Guild Wars 2

teg.1340:

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

Not sure if your talking to me. My brother doesn’t play this game anymore.

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.

My belief is that Anet do not hold the same balance opinions on thiefs that alot of players in this thread do.

Demented Lemur.7861:

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

They can’t handle the truth?

sostronk.8167:

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.

My belief is that Anet do not hold the same balance opinions on thiefs that alot of players in this thread do.

They might want to start. This game doesn’t have a subscription base so if they lose population they cant go to the free to play system.

Or not, this plenty of other games to jump ship coming up.

The problem is whether its an actual balance issue, or a technical problem. Again thieves aren’t dominating all the Spvp tournaments, the problem is just the interaction between stealth/culling in WvW.

If the supposed removal of culling doesn’t balance the thief class in WvW then it is time to rage about it, until then remain calm and lets see if it solves the problem.

sostronk.8167:

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.

My belief is that Anet do not hold the same balance opinions on thiefs that alot of players in this thread do.

From my POV it’s because they based balance off of higher levels of skill gameplay. In the lower levels of skill… being killed quickly by an opponent who they can’t easily see/track is frustrating and seemingly impossible to counter.

However, in higher levels people are totally aware of what’s going on even when they can’t see the thief and are able to react to the situation which makes the solo thief far less “OMG OP needs a nerf!”

Dralor.3701:

The problem is whether its an actual balance issue, or a technical problem. Again thieves aren’t dominating all the Spvp tournaments, the problem is just the interaction between stealth/culling in WvW.

If the supposed removal of culling doesn’t balance the thief class in WvW then it is time to rage about it, until then remain calm and lets see if it solves the problem.

They nerfed the Thief’s damage in SPvP

No one likes fighting something they can’t see, it’s just not fun. Fix this, problem solved.

Search for GW2 Perma Stealth on youtube or google and you will see the problem.

First of all, Spvp has nothing to do with WvW. This game revolves around WvW, if that disappears this game folds.

From a WvW perspective as having a thief and playing against them. They need a nerf, I quit playing mine after I can take on 2 and 3 people killing at least one then run away. The class is broken, it needs to be fixed. I deleted it after spending about 35g to level and gear one up. I couldnt stand to have a class that is that out of balance.

It doesn’t matter how much of an amazing player I am – short of being a mind reader and following the +50% movespeed, infiltrator-arrow-spamming, dodge-roll-caltrop-deploying thief around hitting him, how are you supposed to kill one?

By using stuns/knockdowns/snares?

1) Glass cannon – this is unlikely as I’m probably already dead or at <50% health. Even the tankier thief builds have decent burst from stealth.
2) Bunker – I stun the thief and burst down a third of his health. He can just disappear and choose not to fight me.
3) Stun him and get your zerg to focus him down in .5 seconds. You just won a 20v1 that nobody can survive anyway. Congratulations (?)

In a massive zerg if we all decided to dogpile onto one poor bunker guardian, she would explode in about a second as well (minus the invuln from elite skill, if she can press it quickly enough). Yet of course this is the ‘proper’ way to counter a thief. Definitely balanced. Of COURSE thieves should be able to run around inside the enemy’s zerg without being killed.

See the problem is that thieves can fight who they want, all the time. Big zerg coming? No problem just shadow refuge and run away (BEFORE they reach you, obviously. If you are stupid enough to wait for them to be on top of you you deserve to run back from spawn).

Exceptionally strong dueling class? (see D/D elementalist, shatter mesmer, another thief.etc) Run away again! Hit your blinding powder and get out of there. Wow so they bursted you down super fast before you could press a button? Why not take some of that good ole thief advice and BUILD MORE TANKY? And before you complain that to instantly burst someone down you can’t devote too many stat points to survivability (which is true), this is a stupid argument because you can now burst them down too – why shouldn’t they be able to do the same in return?

Random low-level character/supporty person running around? I’ll just initiate on to you from somewhere and not stop until you die. I mean after all thieves are SUPPOSED to be 1v1 masters so they shouldn’t be able to escape, right?

Why not massively reduce their mobility while in stealth so it isn’t a free “Restart-this-fight” button? Staying in stealth for >2 seconds cripples you until you leave/get revealed or something along those lines. Mind you this is probably a little too much of a nerf.

And stop with the nonsense about this being what a thief should be able to do. The closest comparison to a thief is the D/D ele in the sense that they can always fight on their own terms, and Anet nerfed RTL.

