouts couldn’t tell the difference between a Skald and a Thane.

I was around with Smite Clerics were the best Solo class in the game, Blowing away what you consider a Powerful combo on infil..

I was around with Ninpo the Scout could One shot people from a mile way because Bubble Didn’t exist at the time….

I was in the number 1 Midgard 8man on Merlin Server..

I had Multiple High Rank characters, Most notably a Savage and a Valkyrie.

My Valkyrie was the first RR5 Valk in the game, 6 Month’s after the class came out because no one played it, I was the first RR10 Valkyrie in the game….

I was the highest ranked valkyrie in the game for 2 years after i quit before someone finally caught up to me.

I was 300 Kills from Lone Enforcer on my Valkyrie. I also had the highest amount of Solo kills for a Valkyrie for most of the classes life, and only in the 4 years have I been surpassed on the class.

Oh and I also had multiple high rank stealthers..

Dual.8953:

That’s because we get a whole bunch of laymen making suggestions that would ruin thieves. Things that would be equivalent to, make it so Eles can’t use Boons, or make it so Mesmers can’t use clones or phantasms. Other classes ardently defend themselves too from similar claims against them. Thieves and Mesmers probably take the most heat because they’re based around deception and trickery.

Ele boon stacking has been nerfed significantly with the latest patch in addition to RTL nerf. Fury, Swiftness and Vigor uptime has been extremely cut back. Thats results in less mobility, less survivability and less damage. Coincident nothing has been changed about thief and stealth in WvW.

Eliyahu.1467:

Daeqar.8965:

Eliyahu.1467:

You’re being pretty thick. You have to balance WvW around all engagements, large and small.

You say people who are advocating for a stealth nerf are only pushing for balancing around a small scale. That is false. Nerfing stealth will only serve to help balance small engagements and will do nothing to unbalance large engagements. There is absolutely no con to nerfing stealth other then you and yours won’t be able to endlessly troll other players anymore.

You have all but acknowledged that stealth is overpowered in small engagements, but you have yet to present one legitimate reason why it should not be changed. The argument that WvW should be balanced exclusively around zerg v zerg with no consideration for small engagements is absolutely absurd. If one does not affect the other you can balance them separately, making your argument completely and utterly irrelevant.

The thief class is weak/limited with large engagements. It specializes in small engagements, and only because of stealth. If you make it even just mediocre in small engagements (which are largely inconsequential towards winning,) the entire class is weak and pointless for WvW.

There are plenty of thief builds out there that excel at small engagements that aren’t “perma-stealth” variants. If you believe a thief needs all of the stealth it has access to right now to be successful in small fights, you are mistaken. It’s one thing to be good in a small fight. It’s another thing to be able to invariably escape death when engaging 10 players.

Oh and as a note, I’m not opposed to thieves getting a simultaneous buff to their survivability/durability with a stealth nerf. I think the class needs a small redesign in that regard.

A skilled player can absolutely take a thief and run several builds with success that does not feature stealth, but they accomplish it by out-skilling their opponents. And lets face it, the majority of players in all classes run terrible builds; it’s not hard to beat that.

Every single non-stealth thief build you point out, I can point out a different class that can accomplish the same basic gameplay 2x better. There is zero reason to play a thief without stealth because it’s a gimp class without it.

I think just having the damage number show up when you hit a thief in stealth with damage would do quite a bit.

It doesn’t need to show bleeds ticking on their head so you can see them moving (That’d be too much) but just having the initial damage show when you hit them.

Xsorus.2507:

jkctmc.8754:

oZii.2864:

Daeqar.8965:

When it comes to thieves in WvW, they are what is likely the best class at executing a losing strategy. That strategy being lonewolf PvP in a large scale gametype.

If you want to move around the field alone, quickly, and potentially pick off stragglers, I can’t think of anything better than a thief. This does have some niche value in WvW for things like murdering dolyaks at low personnel costs, but if even a disproportionate fraction of a server is running these lonewolf spec thieves, they will get absolutely destroyed in WvW by the server running a tight, unstoppable ball of team specs like hammer warriors, guardians, eles, necros, etc. that support each other and play together. If folks ditch the narcissistic attitudes, they would realize that thieves are actually a very limited value class when it comes to winning WvW. The game is called Guild Wars for a reason.

