Guild Wars 2

I am running with over 3000 armor in WvW, However thieves are still the only class that can hack my health down like no other. In fact I can even eat a hundred blades and get less damage then what thieves can do just spamming abilities. Their glass cannon is like no other it puts out way too much burst.

tl;dr thieves still doing much burst damage compared to other classes

Thieves have considerably less health too. Less survival, more burst. Sounds about right.

They are supposed to do high burst damage…thats kinda their thing. Who are you to decide what damage output they are supposed to deal out? Just because you are outplayed by another class doesn’t mean you should bother others with your whining.

Honestly have fewer issues with thief than I do with mesmer. Thief I can deal with 90% of the time and have a decent fight, still have to have more time working out mesmer tricks to make the fights decent.

@katsumoto actually elementalists have the lowest health pools in the game. In terms of survival thieves can run faster then any other class, they can port with shortbows not to mention stealth. They have one of the best if not the best survival options.

Thieves aren’t the fastest. They are the fastest with no effort (signet of shadows), but perma swiftness engineer with 33% ms bonus > 25%.

Fact is a thief is designed almost entirely around burst damage. Low health and resistances mean you need big damage. Initiative hammers this point home even more. With other classes you can blow 5 cool-downs, switch weapon and blow another 5. With a thief you can blow 3 cool-downs are you are out of initiative. Weapon swap or not. 4 if you build around initiative.

I am not saying they shouldn’t have burst but they shouldn’t be hitting as hard as they do in the games current state. Especially when you look at all other burst compatibilities of other classes. They also get medium armor which is already better resistance than any class wearing light armor.

I’ll grant that but the light armour classes have a fair bit going for them. Thief has sod all AoE and it’s all on the shortbow. So they are mainly single target dps. We haven’t got many conditions, blinds and bleeds and a naff poison.

Necros have decent AoE conditions and can spread them further with epidemic. And some nice CC.
Elementalists have nice AoE and some decent CC.
Mesmers have confusion, decent CC and clones.

Thieves have single target dps.

I’m not saying that ele’s or necro’s are better here at all, but that mechanic makes it fairer for the high burst. It’s ele’s and necro’s needing a buff, not thieves needing a nerf IMO. Nerf thief, thief can do nothing vs warrior or guardian.

just to ask, you have 3k armor, but whats your total hp? and to add to the question:-
- does he have the wvw orb bonus?
- is he using any food that adds damage?
- does he use the sigil that adds damage?

Total Hp – ~17k
Orb Bonus – Yes they had one ORB
Food – I have no idea? I honestly can’t remember
Sigil – He had one.. Which one I am not sure. So its possible it was that one.

You have 3000 armor? OMG nerf that class. That’s more than I have. You should be nerfed.

a burst build thief, full berserker can be 2-shot if not careful. so i think its about right.

Dovgan.8605:

Honestly have fewer issues with thief than I do with mesmer. Thief I can deal with 90% of the time and have a decent fight, still have to have more time working out mesmer tricks to make the fights decent.

This ^^^^

I rather fight multiple thief’s at once then face a Mesmer.

I dont mind their huge damage, I think its the way its supposed to be. What is frustrating to me is the perpetual re-stealthing and the insane mobility. I like to fight thiefs, but in an average fight the thief appears for 0.5-1 sec and stealths again. This class has the best survivability of all.

Katsumoto.9452:

Thieves have considerably less health too. Less survival, more burst. Sounds about right.

In WvW my thief has more survivability than any other class, because stealth + mobility (both in terms of initially getting out of combat, then being able to move fast accross the map and actually escape any pursuers) is far superior to anything else, especially in terms of scale.

Lots of other classes rely on being tough/HP (or death shroud for necros) as a signifcant part of their suviability, this does not scale in WvW, it doesn’t matter how big your HP pool is or how much armour you have when a bunch of people start hitting you, but on my thief my basic surviabilty of stealth + mobility (+evade, but granted some other classes have invulnerability that also scales like evade) is far less affected by increasing numbers of people.

I feel more confident heading out solo on my thief than any other class, this" oh no we are glass cannons" line is rubbish, teh reason there are so many thief glass cannons and far fewer of other classes (mesmer excepted) is beause a glass cannon thief is far, far more surviable in WvW than a glass cannon anything else.

Oh and another thing, has no one noticed in most games the ability to stealth in combat is considered a big deal and is balanced by long cooldowns (as in 3 mins or the like), yet here there are multiple ways to do this, with short or no cooldown.