As a thief player I can say the topic is not that far from truth. I play P/D atm – but tried D/D for a while in wvw.
There are few classes you should avoid because they counter you, but most of the other professions are easy to kill because of stealth in combination with lag/culling/performance in wvw.

The problem with fixing this issue is that thieves are squishy without stealth and the whole profession is balanced around the stealthing abilities so you can’t just take away stealth or change it without destroying the whole profession (the stealth nerf in pve is really bad and I paid with going down in boss fights a lot today)

I think it would be fair to cut down the stealth ability a bit but give something new to thieves which does not make them easy prey.

gebrechen.5643:

As a thief player I can say the topic is not that far from truth. I play P/D atm – but tried D/D for a while in wvw.
There are few classes you should avoid because they counter you, but most of the other professions are easy to kill because of stealth in combination with lag/culling/performance in wvw.

The problem with fixing this issue is that thieves are squishy without stealth and the whole profession is balanced around the stealthing abilities so you can’t just take away stealth or change it without destroying the whole profession (the stealth nerf in pve is really bad and I paid with going down in boss fights a lot today)

I think it would be fair to cut down the stealth ability a bit but give something new to thieves which does not make them easy prey.

That’s what alot of people want, most don’t just want thieves nerfed into uselessness. They just want viable counterplay that isn’t "better be X/Y class/spec. Unfortunately alot of thieves out there don’t want to have to earn their kills.

Lebannen.8325:

First of all, Spvp has nothing to do with WvW. This game revolves around WvW, if that disappears this game folds.

From a WvW perspective as having a thief and playing against them. They need a nerf, I quit playing mine after I can take on 2 and 3 people killing at least one then run away. The class is broken, it needs to be fixed. I deleted it after spending about 35g to level and gear one up. I couldnt stand to have a class that is that out of balance.

Only killing 1 vs 2-3? Then get away?

Any class can do that.

The current thief damage + stelth + culling is seriously one mix of one of the most overpowered classes of gaming. Only few games have had this OP class. (talking in wvw context) Stealth should be nerfed and something done to thief, but not too much because their basically one trick wonders.

Forcing players to defend on prediction is the first sign of an OP class in most PvP games.
It has nothing to do with “higher level of skill” that can be countered by thief being good as well.

Balance is made around SPVP maybe where Killing is less important that surviving in a spot.

If you want to see how balanced stealth is just get back the ability for stealth to cap points…

Do you remember thieves being able to keep points capped for30 mins?

So what are we talking about?
Stealth is still OP in term of FIGHTING SKILL but simply they toggled the chance to matter directly on points….just hiding the problem.

And i bet its a reason they just don t want deathmatches and kill stats.

Jinks.2057:

Lebannen.8325:

First of all, Spvp has nothing to do with WvW. This game revolves around WvW, if that disappears this game folds.

From a WvW perspective as having a thief and playing against them. They need a nerf, I quit playing mine after I can take on 2 and 3 people killing at least one then run away. The class is broken, it needs to be fixed. I deleted it after spending about 35g to level and gear one up. I couldnt stand to have a class that is that out of balance.

Only killing 1 vs 2-3? Then get away?

Any class can do that.

But can they do it at 90% health? no they cant. Keep defending it, either three things will happen.

1) Anet will cave into pressure -Least likely
2) People will finally rage enough to quit the game over game imbalance. 2nd place
3) People will ignore the threads and continue to be abused by game mechanics until you have a dire overpopulation of thieves. Most likely to occur

Lebannen.8325:

Jinks.2057:

Lebannen.8325:

First of all, Spvp has nothing to do with WvW. This game revolves around WvW, if that disappears this game folds.

From a WvW perspective as having a thief and playing against them. They need a nerf, I quit playing mine after I can take on 2 and 3 people killing at least one then run away. The class is broken, it needs to be fixed. I deleted it after spending about 35g to level and gear one up. I couldnt stand to have a class that is that out of balance.

Only killing 1 vs 2-3? Then get away?

Any class can do that.

But can they do it at 90% health? no they cant. Keep defending it, either three things will happen.

1) Anet will cave into pressure -Least likely
2) People will finally rage enough to quit the game over game imbalance. 2nd place
3) People will ignore the threads and continue to be abused by game mechanics until you have a dire overpopulation of thieves. Most likely to occur

Believe it or not, WvW is a mere Fraction of the total players that play the game. If WvW actually mattered to the majority of the players, you wouldn’t have population imbalances between servers that define their tiers. There is a reason why plenty of PvE and sPvP content has been released, but WvW is just starting to get major updates. They will fix culling, but they aren’t rushed to do so and the class balances are based on sPvP, not WvW where culling issues come into play.