Pretty much the only opportunity a thief has for a useful role in that winning, tightly-knit teamplay is just for on-demand blast finishers with shortbow. (No permastealth or burst combos here.) Bring two shortbow thieves: role filled. Everyone else re-roll a more useful class or be a scout/dolyak-killer (better yet, let pugs do it) and miss out on all mega-bag drops.

Hit the nail on the head but people will come with a counter argument that nobody cares about the objectives in WvW and everyone is just looking for small team fights/1vX.

We need to balance WvW around 1vX and 5v5’s and solo roamers that is what matters in WvW according to this thread.

You can take any camp with 2 people, and prior to the patch you could open any wall, or gate with four people, now you can do it with up to 25 people. You guys really think you need a Zerg to accomplish anything in WvW? O.O

I can solo any camp in WvW with my thief or ranger..I’m sure other classes don’t have trouble with it either.

Hell I can blow down a wall at a keep on my thief or ranger and take the keep just the same

When there are queues to get into BL’s (common in upper tiers) you’re not going to blow down anything solo other than a supply camp, and even then you’re liable to get steamrolled while trying to solo a camp.

If a match is at all competitive, the results of large group vs. large group is going to dominate match outcomes. Playing lonewolf is of little consequence in WvW.

I see we can go back and forth for years about knowledge, you have your personal knowledge and I had official non-published data.

Plow was good friends with Mackey, (Will say that I couldnt remember the name, but I remember the conversation about skalds)

It wasnt sbaldes that could oneshot and stay stealthed. It was everyone for years, I think it was 1.78 or 1.79 that finally fixed that.

Viper was the most reliable counter to infiltrators but if it was down, they were done.

Scouts dont count, Rangers here do not even come close the overpoweredness of scouts in DAoC.

Smite Clerics and Valkyries, didnt know they could stealth.

This portion is about Thieves vs DAoC’s terrible imbalance of stealth dynamics and classes.

Simple fix to thieves.
Damage received automatically breaks stealth.
Reduce effectiveness of condition removal in stealth (Make it a grandmaster)
Give them 1 elite escape (remove another) that gives them a 50% speed boost, drops them from combat, unbreakable stealth, removes all initiative, 240 second reuse timer and unable to attack for 12-15 seconds.

Then leave their damage as is, thieves are now fixed.

Ralathar.7236:

Daeqar.8965:

When it comes to thieves in WvW, they are what is likely the best class at executing a losing strategy. That strategy being lonewolf PvP in a large scale gametype.

If you want to move around the field alone, quickly, and potentially pick off stragglers, I can’t think of anything better than a thief. This does have some niche value in WvW for things like murdering dolyaks at low personnel costs, but if even a disproportionate fraction of a server is running these lonewolf spec thieves, they will get absolutely destroyed in WvW by the server running a tight, unstoppable ball of team specs like hammer warriors, guardians, eles, necros, etc. that support each other and play together. If folks ditch the narcissistic attitudes, they would realize that thieves are actually a very limited value class when it comes to winning WvW. The game is called Guild Wars for a reason.

Pretty much the only opportunity a thief has for a useful role in that winning, tightly-knit teamplay is just for on-demand blast finishers with shortbow. (No permastealth or burst combos here.) Bring two shortbow thieves: role filled. Everyone else re-roll a more useful class or be a scout/dolyak-killer (better yet, let pugs do it) and miss out on all mega-bag drops.

Actually no, small groups of thieves can dominate the supply game. The supply game has a major impact on the overall war effort. A properly coordinated force of about 12 thieves that are working in duo’s can completely shut down the supply in an entire map while still causing chaos. They can also potentially ninja supply camps at will if people do not guard them

These same thieves can also take out solos and small groups of players who would be reinforcing objectives or retaking said supply camps.

Thieves are actually one of the most effective classes in the overall war effort used properly. But most people just use them as LAWL kill machines due to their current low risk high reward design. Thus they are ironically seen as near worthless because people don’t use them to achieve the right goals.

You folks need to learn how to think objectively. In a reasonably balanced match such a coordinated thief team would cause a landslide victory. Not by vaping players, or towers, or keeps, but by controlling supplies by playing to the classes strengths of mobility, zerg avoidance, and high damage. Supplies control how easy and hard it is to keep all other objectives.

