Guild Wars 2

Straegen.2938:

The thief mostly sucks at large group play, sPvP, dueling, PvE and GvG. It is marginal in skirmish. So the plan would be to gut its scouting and roaming capability? Basically remove its ability to decap in sPvP.

Thieves are so far down the totem pole now any changes to their mobility would effectively eliminate the class from play. Even more so gutting the SB teleport would turn an already pathetic weapon into a complete piece of trash much like they have already done to D/D, S/D and P/P.

Luckily for Karl thief players the “balance” team would never let that happen. So you don’t have to worry about some nonsense like adding a cooldown, then also bumping up the initiative cost a few months later.

Josh XT.6053:

See, I disagree. There are just so many bad thief players that rely heavily on 2 shotting people and if that doesn’t work, they rely on their their mobility and stealth to get away. I’m not going to act like I’m any kind of expert thief player, but I’ve met some good ones and they don’t need to heavily rely on mobility or stealth to win fights.

Two shotting a decent player just doesn’t happen much any more. Most thieves that rely on hit/run are only good at killing other glassy thieves, +1 a fight or culling zerglings headed to the herd. Contrast this to the actually powerful meta classes in the game that drop massive AoE, CC or bunker/buff everything around them.

I don’t disagree that mobility is powerful. However it is no less so than dropping 20 stacks of might, regen, protection and near constant condi clears on 5 players. Being able to block, invuln, block, invuln, stealth constantly in a fight.

At the end of the day what is the typical thief KDR… probably a lot less than guardians, warriors, heralds, necros, mesmers, etc.

Clownmug.8357:

Straegen.2938:

The thief mostly sucks at large group play, sPvP, dueling, PvE and GvG. It is marginal in skirmish. So the plan would be to gut its scouting and roaming capability? Basically remove its ability to decap in sPvP.

Thieves are so far down the totem pole now any changes to their mobility would effectively eliminate the class from play. Even more so gutting the SB teleport would turn an already pathetic weapon into a complete piece of trash much like they have already done to D/D, S/D and P/P.

Luckily for Karl thief players the “balance” team would never let that happen. So you don’t have to worry about some nonsense like adding a cooldown, then also bumping up the initiative cost a few months later.

Oh, you’re talking about PT, the skill with 1200 range, good damage, and unblockable attacks that now requires 7s of energy regen. IA has less than 900 range (arrow travel time effectively reduces range), no other noteworthy effects, and requires 6s of init regen.

If a rev chases a thief and all they do is run and use IA or PT, the rev will gain over 21 distance on the thief per second (average). Thieves can only escape if they spam dash and use steal on ambients to widen the gap.

Maybe we could get a poll about whether to get rid of stealth in WvW. That would improve WvW more than any pop balance attempts or scoring changes.

Straegen.2938:

Josh XT.6053:

See, I disagree. There are just so many bad thief players that rely heavily on 2 shotting people and if that doesn’t work, they rely on their their mobility and stealth to get away. I’m not going to act like I’m any kind of expert thief player, but I’ve met some good ones and they don’t need to heavily rely on mobility or stealth to win fights.

Two shotting a decent player just doesn’t happen much any more. Most thieves that rely on hit/run are only good at killing other glassy thieves, +1 a fight or culling zerglings headed to the herd. Contrast this to the actually powerful meta classes in the game that drop massive AoE, CC or bunker/buff everything around them.

I don’t disagree that mobility is powerful. However it is no less so than dropping 20 stacks of might, regen, protection and near constant condi clears on 5 players. Being able to block, invuln, block, invuln, stealth constantly in a fight.

At the end of the day what is the typical thief KDR… probably a lot less than guardians, warriors, heralds, necros, mesmers, etc.

The thief KDR is probably not great because they spend more time running away than killing anything unless they’re jumping in on a 1v1 or something like that, which I see a lot lol.