This is World of Roguecraft all over again, even repeating the same arguments.

If Anet hasn’t done anything at this point I would hazard some guesses:
1. They plan on revamping the thief. I don’t think this will happen.
2. Spvp is all that matters (lol) and thieves aren’t so bad there. I mean, who would guess that the most annoying classes in a “sit in a circle” gamemode would be the ones that can… best sit in a circle? Thieves would be broken here as well if their survival lines of mass stealth worked in circles.
3. They have no idea what to do.

We can all just roll thieves until Anet gets the picture.

Until the culling patch this topic should just have a giant pin in it. Once culling is addressed, there are probably some lingering thief issues that need to be dealt with but IMO thieves probably won’t even make the top five list of real issues that significantly effect most players in WvW. I seriously doubt this issue ranks above nuisance to most WvW players. I run across an annoying thief or a really dangerous one occasionally but there are dozens of other items I would like fixed/addressed before this.

Imo devs are afraid. Every time they fix something (by “fix” i mean nerf) tons of whiny kids start qqing. Imagine what would happen if they nerfed stealth in wvw. What the devs don’t realize is those qquers won’t quit the game, they will simply reroll to the new fotm class. Also i believe there’s no “balance testing” at all for wvw. For them wvw is not balanced in the first place. It’s always the same stupid excuse “the game is balanced for 5v5”. No it’s not. It’s not even balanced for the stupid “capture the flag” spvp mode. They are not introducing new game modes in spvp and do you know why? Cos a different game mode will show how imbalanced this game is. They promised they were going to revamp some weapons and nerf some builds. They did pretty much nothing. Well, they fixed the guardian staff, ye that was a good change. It tooks them a whole month to make line of warding castable on the move. At this rate in 2016 every weapon in game will be viable. Maybe in 2017 or 2018 steath in wvw will be fixed.

Xsorus.2507:

Dralor.3701:

The problem is whether its an actual balance issue, or a technical problem. Again thieves aren’t dominating all the Spvp tournaments, the problem is just the interaction between stealth/culling in WvW.

If the supposed removal of culling doesn’t balance the thief class in WvW then it is time to rage about it, until then remain calm and lets see if it solves the problem.

They nerfed the Thief’s damage in SPvP

And in SPvP crit damage is much lower than it is in WvW making it much harder for a thief to kill you instantly with the steal c&d and stealth combo.

And as mentioned spvp the nature of spvp where you hold points means almost all point guards are full bunker because all they need to do is not die and stay on a point. It also involves only a couple of people making it less likely that a thief can surprise you in the middle of a fight because there are only so many roamers you can have on a team.

Which is why it is silly to compare spvp to wvw thieves. They are different styles of games, with different damage calculations and very different goals. And in WvW thieves are OP and need to be toned down.

Edit: Also personal opinion, stealth is fine. Mesmers can stealth and it is an annoyance but manageable. Thieves getting multiple stealth because the initiative system and the huge damage spikes from stealth is an issue. Give thieves cool downs on abilities like every other class and suddenly they are a lot more balanced.

Straegen.2938:

Until the culling patch this topic should just have a giant pin in it. Once culling is addressed, there are probably some lingering thief issues that need to be dealt with but IMO thieves probably won’t even make the top five list of real issues that significantly effect most players in WvW. I seriously doubt this issue ranks above nuisance to most WvW players. I run across an annoying thief or a really dangerous one occasionally but there are dozens of other items I would like fixed/addressed before this.

I don’t think the issue is quite as lighthearted. Even for someone who can accurately predict the location of stealthers, balanced thief builds still require specific counters—counter builds that are bad for zerg fights or sieges. In lower tier servers we cannot afford to send people after 1 or 2 thieves that held off 5-10 of our defenders.

If you look at thief videos where the thieves fight in the middle of at least 4 hostiles, none of them run pure glass cannon. They all have at least some vit from gears, and most have 30 in shadow arts (That’s Toughness and Healing). Thieves have a lot of advantage working for them as is as they can burst effectively with just 30 points into offensive attribute. Every other class require 40+. Perma-stealth as it is is already the most effective bunkering mechanic in the game, add freedom to burst with no cooldown and no visible tells and the issue is quite apparent.

