Guild Wars 2

Thieves are designed in a way that they are very efficient at killing new and unskilled players. Even some of the most skilled thieves have a hard time beating any other class that’s played by a somewhat experienced player. No worries though they will soon be nerfed further to make it easier for me to kill them.

If you are a skilled player thieves, no matter their skill level, are a little underpowered. I think the nerf is a smack in the face to theives because I personally don’t have a problem with thieves. They need a health pool buff if anything.

Gyuforce.8291:

If you are a skilled player thieves, no matter their skill level, are a little underpowered. I think the nerf is a smack in the face to theives because I personally don’t have a problem with thieves. They need a health pool buff if anything.

Maybe in sPvP, but in WvW Thieves are still excesive and they have been since launch. The only reason we dont hear that many complaitns about Thieves anymore is because since a few months Warriors have risen to the same absurd levels, if not worst.

But make no mistake, Thieves still go around 9k+ backstabbing people. Lovely combo CnD→Steal→BS = 14k+ dmg in a split second. That has never changed. And the excuse that these Thieves are squishy is nonsense because they rely on evasion not tanking to stay alive.
Cant kill what you cant hit, and you cant hit what keeps disapearing into stealth and zips all over the place with teleports and evades.

Thieves keep getting nerfs to builds that actually go and fight people, pushing them further into builds that rely on perma-stealth trolling or instagibbing.
Something a lot of Thieves already do since its easy, and Stealth is a stupidly powerful mechanic. The only “counter” (i disagree with using the term counter) is to prevent them from Stealthing (Stun/Daze/Sic ’em).

But once in stealth, stealth has no counter. It’ll do exactly as advertised on the tin and there is no reasonable action any other player can take to counter that. Some people would argue Stealth Disruption Trap. I think these people are stupid for thinking a 10supply, channeled (if interupted, byebye trap), 15 badge, limited aoe trap is a reasonable counter.

Dodging the combo however leaves the thief without stealth, without burst and with 6 less iniative. A d/d thief coming up to you is obviously going to use c&d> steal > backstab as soon as he’s in 900 range. If you look for the animation you can see the c&d coming before he steals, and as such it’s fairly easy to dodge. Even with full stacks I get 9k backstabs only on 2200 armor and below, so if you’re that glassy yourself it’s either burst or be bursted, other classes can easily do the same amount (except the ranger perhaps). The usual d/d builds hardly have any evasion by the way, no vigor or anything. I believe thieves are equal to other classes as far as 1v1s in WvW are concerned, and I’ve done my fair share of duels on multiple classes. However, spvp is different and I believe d/p and especially d/d to be very lackluster there.

MarkedOne.1309:

maeggle.6021:

If the two players are on-par skillwise, the thief is almost always at a disadvantage.

Correct.
The thing is, it is rare to find good players on the same skill level.
Everyone complaining about stealth just did not learn how to counter ir or adapt.
Bottom of the barrel is complaining about thieves all over the forums and they are being heard. (the d/p nerf is justified and well deserved, though.)

Condi stealth mesmer, condi engi, necro + retal guard or condi war/ hammer war are just horrendously OP compared to any thief. Yet those classes still complain because they are horrible players who dont know how to play their classes and are calling for nerfs – the easy way out.

please don’t play this game, pleanty of posts about Condi necro and hammer warriors on this forum.

the real problem with stealth is not stealth itself. It is how much the game has tied thief defense to stealth. I honestly don’t think you would see half as much complaining if the trait that healed well stealthed got removed. I honestly think that’s the biggest complaint I hear is the ability to reset the fight and comeback with full health over and over again.

Samhayn.2385:

the real problem with stealth is not stealth itself. It is how much the game has tied thief defense to stealth. I honestly don’t think you would see half as much complaining if the trait that healed well stealthed got removed. I honestly think that’s the biggest complaint I hear is the ability to reset the fight and comeback with full health over and over again.

I agree that the trait is excessive in combination with permastealth, but after the nerf I see it as one of the things that enables thieves to still compete against some classes, it’s the sustain they need. Shadow refuge is the biggest offender of resetting fights, and personally I think the duration of the stealth and as such the heal it provides is too much. I wouldn’t mind if they nerfed the duration greatly (to about 5 seconds stealth), but in turn reduce the cooldown and remove the revealed when you get knocked out. After that, removing the healing in stealth trait would cause thieves to simply not be able to keep up with other classes anymore, so I think it needs to stay. Or the other option would be to rework the class entirely.

Okaishi.8320:

Samhayn.2385:

the real problem with stealth is not stealth itself. It is how much the game has tied thief defense to stealth. I honestly don’t think you would see half as much complaining if the trait that healed well stealthed got removed. I honestly think that’s the biggest complaint I hear is the ability to reset the fight and comeback with full health over and over again.

I agree that the trait is excessive in combination with permastealth, but after the nerf I see it as one of the things that enables thieves to still compete against some classes, it’s the sustain they need. Shadow refuge is the biggest offender of resetting fights, and personally I think the duration of the stealth and as such the heal it provides is too much. I wouldn’t mind if they nerfed the duration greatly (to about 5 seconds stealth), but in turn reduce the cooldown and remove the revealed when you get knocked out. After that, removing the healing in stealth trait would cause thieves to simply not be able to keep up with other classes anymore, so I think it needs to stay. Or the other option would be to rework the class entirely.

they could always rework it to give a random defensive boon when entering stealth (aegis, regen, protection) still a good trait but does not fully cover up the weakness of having a small hp pool which is exactly what the trait does atm, cover up your greatest weakness.

