Guild Wars 2

Kovu.7560:

Siphon.8405:

Very very strong, I simply had to run because after slapped 50% of my health off me I was left with several conditions still to deal with.

Wow was he unstoppable.

I think that’s why a lot of people in this thread are irritated. Thieves can simply disengage if they meet their hard counter. The same is not true for other professions outside of warriors, mesmers and to a lesser extent engineers & rangers.
If necros get put in a tough situation, they’re SoL.

~ Kovu

Them disengaging is not the issue, all classes have a measure of disengage, the problem is the absurd on demand damage with impunity and the UNLIMITED ON DEMAND DISENGAGES.

Like its been said above, it takes no skill to play a thief and there is no fighting a thief.

Risk reward, implies risk, unlimited on demand disengages, remove Risk from the equation.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Zenith.7301:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Apolo.5942:

Thief on demand damage and on demand engage and disengage are just stupid, they can have 1 not both.

Tell that to Warrior, Druid,Mesmer, and a lesser extent Revenant.

Druid requires a resource build up, which is also ruined by reveal as CA has a cooldown unlike black powder>hs. Druid’s only gap creator is either staff 3 or greatsword 3 (and they rarely run both), so you get a 800 leap with travel time that also doesn’t break stuns.

More importantly, druid has garbage damage compared to thief, the burst damage isn’t even comparable outside a rapid fire which is not only a channeled ability that’s easily dodged or interrupted or reflected, but forces them into a weapon with no mobility or good defenses (knockback shot is easy to dodge as ever with the indicator and cast time).

Revenant can’t disengage from fights at all, don’t know what fantasy you’re trying to concoct here. It is one of the worst classes for roaming because it has no tools whatsoever to run away short of having a mob nearby they can phase traversal to.

Mesmer is not even comparable to thief because all you need to do to a condi mesmer is kite the clones and him. Mesmer has no chasing potential. It’s got a 30 sec cf blink with shorter range than shadow step and that’s as far as they can chase. Staff and scepter clones cannot hit fleeing targets as they interrupt their animations to chase and shatters need melee proximity.

Thief and warriors are the only classes that have ridiculous burst on top of immense disengage and chase potential.

You can run away from mesmers, engineers, guardians, necromancers, and druids; you cannot run away from thieves or warriors because they’re the classes with the best mobility in the game on top of the best spike damage power builds

Hmm easily able to due high Burst with Druid you must not be playing it right, and Staff along with Stealth from CA allow for great mobility and Disengage, don’t know what world you are living in, and yes Rev can Disengage using Skills like Phase Traversal and so on if you can’t think of ways to use the classes tools to benefit in any situation isn’t my fault, ( the two classes I play in WvW are Rev and Thief) and again that’s why I said to a lesser extent Revenants since they require targets or using skills other than Phase Traversal to Disengage.

And I guess you have never seen a decent Chronomancer, depending on the skill and build they can Disengage extremely well as well as Provide decent damage between Mimic, Blink, Continuum Split, and Phase Retreat on top of Stealth. Again it just takes skill and Class knowledge to make use of these resources.

again not my problem if you don’t know how to utilize these classes to their potential and outside the box.

all of those classes allow for braindead gameplay as well, again every class is Op in this game currently and every last class needs to be nerfed hard.

I guess you mean condi chrono but I’m more puzzled as to why people think they will lose to a mesmer with mimic?

I mean sure you can get some good 3600 teleporting going on but if you’re going down that route portal is several magnitudes better than mimic and can be used in CS to teleport to your target when you get teleported back to the more.

He isn’t wrong about a mesmers chasing potential, it’s pretty terrible and utilising phase retreat for going forward isn’t something I see done by 99% of mesmers I’ve seen in WvW that aren’t trying to and failing to be Helseth.

Still I do think that condi stealth camping mesmer needed nerfing but so too should every classes stealth access at the same time.

ITT: People think the thief as a whole is overpowered because of D/P daredevil.

Please, when was the last time you were genuinely scared of a D/D power build, a S/D build, or just a core thief in general? Shadowstep is strong and one of the best utilities in the game. Most other thief utils, similarly to the mesmer, are just terrible. The Daredevil ones and synergy the older, crappier utilities have with Daredevil are what push the profession to craziness.

D/P is and has been conceptually busted for years. Anet keeps buffing it, and has nerfed every other set, directly, since release.

Every meta build needs drastic nerfs and reworks for the most part. The reaper’s probably in the best general balance state right now, if not even then a bit strong.

DeceiverX.8361:

ITT: People think the thief as a whole is overpowered because of D/P daredevil.

I don’t think people are only thinking of d/p daredevil. There’s been a few other complaint topics recently for things such as ghost thief, staff daredevil, and d/d condi daredevil.

DeceiverX.8361:

D/P is and has been conceptually busted for years. Anet keeps buffing it, and has nerfed every other set, directly, since release.

I agree with the busted part (stealth stacking particularly) but the buffing thing not so much. Outside of the AA buff not sure it has seen a significant buff in a long time. The ICD on Backstab was a pretty serious nerf IMO.