Culling is part of the problem. However, I’m not convinced that it is the only problem. Culling only really help low-skill glass cannon thieves, but they aren’t even exploring the full potential of thieves to begin with. Glass cannon thieves will die to AoEs, visible or not. Balanced thieves can take a hit or two if they’re shown for 3 seconds (assuming the most ideal fix for culling happens, which we all know is impossible) then heal up in stealth to burst again. If you don’t stun lock them over and over, you just won’t kill a well-played stealther.

Until Anet can trivialize zerg fights or thieves finally achieve 60% population of WvW, single target stun lock builds will never be popular in WvW, and the rest of us can beg till our tongues fall off and no new players will join the mist fight just on this alone.

===

And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. Do realize that if WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think not that many of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too (as if the risen priests can complain about imba. *rolleyes).

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Heinel.6548:

===

And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. If you really think WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think few of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too.

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Thought stealth capping in spvp went out in beta.
It was removed from www a lot later, but it was removed.

Roysten.3456:

Heinel.6548:

===

And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. If you really think WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think few of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too.

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Thought stealth capping in spvp went out in beta.
It was removed from www a lot later, but it was removed.

By comparable I didn’t mean exactly the same solution. Just like the PvE nerf isn’t exactly the same as the sPvP nerf.

If stealth is to be brought in-line with the other game modes in WvW. All objectives will have innate stealth revealers in their vicinity (100% up-time with a first tier personnel upgrade, same range as guild buffs), all guards, sentries, other keep NPCs, caravans, siege weapons, doors cannot be used to enter stealth. Guards, Sentries and keep NPCs will put stealthers at higher aggro priorities.

Heinel.6548:

I don’t think the issue is quite as lighthearted. Even for someone who can accurately predict the location of stealthers, balanced thief builds still require specific counters—counter builds that are bad for zerg fights or sieges. In lower tier servers we cannot afford to send people after 1 or 2 thieves that held off 5-10 of our defenders.

If you look at thief videos where the thieves fight in the middle of at least 4 hostiles, none of them run pure glass cannon. They all have at least some vit from gears, and most have 30 in shadow arts (That’s Toughness and Healing). Thieves have a lot of advantage working for them as is as they can burst effectively with just 30 points into offensive attribute. Every other class require 40+. Perma-stealth as it is is already the most effective bunkering mechanic in the game, add freedom to burst with no cooldown and no visible tells and the issue is quite apparent.

Culling is part of the problem. However, I’m not convinced that it is the only problem. Culling only really help low-skill glass cannon thieves, but they aren’t even exploring the full potential of thieves to begin with. Glass cannon thieves will die to AoEs, visible or not. Balanced thieves can take a hit or two if they’re shown for 3 seconds (assuming the most ideal fix for culling happens, which we all know is impossible) then heal up in stealth to burst again. If you don’t stun lock them over and over, you just won’t kill a well-played stealther.

Until Anet can trivialize zerg fights or thieves finally achieve 60% population of WvW, single target stun lock builds will never be popular in WvW, and the rest of us can beg till our tongues fall off and no new players will join the mist fight just on this alone.

===

And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. Do realize that if WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think not that many of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too (as if the risen priests can complain about imba. *rolleyes).

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

If you look at powerhouse WvW guilds, the coordinated teamwork type folks that push their servers to success against equal or greater opposing numbers, they are not composed of very many lonewolf or even balanced thief specs and definitely are not recruiting them. They very much build around an entirely different set of classes, and for good reason.

Secondly, you mention that thief counter builds are bad for zerg fights or sieges, and that’s not entirely true. Frequently, there is a lot of overlap in thief counter builds and large scale teamwork builds.

Three core things in many thief counter builds: PBAoE, high survivability (toughness + vitality), and CC. Those three things are also core tenets in teamwork builds that the above mentioned powerhouse guilds demand from their players.

The stealth mesmer has access to is what thief should have. Short bursts used to escape danger. Not easily abused combo fields.

Nurf me baby one more time! No seriously, whats up with you ppl ? Every possible aspect of OP and not OP was allready said by both sides. Stop repeating same things over and over. Its time to STFU!

SteepledHat.1345:

The stealth mesmer has access to is what thief should have. Short bursts used to escape danger. Not easily abused combo fields.

There’s only one weapon set that uses combo fields for its stealth (D/P) and it’s not even popularly used. What most people end up complaining about use Cloak & Dagger for their stealth.

Unless you’re thinking of Shadow Refuge, which is a 1m CD and basically the type of stealth you just said they should have.