Araris.7839:

denimdan.8642:

read the December 10 patch notes, much of the thief perma stealth ability if getting nerfed through nerfing there initiative regain

Actually, as pointed out by a dev in their forum, due to the overall initiative regain being upped, the slight nerf to the trait will have little to no effect.

I think stealth is actually pretty balanced. Like others have noted, it’s only true value is shown when escaping. I have no issue predicting and killing a thief on multiple classes when stealth is used offensively.

The one thing I would alter, is that when a stealth player is hit by a melee attack, their cloaked form (the invisible man) is shown for a brief instant. The same form you see when grouped with them/pve.

This would make sense, seeing as when you connect with a melee attack, you would feel the impact/resistance on the person.

My 2 copper~

Take a moment to crunch the numbers and you will realize that the nerf to the trait isn’t slight, that it will affect the d/p playstyle, and that in general this change will remove perma-stealth build due to a lack of efficiency.

Terrahero.9358:

Cant kill what you cant hit, and you cant hit what keeps disapearing into stealth and zips all over the place with teleports and evades..

The constant teleports are awesome, and they make a thief very hard to hit if played well. Those are sword abilities (it’s the sword 2 ability, which is also getting nerfed on 12/10). The evades? What’s that? The only ‘evade’ built into backstabbing thief builds is Death Blossom, a condition damage AoE that power/ crit builds don’t use.

Yeah, thieves can dodge roll. So can every class. Thief access to vigor is pretty good right now, but is also getting nerfed on 12/10.

Give everyone stealth…that’ll fix things :-)

Thieves have some of the lowest health in the game. Although they can be built to have a generous amount of health, that would sacrifice a lot of their critical attack chance abilities.
I agree completely with your opinion. If there’s one thing in the game I hate more than anything else it’s perma-stealthers. However, I respect that it’s a necessary defense because without it, they’re pretty kitten easy to kill. The problem lies in the fact that while they’re visible, you can cut them down to 40% health within 3 seconds. But as soon as they go back in to stealth, which usually only takes about 4 seconds, they’ll go right back up to 90 – 100% health. I would say the health regeneration needs a nerf. Nothing else really needs much of a change. Although I passionately hate swinging blindly in to the air hoping I’ll hit them after they’ve disappeared, I understand that without it they’re incredibly vulnerable.
So I would only suggest reducing the amount they’re able to heal while in stealth, rather than nerfing stealth as a whole.

Stx.4857:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Malik.6781:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Okaishi.8320:

Sanduskel.1850:

this is the kind of arrogance that gets our class constantly nerfed. no compromising, just call everyone who hates the abuse of perma stealth (Anet’s phraseology, not mine) bad players. keep it up. Your attitude towards players who ask for balance just foster more hatred and more nerfs.

What arrogance? I’m not calling people bad for hating perma stealth, I’m calling out players who don’t bother to try and learn how to play against thieves. Please read before making these replies with your usual nonsense.

5 of us fighting a thief in north camp, 2 of us rangers. We switched out Sic’Em while fighting this thief for 10 MINUTES. Shadowstealthing away constantly (I prefer when thieves do this), entering stealth for barely a second before attacking us again. We threw down traps, AoE, solid attacks, EVERYTHING. He never got down lower than 20%.

Reason being, too many of the thief traits that allow you to survive are attached to stealth or add to it. You can easily trait for condition cleansing through stealth, regen health in stealth, move faster in stealth, removing conditions and gain regen when you get under 75%, heal yourself whenever you use initiative, steal = stealth, etc.

Add all these together and you create an unkillable thief. Which is what we just had. There is no L2P when you have THAT much utility plus being untargettable and impossible to knock out of stealth.

Are you talking about 70 pts in shadow arts build?

No, I’m talking the 0/0/30/30/10 build.

akanibbles.6237:

RyuDragnier.9476:

5 of us fighting a thief in north camp, 2 of us rangers

“2 of us rangers”

That sounds like a comedy, this is a comedy right?

Trap Ranger and Power Ranger. The other 3 were a guardian, a zerk warrior, and a mesmer. If you call surviving a zerk warrior, a mesmer, 2 rangers, and a guardian comedy, then yes, it is.

This is why its hard to take thief complainers seriously. No one runs that build. Seriously no one. The only thing a 30/30/10 build could be useful for is a full survival build with dire gear, melandru runes or something, and just running around spamming dodge and stealth to troll groups of people like you and your friends.

You guys might not have been able to kill him, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to kill anyone.

And y’see, how can thief players think that is okay?

In beta, necros are shown to be pretty much invincible bunkers, they rarely kill anything but good luck killing them. They have lifesteal taken away on multiple abilities and their DS is severely nerfed, the game launch with them practically useless in PvP.

Shortly after launch, developers realize that the guardian can basically live forever in as much as a 1v3 by focusing purely on defense, blocks, and healing. Their healing and defensive stat gets severely nerfed.

A few months later, the water/arcane elementalist bunker build is made, has the same problem as the previous two, and the developers pretty much euthanize the entire class because of that one build.

So why is it okay that thieves be the only class that can build to live through anything? It’s not, either all classes should be able to or none, and in my opinion it would be better for the game if none.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Thieves have some of the lowest health in the game. Although they can be built to have a generous amount of health, that would sacrifice a lot of their critical attack chance abilities.
I agree completely with your opinion. If there’s one thing in the game I hate more than anything else it’s perma-stealthers. However, I respect that it’s a necessary defense because without it, they’re pretty kitten easy to kill. The problem lies in the fact that while they’re visible, you can cut them down to 40% health within 3 seconds. But as soon as they go back in to stealth, which usually only takes about 4 seconds, they’ll go right back up to 90 – 100% health. I would say the health regeneration needs a nerf. Nothing else really needs much of a change. Although I passionately hate swinging blindly in to the air hoping I’ll hit them after they’ve disappeared, I understand that without it they’re incredibly vulnerable.
So I would only suggest reducing the amount they’re able to heal while in stealth, rather than nerfing stealth as a whole.

