Guild Wars 2

There is this thing called “Dodging” and “Situational Awareness” which alot of you guys lack.

the single most annyoing thing with thieves is not the stealth during combat, it’s the stupid stealth stomping. Because somehow, doesn’t matter if you are a ranger with a wolf using fear, or a guardian using the Downed #2, or a necro using life drain. Nothing affects them at all, and i tried with on a mesmer, stealthing before stomp… you are completely unaffected by anything. This might be a bug, or intended, but it makes it impossible to make a mistake against a thief, while a thief can screw up a hundred times and still live to tell the tale

AoE abilities still affect a thief during a stealth stomp…

the thing about thieves is it requires near to no skill to play as one to competitive level against other classes not only can they stealth almost indefinetly they have ridiculous damage output when you combine their direct damage and attack rate they also have the highest mobility and can spam gap closers wich doesnt leave room for errors to other classes whereas a thief can just keep stealthing if he messes up

the most common responses yeah but thieves are the most squishiest class so its fine

to this excuse i say : it is an overused lie the reason you’d be squishy is because 99.8% thieves run berserker builds wich makes ALL classes squishy apparently not thief if you consider their unbalanced mechanics

Thiefs have no aoe’s : again this is a lie use a shortbow and you ll maul groups from afar the auto attack alone bounces on up to 3 targets untraited and even more traited

then theres clustr bomb wich deals massive damage and adds up to 6 stacks of bleed

then theres the spammable poison aoe

and the blind/shadowstep

so yeah i wanna see what other excuse someone else tries to come up with next

Prysin.8542:

the single most annyoing thing with thieves is not the stealth during combat, it’s the stupid stealth stomping. Because somehow, doesn’t matter if you are a ranger with a wolf using fear, or a guardian using the Downed #2, or a necro using life drain. Nothing affects them at all, and i tried with on a mesmer, stealthing before stomp… you are completely unaffected by anything. This might be a bug, or intended, but it makes it impossible to make a mistake against a thief, while a thief can screw up a hundred times and still live to tell the tale

Actually that’s blind at work. There’s a trait that allows them to blind when they stealth. Or it could be Blinding Powder or Black Powder. Blind Stomps are very powerful as opposed to basic stealth stomps.

I am seriously hoping Anet will develop many stealth skills to other classes, ranger and engie especially. If the engies get a perm stealth option without stupid kits and elixirs but as a passive trait, you will hear the thieves QQing like crazy. The shoe is always good unless its on the other foot – lets hope Anet does that.

no zerger should be here… this is a roamers problem and for good reason. If you are a 1 spammer, a AC sitter or a tower hugger dont comment on this post.

I played a little more with my thief. It is actually rly easy to confuse ppl and throw them off. Once you get the hang of it, many ppl maneuver themselfes in a rly bad position. And you can finish them off. I guess with no other profession it is that easy to take on 3+ opponents and have a fairly good chance to win.

However, we are talking about balance. One has to consider, when thinking about balance, that there is a balance for casual players and one for very dedicated ones.

Casual Player Balance
In the casual level thieves are fairly strong. Here it is way easier through stealth to confuse and assault the opponent than it is to predict movements and attack patterns of the thief.

Dedicated Player Balance
Here the thief loses his advantage. Opponents know the most common builds and strategies of most professions. They either have played or fought most professions and builds and got their experience with them. So in result, they can anticipate the thieves behaviour or react fast enough to be able to defend against them.

So one has to consider the balance in both player levels when thinking about the strength of thieves…

TyPin.9860:

I played a little more with my thief. It is actually rly easy to confuse ppl and throw them off. Once you get the hang of it, many ppl maneuver themselfes in a rly bad position. And you can finish them off. I guess with no other profession it is that easy to take on 3+ opponents and have a fairly good chance to win.

However, we are talking about balance. One has to consider, when thinking about balance, that there is a balance for casual players and one for very dedicated ones.

Casual Player Balance
In the casual level thieves are fairly strong. Here it is way easier through stealth to confuse and assault the opponent than it is to predict movements and attack patterns of the thief.