Daeqar.8965:

If you look at powerhouse WvW guilds, the coordinated teamwork type folks that push their servers to success against equal or greater opposing numbers, they are not composed of very many lonewolf or even balanced thief specs and definitely are not recruiting them. They very much build around an entirely different set of classes, and for good reason.

Secondly, you mention that thief counter builds are bad for zerg fights or sieges, and that’s not entirely true. Frequently, there is a lot of overlap in thief counter builds and large scale teamwork builds.

Three core things in many thief counter builds: PBAoE, high survivability (toughness + vitality), and CC. Those three things are also core tenets in teamwork builds that the above mentioned powerhouse guilds demand from their players.

1.) That’s why I said gank thieves don’t fit into the current WvW meta. That makes the thief problem in lower tiers a lot worse. We can counter thieves and lose manpower in the front lines, or give in to the fact that not all of us will make it. It doesn’t make much difference either way we approach this and the response so far is to either pretend it doesn’t happen or quit.

2.) Toughness and vitality isn’t a problem for a patient thief. They have enough burst to go through passive defenses, all they need to do is repeatedly burst you until you’re out of cooldowns and endurance, then HS you out. Remember, these thieves themselves run some healing power, and has at least two sources of healing outside of #6 (regen from stealth, health gain while stealthed, some run even more). Unless you go full bunk with sustain, you only delay the inevitable. With defensive specs, I can only see mesmer bunkers and guardian bunkers having enough sustain to outlast the thief, eles will RTL after the cantrips are gone, the other classes I cannot see how they can compete. Otherwise you run glass cannon yourself, and make everything a gamble.

3.) CC. The problem with this is two fold.

Firstly, not all classes are made the same in terms of CC capabilities. In high level zerg balls, each profession has their own thing that they do, because that’s what they’re best at—glamour mes, stability guards, staff eles, and the melee CC train. The CC job is mostly relegated to the heavy classes because they have the most abundant AoE immobilize/stun/knockdown/pull/wards that can hit masses of people. Other professions don’t get that, and instead of single target versions of those abilities. The thief counter this by not striking when and where a hammer warrior is present.

Secondly, the AoE CC abilities that are favored in zerg tactics does not work in small scale fights because of balance issues. They’re supposed to be chained by multiple people one after another. You have to actually have that many people present to chain it, and a comparable size of foes to use it against, in order for those abilities to be worth it. Otherwise they are skills with very singular use and very high cooldown. For this reason you won’t see a glamour mesmer being able to curtain a gank thief to death. This is by design. Similarly, the more small-form friendly stunning abilities aren’t really worth it in zergs.

===

Basically, at the end of the day, unless you’re warrior, you’ll have to either build for the zerg or build for the gank. Sounds reasonable, if respec’ing is free. But that’s not the case, so it is a hard proposition to make when convincing new people to WvW. It’s bad enough that it’s the least rewarded activity to begin with, but you have to gear for multiple sets, and familiar yourself with so many builds just to not get ganked 5 minutes into the game or feeling completely useless standing in a mass of AoE. I question how many people actually got past that stage.

Heinel.6548:

1.) That’s why I said gank thieves don’t fit into the current WvW meta. That makes the thief problem in lower tiers a lot worse. We can counter thieves and lose manpower in the front lines, or give in to the fact that not all of us will make it. It doesn’t make much difference either way we approach this and the response so far is to either pretend it doesn’t happen or quit.

2.) Toughness and vitality isn’t a problem for a patient thief. They have enough burst to go through passive defenses, all they need to do is repeatedly burst you until you’re out of cooldowns and endurance, then HS you out. Remember, these thieves themselves run some healing power, and has at least two sources of healing outside of #6 (regen from stealth, health gain while stealthed, some run even more). Unless you go full bunk with sustain, you only delay the inevitable. With defensive specs, I can only see mesmer bunkers and guardian bunkers having enough sustain to outlast the thief, eles will RTL after the cantrips are gone, the other classes I cannot see how they can compete. Otherwise you run glass cannon yourself, and make everything a gamble.

3.) CC. The problem with this is two fold.

Firstly, not all classes are made the same in terms of CC capabilities. In high level zerg balls, each profession has their own thing that they do, because that’s what they’re best at—glamour mes, stability guards, staff eles, and the melee CC train. The CC job is mostly relegated to the heavy classes because they have the most abundant AoE immobilize/stun/knockdown/pull/wards that can hit masses of people. Other professions don’t get that, and instead of single target versions of those abilities. The thief counter this by not striking when and where a hammer warrior is present.