So since the Tuesday patch my game has pretty much gone to kitten, I’ve had a huge fps drop and and my right click turning is unreliable as hell. And yet I still have no problem fighting thieves. On Tuesday I killed 1 on my engi without moving at all, I just rotated blocks, blinds, dodges, stealth, invuln, cc, and aoe to kill him. This was on my alt account which doesn’t have HoT.
I’ve easily wrecked them on necro, ranger, mesmer, and today I won several 1v2’s on a warrior build that I’d been playing for about 5 minutes.
If I can do this on multiple classes without being able to reliably turn, I have to wonder what it is you all are running that you are crying about thieves killing you. Are you playing some full glass, backline zerg build and not sticking with the zerg? I think the only time I do have trouble fighting thieves is if I’m running a glass thief (because I’m a pretty mediocre thief) or if I’m on a staff ele zerg build (which I almost never play).
There are so many passive and active save your kitten skills in the game it is pretty much impossible to be insta killed without having a chance to react.
This really is a l2p issue.

Puck.9612:

So since the Tuesday patch my game has pretty much gone to kitten, I’ve had a huge fps drop and and my right click turning is unreliable as hell. And yet I still have no problem fighting thieves. On Tuesday I killed 1 on my engi without moving at all, I just rotated blocks, blinds, dodges, stealth, invuln, cc, and aoe to kill him. This was on my alt account which doesn’t have HoT.
I’ve easily wrecked them on necro, ranger, mesmer, and today I won several 1v2’s on a warrior build that I’d been playing for about 5 minutes.
If I can do this on multiple classes without being able to reliably turn, I have to wonder what it is you all are running that you are crying about thieves killing you. Are you playing some full glass, backline zerg build and not sticking with the zerg? I think the only time I do have trouble fighting thieves is if I’m running a glass thief (because I’m a pretty mediocre thief) or if I’m on a staff ele zerg build (which I almost never play).
There are so many passive and active save your kitten skills in the game it is pretty much impossible to be insta killed without having a chance to react.
This really is a l2p issue.

To be fair aren’t you one of the top roamers in the game?

Is it a L2p issue? Yes and No.

Yes. That group was “tested”. Meaning, the Thieves poked at your group and got a sloppy enough response that they felt they could wear your group down, e.i, someone was super squishy, poor CC/burst/cleave, slow reaction, overextending etc . In a 2v6, the 2 should at the very least be forced to retreat because no progress was being made.

No. Thieves now have a ton of evades lumped on top of some stealth options (not sure if they needed a block or even an evade on a skill like Vault but hey /shrug). If you actually kill a DD in a small fight, its because they messed up bad. The elite specs in general are overtuned but at least most others have to commit because they can’t reset fights as easily, if at all.

Josh XT.6053:

The thief KDR is probably not great because they spend more time running away than killing anything unless they’re jumping in on a 1v1 or something like that, which I see a lot lol.

The KDR isn’t great because the game has changed to strong bunker, heavy AoE and prolific CC of which the thief has access to virtually none of. The entire class has been neutered out of almost every facet of the game.

Complaining about a class that is effective in one narrow portion of the game and virtually non-existent effectively in others just doesn’t make sense to me. As it currently sits, the Dare Devil is marginal at best. Those who play it very well are indeed dangerous but those same players are just as lethal if not more so in other classes.

Johje Holan.4607:

Puck.9612:

So since the Tuesday patch my game has pretty much gone to kitten, I’ve had a huge fps drop and and my right click turning is unreliable as hell. And yet I still have no problem fighting thieves. On Tuesday I killed 1 on my engi without moving at all, I just rotated blocks, blinds, dodges, stealth, invuln, cc, and aoe to kill him. This was on my alt account which doesn’t have HoT.
I’ve easily wrecked them on necro, ranger, mesmer, and today I won several 1v2’s on a warrior build that I’d been playing for about 5 minutes.
If I can do this on multiple classes without being able to reliably turn, I have to wonder what it is you all are running that you are crying about thieves killing you. Are you playing some full glass, backline zerg build and not sticking with the zerg? I think the only time I do have trouble fighting thieves is if I’m running a glass thief (because I’m a pretty mediocre thief) or if I’m on a staff ele zerg build (which I almost never play).
There are so many passive and active save your kitten skills in the game it is pretty much impossible to be insta killed without having a chance to react.
This really is a l2p issue.

