Guild Wars 2

Furyos.9538:

I got hit for 5000 and then backstabbed by a guy for 8000 tonight in my full defensive setup and then followed up with him stealthing and finishing me while invisible.

Intended?

13k hp- defensive setup
intended ?

Thieves are definitely annoying in WvW I won’t deny that, most are built extreme glass cannon and for 1v1 combat and that’s sort of what the class was designed for. I’m not trying to defend thieves but running a defensive warrior unless I get caught unaware I can usually survive the initial burst of damage, the beef I have with thieves is when they fail to kill me they can just run away and most of the time there’s nothing I can do about it. For those saying that they get killed in 3 seconds by a thief as a tank warrior/guardian it’s probably because you were killed unprepared/out of position.

Seems like most people agree it’s the stealth mechanic that needs to be looked at, and not the thiefs burst damage (shouldn’t thieves have the best burst damage in the game considering they’re a class that somewhat relies on 1v1 ambushes in close combat?).

I can’t blame them for leaving because of god mode thieves infesting WvWvW. Many of us leave WvWvW after multiple occasions dying to perma stealthed enemies within seconds. I have never seen a worse implementation of stealth in any game. Who thought it was a good idea to give one class the highest dps, best mobility and perma stealth? Seriously?

Starwolf.4891:

Seems like most people agree it’s the stealth mechanic that needs to be looked at, and not the thiefs burst damage (shouldn’t thieves have the best burst damage in the game considering they’re a class that somewhat relies on 1v1 ambushes in close combat?).

It isn’t the profession that relies on 1v1 ambushes, it is a particular play style. Any profession can stack offense and jump people for quick 1v1 kills, thieves just have the mobility to get away when it fails.

High damage isn’t innate to thieves, they do the same damage any other profession does when stacking full offense. The only exception to this is the Steal class mechanic, which allows instant additional damage when traited, giving thieves more burst in the 1-3 second timeframe.

Profession roles aren’t that tightly laid out in GW2, “burst assassin” is a playstyle choice, not something that thieves are forced into. You can’t use that same build to be very effective in utility, group support, or siege warfare, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t thief builds that can be.

Tulisin.6945:

It isn’t the profession that relies on 1v1 ambushes, it is a particular play style. Any profession can stack offense and jump people for quick 1v1 kills, thieves just have the mobility to get away when it fails.

I do kinda share your point, but thieves only being able to get away when they fail? what about warrior endure pain and spamming leap attacks to get away? mesmers using portals and teleport + stealth skills + all their illusions to trick you? necro’s state mode and fear?, d/d eles with mist form + lighting leap (don’t know the name)? etc etc the only classes I can think that suck at running away are guards, engineers and rangers, but rangers the most, guards still have a lot of buffs + invulnerability and some leap attacks and engineers have elixirs <3, I never play ranger I might be wrong :P

Think I’m ready to throw my hat into this. Without QQing about my personal failures against thieves I can honestly say that the thief has too much in one package for it to be balanced. The class itself encourages exploiting the culling problems, the stealth mechanic makes it next to impossible for several classes to really counter it, and the ungodly high damage rate mixed with both of the above make it both frustrating and I feel lessens what could be a FULLY enjoyable fight for both parties. It is not a “L2P issue” 90% of the time, and the class could use some fundamental work. I’m not here screaming NERF OMG OP, but I am saying that the class could use a lot of tweaking.

NOW throwing in a fight I had the other day with 3+ people against one thief… we all used CC to try and lock her down, AOE in all places we thought she would go, but every time she popped back into view she was at equal or higher health than before, and refused to give us a fighting chance. In the end she ran away with 90% health. The mobility and utility of stealth does make it too easy for the class to get out of ridiculously stupid decisions and fights.

TL;DR : The class needs a bit of work, but not a straight up nerf.

cannons.8109:

Facts: (1) Anet will never balance classes around WvW; and (2) Anet will never fix culling. Therefore, thief will always be OP in WvW. Deal with it. It takes only a few days to level a thief to 80, and you should have caves full of gold by now to gear your toons, so there’s no reason to QQ.

I am a customer and I am in my right to complain, I have started this topic because all my group is broken and they dont want to play again this game because of this issue so yeah I have all the right to come here and tell the devs that there is a big problem that is affecting population. Probably for a big clan with tons of active members this is not an issue because they spam aoe all around but for a small group of people it is a big time problem.

No matter how many times people are told that throwing AEs all over the ground is not an effective counter to stealth, they still complain that they don’t have enough AE power to throw on the ground to counter stealth.

You’re better off auto attacking than trying to coat the ground in red circles.

Tulisin.6945:

No matter how many times people are told that throwing AEs all over the ground is not an effective counter to stealth, they still complain that they don’t have enough AE power to throw on the ground to counter stealth.

You’re better off auto attacking than trying to coat the ground in red circles.

Actually a necromancer throwing down bleeds and marks is a pretty good counter to thieves. This technically qualifies as AOE. Does not change the point made in my post though.