I think he meant indirect buffs. Way before hot d/p was either shadow arts or crit strikes. S/d used acro but they shafted that into oblivion and put most of what acro was all into daredevil and there’s the problem. Now d/p has the same sort of evade’s as what s/d use to have (not to mention pi) and so leaving every other thief build miles behind while d/p got a huge buff, the aa buff was a joke…still have no idea why they did that.

The point is. A thief can either gank someone who is at a disadvantage or run like a coward, I have to run full offensive gear on my thief to actually be effective and it dosnt take much for anyone to counter Presure a thief, we also can’t really participate in team fights unless someone is out of postion and even the acro staff build can be shut down and destroyed with 1 random stun mid brawl.

Thief isn’t that great in raids, dungeons, pve in general. It’s only good for +1 and decap in spvp it cant zerg fight or blob up like everyone else can do the only 1 good thing thief can do is roam in wvw and everyone loses their minds.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Thief isn’t that great in raids, dungeons, pve in general. It’s only good for +1 and decap in spvp it cant zerg fight or blob up like everyone else can do the only 1 good thing thief can do is roam in wvw and everyone loses their minds.

Thief is a terrible designed class. And it has no real counter in wvw. Every other class can be countered somehow.
The only thing that counters a thief is the thieves own failures or getting blown up by unforeseen random ae damage.
That’s just a real bad gamedesign.

Thief isn’t great in PvE? It is neck on neck with ele in DPS and all you have to do for that DPS is press your autoattack on staff and dodge every 5 seconds for the bounding dodge buff, while the ele actually has to perform some semblance of rotation that isn’t an autoattack.

Thief staff autoattack does more DPS than 100b and Gravedigger, how is that not busted, that a godkitten autoattack does more DPS than spamming either of those two skills?

STAFF AUTO DOES MORE DPS THAN VAULT, THAT IS ABSURD. Thief should have to spend initiative to do DPS, those autoattack buffs are beyond the pale, an initiative free attack should never eclipse initiative spenders.

Yeah with big dps numbers comes a lot of sacrifice which is why we have things like shadow step (which is also our main condi clear using meta build lol). Let’s see how this awesome high dps can face tank…say a keep lord, or even a tower lord? A thief won’t last long at all yet nearly all other class’s can solo Lords as power builds because of the self sustain from either passives or just boon over load, not to mention now that 4 stats armours are out, some of the above class’s can sit at 27-30k health, my thief has 18k with food oil and keep buff. I have seen a power warrior, a power ranger/ druid, power reaper, power mesmer and a power dh all solo lords, not seen an ele do it or a rev and definitely not a power thief. Only the Condi thief can solo a lord and that’s because it’s either the d/d evade spam or ranged p/d.

Dash DA Staff (aka no stealth no poledance no PI no accro) thief here,

Zenith.7301:

STAFF AUTO DOES MORE DPS THAN VAULT, THAT IS ABSURD. Thief should have to spend initiative to do DPS, those autoattack buffs are beyond the pale, an initiative free attack should never eclipse initiative spenders.

No, the devs said they don’t want to ini = damage equation but the ini = utility (aka rupt/burst/port/blind/immo/whatever). ini = damage thats promote spam (see p/p) while ini = utility promotes healthier gameplay.

On AA trading thief is “strong” but I fail to see any decent player tradding AA with a thief without using any instant burst (guard), blocks (engie), immu (war), PBAoE (necro), condi bomb (mesmer) [do i really need to finish the list?] that forces the thief to create distance.

On the main topic :

And tbh the whole “stealth” thing makes me laugh, even on a stealthless build i got qq whispers about me being a stealth coward that should stop playing a chess class. Engie, druid or mesmer stealth more than me and tbh i think druid has an higher stealth uptime than most d/p thief i see in the openfield.

If you really want, you can just begin to run away when he stealth up, mobility has a cost and stealth + mobility = ressources-less thief.

BP + HS costs a huge chunk of ini (that a thief doesn’t have if he spam that “OP” headshot or that “OP” vault) and has counterplay but people are too used to spam their cc and get them dodged instead of using it at key moment. Interrupting a HS or standing into the BP (reveals 99% of the time) = thief becoming a free kill with a decent follow up.

As a final note : thief isn’t meant to play fair.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Yeah with big dps numbers comes a lot of sacrifice which is why we have things like shadow step (which is also our main condi clear using meta build lol). Let’s see how this awesome high dps can face tank…say a keep lord, or even a tower lord? A thief won’t last long at all yet nearly all other class’s can solo Lords as power builds because of the self sustain from either passives or just boon over load, not to mention now that 4 stats armours are out, some of the above class’s can sit at 27-30k health, my thief has 18k with food oil and keep buff. I have seen a power warrior, a power ranger/ druid, power reaper, power mesmer and a power dh all solo lords, not seen an ele do it or a rev and definitely not a power thief. Only the Condi thief can solo a lord and that’s because it’s either the d/d evade spam or ranged p/d.