Thieves who have low health are glass cannons and choose to have low health. I can exceed 20k health on mine. That’s not low.

Oghier.7419:

Terrahero.9358:

Cant kill what you cant hit, and you cant hit what keeps disapearing into stealth and zips all over the place with teleports and evades..

The constant teleports are awesome, and they make a thief very hard to hit if played well. Those are sword abilities (it’s the sword 2 ability, which is also getting nerfed on 12/10). The evades? What’s that? The only ‘evade’ built into backstabbing thief builds is Death Blossom, a condition damage AoE that power/ crit builds don’t use.

Yeah, thieves can dodge roll. So can every class. Thief access to vigor is pretty good right now, but is also getting nerfed on 12/10.

Shortbow also comes with a teleport, aswell as an evade. Sword/dagger has teleport, and an evade. Two combo’s that can be combined with d/d or d/p.

Toss in Shadowstep, which has 2 teleports. And a Thief will be zipping all over the place plenty. With above average evading capabilities. Making him quite difficult to kill without having to actually pick up gear with toughness or vitality.

Thats where the tradeoff becomes unbalanced. I have to pick up toughness, and i have on all armor pieces, to help me stay alive. So ofcourse i deal less damage then the Thief, but im still easier to kill.
But if i was to go full damage, i’d just be even easier to kill while still not having anywhere close to the same damage.

Warriors are a similar story. Even going full zerker they are quite durable with naturally high hp and armor. Aswell as (to much) passive regeneration and great utility skills, and having amazing mobility to get out of harms way.

As a result, there is no such thing as a Glasscannon Thief or Warrior. Because both can go full damage, and get fantastic damage, and still be quite hard to bring down.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The problem lies in the fact that while they’re visible, you can cut them down to 40% health within 3 seconds. But as soon as they go back in to stealth, which usually only takes about 4 seconds, they’ll go right back up to 90 – 100% health.

Shadow’s Rejuvenation does not heal that much in that short amount of time. If they go back to 100% it means they have used their heal as well. That and shadow refuge are the only skills that allow them to heal that much, the trait on its own heals for about 300 every second. Ten seconds of stealth equals 3k hp. It’s not bad, but it’s hardly 60% of their HP pool. The trait is not that amazing.

Conncept.7638:

So why is it okay that thieves be the only class that can build to live through anything? It’s not, either all classes should be able to or none, and in my opinion it would be better for the game if none.

sPvP = Point Capture Mode = Area Bunkering.
Stealth does not contribute to captures, nor does it prevent the enemy from capturing a spot. D/D and D/P Thieves cannot bunker a spot because they lack evasion, protection, stability, regeneration, aegis, other forms of blocks, reliable blinds, healing while being able to contribute to a spot (see previous note), a big health pool and some armor, etc etc etc; all of which are somewhat neccessary to bunker a capture zone.
I guess Anet will provide some changes when / if they introduce a TDM-mode in PvP as they see fit. In my experience backstab-thieves can be hard opponents when played properly, but they are less of a threat compared to many other things currently in the game. Try it out yourself: Against bad players a D/D thief is really effective… But the more AoE, condition pressure and CC is flying around, the harder it gets to even survive so long to down an enemy – let alone stomping him.

Terrahero.9358:

As a result, there is no such thing as a Glasscannon Thief or Warrior. Because both can go full damage, and get fantastic damage, and still be quite hard to bring down.

On the contrary, full glass thieves go down really easy, unless they are very good. I’ve seen it happen so often. Only few thieves run completely glass because in most cases it’s suicide, the survivability that Shadow Arts brings is just too important in my opinion. And the scenarios you’re portraying with evades combined with d/d or d/p builds are exaggerated. The evades on sword or on shortbow burn through your iniative fast, especially if you’re switching sets and trying to use them both to their fullest potential. Thieves can’t have the best of both worlds, it’s why d/d and d/p builds usually differ from s/d and s/p ones. Spamming the shortbow evade is useless by the way, it’s just a waste of initiative and accomplishes little. The teleport on it is mostly used for running away from a lost fight anyway. I actually don’t find shortbow a good weapon to have equipped for roaming.

Okaishi.8320:

Because stealth is the mechanic many new players have the most problems with figuring out. Kind of obvious, really. And those people happen to get caught a lot by roaming thieves, so go figure.

Top kittening Lel right here- stealth has been around long enough for people to get how it works- you pop in, pop out. Mesmer skills, necro DS and even some engie kits should have a much higher propensity to confuse new players.

And note the distinction between “baddies” and “new players”- the two are not necessarily synonymous. Many of those commenting on stealth have been around a while, and some have rolled thieves- I did, and despite no longer being a “new player” I still play like fetid garbage, yet have free reign on my thief whenever I take a stroll with it in wvw.

maeggle.6021:

sPvP

Take a look at what subforum you’re in, pal.

Just saying

a summer classic

Piogre.2164:

I still play like fetid garbage, yet have free reign on my thief whenever I take a stroll with it in wvw.

wow
such roaming
player chopping tree = kill
many backstab damages
such stealhy approach
wow

Here’s a hint: You don’t take the premier roaming class to instagib players half-afqedly minding their own business. That’s like letting a tank class in other MMOs “tank” one trash mob. It’s nothing to judge the class by.