To be fair aren’t you one of the top roamers in the game?

I have no idea how that could even be determined, I do win the majority of my fights and I build so I can escape a bad/heavily outnumbered situation. But when I legit can’t turn to make it harder for them to land a back stab I’d say my fighting ability is average at best.
There was a time when thieves were extremely dangerous but that time is long past. Now they have to run in packs or find really glassy targets.

Straegen.2938:

Josh XT.6053:

The thief KDR is probably not great because they spend more time running away than killing anything unless they’re jumping in on a 1v1 or something like that, which I see a lot lol.

The KDR isn’t great because the game has changed to strong bunker, heavy AoE and prolific CC of which the thief has access to virtually none of. The entire class has been neutered out of almost every facet of the game.

Complaining about a class that is effective in one narrow portion of the game and virtually non-existent effectively in others just doesn’t make sense to me. As it currently sits, the Dare Devil is marginal at best. Those who play it very well are indeed dangerous but those same players are just as lethal if not more so in other classes.

I don’t care if they nerf thief mobility or not. They’re still good for ganking if built and played right. You’re right though, pretty well useless for larger group play. I don’t have any issues beating thieves. They’re just annoying is all, kind of like mosquitoes in real life, the ones without diseases though. Annoying, but easily swatted away.

Puck.9612:

So since the Tuesday patch my game has pretty much gone to kitten, I’ve had a huge fps drop and and my right click turning is unreliable as hell. .

Holy turtles I thought there was something wrong with my computer. I have the same problems since tuesday. I hope they will fix this.

alain.1659:

Puck.9612:

So since the Tuesday patch my game has pretty much gone to kitten, I’ve had a huge fps drop and and my right click turning is unreliable as hell. .

Holy turtles I thought there was something wrong with my computer. I have the same problems since tuesday. I hope they will fix this.

I switched back to the 32 bit client which helped a lot with the fps(still not close to what it was but at least it’s payable again) but the mouse is still pretty kitten ed buggy.

I tried everything but it still feels different. My wife also shares this problem. Do not know why. I will try switching back to 32 bit thanks a lot

Straegen.2938:

Black Powder costs 6 and HS costs 3. That is 9 init for 4s of stealth. If a player is really good they can stack about 8s or 9s of stealth for all their init. A high cost to deliver maybe one shot that deals slightly more damage than the AA on a dagger and must hit from a flanking position.

Takes about 3s to do that so you regen 3+1 initiative if you BP+HSx3 costing 15 initiative and getting you 12s of stealth but leaving you with 4 ini left. Alternatively you can just HS twice to get 8s stealth for 12 ini, which as we were talking about the SA line it doesn’t give you just a “one shot that deals slightly more damage than the AA on a dagger and must hit from a flanking position.” You get condition clear every second, healing signet levels oh health regen 1 ini per 3s and 25% less damage taken in stealth.

Please try to at least look at the other benefits of running SA.

Straegen.2938:

The Mesmer has Veil arguably the best group stealth in the game as it can cloak an entire zerg. Add in PU and TE and the skill gets really good. Mass Invis comes with a whopping 1200 range and hits 10 targets.

Outside of a blast finisher the thief has ONE group stealth ability on a 60s timer that as stated is an AoE bomb spot and only effects 5 players.

Yeah…3s stealth for unlimited people costing a GM trait and with a 72s cool down, big woop, also temporal enchanter doesn’t help veil, the superspeed/resistance is 5 people when cast and the duration is meh. MI with a big 2.75s channel where they hold their weapon in the air screaming interrupt me? That’s without mentioning the trait that reduces it’s cool down will reveal you after casting it half the time due to reflecting. Sure for massive numbers in some niche areas veil is alright and MI is certainly a good escape if they cover the cast but…

As a thief I can run blinding powder, quickly black powder and use it in less than half a second and 8s stealth to me and 4 other people. Much better in a pinch. For an engage a group of 25 players, raid group or GvG group can blast stealth for longer which is much more useful than veil, here’s an example, right at the start you can see the enemy team blasting stealth.