This is why most players travel around in a zergball and blindly follow. They look for kills and keeps. This is why it’s up to the commanders to look for objective play and strategy. This is why most thieves are ineffective at WvW. The average players thinks about WvW in all the wrong ways.

I don’t play in random zerg-balls; I play in a skilled and coordinated guild that works as a team and that coordinates with the server community. Of course we’re playing objectives – and winning because of it.

We use scouts and dolyak assassins and stuff like that which is small scale, but most of what gets the job done is large scale combat that exploits group synergy to maximum possible extent. Pugs also make good scouts and dolyak assassins, but pugs do NOT make good group players because they don’t use the right builds, don’t use the right combo fields/finishers, don’t stay stacked up, don’t listen in TS / follow directions, etc.

All that small scale stuff can be accomplished by any random players that show up and just play hard. But the big stuff that wins/saves keeps because a tight 20 player guild group smashes a 35 player random zerg-wad into glitter bags over and over and over….that dictates outcome. The lonewolf gankers are meaningless in comparison, and they don’t even get as many bags.

After leveling a…

Mesmer, Ele, Warrior, Guardian, Ranger, Necro, and finally a Thief….

[insert drumroll]

Thieves are fine as is. For saying thieves have a low skill gap. It’s true, much like a D/D Ele, or a 100B warror you can typically be mediocre and kill bad players easily. However, all classes have a counter to one spec of various classes and the get countered by other specs.

WvW is not just about what class you play, but also about what spec/stats you run.

If you get killed in one spec with one set of gear, have another set of gear and a diff spec. One spec/set of gear is not good for all things and should not be good for all things. That is not balanced pvp. Quit player checkers, when you should be playing chess.

sostronk.8167:

Korgov.7645:

NevirSayDie.6235:

I can answer that for you. In tournaments, thieves are average at best because when they attack, they come out of stealth. There’s also less opportunity for endless kiting, but I think the main thing is that revealed debuff actually works in tournaments.

Isn’t it also so that Thieves do less damage in tournaments?

Is there less targets in tournaments, meaning TAB retargetting is more effective?

Do all players in tournament have same level and reasonable toughness so that thief cannot just burst a target down with opener alone?

One of the complaints in WvW is green arrow players getting repeatedly 1-shotted by thief and thief escaping. Sure any profession can succeed killing a lowbie, but our team would have a chance to hunt him down and kill him back. Either right after the kill or before if the enemy was discovered hovering just outside spawn point.

I complained of being one hit by thiefs in the past too. So I picked up the thief as my main. I do not believe its possible for a thief to one hit anyone other than another thief. I have the highest possible crit build and the highest crit I have seen is 13k. And this is with a full GC build where you only have 10k health and there are multiple classes that can one hit you.

In all honesty I see a GC thief as a “high risk-medium rewards”build. Why I still run my thief this way is because I feel I can outplay a majority of the players in WvW with any class. And to point out, I recently have had to change my thief and Ive gone back to my Necromancer as the current servers are kind of forcing me to do it because of the tactics they implement and GC thief is not as beneficial. I could always switch out my thief build, but the reality is I would be contributing less than with my Necro right now so Ill play whats needed.

Original questions:
—Everyone does less damage in tournaments, so I don’t think it’s that.
—True, there are no upleveled players in tournaments, so that’s part of it.
—You don’t need to tab retarget in tournaments because there’s no culling. As soon as the thief leaves stealth, you can see him.
—The last part is what I meant about infinite kiting: in a tourney, a thief can’t exactly hide/kite around the map for 2-3 minutes while they wait for an opportunity to pick someone off.

Second set of questions:
—Certainly, necros are a strong profession. I don’t think this is necessarily about what’s “winning” matchups, more about things that are not fun for people and cause people to not want to play.
—“High risk, medium reward” would accurately describe thieves in tourneys. I think it’s less accurate of thieves in Tier 3 to Tier 8 WvW. Thus, my reasoning that culling is the problem, not thieves themselves.

Lebannen.8325:

Simple fix to thieves.
Damage received automatically breaks stealth.

This would not work at all. This isn’t a like most other games were stealth lasts indefinitely.