Also you’re asking for the equivalent of every class being able to tank in said MMOs, even the healer. Nope. Some classes are just by design better at something. Same with roaming. Thieves are borderline garbage for zerg vs zerg action in exchange.
Go live out your Mary Sue class fantasies somewhere else.

Lol @ zealous censor.

Why this topic again? Thieves are due for a buff. Dec10 patch is looking good.

It’s funny people still think:

Thief should win every 1 vs 1 fight. They really doesn’t have any kind of chance to lose.

oZii.2864:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I still think the problem is shadow refuge. I have no problem with the short duration stealths of thieves mesmers or engi. The problem is shadow refuge can give up to 15 seconds of stealth. Virtually every single thief in the entire history of gw2 uses shadow refuge. It is a absolute must have utility for any build. Doesn’t that tell you something is overpowered when 100% of people playing the class use that utility. I feel its stronger than any other skill in the game even elites and it only has a 1 min cooldown.

No! Popularity of a utility skill for a profession doesn’t mean it’s overpowered. Every profession has popular utilities. You will have a hard time weeding through mesmers not running decoy, necros rarely don’t run epidemic, eles almost always have 1 cantrip on their bar, Endure pain is probably on almost every warriors bar.

While I agree with you that popularity does not equal overpowered, try not to use Elementalists in this discussion, because I can assure you Eles don’t have a single utility skill that even comes close to being overpowered, and there are plenty of Eles that don’t use cantrips, because frankly most Ele utlity skills are lousy so none of them are really a “must have.”

That said, Thief Shadow Refuge is fine, it’s part of the flavor and core mechanic of the class. It should be there, and I’m saying this as a Glass Cannon elementalist for whom backstabbing stealth thieves are a hard counter. Same as how clones are a core mechanic enhancement for Mesmers.

Okaishi.8320:

Terrahero.9358:

As a result, there is no such thing as a Glasscannon Thief or Warrior. Because both can go full damage, and get fantastic damage, and still be quite hard to bring down.

On the contrary, full glass thieves go down really easy, unless they are very good.

That is not glasscannon. A glasscannon is something that deals a lot of damage, but is very vulnerable to being attacked itself.

A thief is not. Sure they dont tank damage very well, but they dont have to. If they are attacked they have means to deal with that. Teleports, Stealth, Blinds, Evades. They have plenty of tools to deal with not dying under presure that in no way rely on actually taking a hit.

As a result, they are not dependant on Toughnes, Vitality or Healing Power to stay alive. And they can pump that statbudget into more damage.

Warriors are similar, but for a different reason. Warriors do take hits, but they start off with an incredible crutch in the form of naturally high armor, health and healing. What another profession has to dump stats on to achieve, at the expense of damage.

And in my opinion, this is something that should be fixed. Warriors and Thieves should be forced to spend more on defensive stats at the expense of their damage if they want to stay alive instead of enjoying an inherently high survivability.

Incase of Warriors, their baseline simply needs to be nerfed. Passive healing, minimal health and armor are just to high. As a result they can neglect statting for survivability because theyll be in a decent spot no matter what.
Thieves are going to be a lot harder because they dont seem to scale terribly well with toughness, vitality and healingpower. So just nerfing what they have will probably not work. Altough i do believe Stealth needs actual counters regardles.

People arguing over whether a glass-cannon includes evades and such eludes me. As many evades and such a thief has even melee classes can unload on them due to huge hitboxes and the large range of melee weapons. I play guardian and even when I get hit with a backstab I can still unload damage on a thief before he gets into stealth again. The only thieves who get away from that burst are the ones who instantly shadowstep away and guess what? That utility is gone for 40 seconds. Most don’t instantly get away, so melee classes can unload on them just as much and AoE class. That’s where the glass-cannon phrase comes in. Instead of only 5k damage like I would get on a tanky opponent, I’m auttoattacking for 2k and hitting 10k with Whirling Wrath.

It’s all about reaction time.

Jamais vu.5284:

Piogre.2164:

I still play like fetid garbage, yet have free reign on my thief whenever I take a stroll with it in wvw.

wow
such roaming
player chopping tree = kill
many backstab damages
such stealhy approach
wow

Here’s a hint: You don’t take the premier roaming class to instagib players half-afqedly minding their own business. That’s like letting a tank class in other MMOs “tank” one trash mob. It’s nothing to judge the class by.

Also you’re asking for the equivalent of every class being able to tank in said MMOs, even the healer. Nope. Some classes are just by design better at something. Same with roaming. Thieves are borderline garbage for zerg vs zerg action in exchange.
Go live out your Mary Sue class fantasies somewhere else.

Lol @ zealous censor.

Don’t really understand your point here. However, thieves aren’t borderline garbage in Zerg vs Zerg. You just need to spec and play appropriately. Most of the thieves who complain to me about dying in Zerg vs Zerg are glass cannons but wonder how my thief survives and contributes. Lol

Terrahero.9358:

A thief is not. Sure they dont tank damage very well, but they dont have to. If they are attacked they have means to deal with that. Teleports, Stealth, Blinds, Evades. They have plenty of tools to deal with not dying under presure that in no way rely on actually taking a hit.

As a result, they are not dependant on Toughnes, Vitality or Healing Power to stay alive. And they can pump that statbudget into more damage.

Warriors are similar, but for a different reason. Warriors do take hits, but they start off with an incredible crutch in the form of naturally high armor, health and healing. What another profession has to dump stats on to achieve, at the expense of damage.

And in my opinion, this is something that should be fixed. Warriors and Thieves should be forced to spend more on defensive stats at the expense of their damage if they want to stay alive instead of enjoying an inherently high survivability.