Now originially I seem to remember that the balance for this was that stealth was going to be very short, that the point was it was there to confuse the opponent, allow the thief to change the angle of atttack / gain an advantge, but NOT for the thief to be able to escape, guess what, they failed, terrible design that repeats the same mistakes other MMOs make, that usually results in the class bouncing between OP & UP, because it is based on a flawed design that is impossible to balance.

What Sylosi said. Many forget that in this game survivability depends much more on skills, dodge, things that prevent being hit/target etc than armor/HP. 22k HP and 3k armor is good when 1vs1, still good when 1vs2, but vs 5,10,20… it diminishes as a factor for survival. If 10 ppl focus my warrior I cannot stand on relying only on my armor and HP, I need skills, dodge to be able to survive (with still low chance).

However a thief has many tools that does not affected y the number of attacker. Thief can do many things to prevent being hit and move fast away. And that give much more survivability to them than high armor/HP on other classes.

Currently, thief and mesmer are the two best classes in the survivability/escape department.

My main up till recently was a thief (got a guardian, engineer and necro also) and i admit thiefs got it too easy along with mesmers from what i can tell.

I can live with the burst dmg but stealth really needs rework in this game. I played many other games with stealth mechanic and it was most of the times unbalanced – it doesn’t change in GW2.
When Sin’s got introduced in GW1 i thought stealth wasn’t implemented for balance reasons and shadow step put in place instead – if this was the case, what changed their mind or it was just a game engine limitation ?

Last night, i was with 5-6 ppl more trying to fight a duo mes and thief and it took us LOTs of chasing for around 10min around a supply camp while we were getting picked 1 by one – it sure feels epic and awesome on the the thief/mes side but one must wonder, when compared with other classes survivability and abilities if this is “balanced”…

This situation is common even when fighting solo thief’s/mesmers – their escape mechanics out of danger while still putting dmg out are far greater than any other class – FoTM classes it seems.

Add to that, the fact that many times, foes are attacking without being seen (invisibility render bug) doesn’t help at all.

Of course i sometimes can kill those classes but most of the time it’s all smoke and mirrors and death when compared to any other classes i face.

Solution ?
I’d say, increase recloak debuff time for one.
Remove stealth stacking for another.

I consider invisibility a support utility mechanic not to be constantly relied on.

/rant off

I have around 1800 armor and I survive just fine against a Thief. If you’re getting dropped like a sack of bricks by one, then maybe you should rethink your class, spec, gear selection, etc…

Mesmer can have better burst and aoe. That said unless they want to reduce burst across the board they probably shouldn’t touch backstab much. Culling and holding points b/c of stealth is the biggest issue in wvw atm.

Here maybe you should watch this video.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Video-Thief-PvP-Yippie-Kye-Yay-6

I would also like to point out at 5:15 of the video you can see my complaint to ANET that has yet to be addressed about invis breaking entanglement. I posted it in bugs yet no reply.

Also name a class that can take on 5 people at once besides a thief. I think not because there isn’t. I would challenge anyone to even try and come close to what this guy can do with his thief. Yes he has skill but its backed with a way OP class. You can’t kill what you can’t hit. Fighting against thiefs my pet just stands there and doesn’t even attack you have to keep pressing attack my target but he goes invis before it even gets a hit in.

I got to 80 and bought exotics, which proves that I am a good player and should be owning face.

FailureNet please nerf this class before me and my guild go back to WoW.

And Engis deal 20k burst AoE with nades.
And Warrior deal 20k burst with Killshot+Volley.
The list goes on…

Simply put, the game isn’t balanced around WvW, nor around 1v1, and will never be.
You can’t balance a class around what damage it does with 25 stacks of power, 25 might, orbs, guild buffs…

/thread

Actually, the OP misses the point, imo. It isn’t about their burst…it’s about their mobility and utility. Stealth in alot of other MMOs has generally been counterbalanced by the stealther being exceptionally squishy, and having VERY limited mid-combat stealthing options. This isn’t the case in GW2. Yes, the Thief, if he were standing still and didn’t bother restealthing during the fight, is very squishy…but that isn’t the reality. The reality is, Thief possesses FAR too much survivability for their level of burst. There has to be a tradeoff, and currently there doesn’t seem to be.