Straegen.2938:

I am not sure of the point you are making here. Avoiding a zerg requires zero stealth for a thief as their mobility is cheaper and easier. What is the point of staying in a structure for a thief? With new lord HP powering one down takes a long time. A mesmer can portal but doesn’t need full stealth up time just needs to be slippery for 3 minutes which is pretty easy.

Once again, you’re only thinking of one person, you, the thief. What about if you’re with a guard and necro? They need stealth for getting past a zerg and a thief being able to give 8s in a pinch or 20s with a little pre blasting is invaluable. I’ll tell you this, if any zerg in my current match up saw a thief, necro and guard nearby they would chase them till they die if they don’t stealth up.

In regards to tower hiding, as a thief I can hide up to 4 other people in a tower or most likely outer of a keep. I’ve spent an hour trolling a zerg on reset night by stealthing 2 of my friends (both 20 sup) so their name tags don’t appear in the distance, then building a super ram 5 mins after it flips and flipping an enemy bay before anyone can react.

Straegen.2938:

To be the “master” I consider that to be how effective a build is with stealth. Mesmers are highly potent in their stealth builds and far scarier and more slippery than all but the best stealth thieves.

Scrappers equip stealth almost as a byproduct and that gyro often comes with an AoE daze, lightning field, super speed and Detection Pulse. Even their Elixir S AoE group stealth is superior to Shadow Refuge as it has no cast time, 50s timer (usually 40s), can be done from range, gets a lot of trait buffs and is tied to a stun break/3s invuln.

I spend a considerable amount of time on a thief, mesmer and some time on a scapper. I can say both fighting as one and fighting against one, I would rather fight a stealth thief than a non-stealth thief, stealth mesmer, scrapper or a partial stealth druid. In fact stealth thieves are about the easiest class to blow up right now.

Mesmer: Yeah mesmers have much harder burst but generally much much more susceptible to condi and they have very very poor follow up damage. If you dodge the burst then can counter burst the mesmer you’re probably gonna force them to run or reset the fight.

Scrapper: Scrapper is just ridiculous atm however their stealth has it’s downsides in that the gyro gives away what you’re doing. I also tend to bomb the gyro and most of the time you get the scrapper too. Toss elixir S traited is pretty good, better than blinding powder? Marginally but as I said, quick 5 and blinding powder and you get more stealth and takes less than a fraction of a second. Also think you have your wires crossed, tossing elixir S at anything but your feet takes time and it’s duration is much, much less than SR. To be honest comparing it to SR is kinda weird tbh kitten is much much longer stealth and heals.

I also spend a lot of time on mesmer, less on thief and scrapper but have played enough to know their strengths and weaknesses. I would say power mesmer is not as good as power daredevil, if a mesmer gets it’s stealth taken from them, they’re pretty much dead. A daredevil though can be 2000+ units away in the blink of an eye. The power of thieves is that they’re nearly uncatchable and you can’t run from them if they catch you with your pants down.

Eh there are way better traits to run on Mes theses days than PU. The usefulness of Veil for big groups is extremely situational, even worse now since they’ve gutted the aforementioned trait, the short up time and long CD on the stealth often results in groups being predictable anyway.

MI is just OK now, in a pinch it can help, especially with continuum shift and being solo but I think gravity well is better if you have even one buddy as it’s pretty handy as a defensive tool as well. The sheer amount of damage, AoEs and CCs these days reduces the usefulness of stealth on squishy Mesmers IMO, shield has replaced my torch. I will say though that Decoy is still a must have.

Puck.9612:

alain.1659:

Puck.9612:

So since the Tuesday patch my game has pretty much gone to kitten, I’ve had a huge fps drop and and my right click turning is unreliable as hell. .