well tbh i kill with my full berserk thief all tower / keep lords solo , tho i got to change some traits or the weapon for some. for instance for an alpine / ebg tower lord i run DA , DD, crit strikes with that heal on crits .. then i stay on max melee range ( when u see that red bar at the bottom of your skill so ur out of range but still hit) and just spamm 1, the lord dies really fast that way as i reflect his volley shots with like 15k and the bleeding shots with 30k , while i am out of range for his CC hits as they are melee

i also stealthcap enemy keep/ towers alot by going inside with enemy and staying stealthed till buff is gone, unless a full blob is chasing me with anti stealth traps i mostly get every objective. cause if only few do that with traps at least in keeps and in any desert objective u get away with shadow trap 10k range out of combat port OP

thief is superior to any other class for solo roaming, as i can stealthcap anything with my thief and can kill as far as i know every build i encounter in WvW and get away if it get too much or even annoy larger groups to pick em one by one.

i do like some other classes as well especially revenant and reaper and run em when roaming in group or zerging but for solo thief is simply the best.

my FPS drops alot when recording but i could still try recording each lord fight(wont be a pleasure to watch tho) when i next time kill em if u dont believe me, that a full berserk thief can kill these lords all solo.

ich.7086:

Dash DA Staff (aka no stealth no poledance no PI no accro) thief here,

Zenith.7301:

STAFF AUTO DOES MORE DPS THAN VAULT, THAT IS ABSURD. Thief should have to spend initiative to do DPS, those autoattack buffs are beyond the pale, an initiative free attack should never eclipse initiative spenders.

No, the devs said they don’t want to ini = damage equation but the ini = utility (aka rupt/burst/port/blind/immo/whatever). ini = damage thats promote spam (see p/p) while ini = utility promotes healthier gameplay.

Yeah, clearly spamming headshot promotes healthier gameplay when you don’t have to choose between utility and damage lolololol.

That dev decision was a total bait and switch and one of the worst design decisions in the game as we now see from the way head shot and weakening strike works out. But keep rationalizing your thief however you want.

Revenant chares energy cost on weapons, class mechanic, and utilities and elites, but somehow thief gets to be that special class that pays no resource for damage, no resource for utilities, is immune to the cooldown increase effects of chill or interrupt traits.

If you’re having problems with mesmers dodge the shatters. Alternatively, if a condi mesmer hits you, condi clear. Most people waste their dodges on attacks that do hardly any damage.

Straegen.2938:

DeceiverX.8361:

D/P is and has been conceptually busted for years. Anet keeps buffing it, and has nerfed every other set, directly, since release.

I agree with the busted part (stealth stacking particularly) but the buffing thing not so much. Outside of the AA buff not sure it has seen a significant buff in a long time. The ICD on Backstab was a pretty serious nerf IMO.

It hit D/D harder; the Daredevil was pretty much made for OH pistol and making D/P in general just better and much safer, while AA’ing was already the way to go for D/P since the init wasn’t worth the stabs, particularly in this meta.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

When will people learn every class has things broken about them? Every last one of them, has brain dead concepts baked into them mainly due to HoT. Look at every class they have multiple things that carry them through Passive Defenses, Passive CCs, Passive Sustain, to ridiculous amounts of CC , the ridiculous amounts of Invulnerabilities and the ridiculous amount of Offensive and Defensive skills.

It’s funny when people try to claim one thing is OP when everything needs a huge nerf, every class can spec to be unkillable, or to do ridiculous amounts of burst it’s not just one or two classes it is literally every class, if you think otherwise you must not know much about the game or classes.

So until every class receives the Nerf hammer nothing should be touched balance wise since there is a pseudo balance currently.

Things that need to be toned down across the board:

• Remove or severely nerf the damage on skills that provide a defensive effect.
• Stop all classes from atatcking while Invulnerable.
• Remove all Braindead passive Defenses.
• Remove all Braindead Passive CCs.
• Tone down Burst.
• Tone down the Sustain, both Active and Passive.
• Tone down Certain conditions in PvP and WvW environments Confusion and Torment by removing the passive ticks.
• Bring back class concepts and balance classes around those concepts, classes shouldn’t be able to do everything or have access to everything, more class Unique separation.
• Make Stat investment more meaningful nerf all classes baseline heals, defenses and damage.
• Require multiple stats for building offensive Burst for both Power and Condi.
• remove Braindead Passive Traits and Skills.

And a few things to note to this thread, if a Thief or Mesmer disengages and resets a fight guess what that means you are no longer in combat as well and are effectively resetting as well… mind blown right?

Classes with Burst builds like Thief and Mesmer have to put a lot into the Burst either in blowing multiple CDs or through positioning for most of the Burst.

And it’s a laughable joke that players think Steal is OP let’s see here to make it worth while it takes 3 whole traitlines, and 5 traits to make it what it is, no other Class mechanic in game requires that kind of investment, he’ll most classes get multiple skills for their class mechanics, all of which have separate CDs and do a multitude of effects from damage to CC to healing to invulnerabilities you name it.

Again right now unless they nerf every class and strip all the broken aspects they should leave balance alone since every class has a counter, every class has weaknesses, every class has a role, every class is viable in WvW.

And last but not least these classes don’t have ridiculous healing Sustain or braindead passives carrying most of them, they rely on almost exclusive Active skill use for Sustain and mitigation so crying about stealth which doesn’t stop damage and can be revealed by a multitude of classes and skills either reactively or proactively, while other classes can run around invulnerable that can’t be removed… kinda hypocritical.