It’s enough that hitting a thief in stealth is actively killing them – and it’s extremely easy to do in this game because of the massive amounts of aoe. Additionally automatically stripping their only form of defense is too much. Every other class spends resources and gets X amount of reliable protection in whatever form outside of boon stripping in some cases – and those cases are balanced around boon stripping. Random aoe making it impossible to stealth, especially in large scale combat, leaves the thief class fragile and vulnerable with no upside to offset it. And no, a 4 minute CD “run away” ability doesn’t fix it.

NevirSayDie.6235:

—The last part is what I meant about infinite kiting: in a tourney, a thief can’t exactly hide/kite around the map for 2-3 minutes while they wait for an opportunity to pick someone off.

Actually, they can – it’s just not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning.

They same is true in WvW. Running around looking for someone to gank every once in a while is not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning compared to playing objectives.

Lebannen.8325:

I see we can go back and forth for years about knowledge, you have your personal knowledge and I had official non-published data.

Plow was good friends with Mackey, (Will say that I couldnt remember the name, but I remember the conversation about skalds)

It wasnt sbaldes that could oneshot and stay stealthed. It was everyone for years, I think it was 1.78 or 1.79 that finally fixed that.

Viper was the most reliable counter to infiltrators but if it was down, they were done.

Scouts dont count, Rangers here do not even come close the overpoweredness of scouts in DAoC.

Smite Clerics and Valkyries, didnt know they could stealth.

This portion is about Thieves vs DAoC’s terrible imbalance of stealth dynamics and classes.

Simple fix to thieves.
Damage received automatically breaks stealth.
Reduce effectiveness of condition removal in stealth (Make it a grandmaster)
Give them 1 elite escape (remove another) that gives them a 50% speed boost, drops them from combat, unbreakable stealth, removes all initiative, 240 second reuse timer and unable to attack for 12-15 seconds.

Then leave their damage as is, thieves are now fixed.

A. All Stealthers could one shot someone and remain stealth this is true, However It was more likely on a SB simply because the 2 handed PA’s hit harder. After they changed it most of the SB’s moved over to Left Axe until that was nerfed and SB’s were subpar after that for quite some time.

B. Viper was a counter to Infil’s yes, But more so Purge was…Purge back in the day was 15 minute cooldown, and like I said, if you got caught without purge up, an Infil would probably kill ya….However if Purge was up they weren’t that hard to take down..

C. I agree with you a Ranger is no where near a Scout at the beginning of the game.

D. I was giving information on relation to classes and knowledge.

If you want to talk about just Stealther’s in DAOC and balance, you have to account for time and the period of the game, Because at different points of the game, The stealthers all measured differently in relation to their power against one another.

Scouts for example were powerful very early game, and eventually became somewhat subpar until they became powerful enough to Warrant another Block Nerf.

Shadowblades, Again powerful early game, Became incredibly overpowered with Left Axe, and eventually subpar for a while before being decent again.

Hunter’s, Which would be the closest thing to a Ranger in this game also had ups and downs and eventually their Beast line became fairly decent, and two handed sword hunters were actually good (Remember how their Bow line was actually the worst of the archers for most of the games life)

Nightshades, Like most of the stealthers were powerful then crappy, then powerful again (recently in the game they became incredibly powerful after their nuke went from being based of Acuity to Dex)

Rangers in that came were powerful for a long time because of access to PD/Duel Wield until DW’s bonus of cutting Evade/Block in half was nerfed. Then they were subpar after that..

Minstrel’s While not super stealthers have always been powerful to some degree.. and amazing in stealth groups.

All these Classes have been Top Dog at one point in the stealther game…..However in relation to other classes in the game they’ve never been “top dog” period.

Multiple classes in DAOC absolutely kittenon Stealthers at all period’s of the games.

Reavers/Valks/Warlocks/BD’s/ValeWalkers/Vampiir’s (esp Vampiir’s)/and to some extent Necro’s (though rare)

All these classes no matter who was top dog in the stealther world would just absolutely wreck most of them fairly easy.

My Valkyrie for example could take on groups of Stealthers without breaking a sweat.

teg.1340:

Dual.8953:

That’s because we get a whole bunch of laymen making suggestions that would ruin thieves. Things that would be equivalent to, make it so Eles can’t use Boons, or make it so Mesmers can’t use clones or phantasms. Other classes ardently defend themselves too from similar claims against them. Thieves and Mesmers probably take the most heat because they’re based around deception and trickery.