Incase of Warriors, their baseline simply needs to be nerfed. Passive healing, minimal health and armor are just to high. As a result they can neglect statting for survivability because theyll be in a decent spot no matter what.
Thieves are going to be a lot harder because they dont seem to scale terribly well with toughness, vitality and healingpower. So just nerfing what they have will probably not work. Altough i do believe Stealth needs actual counters regardles.

You make it sound as though a thief can backstab, perma evade everything and can just stealth up again. It simply doesn’t work that way. As you point out yourself thief scales terribly and you basically have to get a lot of power and crit damage or you’re going to be worthless.

As I posted earlier there’s already a lot of counterplay to d/d especially to prevent them from stealthing and make them waste iniative and utilities. There’s plenty of players who do this well already and win their fights vs thieves, and giving them stealth detection on top of that would leave the thief unable to compete. It’s as simple as that.

Conncept.7638:

Stx.4857:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Malik.6781:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Okaishi.8320:

Sanduskel.1850:

this is the kind of arrogance that gets our class constantly nerfed. no compromising, just call everyone who hates the abuse of perma stealth (Anet’s phraseology, not mine) bad players. keep it up. Your attitude towards players who ask for balance just foster more hatred and more nerfs.

What arrogance? I’m not calling people bad for hating perma stealth, I’m calling out players who don’t bother to try and learn how to play against thieves. Please read before making these replies with your usual nonsense.

5 of us fighting a thief in north camp, 2 of us rangers. We switched out Sic’Em while fighting this thief for 10 MINUTES. Shadowstealthing away constantly (I prefer when thieves do this), entering stealth for barely a second before attacking us again. We threw down traps, AoE, solid attacks, EVERYTHING. He never got down lower than 20%.

Reason being, too many of the thief traits that allow you to survive are attached to stealth or add to it. You can easily trait for condition cleansing through stealth, regen health in stealth, move faster in stealth, removing conditions and gain regen when you get under 75%, heal yourself whenever you use initiative, steal = stealth, etc.

Add all these together and you create an unkillable thief. Which is what we just had. There is no L2P when you have THAT much utility plus being untargettable and impossible to knock out of stealth.

Are you talking about 70 pts in shadow arts build?

No, I’m talking the 0/0/30/30/10 build.

akanibbles.6237:

RyuDragnier.9476:

5 of us fighting a thief in north camp, 2 of us rangers

“2 of us rangers”

That sounds like a comedy, this is a comedy right?

Trap Ranger and Power Ranger. The other 3 were a guardian, a zerk warrior, and a mesmer. If you call surviving a zerk warrior, a mesmer, 2 rangers, and a guardian comedy, then yes, it is.

This is why its hard to take thief complainers seriously. No one runs that build. Seriously no one. The only thing a 30/30/10 build could be useful for is a full survival build with dire gear, melandru runes or something, and just running around spamming dodge and stealth to troll groups of people like you and your friends.

You guys might not have been able to kill him, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to kill anyone.

And y’see, how can thief players think that is okay?

In beta, necros are shown to be pretty much invincible bunkers, they rarely kill anything but good luck killing them. They have lifesteal taken away on multiple abilities and their DS is severely nerfed, the game launch with them practically useless in PvP.

Shortly after launch, developers realize that the guardian can basically live forever in as much as a 1v3 by focusing purely on defense, blocks, and healing. Their healing and defensive stat gets severely nerfed.

A few months later, the water/arcane elementalist bunker build is made, has the same problem as the previous two, and the developers pretty much euthanize the entire class because of that one build.

So why is it okay that thieves be the only class that can build to live through anything? It’s not, either all classes should be able to or none, and in my opinion it would be better for the game if none.

Favortism-

1. the practice of giving unfair preferential treatment to one person or group at the expense of another

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/favouritism

2. the practice of giving special treatment to a person or group

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/favouritism

Favorite-

1. A contestant or competitor regarded as most likely to win

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/favorite

Hey I got an idea. Why don’t we just remove thieves all together. I mean we are going to take away all that the thief is essentially anyway, why not. In fact why don’t we just remove all profession’s besides warriors. That way we can all have a fair, equal balance, hammer swinging serenity. I know i’m being dramatic, but you know what they say, “When in Rome”

Also, let me apologize for my previous post, which has since been deleted, for insulting all you swell folks. you guys are just terrific.

i usualy see thieves in wvw who can go back into stealth after just 1 second of coming out of stealth. Is it due to lag or runes/sigils/food? is there something a wvw thief can do that a tpvp thief cant? because I don’t see it being done in tpvp. but i do know that wvw has more variety of equipment that cannot be used in tpvp.

Based on a various random roaming encounter, i use a ranger with shortbow and when i see that thief pops out of stealth to backstab me,i shoot one arrow,it lands,then he disappears,repeats until i die because i can only get 1 shot in each time he appears before he stealths again.I’ve never seen this happen in tpvp before.

can anybody share with me the secret? so that i can find a way to counter this type of thieves.Sic em is not effective because I don;t have enough dps to kill it in 4 seconds. Thanks

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

i usualy see thieves in wvw who can go back into stealth after just 1 second of coming out of stealth. Is it due to lag or runes/sigils/food? is there something a wvw thief can do that a tpvp thief cant? because I don’t see it being done in tpvp. but i do know that wvw has more variety of equipment that cannot be used in tpvp.