I like your points…

I would like to add as well that most people forget that thief was designed to be a DUELIST. It is the very reason that they are quickly replaced in PvE/Raids/Fractals and ohh god hear the outcries if you have 2 thieves in sPvP. Double any other class in sPvP and nobody says a word….

I would add as well that in WvW nobody readily accepts thieves into there blob groups and if they do its only because it is off hours and they need more bodies for the fire. Not because thieves have anything valuable to add to the group via heals/boons.

Many classes by design are intended for strong group play and are really good at it. The thief is not

People seem to not want to accept that there build is being countered in WvW. Thieves by design are Alpha Predators in WvW. It is where they shine, capturing camps, cutting off small groups, harassing enemies. ASSASSINS if you will ROAMING is what the thief is best at…

Siphon.8405:

People seem to not want to accept that there build is being countered in WvW. Thieves by design are Alpha Predators in WvW. It is where they shine, capturing camps, cutting off small groups, harassing enemies. ASSASSINS if you will ROAMING is what the thief is best at…

Best and Over Powered are not the same concept. Over Powered is by default the Best. The Best needs not be Over Powered.

The goal is to create fun gameplay for both roaming thieves and other players.

This means the other player needs to feel that they have a chance to win the fight. If the other player can never kill the thief even if they’re winning the fight, they’ll just be frustrated and bored.

When I meet a non-thief class roaming, I know the two of us are going to have an exciting duel to the death. If either of us tries to flee, the other can reasonably give chase and use cc abilities to stop the runner.

When I meet a thief, I don’t want to fight because we might have an exciting duel for a few seconds, but I can’t win unless I happen to burst them 100-0 before they can teleport away. They’ll just keep escaping to 10k range, then return until I make a mistake or my cooldowns are up. This is pretty lame, so I leave. Now neither of us are having fun.

Apolo.5942:

Siphon.8405:

People seem to not want to accept that there build is being countered in WvW. Thieves by design are Alpha Predators in WvW. It is where they shine, capturing camps, cutting off small groups, harassing enemies. ASSASSINS if you will ROAMING is what the thief is best at…

Best and Over Powered are not the same concept. Over Powered is by default the Best. The Best needs not be Over Powered.

If Thieves were as OP and unkillable then everyone would run them, yet it is the complete opposite more people run Guardians/Revenants/Eles/Necros in WvW. Go figure right?!

Again all classes are OP currently everything is overtuned and everything needs to be nerfed hard. Until that happens then it’s just people whining because their OP class got killed

In my previous post date stated what would be needed to be removed and nerd for helping gameplay to exist in this game will happen probably not

Siphon.8405:

Thieves by design are Alpha Predators in WvW.

Not really, there was no “design in WvW”, they built the combat and classes around their “e-sport” and in alpha they pretty much ignored WvW & PvE players in relation to combat, whilst hanging on the words of Teldo and friends on what needed to be changed.

They then spent 3 years balancing around virtually nothing but PvP, and since HoT only really PvE raids have been added to the balance consideration in any meanigful sense, WvW is still basically ignored other than the odd crumb thrown its way.

Which is why WvW in every aspect from roaming, to guild raids, to blobs has been a total joke in terms of balance since day 1.

As for thieves not being wanted in blob groups that is true, and a fine example of the non-existent balance in the WvW (but then neither are engies or rangers, and for the two mesmers a blob might want, they want 20 guards, hardly balance is it), but regardless, two wrongs don’t make a right.

When it comes to roaming thief breaks a pretty basic rule of PvP – risk vs reward, if a class lets a player screw up, get outplayed, etc and not be punished for that, because you can disengage most times, then that is absolutely broken (and is of course why thief has always been so popular as a roamer, it is ez-mode), that it is unwanted in blobs doesn’t justify that in any way.

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

..all class is broken when play full dire/trailblazer not just thief/mesmer.

Reverence.6915:

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I’d disagree. It has a massive telegraph and rarely lands, it’s more of a get-lucky ability unless they steal to you with basi-venom and you don’t have a way to get out of it.

On the contrary, Surge of the Mists does massive damage, cc, evade, and has no telegraph. Yet, people don’t complain about it now (although it’s damage was halved? In sPvP).

HoneyBadger.5691:

Reverence.6915:

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I’d disagree. It has a massive telegraph and rarely lands, it’s more of a get-lucky ability unless they steal to you with basi-venom and you don’t have a way to get out of it.

On the contrary, Surge of the Mists does massive damage, cc, evade, and has no telegraph. Yet, people don’t complain about it now (although it’s damage was halved? In sPvP).

Whether it’s telegraphed or not isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that the skill itself is overloaded. Heck, most staff DDs I come across now use it as an evade/mobility skill rather than a damage skill, basically resulting in no way to lock them down with their 3 base evades + weapon evades + sigil of energy procs.

Surge of the Mists was nerfed for the exact same reason. I don’t see why Vault can’t get the same treatment.

Zenith.7301:

Yeah, clearly spamming headshot promotes healthier gameplay when you don’t have to choose between utility and damage lolololol.