Side note. I’ve seen multiple posts by you Red-Falcon…they can all be summed up; “Learn to play noob”. In many situations, you make a valid point…but you can’t apply that kind of blanket argument to everything.

There is that Red Falcon too. WvW isn’t a balance point.

PvE is probably still the main balance point and Thieves are far from the best at that. I’d say that Warriors were to be honest.

Katsumoto.9452:

There is that Red Falcon too. WvW isn’t a balance point.

PvE is probably still the main balance point and Thieves are far from the best at that. I’d say that Warriors were to be honest.

PvE is not a balance point in GW2. Generally, tPvP is. In my opinion however, in a game that offers so many seperate game modes…ALL modes have to be taken into account.

Correct me if wrong but many of the top pvp players (not in wvw) don’t actually have thieves on their teams? I don’t pay much attention but that’s what i’ve heard. If thieves truly are that good, surely they’d use them?

To me a thief feels fun because of the speed, but annoyingly like a pubstomper class.

To address some points in this thread:

- survivability is about the active defense – stealth, speed, clones, dodging…things like that. Toughness is neat, vitaility a distant last place. A few thousand health more or less won’t save you.

- I hate mesmers – their clones, etc drive me batty in WvW. But unbalanced? Not in the tactical sense. Any fight with a mesmer is long-term affair, and that’s fine.

Thieves are overpowered. They have the best burst damage, among the best defensive options, and fantastic mobility (which is both offensive and defensive). The idea that they have a smaller health pool and so-on is a smokescreen that has little to nothing to do with this conversation. Health pool is not defense.

-Jeff

P.S. Said from the POV of an elementalist and budding necromancer.

@Katsumoto
The reason most don’t use thieves is because they are trying to accomplish a different goal. The goal of their matches is capture/hold points, thus bunker builds are the meta because they do that very well. A thief is great at roaming but having to stay in that tiny area to hold a point means AOE’s will kill them in short order. So while in the killing/surviving department Thieves are insane, they aren’t really great at holding points which is all that matters in SPvP.

jaif.3518:

To address some points in this thread:

- survivability is about the active defense – stealth, speed, clones, dodging…things like that. Toughness is neat, vitaility a distant last place. A few thousand health more or less won’t save you.

- I hate mesmers – their clones, etc drive me batty in WvW. But unbalanced? Not in the tactical sense. Any fight with a mesmer is long-term affair, and that’s fine.

Thieves are overpowered. They have the best burst damage, among the best defensive options, and fantastic mobility (which is both offensive and defensive). The idea that they have a smaller health pool and so-on is a smokescreen that has little to nothing to do with this conversation. Health pool is not defense.

-Jeff

P.S. Said from the POV of an elementalist and budding necromancer.

You and I are in complete agreement.

Red Falcon.8257:

And Engis deal 20k burst AoE with nades.
And Warrior deal 20k burst with Killshot+Volley.
The list goes on…

Simply put, the game isn’t balanced around WvW, nor around 1v1, and will never be.
You can’t balance a class around what damage it does with 25 stacks of power, 25 might, orbs, guild buffs…

/thread

Engi will end up taking damage to do that and probably die.
Warrior will end up taking damage to do that and probably die.
The thief can do that, survive, and repeat it even while 5 enemies are around.

We aren’t balancing around 25 stacks of anything. The thief class has very high burst and does it while stealthed so he takes very little if any damage. Stealth is the problem here, frankly it needs removed.

Don’t get me wrong, ALL BURST NEEDS NERFED. The thief’s burst though would be fine if they actually had to risk something to do it. My main is an 80 thief, stealth is far too powerful for the burst we can do.

As other posters have stated, burst damage is part of the problem, but not the main problem.

The main problem is that thieves always have the element of surprise and can escape/avoid damage easily if their burst fails and things go bad. I don’t know how Anet managed to give 1 class the best burst dps, arguably the best defensive skills and the best mobility in the game.

Stealth is fine. People just don’t see thieves because of rendering issues. I can’t see whole zergs sometimes because of rendering issues.

3.3 seconds of being out of stealth, after stealthing isn’t that short a time. Considering the initiative cost of restealthing, or the cost of blowing a minute long CD to do it.

Its WoW Rogues all over again but worse.. since they can practically vanish at their hearts content.

Keep their burst, fine, but fix their surviability… thieves are so powerful in wuvwuv its not funny, even if you somehow manage to survive their initial burst, you cant kill them, they can easily outrun you and disappear

Its frustrating having ONE single class ruin all the fun for you in wuvwuv.