Based on a various random roaming encounter, i use a ranger with shortbow and when i see that thief pops out of stealth to backstab me,i shoot one arrow,it lands,then he disappears,repeats until i die because i can only get 1 shot in each time he appears before he stealths again.I’ve never seen this happen in tpvp before.

can anybody share with me the secret? so that i can find a way to counter this type of thieves.Sic em is not effective because I don;t have enough dps to kill it in 4 seconds. Thanks

Revealed is 3 seconds in WvW and 4 in sPvP. Time your dodge roll accordingly.

Sanduskel.1850:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Although they can be built to have a generous amount of health, that would sacrifice a lot of their critical attack chance abilities.

Thieves who have low health are glass cannons and choose to have low health. I can exceed 20k health on mine. That’s not low.

I understand that, and I’ve said so here.

Zephyrus.9680:

Revealed is 3 seconds in WvW and 4 in sPvP. Time your dodge roll accordingly.

must be something else, because my shortbow doesn’t take more than 3 seconds to shoot another arrow, but i can only hit him once before he disappears again, how do they bypass the “revealed-3 second”s in wvw?

I can’t dodge every 3 second anyways to keep up with his perma stealth

Okaishi.8320:

Shadow’s Rejuvenation does not heal that much in that short amount of time. If they go back to 100% it means they have used their heal as well. That and shadow refuge are the only skills that allow them to heal that much, the trait on its own heals for about 300 every second. Ten seconds of stealth equals 3k hp. It’s not bad, but it’s hardly 60% of their HP pool. The trait is not that amazing.

I didn’t mention whether or not they used Shadow’s Rejuvenation. I just said that when they go in to stealth, they regenerate a large amount of health. And if they’re invisible while regenerating health, that means it’s likely they won’t be hit, which means they’ll get full use of that regeneration not sacrificing any of it to damage taken.
It’s not that amazing. It’s just that regenerating health should be the time you’re most vulnerable not the time you’re strongest. Eg. when you’re about to use a heal on most classes, there’s an obvious animation which you can interrupt.

I’ve ran into plenty of people who play through and against stealth very well against my thief. Granted I do not play d/p because that specific form of stealth is OP (perma stealth). But that shouldn’t be discussed any further since the nerf is coming out on december 10th for it.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Sanduskel.1850:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Although they can be built to have a generous amount of health, that would sacrifice a lot of their critical attack chance abilities.

Thieves who have low health are glass cannons and choose to have low health. I can exceed 20k health on mine. That’s not low.

I understand that, and I’ve said so here.

Ok. Other classes have to make trade offs too. On my thief I give up some dps to increase survivability. Join the club.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

must be something else, because my shortbow doesn’t take more than 3 seconds to shoot another arrow, but i can only hit him once before he disappears again, how do they bypass the “revealed-3 second”s in wvw?

Thieves only get the ‘revealed’ debuff if they hit someone. If they don’t take a swing (or a stab) at anyone, then there is no debuff.

That may seem unfair, but remember that it only works if the thief isn’t doing any direct damage.

MarkedOne.1309:

NornBearPig.9814:

Stealth is what holds thieves back. If they weren’t balanced around a broken mechanic, Anet could buff them in other more interesting areas.

Thieves had one pretty solid build that did not use stealth, at all. Then people started complaining how ridiculous it is and how OP it is (evade). That resulted in nerfing every build that does not rely on stealth, sword/x in next patch. As a result, you will see almost everyone using stealth builds from now on. If not evades, it will be stealth.

You want to know where the complaints were? Not in WvW, or PvE. It was sPvP. Yes, that same field the majority of players don’t care about and that ends up nerfing builds unnecessary because Anet is foolish enough to balance everything around that instead of splitting the nerfs and buffs between each section.

Sanduskel.1850:

Zacchary.6183:

Burnfall.9573:

Arcuss.6457:

you people are kittening stupid. You’re complaining about a profession that has kitten defense and kitten attack (save for stealth backstabs, which is why they have an exposed condition), and you want them to take away the only way a dps thief can survive. sounds like a bunch of cry babies who got their kitten handed to them by thieves.

What is a cry baby when we get you to 80%-90% health and you cowards stealth away.

Fight like a man than you will never hear us cry.

Like the saying goes, “Bravery bring Honor, Cowards bring Disgrace”

-Arena.net designed and supports a Coward Mechanic which Disgraces the Rule of Class Balance-

What a Shame.

If it is so overpowered, then why are you and sanduskel not playing it?

lol i AM playing it. i am not playing scrub spec though.

I’m curious what build you run. You’ve stated you don’t use “perma stealth,” “perma evade,” and you have lots of health from training defensively. Would you mind posting your build? Are you a condi thief or what?

pantsforbirds.9032:

Sanduskel.1850:

Zacchary.6183:

Burnfall.9573:

Arcuss.6457:

you people are kittening stupid. You’re complaining about a profession that has kitten defense and kitten attack (save for stealth backstabs, which is why they have an exposed condition), and you want them to take away the only way a dps thief can survive. sounds like a bunch of cry babies who got their kitten handed to them by thieves.

What is a cry baby when we get you to 80%-90% health and you cowards stealth away.

Fight like a man than you will never hear us cry.

Like the saying goes, “Bravery bring Honor, Cowards bring Disgrace”

-Arena.net designed and supports a Coward Mechanic which Disgraces the Rule of Class Balance-

What a Shame.

If it is so overpowered, then why are you and sanduskel not playing it?

lol i AM playing it. i am not playing scrub spec though.

I’m curious what build you run. You’ve stated you don’t use “perma stealth,” “perma evade,” and you have lots of health from training defensively. Would you mind posting your build? Are you a condi thief or what?

He runs this.