Dedicated Player Balance
Here the thief loses his advantage. Opponents know the most common builds and strategies of most professions. They either have played or fought most professions and builds and got their experience with them. So in result, they can anticipate the thieves behaviour or react fast enough to be able to defend against them.

So one has to consider the balance in both player levels when thinking about the strength of thieves…

then theres the Dedicated Thief player
who will have also studied other classes as well and figured how to get the upper hand.

Rezzet.3614:

then theres the Dedicated Thief player
who will have also studied other classes as well and figured how to get the upper hand.

Only that doesn’t happen. The higher up you go in skill levels the worse thief gets in comparison to the other classes. Thieves use their deception to gain an advantage over inexperienced players. Once you get past that they are just another very predictable foos class.

It’s like the CoD noob tube… new people complained about it 24/7, but do you ever see it at higher levels of gameplay? No. Because there are other more powerful options.

Thieves can’t help groups as much as other classes and aren’t the best 1v1-ers. You’re left with doing stuff like ganking yaks… which they are the best at… but ugh. The thief class needs some love. Until then I’ll be leaving mine on the shelf.

What’s all this crap about “can’t target them!!!!!!” You all know there are ground aoes and auto attack right?

ETR.8152:

What’s all this crap about “can’t target them!!!!!!” You all know there are ground aoes and auto attack right?

you do know thiefs can move and shadow step and evade while stealthed even blind when stealthing as well right?

Prysin.8542:

the single most annyoing thing with thieves is not the stealth during combat, it’s the stupid stealth stomping. Because somehow, doesn’t matter if you are a ranger with a wolf using fear, or a guardian using the Downed #2, or a necro using life drain. Nothing affects them at all, and i tried with on a mesmer, stealthing before stomp… you are completely unaffected by anything. This might be a bug, or intended, but it makes it impossible to make a mistake against a thief, while a thief can screw up a hundred times and still live to tell the tale

I would take my stability stomp over a stealth stomp every day.

Rezzet.3614:

ETR.8152:

What’s all this crap about “can’t target them!!!!!!” You all know there are ground aoes and auto attack right?

you do know thiefs can move and shadow step and evade while stealthed even blind when stealthing as well right?

Yep. fact is still there though. Most of the time though In 5 or so seconds a downed thief will pop up…

The issue that I have with any stealthed player in WVW is that they take damage but do not show damage taken while stealthed. However the thief can stealth and stay stealthed while taking damage without even being knocked out of stealth momentarily. This is the only MMO that I have ever seen that in practice. There are ways to counter the “loner” dual dagger thief in WVW but it’s just more of an annoyance more than anything. The class isn’t OP but the stealth mechanic is goofy comparatively to other games. It really doesn’t matter what anyone here says though, the thief is the thief. ANET couldn’t care less what we say about it.

The key to dealing with thieves in WvW is to just ignore them. They don’t really contribute that much to their server’s competiveness. They slap a few yaks and cull some Noobs — and in large battles and they are usually the first to go down, or they just run away.

Too many people get too worked up over the least effective profession in the game.

Nick.6972:

Honestly, I’d love to hear why?

My main is Guardian, I play WvW casually on a T2 server, and I don’t remember last time being killed by a Thief, nor do I have any problems with Perma Stealth.

Where’s the problem?
Are people just bad or unwilling to learn to play better?

Because stealth is a poor game mechanic used by bad game designers.

I don’t really have an issue with thieves, either. Every once in awhile they can gank me in WvW, but most of the time they die then run away.

I main a Necro in WvW and minor an Engi in WvW.

Spiuk.8421:

Nick.6972:

Honestly, I’d love to hear why?

My main is Guardian, I play WvW casually on a T2 server, and I don’t remember last time being killed by a Thief, nor do I have any problems with Perma Stealth.

Where’s the problem?
Are people just bad or unwilling to learn to play better?

Because stealth is a poor game mechanic used by bad game designers.