Secondly, the AoE CC abilities that are favored in zerg tactics does not work in small scale fights because of balance issues. They’re supposed to be chained by multiple people one after another. You have to actually have that many people present to chain it, and a comparable size of foes to use it against, in order for those abilities to be worth it. Otherwise they are skills with very singular use and very high cooldown. For this reason you won’t see a glamour mesmer being able to curtain a gank thief to death. This is by design. Similarly, the more small-form friendly stunning abilities aren’t really worth it in zergs.

===

Basically, at the end of the day, unless you’re warrior, you’ll have to either build for the zerg or build for the gank. Sounds reasonable, if respec’ing is free. But that’s not the case, so it is a hard proposition to make when convincing new people to WvW. It’s bad enough that it’s the least rewarded activity to begin with, but you have to gear for multiple sets, and familiar yourself with so many builds just to not get ganked 5 minutes into the game or feeling completely useless standing in a mass of AoE. I question how many people actually got past that stage.

You’re basically putting two thief builds together. Generally speaking, they’re setup for immediate kill, but have a paper thin health pool, or they are more balanced like you describe here, but they really don’t do more damage than pretty much any good damage dealing WvW build of any class. Not even a thief can be all things at once. I’m not saying the balanced thief can’t methodically kill people – a skilled one absolutely can – but there is extremely ample opportunity to fight back against those types.

The Power + Toughness I mentioned is just to have enough of a health pool so the glass cannon thieves can’t outright down you with a cooldown filled opening combo. Against the balanced thieves, you still want toughness at the very least to be able to win a long-term fight by cutting down incoming damage.

I’ll agree not all classes have great CC options, but quite a lot do if you explore options. And the CC does work on small scale and against a stealth thief more so than pretty much anyone else. You don’t need to lock a thief down with CC; just disrupt their stealth cycles and create windows of opportunity and force mistakes. Thieves are a timing class, and anything that screws up their timing – even a little bit – makes beating them massively easier.

I very much disagree that Warriors are the only class that can build for teamplay and to survive/win a gank attempt at the same time. Guardians, Necros, and Eles in particular have sought after team-oriented specs that overlap with countering thieves, in addition to Warriors you already mentioned. All the other classes have some overlap as well, but to a lesser extent.

Remove Stealth from the game or WvW

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

jportell.2197:

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Ironically no one seems to complain about mesmer stealth even though they have culling to. Seems like that points to there being something about thieves other than simply culling.

Heinel.6548:

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Many people here have focused on what thieves excel at and have current unfair advantages but completely ignore their weaknesses. The class is built to be one of the best 1v1 classes so players should have difficulty tangling with them 1v1. However what they cannot do is portal groups, run with tons of boons, group condition removal, stun/lock aside from an elite, squishy, move with limited combat mobility and do not make a group inherently stronger like so many other classes.

They do need to make adjustments but again I would rather see buffs to rangers, variety of builds for necros, better server balance, soft caps on power/crit (which would actually “fix” the thief IMO) and dozens of other items that effect all players all the time. Besides as has been pointed out before, stealth is a complete non-issue in sPvP when 20k damage doesn’t come in a stealth package

purpleskies.3274:

jportell.2197:

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Ironically no one seems to complain about mesmer stealth even though they have culling to. Seems like that points to there being something about thieves other than simply culling.

Nope…they just complain about the “culling bomb” that drops on top of them when a zerg materializes around their downed body because a mesmer veiled 20 people as they rolled in on your group or portaled nearby.

Oddly enough, this abuse of culling actually has a big impact on matchup outcomes whereas thieves with individual stealth is essentially inconsequential in the big picture.

Straegen.2938:

Heinel.6548:

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Many people here have focused on what thieves excel at and have current unfair advantages but completely ignore their weaknesses. The class is built to be one of the best 1v1 classes so players should have difficulty tangling with them 1v1. However what they cannot do is portal groups, run with tons of boons, group condition removal, stun/lock aside from an elite, squishy, move with limited combat mobility and do not make a group inherently stronger like so many other classes.

They do need to make adjustments but again I would rather see buffs to rangers, variety of builds for necros, better server balance, soft caps on power/crit (which would actually “fix” the thief IMO) and dozens of other items that effect all players all the time. Besides as has been pointed out before, stealth is a complete non-issue in sPvP when 20k damage doesn’t come in a stealth package

That goes back to my point about thieves not fitting into the current meta. Changes on that front is of course very welcomed, but it will most likely take a very long time to test and implement, not to mention no one has any constructive input as to what can be done to make thieves relevant in a game about siege warfare, without breaking the lower tiers.

