Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of post about thief, wondering if they are OP or not. It’s pretty hard to determine in WvW since we have the culling issue, the gears, and the skills of players.

But I think we miss the real question :

Do you have FUN fighting a thief?

It might be just me, that’s why I’m asking the question. But I hate fighting thief in WvW. Not because they can kill me in 2-3 sec (doesn’t happen that much once you know how to counter DD) but because I have to fight an invis ennemy.

I don’t like at all, attacking nothing. I would say, in average, they are invis for half the fight. Especially P/D. They will invis, heal a bit with auto regen, then come back for 3-5 sec, then invis.

I don’t have any fun fighting an invis ennemy. I have to learn the patern, and hope he isn’t pro and isn’t changing his stealth pattern during the fight. That like rolling the dice.

I don’t care about Mesmer illusion, since I still can find the real one. I don’t care about warrior invul, as I can see him and read his movement. Any other class “cheesy” move, they don’t bother me. Even the DD Elem, who is really strong right now, At least I can see him.

There is just something missing for the fun to be there when fighting a thief for me. To be able to see your ennemy, and not auto attack randomly in the air.

I play MMORPG since Ultima Online, and it’s the first time that a class/player can SPAM invis during a fight. Most game only allow stealth as an opener, and few permited a not spammable invis during fight. But Most of them had a way to detect invis by being too close or using a skill.

It’s my opinion, not a fact. I might be the only player to feel like this in WvW. And this is not a thread about balancing them, it’s about the invis factor.

TD;DR : This post isn’t about thief balance. The question is : Do you have fun fighting an invis ennemy?

Yes, thieves are my favorite to fight, especially burst ones because people think they are so OP.

I just said it in another thread but if a thief is stealth spamming you it’s because he’s hitting you multiple times in melee. I know P/D seems like ranged but they are no threat at range. They need to melee you to dps/stealth/heal/removeconditions/blind.

If you are a ranger, I’m sorry the pet options are dumb. Otherwise, drag the fight away from the 50 coyotes or the arrow cart and kite the thief. Dodge/block/immune cloak and dagger and you cripple this play-style.

i enjoy fighting thieves, once you learn to counter the opening attack from them its pretty much game over, and sense 90% of WvW thieves are the same spec there really isn’t a whole lot to pay attention to as far as trying to figure out what spec he is

i agree with you OP, the fact that even if i do win the fight (which is rare because im half dead before i even start it due to culling and whatnot) they can just stealth and run away.

if they are bad its a different story, but a well played theif will never die 1v1

for this reason if one attacks me now 1v1 i just use my blocks and cripples and walk away cause its a waste of time and annoying.

I want to see videos of people actually countering a Thief’s opening move. I see plenty of people who say fighting Thieves is easy once you learn their moves. Really? I want to see actual footage against at least an average skill level thief. Until then, it’s all just talk. Because the Thieves I see pop in and out of stealth, wallop you for ridiculous amounts of DPS, stealth stomp you, then giggle as they run away from your friends. If they’re out in the open, they’re spinning daggers all over the place, then they’re gone again. So show me, because I don’t believe it.

If you want to show videos of invulnerable skills, that’s something completely different. Even then, the Thief can just run until your timers are on cool down, then come own you. Seriously… let’s see some videos and not just claims.

Play a Guardian, drop ret, heal, and swing. I only lose to thieves when I’m afk

i’ve played over 500 hours as a thief, people have done it to me and i also know what to look for in a thief im going against whether im on my thief, ele, or mesmer and i can counter the opener… before you say its impossible why dont you learn the class so you have a better understanding of its counters? i used to have trouble with mesmers which is why i rolled one that way i could take the time to learn the mechanics and counters

brogarn.8723:

I want to see videos of people actually countering a Thief’s opening move.

vey good video in my opinion

Thieves are a tasty meal in WvW, I haven’t seen good ones for long time. Most of them can do the basic opening but if it fails, he fails. So I block or evade the first strike and then I can do what ever i want with him. Usually unload my burst after immobilize or knockback.
Good ones are a different story and I have to adapt because my basic combos usually won’t work or atleast shouldn’t. I have no problem with invisible enemies.

Stiv.1820:

brogarn.8723:

I want to see videos of people actually countering a Thief’s opening move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2IUL4wLcig

Very nice. Thank you.

Uberlicious.3956:

vey good video in my opinion

Yep, every class can make a video like that (save ranger probably). Just takes skill and complete understanding of Thief mechanics.

Stiv.1820:

Uberlicious.3956:

vey good video in my opinion

Yep, every class can make a video like that (save ranger probably). Just takes skill and complete understanding of Thief mechanics.