Holy turtles I thought there was something wrong with my computer. I have the same problems since tuesday. I hope they will fix this.

I switched back to the 32 bit client which helped a lot with the fps(still not close to what it was but at least it’s payable again) but the mouse is still pretty kitten ed buggy.

Tried running in admin mode yet? Helped me a while back when anything I wanted to interact/activate took like 3 presses to go.

thieves thieves thieves… stealth is a pain in the butt from all classes! ever tried to clear a mesmer out of your keep alone or duo? good luck with that. RANGERS constantly stealthing, engis now stealthing – every godkitten class is stealthing when it was only thief at the beginning and very very little mesmer. just stop right there and turn around and start REMOVING stealth and giving other tools. this argument is stupid “dont touch thief it can do nothing execept stealth and kill noobs”.. well wow isnt that the best argument to how broken op the stealth mechanic is in this game? you can basically nerf the classes to the ground – as long as they can stealth they are just fine! no this has been going the wrong direction for a long time, just like the invuln /block/evade spam – make combat more about position, movement, reaction – not about rotating through your damage-nullifiers/stealth/evades and not giving a kitten.

Zenith.6403:

Sich.7103:

If 2 thief can kill 6/8 enemy I think that those enemy are really bad….
First thing to do in that case is to regroup, never chase thief, stay together and the thief won’t be able to kill you… It may be hard to kill the thief, but they won’t kill you…

This is true.
You can’t chase a thief.
You must stay tight in a group of 6-8 people.
You can’t kill a thief.
If you don’t stay in group, thief kills you.

What a wonderfully balanced profession.

slow clap

Thread over, some1 close it….cause this is all that needs to be said.

Go roll thief. Maybe after you’ll have an easier time fighting them.

I think removing stealth from WvW would make the thief unplayable. One solution could be to increase the length of the revealed status from 3 secconds to 6 (or whatever). This would make them eaiser to catch/down.

Steelo.4597:

thieves thieves thieves… stealth is a pain in the butt from all classes! ever tried to clear a mesmer out of your keep alone or duo? good luck with that. RANGERS constantly stealthing, engis now stealthing – every godkitten class is stealthing when it was only thief at the beginning and very very little mesmer. just stop right there and turn around and start REMOVING stealth and giving other tools. this argument is stupid “dont touch thief it can do nothing execept stealth and kill noobs”.. well wow isnt that the best argument to how broken op the stealth mechanic is in this game? you can basically nerf the classes to the ground – as long as they can stealth they are just fine! no this has been going the wrong direction for a long time, just like the invuln /block/evade spam – make combat more about position, movement, reaction – not about rotating through your damage-nullifiers/stealth/evades and not giving a kitten.

You say make combat more about movement and reaction while complaining about blocks and evades in the same sentence lol.

Also rangers have been able to stealth for years, engi’s have been able to since the start of the game.

You say remove stealth and provide other tools but than you proceed to complain about kitten near every other tool for avoiding damage…. is it only fair if players stand still and trade punches like this is rock ’em sock ’em robots?

sorry for being better at the game than you <3

Thief does feel pretty broken in WvW right now between the unload buffs, introduction of Vault, unblockable basilisk, dagger auto-attack damage increase, Lead Attacks buff, almost complete immunity to snares from UC and now having two skills to completely reset endurance usage. Let’s not forget about the hilarious Basilisk+Impairing Dagger+Mug+Auto-attack combo that kills just about everything I use it on.

But, this is kind of just what the game is like now. I kill most people on my Ranger by just using PBS with Ancient Seeds and then using Rapid Fire with my mini-rapid fire pet doing the same. It’s so easy to kill people now.

Thief does feel pretty broken in WvW right now between the unload buffs, introduction of Vault, unblockable basilisk, dagger auto-attack damage increase, Lead Attacks buff, almost complete immunity to snares from UC and now having two skills to completely reset endurance usage. Let’s not forget about the hilarious Basilisk+Impairing Dagger+Mug+Auto-attack combo that kills just about everything I use it on.