Ele boon stacking has been nerfed significantly with the latest patch in addition to RTL nerf. Fury, Swiftness and Vigor uptime has been extremely cut back. Thats results in less mobility, less survivability and less damage. Coincident nothing has been changed about thief and stealth in WvW.

Nerfed isn’t removed. Eles still have more ways to sustain themselves in plain sight the most classes.

I think you and I should get together and advise Matt Frior with TESO and remind him that people know his format and we have seen his 3 realm war in action

Calling it now, It will be DAoC part 2 reskinned. Nords will be midgard

Daeqar.8965:

Lebannen.8325:

Simple fix to thieves.
Damage received automatically breaks stealth.

This would not work at all. This isn’t a like most other games were stealth lasts indefinitely.

It’s enough that hitting a thief in stealth is actively killing them – and it’s extremely easy to do in this game because of the massive amounts of aoe. Additionally automatically stripping their only form of defense is too much. Every other class spends resources and gets X amount of reliable protection in whatever form outside of boon stripping in some cases – and those cases are balanced around boon stripping. Random aoe making it impossible to stealth, especially in large scale combat, leaves the thief class fragile and vulnerable with no upside to offset it. And no, a 4 minute CD “run away” ability doesn’t fix it.

All it does is make the thief choose their targets more carefully. If you think it is ok to run in the middle of a zerg, kill one person and vanish at 80% life you are sorely mistaken. However, there are no developers willing to fix a stealth class in any MMO due to the large portion of players actually fanatical about it.

I will say this, Star Wars has a well balanced stealther class. Sith Assassin/Jedi shadow no matter how you spec them Tank/DPS have everything I mentioned. Its fantastic to play a stealther with the thrill of knowing if you screw up, you die.

Instead of insta-gibbing people for 5k 3 or 4 times before they can react. You know the class is broken and you dont want the fix that will make them balanced. Its ok, just admit it. I play an engineer.

Lebannen.8325:

I think you and I should get together and advise Matt Frior with TESO and remind him that people know his format and we have seen his 3 realm war in action

Calling it now, It will be DAoC part 2 reskinned. Nords will be midgard

No way i’m playing Nords in ESO, I loved Midgard, but Nords will be the most played side.

I doubt if i will be able to bring myself to play the Almari Dominion either..I hate those guys.

ESO and Camelot Unleashed should be both interesting to watch…I’m looking forward to both though.

Daeqar.8965:

NevirSayDie.6235:

—The last part is what I meant about infinite kiting: in a tourney, a thief can’t exactly hide/kite around the map for 2-3 minutes while they wait for an opportunity to pick someone off.

Actually, they can – it’s just not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning.

They same is true in WvW. Running around looking for someone to gank every once in a while is not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning compared to playing objectives.

What I meant was that thieves don’t hide/gank in tournament matches. I’m not saying it’s great strategy in WvW, just that it happens.

As I mentioned, I think the issue has to do with what is fun or not fun, not necessarily something that’s “OP” in the sense of winning/losing the weekly matchup. Fighting thieves in tournaments is very enjoyable, whether it’s 1v1 or in a group. It’s just not exciting or even interesting in WvW.

Lebannen.8325:

Its ok, just admit it. I play an engineer.

Then you know how badly engineer’s stealth toolbelt s skill needs a nerf. Being able to stealth 50% of the time (its random) on a 60 second cooldown is ridic. With the insane DPS an engineer can pump out on practically every spec, this needs to be looked at. Devs get on this please.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Daeqar.8965:

NevirSayDie.6235:

—The last part is what I meant about infinite kiting: in a tourney, a thief can’t exactly hide/kite around the map for 2-3 minutes while they wait for an opportunity to pick someone off.

Actually, they can – it’s just not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning.

They same is true in WvW. Running around looking for someone to gank every once in a while is not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning compared to playing objectives.

What I meant was that thieves don’t hide/gank in tournament matches. I’m not saying it’s great strategy in WvW, just that it happens.

As I mentioned, I think the issue has to do with what is fun or not fun, not necessarily something that’s “OP” in the sense of winning/losing the weekly matchup. Fighting thieves in tournaments is very enjoyable, whether it’s 1v1 or in a group. It’s just not exciting or even interesting in WvW.