That dev decision was a total bait and switch and one of the worst design decisions in the game as we now see from the way head shot and weakening strike works out. But keep rationalizing your thief however you want.

Headshot+PI spam punish spammer in every case. If you spam againt a headshot+PI spammer, you are punished. If you don’t, he is punished because it dumps initiative so fast since it costs 4 ini. I think punishing spam promotes healthy gameplay. And ofc, if he isn’t spamming but interrupting key skills, he is rewarded for the skill needed to interrupt key skills.

And you merged headshot with PI, headshot is a skill that follows the ini = utility (here utility is daze) rule (headshot damage is trash) and PI is a trait (not subject to the ini = utility rule) that reward interrupt like all of those (power block on zerk should do about the same as PI if it crits, warrior confusion can do more damage too and both classes have plenty of interrupts available).

Wtf you have with weakening strikes, it’s a trait there is no relationship with the dev decision which target the weapon skills. If you speak about weakening charge (#2 staff), I think you picked the worst skill in the staff which one of the few (if not the only) use case is to be combo’ed with steal.

Thief design is basicly an unfair fighter that can’t take the battle heat but use its active defenses and mobility to go in and out and is highly prone to get killed in well-timed burst (just look at the original design of Hard to Catch). By making ini = utility that means that if you want to make damage (aka AA) you have to use your ini to either punish people for being bad (PI/Vault) or lock them to prevent retailation (blind/daze/stun) or out-mobility (gap closer/stealth/port). Once you understand that, you understand how to counter a thief. But ofc you can try to fight against classes withtout rationalizing and thus don’t understand what you fight but that’s not the most effective way to win.

Zenith.7301:

Revenant chares energy cost on weapons, class mechanic, and utilities and elites, but somehow thief gets to be that special class that pays no resource for damage, no resource for utilities, is immune to the cooldown increase effects of chill or interrupt traits.

Rev got an energy reset on legend swap, thief got no class mechanic reset.
Rev got no energy management trait nor skill, thief got some (and some of them are nearly mandatory).
Rev can buffer energy, thief can’t.
Rev has 2 utility bars, thief has one.
There are completly different designs, either having strengths and weaknesses. Apples and orange.

Chill works on utility skills. Utility skills have the same ressource has any other class of the game except rev : time.
Thief pays a ressource for damage : its cooldowns and initiative. But not to actually do damage (most of the time utility skill does not damage at all) but to survive the counterpressure because as a thief you can’t expect to AA someone and get away with it.
Interrupting a thief weapon skill still deplete ini, the global cooldwon applies while other class doesn’t suffer from this. Let’s say you interrupt a scrapper hammer #5. He got kitten cd on that skill but can use everything else not on cooldown. But if you interrupt a Black Power, thief got a 6s cooldown which can prevent him to use some skills. The only interrupt effect thief is immune to is the cooldown increase one.

Reverence.6915:

Surge of the Mists was nerfed for the exact same reason. I don’t see why Vault can’t get the same treatment.

Old SoTM did mobility, damage, cc and evade.
Vault does mobility, damage and evade.
Now SoTM does mobility, cc and evade.

See a pattern ?

SotM probably does more damage than Vault in WvW since it wasn’t nerfed here (as far as I know, can still 100 —> 0 thief/ele with it alone).

Reverence.6915:

HoneyBadger.5691:

Reverence.6915:

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I’d disagree. It has a massive telegraph and rarely lands, it’s more of a get-lucky ability unless they steal to you with basi-venom and you don’t have a way to get out of it.

On the contrary, Surge of the Mists does massive damage, cc, evade, and has no telegraph. Yet, people don’t complain about it now (although it’s damage was halved? In sPvP).

Whether it’s telegraphed or not isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that the skill itself is overloaded. Heck, most staff DDs I come across now use it as an evade/mobility skill rather than a damage skill, basically resulting in no way to lock them down with their 3 base evades + weapon evades + sigil of energy procs.

Surge of the Mists was nerfed for the exact same reason. I don’t see why Vault can’t get the same treatment.

It could probably use some amount of damage nerf, but not the nerf hammer that was SotM in sPvP.

Anyone complaining about thief being OP should play one. I made one and they are are one of the harder to play classes for sure. Most people in this thread are 100% correct that they have heaps of mobility and the ability to reset fights but that is really all they have. Thieves are vultures. They can kill weakened players but cant really go toe to toe with someone on high hp and cool downs up. If you concentrate and l2p you can generally survive them and if they are noob/greedy you can kill them. They die very easily… Just dont bother trying to catch them if they escape. Its a waste of time. Honestly just make one, or go try one in spvp. You learn how to play against them better and probably gain respect for people who play them well.

HoneyBadger.5691:

Reverence.6915:

In regards to thief, their Vault skill is way too overloaded, combining damage, mobility AND evade all into 1 skill that can be spammed 3 times before you run out of initiative. Besides that and their perma stealth trapper build, thieves are fine.

I’d disagree. It has a massive telegraph and rarely lands, it’s more of a get-lucky ability unless they steal to you with basi-venom and you don’t have a way to get out of it.

On the contrary, Surge of the Mists does massive damage, cc, evade, and has no telegraph. Yet, people don’t complain about it now (although it’s damage was halved? In sPvP).