All I really see wrong about stealth are two things:

- Can be maintained indefinitely with a small group of guys with smoke fields and blasts. There should be some sort of ‘overdose’ downside for it. Something like getting an effect after staying stealthed for too long, that counts down. If they don’t lose stealth before that effect ends its counter, they’ll get revealed for quite some time.

- It is possible to defeat someone in relatively little time with just Stealth attacks. Currently Revealed has a fixed time. That time should be dynamic instead. Revealed should be linked to the damage done with the hit that removes stealth and causes revealed. It should be less time than now with small damage, but longer than now with big hits, like a Stealth attack landed perfectly with a neat critical that takes more than 1/4..1/3 of the HP of the target in one hit. When dealing heavy blows with a stealth attack, a thief should have to rely more on evades and movement to survive until they can hide again. Hit harder, hide less. That would autobalance stealth without the need of adjusting a fixed time for all situations, which is well.. kind of impossible.

Anybody who has a problem killing a thief 1 year after release in a 10 button game has an infinite amount of things to improve upon.

Mordecai.6318:

Anybody who has a problem killing a thief 1 year after release in a 10 button game has an infinite amount of things to improve upon.

well I play a thief, and many good players have problems with thieves. Especially permastealth which ANET themselves have admitted is an abuse of the stealth mechanic.

Sanduskel.1850:

Mordecai.6318:

Anybody who has a problem killing a thief 1 year after release in a 10 button game has an infinite amount of things to improve upon.

well I play a thief, and many good players have problems with thieves. Especially permastealth which ANET themselves have admitted is an abuse of the stealth mechanic.

Maybe those good players weren’t so good?

Sanduskel.1850:

Mordecai.6318:

Anybody who has a problem killing a thief 1 year after release in a 10 button game has an infinite amount of things to improve upon.

well I play a thief, and many good players have problems with thieves. Especially permastealth which ANET themselves have admitted is an abuse of the stealth mechanic.

If I see one, I’ll report them.

Okaishi.8320:

Terrahero.9358:

A thief is not. Sure they dont tank damage very well, but they dont have to. If they are attacked they have means to deal with that. Teleports, Stealth, Blinds, Evades. They have plenty of tools to deal with not dying under presure that in no way rely on actually taking a hit.

As a result, they are not dependant on Toughnes, Vitality or Healing Power to stay alive. And they can pump that statbudget into more damage.

Warriors are similar, but for a different reason. Warriors do take hits, but they start off with an incredible crutch in the form of naturally high armor, health and healing. What another profession has to dump stats on to achieve, at the expense of damage.

And in my opinion, this is something that should be fixed. Warriors and Thieves should be forced to spend more on defensive stats at the expense of their damage if they want to stay alive instead of enjoying an inherently high survivability.

Incase of Warriors, their baseline simply needs to be nerfed. Passive healing, minimal health and armor are just to high. As a result they can neglect statting for survivability because theyll be in a decent spot no matter what.
Thieves are going to be a lot harder because they dont seem to scale terribly well with toughness, vitality and healingpower. So just nerfing what they have will probably not work. Altough i do believe Stealth needs actual counters regardles.

You make it sound as though a thief can backstab, perma evade everything and can just stealth up again. It simply doesn’t work that way. As you point out yourself thief scales terribly and you basically have to get a lot of power and crit damage or you’re going to be worthless.

As I posted earlier there’s already a lot of counterplay to d/d especially to prevent them from stealthing and make them waste iniative and utilities. There’s plenty of players who do this well already and win their fights vs thieves, and giving them stealth detection on top of that would leave the thief unable to compete. It’s as simple as that.

Thief can evade and avoid damage good enough to not be considered a glasscannon as far as im concerned. They have to many escapes for that, and are more difficult to actually kill then your average profession.

I’m also not talking about a counter to d/d. Im talking about a counter to stealth, which would also apply to other professions and their stealth abilities.

What you mentioned is a counter to CnD, not to stealth. Also you’re making an assumption that Stealth detection would come for free and stealth detect would mean every profession gets an ability that they can always afford to slot. Thats not how counter-play works.
What i want is some professions getting the option to slot a utility skill that, with a cooldown, offers temporary stealth detection. Preferably in skills these professions otherwise dont want to use because they are just not very good.

maeggle.6021:

Conncept.7638:

So why is it okay that thieves be the only class that can build to live through anything? It’s not, either all classes should be able to or none, and in my opinion it would be better for the game if none.

sPvP = Point Capture Mode = Area Bunkering.
Stealth does not contribute to captures, nor does it prevent the enemy from capturing a spot. D/D and D/P Thieves cannot bunker a spot because they lack evasion, protection, stability, regeneration, aegis, other forms of blocks, reliable blinds, healing while being able to contribute to a spot (see previous note), a big health pool and some armor, etc etc etc; all of which are somewhat neccessary to bunker a capture zone.
I guess Anet will provide some changes when / if they introduce a TDM-mode in PvP as they see fit. In my experience backstab-thieves can be hard opponents when played properly, but they are less of a threat compared to many other things currently in the game. Try it out yourself: Against bad players a D/D thief is really effective… But the more AoE, condition pressure and CC is flying around, the harder it gets to even survive so long to down an enemy – let alone stomping him.

Firstly, the developers have made it very clear they intend to make kills and combat matter more in SPvP, it isn’t an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. When they do, the thiefs current ability to kill and especially to deny kills will not be in any way balanced.

Secondly, SPvP is not the only PvP mode. In one of my servers WvW matches we obtained over 70% of our nearly 200,000 points from the bloodlust buff alone. It matters, and I have a feeling it will continue to matter more and more.