Meanwhile Anet has demonstrated with the orb that if they can’t get something working in a timely manner, they’re perfectly okay with simply removing it entirely. I for one would like to see stealth not go the ways of the orb (stealth is still one of the few ways for smaller groups to tackle larger zergs, this includes perma-stealth), but I also cannot agree with the current situation in WvW, where there’s no penalty to free roaming gankers who are being a detriment to struggling WvW communities and getting rewarded for it.

The way I see it,
we have conditions, and we have condition removals,
we got buffs, and we got debuffs,
we got stealth, and we got… Apples?
How about some stealth removing mechanism? For example, if you burn a thief, well, a human torch shouldn’t even be able to stealth. If you lodge your sword between his ribs, how can you not tell he is there? If you’re a mesmer… stealth is a type of illusion (right?) so surely a mesmer needs some counter skill for that, they’re the masters of illusion after all!

i don’t think fixing culling will affect thieves much. they will still hit way too hard and they can still stealth every what? 3s? 4s?

it simply isn’t long enough for you to target and hit them. thieves should have stealth every 8 seconds or longer. none of this vanishing BS which i firmly believe will still be BS if culling gets fixed.

they should be punished with nearly instant death for glass canon like every other class. right now they are heavily rewarded for it as they have no fear with stealth.

super high burst dmg and super stealth is just wrong.

I stood on the bridge today by Durios and watched a thief kitten around with 9 ppl at once from my server. They were just basically chasing him in circles near the oakenheart guys. They could only ever get a couple of hits on him at a time if that and then he was gone again. This went on for 4 or 5 minutes. He managed to get a stealth pin on one, and later on down another, but not get the pin. No one should be able to do that vs. 9 ppl, no matter how bad those people are. The thief had to run off a little further twice when I assume maybe he ran low on cooldowns, but he was back within 10 or 15 seconds. It was pretty stupid looking standing there watching all these people run around, but life must be fun as a thief.

Eventually people from the 3rd server, who owned SM, showed up and a battle of about 15v15 started from our two servers so I jumped in and lost track of the thief. I did see him hanging around the edge of the battle as the only person there from his server trying to pick off people from both sides.

Heinel.6548:

Straegen.2938:

Until the culling patch this topic should just have a giant pin in it. Once culling is addressed, there are probably some lingering thief issues that need to be dealt with but IMO thieves probably won’t even make the top five list of real issues that significantly effect most players in WvW. I seriously doubt this issue ranks above nuisance to most WvW players. I run across an annoying thief or a really dangerous one occasionally but there are dozens of other items I would like fixed/addressed before this.

I don’t think the issue is quite as lighthearted. Even for someone who can accurately predict the location of stealthers, balanced thief builds still require specific counters—counter builds that are bad for zerg fights or sieges. In lower tier servers we cannot afford to send people after 1 or 2 thieves that held off 5-10 of our defenders.

If you look at thief videos where the thieves fight in the middle of at least 4 hostiles, none of them run pure glass cannon. They all have at least some vit from gears, and most have 30 in shadow arts (That’s Toughness and Healing). Thieves have a lot of advantage working for them as is as they can burst effectively with just 30 points into offensive attribute. Every other class require 40+. Perma-stealth as it is is already the most effective bunkering mechanic in the game, add freedom to burst with no cooldown and no visible tells and the issue is quite apparent.

Culling is part of the problem. However, I’m not convinced that it is the only problem. Culling only really help low-skill glass cannon thieves, but they aren’t even exploring the full potential of thieves to begin with. Glass cannon thieves will die to AoEs, visible or not. Balanced thieves can take a hit or two if they’re shown for 3 seconds (assuming the most ideal fix for culling happens, which we all know is impossible) then heal up in stealth to burst again. If you don’t stun lock them over and over, you just won’t kill a well-played stealther.

Until Anet can trivialize zerg fights or thieves finally achieve 60% population of WvW, single target stun lock builds will never be popular in WvW, and the rest of us can beg till our tongues fall off and no new players will join the mist fight just on this alone.

===

And to those who argue about thieves not being top tier in sPvP. Do realize that stealth has in fact taken a nerf to it’s effectiveness by 100% as far as sPvP objectives are concerned. You cannot cap a point in stealth. It was the biggest nerf in GW2 history. Do realize that if WvW is comparable to sPvP on this, they’ll have to implement a comparable solution to WvW as well, and I think not that many of us actually want to see stealth completely removed from WvW, as it’s already been trivialized both in sPvP and now PvE too (as if the risen priests can complain about imba. *rolleyes).