Surge of the mist is also on a weapon whose only damage is surge of the mist because its autoattack hits for 60% less than thief staff auto.

Surge also is not a reliable aoe skill unlike vault, and it can only be used once every 20 seconds.

Surge is also on a class with only 2 dodged and who only heals if you hit them, their other heal either being a delayed heal with shiro so it’s not a burst heal or Jalis heal.

Surge of the mist isn’t also 1 shotting a thief unless it’s a zerker revenant (aka a free kill, rvenant on zerker dies almost as quickly as thief) and one didn’t stunbreak out of it and dodge.

Rev staff was not meant to be a dps weapon, it’s a support weaponset. Comparing thief staff dps and rev staff dps has the same value as comparing fire auto and water auto on staff ele.

ich.7086:

Rev staff was not meant to be a dps weapon, it’s a support weaponset. Comparing thief staff dps and rev staff dps has the same value as comparing fire auto and water auto on staff ele.

A support weaponset you’re stuck in for 10 seconds, meaning if you use a weapon for for staff 3 and 5 because the other skills and the auto are garbage, you’re sitting in 10 seconds of doing virtually no pressure whatsoever.

Conveniently all of the thief support setups also include massive autoattack damage. Whether it is the blind, weakening, or evasion in the thief staff, or the black powder, headshot support utilities included in thief weapons. Dagger, sword, staff all have support/utility features. If you want to include shortbow, it’s one of the better ranged weapons in the game.

It’s so dishonest of you to even sit here and pretend that a thief understands what it is to sacrifice damage for support/utility.

Revenant needs staff for block/CC, when thieves get evasion and CC built into their main damaging weapons.

What’s more, revenant staff skills cost outrageous amounts of energy on top of having now lengthy cooldowns unlike thief whose initiative management is far mroe easily regenerated, but the costs are so cheap you can head shot or vault three times in a row.

Zenith.7301:

A support weaponset you’re stuck in for 10 seconds, meaning if you use a weapon for for staff 3 and 5 because the other skills and the auto are garbage, you’re sitting in 10 seconds of doing virtually no pressure whatsoever.

Like thief being locked out of his main weaponset when he switch to shortbow for mobility. Or a druid locked out of LB because he is on staff and he needs a quick CC/Burst. Or a war stuck in GS when needed a shield bloc. Like in fact every other classes in the game except engie ?

Zenith.7301:

Conveniently all of the thief support setups also include massive autoattack damage. Whether it is the blind, weakening, or evasion in the thief staff, or the black powder, headshot support utilities included in thief weapons. Dagger, sword, staff all have support/utility features. If you want to include shortbow, it’s one of the better ranged weapons in the game.

I don’t think we have the same definition of support. Support is something that increase your allies prowness. Thief support consisted of : blast spam with SB, stealth, venomshare and a few buffs with steal.

I lol’ed @shortbow.

Zenith.7301:

It’s so dishonest of you to even sit here and pretend that a thief understands what it is to sacrifice damage for support/utility.

Roll a thief and face people that understand how the thief works.

Zenith.7301:

Revenant needs staff for block/CC, when thieves get evasion and CC built into their main damaging weapons.

Rev got evasion (sword #3) and block (shield #5) or CC (axe #5) in their main damaging set (sword/shield or sword/axe depending of preferences).

Zenith.7301:

What’s more, revenant staff skills cost outrageous amounts of energy on top of having now lengthy cooldowns unlike thief whose initiative management is far mroe easily regenerated,

A staff thief skill bar costs 16 ini aka 16 seconds of recovery. A rev staff skill bar costs 55 energy aka 11 seconds of recovery.

Zenith.7301:

but the costs are so cheap you can head shot or vault three times in a row.

If rev got no cd, he could use SoTM 4 times in a row starting from 50%, not even speaking of if starting from 100%. It’s not the low costs, it’s the lack of cd that allows things like the legendary poledancer or headshot+PI spam.

The thing is : if someone 3 vault you, he is naked. If a rev dump all its energy, he legend swap. As I said, totally different ressources design leading to different strengths and weaknesses.

Zenith.7301:

ich.7086:

Rev staff was not meant to be a dps weapon, it’s a support weaponset. Comparing thief staff dps and rev staff dps has the same value as comparing fire auto and water auto on staff ele.

A support weaponset you’re stuck in for 10 seconds, meaning if you use a weapon for for staff 3 and 5 because the other skills and the auto are garbage, you’re sitting in 10 seconds of doing virtually no pressure whatsoever.

This is not an excuse to have SotM be a highly damaging attack. Support weapons should be just that, support. Its a conscious decision to switch to them for the support that they bring, and being stuck in that set for 10 seconds is a balance decision. Support weapons should not be dealing high damage period.

Can we stop with the “staff was supposed to be support” bs lmfao? Stop pretending like we can’t have the good skill SotM is because staff has a super telegraphed 1.4k heal and conditions cleanse and 200 HP healing “orbs” on auto. The support is crap, the damage other than Surge is crap, and even then Surge requires a perfectly aimed hit to fully connect. 9/10 Surges will hit less than 4k in WvW due to desync or half competent players not standing still and taking it since even moderate strafing is likely to kitten most of the damage.