But, this is kind of just what the game is like now. I kill most people on my Ranger by just using PBS with Ancient Seeds and then using Rapid Fire with my mini-rapid fire pet doing the same. It’s so easy to kill people now.

apharma.3741:

Takes about 3s to do that so you regen 3+1 initiative if you BP+HSx3 costing 15 initiative and getting you 12s of stealth but leaving you with 4 ini left.

The stealth clock starts ticking as soon as BP and a leap is performed. BP has a half second post cast and HS is effectively 1s per. This makes it difficult to stack more than 9s with this method and have any init left.

apharma.3741:

Yeah…3s stealth for unlimited people costing a GM trait and with a 72s cool down, big woop

Seriously? Veil is the best large group stealths in the game and has no limit on the number of players it can stealth. Commanders call for it and everything from GvG to Zergs actively use it.

apharma.3741:

also temporal enchanter doesn’t help veil, the superspeed/resistance is 5 people when cast and the duration is meh.

Veil is a glamour so the mesmer and other players near the veil get 2s of no condi damage and super speed. Resistance is powerful and super speed is a nice to have.

apharma.3741:

MI with a big 2.75s channel where they hold their weapon in the air screaming interrupt me? T

Mass Invis is a 1.75s channel and IMO better than Shadow Refuge. If the thief had it as their elite, it would be a strong contender on most builds.

apharma.3741:

As a thief I can run blinding powder, quickly black powder and use it in less than half a second and 8s stealth to me and 4 other people.

I ran Blinding Powder for years then it got knocked off my bar for Bandits Defense. It is an underrated utility and better than Refuge IMO but not many thieves run it. IMO Blinding Powder should have come with a stun break given its relatively long cooldown.

apharma.3741:

Much better in a pinch. For an engage a group of 25 players, raid group or GvG group can blast stealth for longer which is much more useful than veil

Veil can be used on the run which is why so many commanders use it when they have access to it. I have never actually seen a zerg or GvG call for this thief combo. I am sure it happens but a Ranger or Druid could do this just as easily and with a much large field area.

Straegen.2938:

Once again, you’re only thinking of one person, you, the thief. What about if you’re with a guard and necro? They need stealth for getting past a zerg and a thief being able to give 8s in a pinch or 20s with a little pre blasting is invaluable.

In a group setting I typically run a mesmer for the group evasion, group stealth, group healing and group condi removal. Mesmers also bring a significant amount of distraction in a fight as their clones create a significant amount of fog of war. I also prefer a scrapper in that scenario. A thief brings very little to that group over other classes in my experience. So no, I am not thinking of only myself since I know to log the thief out and log in a more capable skirmish class.

Straegen.2938:

In regards to tower hiding, as a thief I can hide up to 4 other people in a tower or most likely outer of a keep. I’ve spent an hour trolling a zerg on reset night by stealthing 2 of my friends (both 20 sup) so their name tags don’t appear in the distance, then building a super ram 5 mins after it flips and flipping an enemy bay before anyone can react.

The number of times a thief has back-capped a keep/tower over a mesmer isn’t even a contest given the mesmer portal. Mesmers are king of back-capping and can remain hidden in most keeps/towers. Also the stealth trick doesn’t work very well on the new BL keeps since the minimap tracks players even stealthed ones.

Straegen.2938:

Mesmer: Yeah mesmers have much harder burst but generally much much more susceptible to condi and they have very very poor follow up damage. If you dodge the burst then can counter burst the mesmer you’re probably gonna force them to run or reset the fight.

The Inspriation line loses 2 conditions every heal and one group removal every shatter. A mesmer can completely cleanse themselves in less than a second. The torch also removes conditions on some builds. They have access to resistance and several utilities that clear condi. Condi is sort of an after thought on the current meta mesmer builds. As for spiking damage Rift and Chronophantasm allow for a nearly continuous amount of shatter spam. Mesmers are very strong in duels and still a very difficult adversary to beat roaming.