If you truly enjoy the stealth gameplay and want it to stay, you better start thinking creatively about solutions that the majority of the players can agree with. The “nyar-nyar-L2P” comments gets you nowhere other than the biggest nerf hammer that’s already swung twice.

Thieves can’t cap points in WvW whilst in stealth either.

sostronk.8167:

Thieves can’t cap points in WvW whilst in stealth either.

The ability of a class to cap points has near zero importance in WvW compared to sPvP since there’s almost always going to be someone else with you to do that job when you’re capping a point. The only reason it was removed from WvW was that perma-stealth thieves could perma-contest supply camps because you couldn’t kittening kill them. You still can’t kill them but at least you can capture the camp.

purpleskies.3274:

jportell.2197:

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Ironically no one seems to complain about mesmer stealth even though they have culling to. Seems like that points to there being something about thieves other than simply culling.

I will say the issue with thieves and their stealth is the insane amount of bonuses they can proc while in stealth… Sure they can’t get them all at once.. But when they make the build for it and such they get too many good things… They have some of the best condi removal in the game and this is before they even touch traits. yeah mesmers have access to stealth but we have to go 30 points into a defensive trait line to even get a bonus from it… Now I am not saying remove all bonuses that a thief gets for going stealth… But tone some down.. I put a list somewhere in this thread earlier…. Other classes get some form of stealth mesmers are a far second with the amount of access we get to it… Then rangers only with traits and engineers (RNG dependent). Beyond that thief is the stealth class and they are ruling wvw… When most of the people you run into are 4/5 man teams of nothing but thieves and you don’t see any other enemy classes on the map something is going on…But when culling gets addressed… Hopefully we can see if there are more problems people have with thieves.. I have these.. and certain skills that do damage but don’t break stealth.

Fred Fargone.3127:

The way I see it,
we have conditions, and we have condition removals,
we got buffs, and we got debuffs,
we got stealth, and we got… Apples?
How about some stealth removing mechanism? For example, if you burn a thief, well, a human torch shouldn’t even be able to stealth. If you lodge your sword between his ribs, how can you not tell he is there? If you’re a mesmer… stealth is a type of illusion (right?) so surely a mesmer needs some counter skill for that, they’re the masters of illusion after all!

Your words… I like em!

Daeqar.8965:

purpleskies.3274:

jportell.2197:

Fix culling lets go from there… Errbody freaking out about stealth thieves… Pistol whip thieves… those are the scary ones. :P

Ironically no one seems to complain about mesmer stealth even though they have culling to. Seems like that points to there being something about thieves other than simply culling.

Nope…they just complain about the “culling bomb” that drops on top of them whekittenerg materializes around their downed body because a mesmer veiled 20 people as they rolled in on your group or portaled nearby.

Oddly enough, this abuse of culling actually has a big impact on matchup outcomes whereas thieves with individual stealth is essentially inconsequential in the big picture.

I beg you sir gimme footy of how a veil bomb works… I want to use it but it kills far more useful utilities… TBH I don’t think any mesmers would gripe if they capped veil somehow… Most of these skills that people gripe about we only use if people scream at us too.

I notice a trend. People get bursted down by glass cannon thieves, then make suggestion that would force thieves to play glass cannon.

A fact is that 95% wvw population are trash. All they do is zerg in huge blobs spamming skills. Then when they get owned by a single skilled roamer thief, they come here to cry how OP thief is.

Ahem… I solo/small squad cap camps all the time… Start ninja ops on towers while the enemy is busy with a keep elsewhere and get compliments nightly on how well I fight in duels… I rarely zerg and I still think that something should be done with the thief type stealth and… Mainly because of the bonuses they get from stealth (most builds give them some sort of bonus) and the culling issue but that has been said will be fixed. And people like you are the ones that think that the only good players are thieves amiright?

Eliyahu.1467:

sostronk.8167:

Thieves can’t cap points in WvW whilst in stealth either.

The ability of a class to cap points has near zero importance in WvW compared to sPvP since there’s almost always going to be someone else with you to do that job when you’re capping a point. The only reason it was removed from WvW was that perma-stealth thieves could perma-contest supply camps because you couldn’t kittening kill them. You still can’t kill them but at least you can capture the camp.

I solo cap points all the time with every class I play.

Master of Timespace.2548:

A fact

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.