It’s hilarious watching everyone compare it to Vault and how Surge is now “balanced” in PvP because it does no damage. Meanwhile vault does not have a 20 second CD and is 1 billion times easier to hit with the EZ ground marker. I’ve hit vaults and bounds twice as hard as post nerf SotM in PvP.

Should we even bring essence sap into this?

Hmm, barely any talk about the mesmer side of the topic, but plenty of discussion about thieves. There’s a little bit about revenant too, but just as a backdrop to the discussion of thief. I wonder what it means when a profession is called out for being imbalanced along with another, but the other one is completely forgotten.

Clownmug.8357:

Hmm, barely any talk about the mesmer side of the topic, but plenty of discussion about thieves. There’s a little bit about revenant too, but just as a backdrop to the discussion of thief. I wonder what it means when a profession is called out for being imbalanced along with another, but the other one is completely forgotten.

Mesmer for the most part is less of a problem in WvW these days because of being oppressed by thief. Power shatter is pretty kitten overall. Condition shatter, I can handle them easy on dash pulm d/p. Don’t even need condition cleanse with the 5s of resistance with improv.

Mesmer vs that acro staff cancer though, don’t even bother.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Mesmer for the most part is less of a problem in WvW these days because of being oppressed by thief. Power shatter is pretty kitten overall. Condition shatter, I can handle them easy on dash pulm d/p. Don’t even need condition cleanse with the 5s of resistance with improv.

Mesmer vs that acro staff cancer though, don’t even bother.

It’s good that you’re a skilled enough player to handle condi chrono. That one build, and the occassional instagib from power shatter, are probably the only reasons mesmer got included in this topic.

Condi shatter is a lot easier to handle then the older pu non chrono as a thief tbh.

Are people claiming thief it self is op or jus d/p? I sometimes see power d/d and s/d but they don’t get much hate at all.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Condi shatter is a lot easier to handle then the older pu non chrono as a thief tbh.

Are people claiming thief it self is op or jus d/p? I sometimes see power d/d and s/d but they don’t get much hate at all.

D/D is mostly a one trick pony with not a whole lot going on outside of a “teleport onto a guy with precast C&D and backstab” sure it’s an instagib on anything remotely squishy if you can’t see them but that’s about it. By can’t see them I mean someone who is hiding round a corner to teleport or in a small scale fight where you don’t know it’s D/D yet.

S/D I honestly have only seen maybe 3 thieves in WvW running S/D since HoT so have no idea tbh.

The rest of the dislike comes from how apart from shadowstep thieves have very low cool downs on thier skills. Adding on the ability to be immune to all soft CC and get away from absolutely everything except another thief or druid longbow if they start rapid fire at close range as they try to run. It’s like a lot of other HoT specs there’s very little risk and a lot of reward vs anything that has moderate to high risk.

This is from a power shatter perspective though where even 0.5s lapse in attention will mean death. There’s just so little risk in the meta builds now vs non meta and all classes suffer, it’s especially hilarious seeing people act like berserker, DH, scrapper and rev are not part of the problem.

Nono, them class’s are perfectly balaced because they are fed with a lot of passives.

Ranger longbow isn’t really an issue for thieves. Between shadowstep & evade gap creators any rapid fire burst tends to be just about mitigated. The ranger won’t be chasing without swapping to either staff or greatsword, the former of which has no burst and the latter won’t catch a running thief.
These days I’m only able to kill thieves if I make them think I’m vulnerable when they’re >half health so they engage and I can sometimes murder them.

I actually really enjoy fights with shatter mesmers — even when I lose. Dodging those shatters is ever so satisfying.

~ Kovu

Mesmers can’t chase anyways. A thief can escape 2-3+ people, a mesmer only has a 30 sec blink and long cd stealth to disengage, while having little access to teleports outside blink. It’s easy to catch and overrun a mesmer.

A mesmer can’t chase disengaging targets. If you don’t want to fight a condi chrono or power shatter, you just turn the other way and run — they won’t catch you. Mesmer greatsword does garbage damage without the phantasm connecting a hit, and illusionary blade is a hilariously slow projectile.

ileap is a 600 range delayed skill that relies on a stupid AI clone to keep up with a running target, which is why the skill is so bad outside melee range as a gap closer to begin with.

You only lose to condi chrono if you stay and choose to die to them.

You do not get to choose to disengage from thief. Thief has the best chase and disengage tools all in one in the game, alongside the best burst and interrupts.

Zenith.7301:

A mesmer can’t chase disengaging targets. If you don’t want to fight a condi chrono or power shatter, you just turn the other way and run — they won’t catch you.

Do they really need to catch you when you are running with 15 confusion stacks, 10 torment stacks and 3-4 other assorted conditions?

Serious question.

No really.

Dawdler.8521:

Zenith.7301:

A mesmer can’t chase disengaging targets. If you don’t want to fight a condi chrono or power shatter, you just turn the other way and run — they won’t catch you.

Do they really need to catch you when you are running with 15 confusion stacks, 10 torment stacks and 3-4 other assorted conditions?

Serious question.

No really.