Well, for me it’s fun stomping a gank thief or forcing them to run away. Probably the most fun compared to other classes. Although, I can understand that most people find it frustrating. Personally, I dislike CC heavy classes, but I’m not going to campaign for nerfs. Diversity helps keep the game interesting.

Arenanet is in for a challenge trying to steer the direction of WvW… They are trying to spread people out more, but also trying to make people play together as a team. Seems they want more medium size groups, but it’s hard to encourage that while simultaneously discouraging mega-zergs and lonewolf gankers.

amiable.4823:

Lebannen.8325:

Its ok, just admit it. I play an engineer.

Then you know how badly engineer’s stealth toolbelt s skill needs a nerf. Being able to stealth 50% of the time (its random) on a 60 second cooldown is ridic. With the insane DPS an engineer can pump out on practically every spec, this needs to be looked at. Devs get on this please.

LOL at you trying to say an engineer DPS is on par with other classes. It only shows you how much you are trying to protect the thief class.

I dont care if they remove stealth, in fact I encourage it.

Lebannen.8325:

LOL at you trying to say an engineer DPS is on par with other classes. It only shows you how much you are trying to protect the thief class.

I dont care if they remove stealth, in fact I encourage it.

They desperately need a sarcasm emote on these forums. ;-)

Lebannen.8325:

Daeqar.8965:

Lebannen.8325:

Simple fix to thieves.
Damage received automatically breaks stealth.

This would not work at all. This isn’t a like most other games were stealth lasts indefinitely.

It’s enough that hitting a thief in stealth is actively killing them – and it’s extremely easy to do in this game because of the massive amounts of aoe. Additionally automatically stripping their only form of defense is too much. Every other class spends resources and gets X amount of reliable protection in whatever form outside of boon stripping in some cases – and those cases are balanced around boon stripping. Random aoe making it impossible to stealth, especially in large scale combat, leaves the thief class fragile and vulnerable with no upside to offset it. And no, a 4 minute CD “run away” ability doesn’t fix it.

All it does is make the thief choose their targets more carefully. If you think it is ok to run in the middle of a zerg, kill one person and vanish at 80% life you are sorely mistaken. However, there are no developers willing to fix a stealth class in any MMO due to the large portion of players actually fanatical about it.

I will say this, Star Wars has a well balanced stealther class. Sith Assassin/Jedi shadow no matter how you spec them Tank/DPS have everything I mentioned. Its fantastic to play a stealther with the thrill of knowing if you screw up, you die.

Instead of insta-gibbing people for 5k 3 or 4 times before they can react. You know the class is broken and you dont want the fix that will make them balanced. Its ok, just admit it. I play an engineer.

I’m not talking about running into the middle of a zerg alone… (In which case is truely suicide for a thief to actually try to down AND stomp someone unless the players in that zerg are both terrible and oblivious – people exaggerate thieves’ ability to do this greatly.) I’m talking a thief being part of a group fighting another group. 10v10 or bigger. Thieves protect themselves with stealth here if they start to take any focused damage – and if damage automatically broke stealth, they have no protection other than just take damage and die because there is continual incidental aoe damage taken in large scale fights like this, especially when you try to do your job and stay with your group.

The glass cannon thief builds that everyone ends up complaining about with the big burst combos, for me, are the easiest to kill because they have tiny health pools and low toughness. I play a balanced build – their initial burst combo is incapable of ever killing me (because I have vitality and toughness) and then they die easily themselves either because I methodically recover and kill them or my friends turn around and insta-gib them.

Whole lotta bad DAoC information here.

Either way thieves are fine, and can be melted by any other class at any time.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Dagger dagger ele is the spammer class #1. You just spam skills till no tomorrow… If you screw up, switch to water, and again spam, spam spam those heals and remember to jump while doing it!
Thief at least needs precision since you are quite exposed if you miss your cloack and dagger.
Sorta like the abilities noob tube and martyr in a certain famous arcade shooter: with the noob tube you at least have to aim.