Straegen.2938:

Scrapper: Scrapper is just ridiculous atm however their stealth has it’s downsides in that the gyro gives away what you’re doing.

So does SR and Black Powder. The Scrapper stealth abilities all come with significant bonuses. Such as the ability to stomp/rez from a distance, Detection Pulse which completely defeats stealth, invulnerability, stun breaks, Super Speed, Lightning Field, dazes, etc. It is almost laughable how easy it is to kill stealth thieves on a Scrapper.

Straegen.2938:

Also think you have your wires crossed, tossing elixir S at anything but your feet takes time and it’s duration is much, much less than SR. To be honest comparing it to SR is kinda weird tbh kitten is much much longer stealth and heals.

Tossing the elixir takes .5 seconds, is an AoE and when elixirs are typically traited, stealths for 6s, adds 2 stacks of might and removes a condition on a relatively short 36s timer. Over time, Elixir S nearly matches SR usable stealth up time with none of the disadvantages. It compares to either Shadow Refuge or Blinding Powder. I chose SR since both are ground targeted versus Blinding Powders self cast. With invulnerability and stun break it beats both of them. If a thief had access to this skill, it would be on their bar over either IMO.

Straegen.2938:

A daredevil though can be 2000+ units away in the blink of an eye. The power of thieves is that they’re nearly uncatchable and you can’t run from them if they catch you with your pants down.

Which is my point… thieves are great at mobility. Their stealth effectiveness compared to both the Mesmer and Scrapper is very debatable. To me the thief is tied with the scrapper as the second best stealth class with the Mesmer being much better at least in the condi and group variants.

Maybe it’s just my luck that I’m running into bad ones, but it seems like they’re usually only deadly when they’re +1’ing a fight, I noted quite a few that were accidentally bursted down by me.

lol power creep.

I think the only lame thieves are the condi ones because they are also tanky, but that’s an issue with condi.

Personally, I see more of an issue against druids, berserkers, reapers and chronos. I also put scrappers here because fighting them is really tiring.

Rev is quickly becoming thief bait, even against power builds. Thief can bait out both heals against shiro/glint and, since most revs don’t run hammer because sign you downing the moment you swap to it, rev only had one real tool to use against thief to avoid being kitted to death, but now it’s been nerfed to oblivion. When I played condi thief a rev was an easy target with pulm, venoms and perplexity runes. Now I’m on rev and I’m the bait to condi thieves because I can’t cleanse, apply constant pressure like before, and can’t heal properly. Shield is useless against thief and UA can be stopped mid use with stealth and bugs out if you start the animation but the person falls out of range before it hits then goes on full CD. Thief has every tool to counter rev now if they’re smart.

CutesySylveon.8290:

Rev is quickly becoming thief bait, even against power builds. Thief can bait out both heals against shiro/glint and, since most revs don’t run hammer because sign you downing the moment you swap to it, rev only had one real tool to use against thief to avoid being kitted to death, but now it’s been nerfed to oblivion. When I played condi thief a rev was an easy target with pulm, venoms and perplexity runes. Now I’m on rev and I’m the bait to condi thieves because I can’t cleanse, apply constant pressure like before, and can’t heal properly. Shield is useless against thief and UA can be stopped mid use with stealth and bugs out if you start the animation but the person falls out of range before it hits then goes on full CD. Thief has every tool to counter rev now if they’re smart.

Rev was always an easy kill for thief

It’s even easier with power based thief then condi imo.

If people are letting thieves 2v8 them and win, they have problems only the lord can solve.

Every heard of…I don’t know… timing your skills so you can hit them? You do realize most of their evades have vulnerability frames?

And if it’s stealth you’re worrying about, don’t worry, lots of classes have a 1-button easy solution to that.

Josh XT.6053:

Straegen.2938:

Josh XT.6053:

Thief isn’t hard to beat, but they just run away and they’re impossible to catch. Shortbow 5 should cost a lot more initiative and range shorter so that it can’t just be spammed to get away though.