Actually, if you look at the way The Repopulation is handling stealth, it proves it can be done properly. Unfortunately, what’s currently available is either the permanent invisibility that gets called stealth(Klingon Cloaking Device stealth), the extremely short duration gimmick stealth (McStealth), or a cop out of not putting anything in at all. My hope is that Shadowrun Online will combine their PnP rules with The Repopulation’s detection mechanics, and there will actually be an MMO out there that doesn’t completely crap the bed when it comes to stealth.

Haltair.3062:

Last day I was runing with two recruits. Three thieves roaming in enemy field.
Suddenly an enemy thief appeared in our back and killed one of the recruits. Then he tried to kill me and he couldn’t due to my knowledge of the stealths. The remaining recruit and I tried to kill him, but we couldn’t, he was frankly skilful and managed the rythm of the fight frankly well. Two thieves against one and we couldn’t beat him.
Was this due to stealth or was due to a skilful fighter?
We had some more stealth options than him.
Now let’s imagine that all the people who qq here has been stomped by one or several skilful thieves. It could seem that it is almost impossible to beat due to stealth. In fact you were fighting against above average players.
Perhaps I should start complaining about stealth, or perhaps I should congratulate an skilful thief.

Best,

Haltair

More simply, you should ask yourself what would happen if the thief had been a ranger?

However the problem of thieves is easy: the terrible stealth mechanics. Whoever denies this has never played stealther class in other games or at least they did not do it at a certain level (in other word they suck).

Ah… those who say that stealth is easy to counter are really fun, because they are just admitting they’re noobs.

Outside of zergs, you are looking at about 50% thieves, 25% Mesmers and 25% everything else. Hmm wonder why?

Thieves and mesmers are the only two classes that I have seen lead a zerg around the map and still manage to get away. This is just plain wrong. Being outmanned 5 to 1 (never mind 10 or 20 to 1) should mean you die. Period.

Stealth is very harsh in this game as there is no way to remove it (apart from that siege trap in WvW) or see through it. The Thief class has the largest amount of stealth based skills and with D/P has stealth pretty much on tap. So it’s actually very easy for me to see why Thieves receive so many complaints.

Stealth definitely needs to be fleshed out now so it’s more fun for classes without stealth to deal with, and also to make the Thief gameplay that little bit more skilful and ultimately much more satisfying.

Some people find stealth to be a cheese mechanic in general and the current popularity of infinite stealth pistol/dagger thieves is very annoying.

Sword/dagger thieves are still extremely powerful and perhaps OP against guardians.

The other problem is that they just aren’t fun to fight against. I never feel like I have good fights against thieves because their mechanics mean you spend more time running around like a chicken with you head cut off looking for them then actually fighting.

Deamhan.9538:

Thieves and mesmers are the only two classes that I have seen lead a zerg around the map and still manage to get away. This is just plain wrong. Being outmanned 5 to 1 (never mind 10 or 20 to 1) should mean you die. Period.

Yes it is indeed plain wrong. What on earth does a 20 man group have any use for hunting a thief or a mesmer around the map? Did their collective intelligence drop a notch, or 9000 notches? The hunt for lootbags sometimes get utterly kittened.

Any group that cannot stunlock kill a thief in stealth need not bother.

Dawdler.8521:

Deamhan.9538:

Thieves and mesmers are the only two classes that I have seen lead a zerg around the map and still manage to get away. This is just plain wrong. Being outmanned 5 to 1 (never mind 10 or 20 to 1) should mean you die. Period.

Yes it is indeed plain wrong. What on earth does a 20 man group have any use for hunting a thief or a mesmer around the map? Did their collective intelligence drop a notch, or 9000 notches? The hunt for lootbags sometimes get utterly kittened.

Any group that cannot stunlock kill a thief in stealth need not bother.

Exactly. The only time a Thief bothers me is when I see 4 people break off from the group and chasing him over half the map.

Just leave them ALONE. Let them play their little ineffectual games of hide and seek. They don’t really matter in the big scheme of things. I can’t imagine the mind-set that would derive enjoyment out of playing such a powerless profession. Picking on yaks and Noobs…. Oh boy!