Combat should be fast. Intuitive. So that every attack missed counts. Every attack dodged count. Not stupid dps vs heal pewpew dancing for minutes.
This is NOT anywhere near single person pvp game.
And to make to make the first post little bit more constructive answer following questions:
1) What kind of pvp were you in?
2) How many of your allies were near you?
3) How many allies thief had?
4) What were you doing at the moment of attack and around 10 seconds before that?
5) What were the skills on your skill bar and how many of them did you manage to use?
6) How many dodges you performed?

Bunzy.8674:

I am running with over 3000 armor in WvW, However thieves are still the only class that can hack my health down like no other. In fact I can even eat a hundred blades and get less damage then what thieves can do just spamming abilities. Their glass cannon is like no other it puts out way too much burst.

tl;dr thieves still doing much burst damage compared to other classes

L2P is really all that can be said. Whining in games to get it to format what you want do is bad form. This is not RIFT or SWToR where they are so confused as to what to do that they check the forums and take/change things with no long term goal.

They (anet) will delete anything they dont like but these kind of threads are just sad.

Every single class has an OP build or some kind of OP skill or something. Every single one. Learn them.

thieves are the most overpowered and brainless class : burst ? no it is not because a burst means you are doing better dmg for a period a time. the thieves CONSTANTLY punch you between 5k-15k (if not more) no matter how much toughness you have (took a 11k with 2300 toughness with backstab on my guardian supposed to have the best dmg mitigation of the game Let’s not forged their auto-attack which is totally oped compared to others.
So to sum up: Insane DMG/Insane Survability (why would you need hp when you can dodge as you want between the teleport skills and the stealth skill heh?)
For those who claim thieves are not broken, they have no clue abou what they are talking about.
cya baddies

2300 toughness on a guardian is pitiful. I have more on my thief….

Red Falcon.8257:

And Engis deal 20k burst AoE with nades.
And Warrior deal 20k burst with Killshot+Volley.
The list goes on…

Simply put, the game isn’t balanced around WvW, nor around 1v1, and will never be.
You can’t balance a class around what damage it does with 25 stacks of power, 25 might, orbs, guild buffs…

/thread

You are missing the point.

Although some classes burst dmg could use some tweaking, the issue here is about having great survivability with great burst dmg.

The issue to me with the thief class is actually INVISIBILITY and how it is abused while still putting great dmg out.

aaron.7850:

Its WoW Rogues all over again but worse.. since they can practically vanish at their hearts content.

Keep their burst, fine, but fix their surviability… thieves are so powerful in wuvwuv its not funny, even if you somehow manage to survive their initial burst, you cant kill them, they can easily outrun you and disappear

Its frustrating having ONE single class ruin all the fun for you in wuvwuv.

keep their burst and survivability, fine, but fix their utility… mesmers are so powerful in wvw its not even funny, if they don’t just kill you, you’ll get an unrendered zerg hot dropped on you or they will just easily outrun you and disappear

its frustrating having ONE single class ruin all the fun for you in wvw.

I’m a warrior with full toughness build and shield. Theives pop stealth and try to burst me, I block, snare them and feed them pain. They run from me after realizing that they can’t kill me in their first burst. Thieves were way more dangerous in Star Wars, and Warhammer online. I am unafraid of them. Thieves absolutely destroy glass cannon builds in WVW and its their fault they specced that way in the first place. Run little thief, run.
See you on the battlefields, Excelsior!

Anatax, you nailed it I do run from your kind as a Thief because I cannot hurt you enough! Backstab crits for 1.5k damage on your kind of build. And with well over 20k HP there’s no way that is enough. I’ll grant i’m not full glass cannon (20/30/20/0/0) but still..

I repeat though, people thinking 2000 region toughness is high, it isn’t. I haven’t even got toughness gear and I have around the 2300 mark on a thief. So the Guardian player a few posts above just isn’t doing it right tbh…

Nilgoow.1037:

I got to 80 and bought exotics, which proves that I am a good player and should be owning face.

FailureNet please nerf this class before me and my guild go back to WoW.

You really shouldn’t use the role Fail and then threaten to go back to WoW. Most WoW players fail compared to other players in the mmo world because that game was 100% designed around noobs who didn’t want to play the earlier mmos which required much more skill.

Go back to WoW. No one will miss you.

People have to realize that the thief is trading away a lot to achieve the silly damage numbers.