Or just a sinlge trait if you happen to be elementalist.

Kardiamond.6952:

I play MMORPG since Ultima Online, and it’s the first time that a class/player can SPAM invis during a fight. Most game only allow stealth as an opener, and few permited a not spammable invis during fight. But Most of them had a way to detect invis by being too close or using a skill.

It’s my opinion, not a fact. I might be the only player to feel like this in WvW. And this is not a thread about balancing them, it’s about the invis factor.

Nope for the very reason you state, the invisi spam is ridiculous, especially combined with their burst.

I tell you what’s fun. Fun is when you are chasing or see the glass cannon thief coming. You prepare and then totally destroy said thief. He/she thought they had you solo only to come to the hard realization they were wrong. That’s fun, what’s not fun is when there are two and you only saw the one

morrolan.9608:

Kardiamond.6952:

I play MMORPG since Ultima Online, and it’s the first time that a class/player can SPAM invis during a fight. Most game only allow stealth as an opener, and few permited a not spammable invis during fight. But Most of them had a way to detect invis by being too close or using a skill.

It’s my opinion, not a fact. I might be the only player to feel like this in WvW. And this is not a thread about balancing them, it’s about the invis factor.

Nope for the very reason you state, the invisi spam is ridiculous, especially combined with their burst.

I didn’t notice his comment about UO. That’s kind of funny since I played UO from beta on and you could hide in the middle of combat in that game for the first year or so. Everyone had 100 hiding. You could cast Invisibility whenever you wanted as well.

People just need to learn the new mechanic. It’s unique to this game. Stealth is part of the Thief’s flow of combat and the way they access buffs/healing/dmg/debuffs and a lot of other things for many builds.

Culling is a real problem in huge zerg situations but that’s about it.

I’m a thief and i love fighting Glass cannon thieves. I do the condition damage/tanky style thief and man do i usually own them. Once they try to burst me down i just heal up and place a bunch of stacks of bleed on them and watch them die so fast.

Culling also plays havoc with the names and target markers above someone’s head. I don’t meant the giant symbol you get from calling target, but rather the down pointing triangle thingy above the Invader or Defender name you see when you have them selected. I’ll see them pop out of stealth and not be sure if I have them targeted or not because there’s nothing above their head. Very annoying.

It’s something unique that I hate

I don’t know why people keep bringing the balance around, even if thief did 0 damage, I would still hate to fight them.

And also, there is a reason why they removed the hiding in combat in Ultima Online

I’m still wondering why Anet wanted to remove perma stealth from the game, and just replaced it with something even worse. And even worse, thief can still perma invis with certain build and combo field.

It require more work then the usual perma stealth, but they can still do it in combat.

For me a fight against a GOOD PLAYER on their thief character is fun because it’s a challenge. I’m fighting against the player themselves and the skill they have with that profession (you can tell the skilled thieves a mile away) and I’m fighting against the culling giving them an advantage over me.

This makes it even sweeter, when I eventually down them

Kardiamond.6952:

And also, there is a reason why they removed the hiding in combat in Ultima Online

I’m still wondering why Anet wanted to remove perma stealth from the game, and just replaced it with something even worse. And even worse, thief can still perma invis with certain build and combo field.

It require more work then the usual perma stealth, but they can still do it in combat.

Well yea in UO everyone had 100 hiding and it was just 1 button push to go invis. In GW2 to have functional stealth combat build you need to hit an enemy with a melee attack that has a small animation and can be avoided. A missed C&D = no stealth and -6 initiative. It’s on the player to avoid C&D or not be in a position where they can use it on mobs or whatever.

The other build with perma stealth requires traits to support it and those traits are outside of the damage lines. They also require a dagger main-hand pistol offhand which is no good aside from utility (without a dagger offhand as well) outside of a power/pres build. So basically it’s a build that can stealth and not kill anyone but people who have green arrows or are terrible. I doubt these will exist much anymore now that camps can’t be trolled.

You can make a d/p build that has glass cannon stats and is very viable but won’t be able to perma stealth.

I used to hate Mesmers until I rolled one and played it in sPvP for a couple hours. Once I understood their moves and limitations, it became much easier to fight them. The same applied to thief when I rolled one(to actually play in WvW). I’d say 90% of thieves in WvW are glass cannon thieves that aren’t very good. Once you know what their animations and most likely skill rotations are, it’s fairly easy to counter. It’s even funnier dodging twice and having the super bad thieves waste 4 heart seekers on nothing.

The lesson is that knowledge is power. Getting wrecked by glass cannon thieves the first 10 times might be frustrating but you have three choices…

1. Go straight to forums and complain that you died really quick to a glass cannon spec so class must be OP
2. Learn about the thief and how to counter it
3. Do nothing about it and continue to get wrecked.