Bs. I’ve fought countless eles 1v1 on my bunker ranger in spvp and it’s easy to tell the difference between a spammer ele and a good one. Ofc the ele is definitely a strong class (even op but that’s debatable) so ye even a mediocre player can do something playing one, but an ele can be much better than that. Against a mediocre ele is easy to make him waste his cds and then burst him down (he can run away ofc). The same thing is true for thieves. Still a thief is easier to play at an average level.

sostronk.8167:

jportell.2197:

sostronk.8167:

Jasra.3627:

i have only problem with P/D thief, they have mostly high survivability an insane stacking of bleed + still they have c&d from dagger, this is "meta"in wvw atm i think, i see more and more thiefs with this
anet forcing ppl to play thieves, when they want small scale pvp in wvw

It might be meta. But I do notice most seem to be running P/P – D/D. I run PP-DD because I find it has a better contribution overall. As a full GC you can do 12-13k damge burst off the PP and you can do it twice in a row before CD (out of initiative). Just got to be careful as reflect skills from Guardian and a few other things and you will basically instantly kill yourself as you only have 10k health. The bleed stacks are only good if they don’t have condition removal or worse condition transfer.

But there is just one thing I don’t like about this thread. Its all QQ about thiefs. But the most OP thing in the game right now is stealth and it is Veil. The amount of times Ive seen this wipe 50 player zergs just because it was landed at the right time. This contributes more to a server than any thief could ever dream to. There are alot of players who know how to deal with thiefs and its brutally obvious who they are when I am facing them. But alot of people dont. And rather than actually work out there mechanics by playing them for a period of time they just want to complain about them without knowing how they really work.

You kiddin me right? If a Mesmer does run veil the duration is not long enough for 50 people to run through and if that be the case by the time all 50 people get through it the ones that popped in it first are already coming out… Then lets talk about the kittenedly long 90 second cooldown on a freaking utility slot (genius!) and the fact that the Mesmer is then losing out on another useful utility slot… Mesmer stealth is not spammable like a thieves… By the time a Mesmer spams all their stealth skills they are SOL and have no more access to it if a Mesmer is running veil then you have roughly 90 seconds to deal with them after… And in all honesty if they were to make veil to have a X person limit… I highly doubt anyone would care… The only people trying to deflect this conversation about the highest stealth class in the game away from it are said players that play this class… And the only people that would get any ADDED BONUS from going through a veil would be thieves especially in damage…

Try telling this to T1 servers. By time organized zergs come out of veil the enemy zerg is pretty much wiped. When its not that, its portal bombing. Both Mesmer abilties. Just because your players don’t know how to use veil doesn’t mean anything.

So because zergs can organize and coordinate its need for a nerf? Portal bombing can also be seen coming a mile away…. And if an enemy zerg can wipe you in a whopping 4 seconds then I’m sorry that’s just terrible… Me (and others) run right into the middle of an enemy zerg and we last for a good 30 seconds if we are alone and they out number us… I find it a very large exaggeration to say that 50ppl can wipe another 50ppl in 4 seconds….

Spaming skills to me means facerolling the keyboard. That doesnt make a good d/d ele. Sure you use skills all the time, but look at this video. He has a pretty good timing at using his powerful skills at the right time. This is crucial to playing d/d ele. Each attunement has a few low cooldown skills which are indeed spamable. But the rest is on huge cooldowns. You definitely dont want to waste those skills in the wrong situations.

Using skills all the time is spamming, and being able to do so is what makes this build so op.

BTW: Non of the opponents shown in this video ever dodged a single churning earth. Its pretty obvious they doesnt really have a clue about eles.

They did not have energy left because they had to evade 100 spams before he used churning.

s. I’ve fought countless eles 1v1 on my bunker ranger in spvp and it’s easy to tell the difference between a spammer ele and a good one.

Spvp rules are differend and you used a bunker ranger D; Try it in wvw and with a build that can’t constantly fix up / soften mistakes you make.

why dont people accept that the issue isnt the theif class itself its culling

Jinks.2057:

Whole lotta bad DAoC information here.

Either way thieves are fine, and can be melted by any other class at any time.

Please elaborate on the so called bad DAoC information?

Demented Lemur.7861:

why dont people accept that the issue isnt the theif class itself its culling

It isnt just the culling, its the fact that thieves have so many stealth options.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Spvp rules are differend and you used a bunker ranger D; Try it in wvw and with a build that can’t constantly fix up / soften mistakes you make.