If you have all those it’s because you were stupid enough to stay and eat a bunch of shatters and must have landed several of them again considering you wasted a condi cleanse before the disengage.

The only way mesmer can apply torment is through shatter and scepter block or unless you stayed for long enough for him to use his 3 chain auto slow arcing projectile on you THREE times to summon 3 illusions so his third autoattack would apply torment with max illusions up, or about 10+ seconds.

15 confusion stacks means you, again, ate a set of shatters and didn’t dodge through the obvious confusing images 2 second channel beam.

You really rolled your face into all of his damage for no reason whatsoever.

It’s about as kittenomeone complaining about dying to ranger traps. It’s plainly avoidable damage with clear delays and requires melee range to maximize.

Zenith.7301:

It’s plainly avoidable damage with clear delays and requires melee range to maximize.

I have to remember to whisper that to people when they die in 4s to my blowtorch. Because surely that meant they sucked and I am awesome at burns.

Dawdler.8521:

Zenith.7301:

It’s plainly avoidable damage with clear delays and requires melee range to maximize.

I have to remember to whisper that to people when they die in 4s to my blowtorch. Because surely that meant they sucked and I am awesome at burns.

You don’t get to pretend avoidable, well telegraphed delayed attacks are somehow unavoidable.

You’re picking the wrong example for a spike condi class anyways, you would want to bring up the old magnet confusion engineer before the WvW confusion nerfs.

Short of burn guard in HoT, no condi class is capable of chasing you down and gibbing you with condi.

Druid, thief, power warriors are the more popular roamers for a reason. Even if they’re not the best duelist classes, they can apply hit and run burst pretty effectively and disengage at will.

Zenith.7301:

Dawdler.8521:

Zenith.7301:

A mesmer can’t chase disengaging targets. If you don’t want to fight a condi chrono or power shatter, you just turn the other way and run — they won’t catch you.

Do they really need to catch you when you are running with 15 confusion stacks, 10 torment stacks and 3-4 other assorted conditions?

Serious question.

No really.

If you have all those it’s because you were stupid enough to stay and eat a bunch of shatters and must have landed several of them again considering you wasted a condi cleanse before the disengage.

The only way mesmer can apply torment is through shatter and scepter block or unless you stayed for long enough for him to use his 3 chain auto slow arcing projectile on you THREE times to summon 3 illusions so his third autoattack would apply torment with max illusions up, or about 10+ seconds.

15 confusion stacks means you, again, ate a set of shatters and didn’t dodge through the obvious confusing images 2 second channel beam.

You really rolled your face into all of his damage for no reason whatsoever.

It’s about as kittenomeone complaining about dying to ranger traps. It’s plainly avoidable damage with clear delays and requires melee range to maximize.

Small correction, but every skill in the scepter auto chain applies torment, not just the third one. But I agree with you that they won’t get any meaningful torment stacks out of just autoattacking. To get meaningful amount of torment stacks would require the use of shatters or scepter 2

zinkz.7045:

Everything is broken in WvW…

OR everything is working as intended. Prospective.

apharma.3741:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Condi shatter is a lot easier to handle then the older pu non chrono as a thief tbh.

Are people claiming thief it self is op or jus d/p? I sometimes see power d/d and s/d but they don’t get much hate at all.

D/D is mostly a one trick pony with not a whole lot going on outside of a “teleport onto a guy with precast C&D and backstab” sure it’s an instagib on anything remotely squishy if you can’t see them but that’s about it. By can’t see them I mean someone who is hiding round a corner to teleport or in a small scale fight where you don’t know it’s D/D yet.

S/D I honestly have only seen maybe 3 thieves in WvW running S/D since HoT so have no idea tbh.

The rest of the dislike comes from how apart from shadowstep thieves have very low cool downs on thier skills. Adding on the ability to be immune to all soft CC and get away from absolutely everything except another thief or druid longbow if they start rapid fire at close range as they try to run. It’s like a lot of other HoT specs there’s very little risk and a lot of reward vs anything that has moderate to high risk.

This is from a power shatter perspective though where even 0.5s lapse in attention will mean death. There’s just so little risk in the meta builds now vs non meta and all classes suffer, it’s especially hilarious seeing people act like berserker, DH, scrapper and rev are not part of the problem.

Same for everything though. D/P Daredevil and to some extent staff are pretty overloaded while the rest of the thief is straight garbage being a gimmick at best unless there’s a serious skill disparity.

Utility cooldowns are pretty standard outside of the Daredevil ones which are just absurdly low for whatever reason, though this is the case with every elite. Understand that the mesmer has pretty high cooldowns but its utilities are also typically much stronger per cast as stand-alone abilities. BV’s probably one of the big exceptions in regards to low-cooldown utilities, but depending on the matchup it can have more/less impact than others.

It pretty much comes down to stealth stacking and ease-of-play on the elites, though.

If only these people claiming low risk and ease of play on thief would ACTUALLY play a thief. These threads would die pretty quick. It’s not that you don’t like fighting thieves, you don’t like fighting good players playing thieves. You’d still be whining if the same players were playing any other class they mastered…

Ugh grow up and realize you’re not as skilled as you think you are. :/