The thief mostly sucks at large group play, sPvP, dueling, PvE and GvG. It is marginal in skirmish. So the plan would be to gut its scouting and roaming capability? Basically remove its ability to decap in sPvP.

Thieves are so far down the totem pole now any changes to their mobility would effectively eliminate the class from play. Even more so gutting the SB teleport would turn an already pathetic weapon into a complete piece of trash much like they have already done to D/D, S/D and P/P.

See, I disagree. There are just so many bad thief players that rely heavily on 2 shotting people and if that doesn’t work, they rely on their their mobility and stealth to get away. I’m not going to act like I’m any kind of expert thief player, but I’ve met some good ones and they don’t need to heavily rely on mobility or stealth to win fights.

lol what?

don’t need to heavily rely on mobility OR stealth? Those are the only 2 defensive options a thief even has apart from spamming d/p #3.

Just watch the best thief players in game in pro tournaments when they play, the thieves are all literally just flying around the map using the classes mobility, and as soon as the fight gets longer than 10 seconds they have to leave because the class is not great at winning small, evenly-numbered skirmishes

Yes, thief mobility with dash is crazy, and it’s probably annoying to newer players who don’t have familiarity with thief. But it’s honestly the only great aspect about the thief now. I play Mesmer as well as thief, and from my experience Mesmer stealth access is superior to thief’s now, and mesmer has access to several other tools to increase defense (blocks, aegis, etc) whereas thief only really has dodge spamming. Mesmer burst can be just as good if not better as well.

Take away dash and infiltrator’s arrow, and thief class is suddenly subpar at everything.

But yeah, I can see how newer players would be annoyed by their mobility. But I would love for my thief mobility to be toned down so that thief would be given other defensive abilities eventually (after people see how ineffective they become)

Classes that run backwards faster than they do forwards will never have the community’s respect. Hello ele’s and thieves.

Honestly warriors are much more OP than thieves. Thieves are only OP if the person playing on one is good. If you know what you’re doing they aren’t that bad and if the person using the thief isn’t very good then they are not hard to kill at all.

Now condi thieves that literally kill you from stealth… that’s a whole other story.

Yeah I still don’t get it. Most meta builds shouldn’t have a lot of trouble with thieves unless there’s a skill difference issue or said meta build is a thief.

If you’re getting wrecked by multiple thieves at once then your either outnumbered, out of position or running with pugs.

Still thinking this is probably not being familiar with the class or maybe even a situational awareness thing. I catch a lot of druids or eles in particular, staring off into the clouds while hosing down some poor camp guard.

@Straegen

Veil is good only for massive zergs, I linked you a video of a GvG, all guild groups that are competent are using blasted stealth in GvGs because veil is massively sub par. Even in massive blobs, 2s resistance and super speed to 4 players is meh, not worth the trait for that large a group unless going for insp anyway. Majority of veil use is going into a fight when you have no conditions on you anyway. Also please show me the other sources of resistance for mesmer because as far as I know it’s only traited glamours and F5 with bountiful disillusionment.

Mesmer doesn’t get group cleanse on shatter, it’s mesmer only, the range on the power cleanse is also 240, it’s not a big deal, you certainly won’t be cleansing many people. Sure the PU condi build has a lot of cleanses and stealth but that is down to 1 trait, the pledge. When the trait revamp came out nearly everyone in the mesmer forum was hoping ANet would change that trait because they thought it promoted stealth camping, offered little to no reduction on the phantasm half the time and was terrible without PU but absurdly broken with.

MI, sure I was wrong it’s only 1.75s but it still a really long time with pulmonary impact thieves and CC added to the game, quite frankly if you get off MI then the enemy is pretty poor, especially if you do it with continuum split.

Thief merely traits SA to get -25% damage reduction, 50% movement speed, healing signet levels of regen and ini regen in stealth as well as being able to stealth rez people. A mesmer going chaos gets other good stuff but I would never consider mesmer stealth superior to thief with equal investment.