I guess that wasn’t really what the OP was questioning, but those were some thoughts. It would be nice to have culling fixed to see if good players still do as well on their thieves.

To answer the question – I don’t mind fighting invisible enemies because they’re not doing damage to me while I can still aoe them down.

Heck I might be in the minority that like seeing what they are hiting.

Never been a fan of Battleship.

And people, stop bringing the “Learn how they play to counter them”. That’s not the point of this thread. @NealCaffrey wrote about it, but at least he also gave is opinion about the original thread.

@Stiv

Yeah but in UO, you also had one button to counter it : Detect hidden.

And a thief fighting a Ranger if it’s hard to stay perma stealth with C&D

And if they miss, they also have OH kittenkill to invis.

Perma stealth isn’t hard to achieve, even with C&D. We are in WvW, it’s a war, you aren’t in 1 vs 1 fights. You can always attack somoene that don’t expect it.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Stiv

Yeah but in UO, you also had one button to counter it : Detect hidden.

And a thief fighting a Ranger if it’s hard to stay perma stealth with C&D

And if they miss, they also have OH kittenkill to invis.

Perma stealth isn’t hard to achieve, even with C&D. We are in WvW, it’s a war, you aren’t in 1 vs 1 fights. You can always attack somoene that don’t expect it.

True but you just had to re-hide instantly. There was no cooldown or anything.

I will give it to you that Rangers are borked.

It is also true that the more players the easier it is for a Thief to stealth due to zerg mentality. This isn’t usually true of 5 or 10 man guild group though.

To your main question though. I really enjoy fighting other thieves. My two favorite things are hitting them while they are in stealth with C&D and countering SR with shortbow cluster-bomb/bleed spam. It’s great seeing them appear downed 15 seconds later then finishing them on the first try by using steal or shadowstep to teleport to their new location mid stomp. (btw anyone with an instant teleport can do this mesmers, guardians whatever)

I love to fight against Thieves on my Elementatlist. However, I used to hate them. I didn’t understand some of the mechanics, their predictable engagement patterns, or how the stealth skills chained together.

So a rolled a thief. I leveled him to 80. I learned how each of the skills work, their strengths and weaknesses. I played a ton of WvW and saw who I could/could not engage. What are the tactics when engaging 1v1? What are the tactics when engaging 1v2+? How does a D/D play differently from a P/D or a S/D?

With the learning experiment complete, I’m back on my Ele. Thieves are a tasty for my D/D. I have to handle each different weapon set a little differently, but it boils down to superior CC, superior sustain, and the ability to easily hit invisible targets. As so many of my abilities are PBAoE or cone, I don’t care if the Thief stealthed, he’s still taking most of my damage.

So yes, I love fighting against Thieves. I love stomping them into the ground, especially if when they get downed while stealthed. It adds a little bit of an extra smile that they lost while supposedly safe.

so someone posts a top player vs some thief and all of a sudden thieves are fine and we should all play like pros.

Problem is the skill cap on a thief is extremely low, you can spam 1 button against most players and win 9 times out of 10, or burst someone down within seconds while stealthed. Every thief video I see has nothing on that necro video, or the isocat videos. There you see them adjusting and trying to combat the thieves extreme damage, thieves just stealth then reopen, rinse and repeat. They barely react to things since they are the ones dominating the fight.

lol.

@Mike Smith

You didn’t have to play a lvl 80 thief to counter them. DD Elem can prolly just breeze thru them. My friend laught each time a thief try to burst him down. DD Elem are the best counter to thief, which also make them the new FotM.

@Stiv

Those poor Ranger And that why once they debug Necro Minions, they will still be kittened. Since half the population of WvW are thief, you have to build for them.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Mike Smith

You didn’t have to play a lvl 80 thief to counter them. DD Elem can prolly just breeze thru them. My friend laught each time a thief try to burst him down. DD Elem are the best counter to thief, which also make them the new FotM.

@Stiv

Those poor Ranger And that why once they debug Necro Minions, they will still be kittened. Since half the population of WvW are thief, you have to build for them.

I probably didn’t have to. It was fun, though, and gave me great insight into the class. Now I have both a Thief and an Elementalist at 80, giving me additional options.

I had a 5+ min fight vs a warrior the other day and it was a blast. I had a 5 + min fight vs a thief it was horrid.
More and more thieves are specing for stealth now and I don’t blame them. It’s the same reason why I spec bunker as ele. But I bet it’s more fun to fight a bunker ele you can’t catch than a thief you can’t see.