Anyone not specced full glass cannon and running around with a disable should be fine!

Thieves don’t have a million stun breakers, they still take damage while being stealthed (they only get 12-15k in glasscannon)!

If you still get ripped up too fast. Think about your spec, your hitpoints/toughness. Or perhaps just don’t run alone / duo and keep an eye on your surroundings.

Thieves cannot run stealthed 59 mins out of 60. So when they actually spot you first, you are very well able to spot them as well! They will only stealth up right before the fight, or most likely, only once the fighting has started!

xxxzavulonxxx.8413

You really shouldn’t use the role Fail and then threaten to go back to WoW. Most WoW players fail compared to other players in the mmo world because that game was 100% designed around noobs who didn’t want to play the earlier mmos which required much more skill.
Go back to WoW. No one will miss you.

I can tell from the number of x’s in your name that you are pretty hardxcore, possibly as hardxcore as me (but not likely) so I will go easy on you. Point is I am in a number #1 raiding guild in GW2 and WoW, so I know how to play mmos.

I will 1v1 you if you need a new dose of pwnsauce to put you back in your place. Please PM me in-game so we can work this out.

Thief doesnt trade anything to do those numbers, why would you need vitality and toughness when your stealth can get you out of harms way?

Thieves are the only glass cannons with on-demand surviability.. while other classes die when they play bad, a bad thief can simply run away and stealth. There is no punishment for thieves for playing bad… they can simply reset the battle and engage you again.

Raiding is more skill then Bandwagon … watch out serious …

aaron.7850:

Thieves are the only glass cannons with on-demand surviability.. while other classes die when they play bad, a bad thief can simply run away and stealth. There is no punishment for thieves for playing bad… they can simply reset the battle and engage you again.

Agree mostly , wouldn’t be too bad if they couldn’t escape the battle when the initial attack fails. Then again in every game there seems to be one class that outshines the others so might as well be thiefs.

It’s mainly the stealth and their the ability to heal – in tandem with those silly numbers – If you were pushing that much damage out on a ranger, or some other class, it wouldn’t really be so much of a problem because they’ll also be flimsy, and they can’t hide at all, so they’re pretty much screwed.

I leveled Ranger to 80, thought it was decent enough and I enjoyed that class for a while… Then, I decided to give thief a try! So, I get that one to 80… and now, no other class seems playable to me, because they’re just all so blatantly inferior.

(well except perhaps for mesmers, as a thief, they’re far more challenging to kill than any other class – and i’d say that’s mostly attributed to the fact that (surprise surprise) they can also vanish on you.)

I’m playing a condition thief. The damage sucks, but only reason I picked it was so that I could kill just about any other thief; therefore, the only classes that prove challenging are engineers/mesmers, and I kill those the majority of the time, so i’ve yet to run into a hard counter.

(Also, I thought my ranger was at least a good roamer… but then I realized that thieves can get infinite swiftness, and that it compliments them (as a class) the most.)

In terms of utility, damage & efficiency, they’re definitely the best class.

aaron.7850:

Thieves are the only glass cannons with on-demand surviability.. while other classes die when they play bad, a bad thief can simply run away and stealth. There is no punishment for thieves for playing bad… they can simply reset the battle and engage you again.

Most of their skills have a relatively short cooldown as well, using mine as an example:

6 – 30sec
7 – 48sec
8 – 48sec
9 – 30sec
0 – 45sec

You can just run away with infinite swiftness, re-engage fully refreshed after they’ve used some of their big cooldowns. ^^ My ranger doesn’t even come close to my thief in terms of kitten-kickery.

I play as a thief…
and IMO
one way to stop the mimimi about thieves is:
Make the “invisibility” just translucent, i mean from afar would and should still hard to get the thief, but at blank point a good player would see the difference on colors.
for who dont know a video showing infiltrator of planetside 2:(sorry if i can’t do that but i needed a example)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqsdjtsz_PM

And if you do that, make sure that you let us use the new “invi” for more time, because if i can just use invi on our heal, and in melee range for 3 secs, and they still can see me… well it will be useless

Those who play Thief and are honest about it like Sylosi and me know that the Thief has the best survival in the game despite lower armor and hp. People have to stop using these lame excuses like hp and toughness and start talking about the real deal : stealth and mobility.

There is absolutely no reason why a Thief can spend 90% of a fight stealthed while having the best mobility in the game.