Additionally, stealth is not their only zero-counterplay defensive ability. Evasion does allow point capturing, thieves have several times more of it than any other class in the game, and there is literally nothing that gets through it. Condition stacks miss, power damage misses, control abilities miss, even unblockable abilities only apply to blocks. I can understand this working as such with dodge, but it should not work as such with any and all evasion abilities. Dodge and evade should be different, evade having counters that dodge does not.

Conncept.7638:

Firstly, the developers have made it very clear they intend to make kills and combat matter more in SPvP. When they do, the thiefs current ability to kill and especially to deny kills will not be in any way balanced.

Meaning they’d be way OP? That’s wrong. In spvp, d/d and d/p thieves are hardly as lethal as they are in WvW. Damage is way less overall, my crit damage is almost halved compared to WvW and this hurts the thief who relies on burst more than anything. On top of that there’s the 4 seconds reveal which completely breaks the rotation and is very annoying. I did a 1v1 tourney recently, and I decided not to play my thief because I’m mostly a d/d player and it just sucks in spvp, especially against capable opponents.

Okaishi.8320:

Conncept.7638:

Firstly, the developers have made it very clear they intend to make kills and combat matter more in SPvP. When they do, the thiefs current ability to kill and especially to deny kills will not be in any way balanced.

Meaning they’d be way OP? That’s wrong. In spvp, d/d and d/p thieves are hardly as lethal as they are in WvW. Damage is way less overall, my crit damage is almost halved compared to WvW and this hurts the thief who relies on burst more than anything. On top of that there’s the 4 seconds reveal which completely breaks the rotation and is very annoying. I did a 1v1 tourney recently, and I decided not to play my thief because I’m mostly a d/d player and it just sucks in spvp, especially against capable opponents.

‘and especially to deny kills’

Your point gain doesn’t matter so long as it is consistently above that of your opponents. If you can consistently deny kills and waste enemy resources on incomplete fights, there is no end to how valuable you are in any death-match, including WvW under the bloodlust buffs.

And I don’t hate thieves, have one myself, and I would love to play it if it didn’t suck to play and wasn’t boring to play against. This needs to be fixed, among other zero-counterplay problems thieves have; and I believe in doing so they would be completely justified in getting some of their burst back and even receiving buffs to open other roles the thief hasn’t even approached since launch.

Conncept.7638:

Firstly, the developers have made it very clear they intend to make kills and combat matter more in SPvP, it isn’t an ‘if’ but a ‘when’. When they do, the thiefs current ability to kill and especially to deny kills will not be in any way balanced.

I intented to point out how the current “balancing” was done, which does not neccessarily reflect my opinion about certain aspects of the game. Therefore I — playing on Kodash where we also earn a great deal of world points via small to medium scale combat (player stomps, dolyak & sentry kills, etc) — agree with you that there are imbalances which should have been dealt with a long time ago.

The ability to escape difficult situations is none of them. We all known there are certain professions and / or builds which are better at disengaging than others. Mesmers, thieves and engineers have some (more or less) reliable ways to stealth for a long duration (more than 3 seconds), warriors have insane mobility by picking some nice traits and equipping a GS, a mainhand-sword, a horn, a hammer or a combination of those. Sometimes it requires some actual skill and situational adaption to get out of a rough situation, but I wouldn’t want to cap any of that for some reason like kill denying.

Anet already nerfed RTL on ele for 2 stupid reasons, one of which was his ability to disengage rather easily (the other one was far-point rushing in tPvP, if I remember correctly). They severily crippled on of our x/d-eles’ major engagement tools; I wouldn’t want another class / build-spectrum to suffer in “honest” combat situations just because the same mechanism could be abused for easier disengagement, thus eventually denying a stomp.

Conncept.7638:

‘and especially to deny kills’

Your point gain doesn’t matter so long as it is consistently above that of your opponents. If you can consistently deny kills and waste enemy resources on incomplete fights, there is no end to how valuable you are in any death-match, including WvW under the bloodlust buffs.

And I don’t hate thieves, have one myself, and I would love to play it if it didn’t suck to play and wasn’t boring to play against. This needs to be fixed, among other zero-counterplay problems thieves have; and I believe in doing so they would be completely justified in getting some of their burst back and even receiving buffs to open other rolls the thief hasn’t even approached in the games history.

Well, I can’t deny they’d be good at denying kills unless they fully commit to the fight and stick around to be persistant and try to get that enemy player downed. However, if they are the kind of thieves that run as soon as it gets a bit hot (and that’s a lot of them) they’re not going to score any kills either.

Thieves’ contribution in WvW is negligable, it’s mostly about who’s zerg is bigger (and they’re far less valuable in a zerg than the heavy and light armour classes), and especially which server has more coverage. Flipping a bunch of camps or maybe a ruin of two is like a drop in the ocean, it pales in comparison of how important coverage is for ‘winning’ in WvW.

Boring to play against is just a matter of opinion, I’ve dueled a lot of thieves, and many of those were lots of fun. They were not the permastealth kind of duels I might add. And there’s plenty of counterplay to thieves, which I already mentioned a few times in my earlier posts. I guess not the kind of counterplay you have in mind, but I’m not sure what you’re looking for here exactly.

Don’t get me wrong though, I really wouldn’t mind a thief rework to make them far less dependant on stealth, where the stealth would simply be a way to surprise your enemy in the middle of the fight with some smart move, rather than being the single most important defensive and offensive mechanism it is now which d/d and d/p thieves rely on so heavily. Reworking stealth in such a way would mean that thieves would need some serious compensation in other areas though, so it would have to be done well while they hopefully add some new interesting mechanics, and to be honest I have some lack of faith there in Anet to pull that off successfully.