Is not easy to burst down a bunker ele with a bunker ranger. Also a non-bunker ranger has no chance vs a bunker ele. Ofc in wvw is a diff story, but you know wvw is not balanced anyway, those amazing devs consider wvw pretty much pve, that’s why some of the few nerfs they included in the last “huge” (lol) patch were for pvp only. That said a bunker ranger is even stronger in small scale wvw (i have much more crit chance for ex). But we are going ot.

Lebannen.8325:

I will say this, Star Wars has a well balanced stealther class. Sith Assassin/Jedi shadow no matter how you spec them Tank/DPS have everything I mentioned. Its fantastic to play a stealther with the thrill of knowing if you screw up, you die.

What? I played Shadow in Star Wars and Bioware nerfed Shadow into the ground because people cared to much about 1v1’s and 1v3’s in hutball. So they nerfed the healing from rock throw etc. They also didn’t allow any type of hybrid specs and kept nerfing those into the ground for all classes, because they wanted you to pretty much go all the way to the top of the tree’s. Also Sniper was the best assassin type in that game for picking people off not a shadow or assassin.

The sniper class is a better comparison to a thief in guild wars 2 than a shadow or assassin. The sniper was better at single target damage than a shadow. The traits and damage modifier i.e. extra damage if target is x health are similar also.

Daeqar.8965:

NevirSayDie.6235:

Daeqar.8965:

NevirSayDie.6235:

—The last part is what I meant about infinite kiting: in a tourney, a thief can’t exactly hide/kite around the map for 2-3 minutes while they wait for an opportunity to pick someone off.

Actually, they can – it’s just not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning.

They same is true in WvW. Running around looking for someone to gank every once in a while is not productive and hurts their team’s chances of winning compared to playing objectives.

What I meant was that thieves don’t hide/gank in tournament matches. I’m not saying it’s great strategy in WvW, just that it happens.

As I mentioned, I think the issue has to do with what is fun or not fun, not necessarily something that’s “OP” in the sense of winning/losing the weekly matchup. Fighting thieves in tournaments is very enjoyable, whether it’s 1v1 or in a group. It’s just not exciting or even interesting in WvW.

Well, for me it’s fun stomping a gank thief or forcing them to run away. Probably the most fun compared to other classes. Although, I can understand that most people find it frustrating. Personally, I dislike CC heavy classes, but I’m not going to campaign for nerfs. Diversity helps keep the game interesting.

Arenanet is in for a challenge trying to steer the direction of WvW… They are trying to spread people out more, but also trying to make people play together as a team. Seems they want more medium size groups, but it’s hard to encourage that while simultaneously discouraging mega-zergs and lonewolf gankers.

Good points. All I’ve been trying to say is that culling is the real culprit, and when that’s dealt with (hopefully) thief fights will be a lot more fun. Thieves will even be looked at for buffs to some of their underused options, because the possibility of creating something broken in combination with culling will be out of the picture.

oZii.2864:

Lebannen.8325:

I will say this, Star Wars has a well balanced stealther class. Sith Assassin/Jedi shadow no matter how you spec them Tank/DPS have everything I mentioned. Its fantastic to play a stealther with the thrill of knowing if you screw up, you die.

What? I played Shadow in Star Wars and Bioware nerfed Shadow into the ground because people cared to much about 1v1’s and 1v3’s in hutball. So they nerfed the healing from rock throw etc. They also didn’t allow any type of hybrid specs and kept nerfing those into the ground for all classes, because they wanted you to pretty much go all the way to the top of the tree’s. Also Sniper was the best assassin type in that game for picking people off not a shadow or assassin.

The sniper class is a better comparison to a thief in guild wars 2 than a shadow or assassin. The sniper was better at single target damage than a shadow. The traits and damage modifier i.e. extra damage if target is x health are similar also.

Shadow isn’t nerfed into the ground, Shadow is considered one of the best classes in SWTOR right now…

They did nerf hybrid though, because Hybrid was incredibly overpowered.

As for closest thing to Thief in Guild Wars 2? that’s Operative.

Sniper is nothing like a Thief, It plays more like a Rifle Warrior (Marksman) or a Necro maybe in terms of Lethality. Another comparison to a Thief would possibly be a Marauder for its in combat stealth and damage.

Lethality Snipers though in the expansion become a bit like a Shortbow using Thief though..so that should be interesting.