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Actually a necromancer throwing down bleeds and marks is a pretty good counter to thieves.

High-stealth thieves can easily remove conditions and avoiding marks is not difficult. Marks beat the heck out of standing there doing nothing, and they work as a solid deterrent if you drop them around friendlies, but they’re not a very effective offensive counter to stealth.

Tulisin.6945:

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Actually a necromancer throwing down bleeds and marks is a pretty good counter to thieves.

High-stealth thieves can reasily remove conditions and avoiding marks is not difficult. Marks beat the heck out of standing there doing nothing, and they work as a solid deterrent if you drop them around friendlies, but they’re not a very effective offensive counter to stealth.

Sadly what you say is true. Even if you happen to be good with Necro you can not beat a high stealth thief. The condition removal that comes with their stealth (3 conditions, mind you) seems like a bit too much…. I can understand it getting rid of immobilize or cripples and chilled, but not general conditions.

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Tulisin.6945:

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Actually a necromancer throwing down bleeds and marks is a pretty good counter to thieves.

High-stealth thieves can reasily remove conditions and avoiding marks is not difficult. Marks beat the heck out of standing there doing nothing, and they work as a solid deterrent if you drop them around friendlies, but they’re not a very effective offensive counter to stealth.

Sadly what you say is true. Even if you happen to be good with Necro you can not beat a high stealth thief. The condition removal that comes with their stealth (3 conditions, mind you) seems like a bit too much…. I can understand it getting rid of immobilize or cripples and chilled, but not general conditions.

Point is this isn’t a problem by itself, necromancers have other tools that can be used to counter stealth. The problem is that the community keeps parroting the advice “throw AEs all over the place” when that is really, really bad advice to counter stealth.

Tulisin.6945:

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Tulisin.6945:

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Actually a necromancer throwing down bleeds and marks is a pretty good counter to thieves.

High-stealth thieves can reasily remove conditions and avoiding marks is not difficult. Marks beat the heck out of standing there doing nothing, and they work as a solid deterrent if you drop them around friendlies, but they’re not a very effective offensive counter to stealth.

Sadly what you say is true. Even if you happen to be good with Necro you can not beat a high stealth thief. The condition removal that comes with their stealth (3 conditions, mind you) seems like a bit too much…. I can understand it getting rid of immobilize or cripples and chilled, but not general conditions.

Point is this isn’t a problem by itself, necromancers have other tools that can be used to counter stealth. The problem is that the community keeps parroting the advice “throw AEs all over the place” when that is really, really bad advice to counter stealth.

Well they arent giving complete advice. Throwing AOEs around is not a good way to counter them alone, but is IS a good way to limit their mobility advantage, you have to admit.

Starwolf.4891:

Thieves are definitely annoying in WvW I won’t deny that, most are built extreme glass cannon and for 1v1 combat and that’s sort of what the class was designed for. I’m not trying to defend thieves but running a defensive warrior unless I get caught unaware I can usually survive the initial burst of damage, the beef I have with thieves is when they fail to kill me they can just run away and most of the time there’s nothing I can do about it. For those saying that they get killed in 3 seconds by a thief as a tank warrior/guardian it’s probably because you were killed unprepared/out of position.

Seems like most people agree it’s the stealth mechanic that needs to be looked at, and not the thiefs burst damage (shouldn’t thieves have the best burst damage in the game considering they’re a class that somewhat relies on 1v1 ambushes in close combat?).

This,exactly,i can evade their backstab i can pop stability i can pop endure pain and evade some more,but when they are Constantly stealthing and appearing miles away with full hp only to return and do the same thing over again,you people do realize the cd on warriors stability’s and endure pain right ? While they are again Constantly in stealth,for some classes there is Nothing you can do about it unless your running with a zerg.Honestly it seems that most disagreeing with this fact are thieves themselves.

Allot of issue comes from fighting every thief the same way. Sure, stray aoe will likely kill a glass cannon, but a thief with enough sense to bulk up a little will just laugh at aoes.

Thieves replying with crap like ‘just cast AOEs’ make me laugh.

Earlier today I get hit for like 6.5K steal, then 6.5K cloak and dagger, then 10K backstab. I have a split second where I could finally see the thieve and able to cast ONE spell before I died to next hit. This is on a necro with a lot of toughness and vitality. When was I supposed to be able to cast AOE’s to kill him?

Sundog.9380:

Thieves replying with crap like ‘just cast AOEs’ make me laugh.

Earlier today I get hit for like 6.5K steal, then 6.5K cloak and dagger, then 10K backstab. I have a split second where I could finally see the thieve and able to cast ONE spell before I died to next hit. This is on a necro with a lot of toughness and vitality. When was I supposed to be able to cast AOE’s to kill him?

The instant you notice something is amiss, dodgeroll/stunbreak if basiklisk venom, then cast an aoe around yourself and heal up and start looking around. In any case, if you’re going around WvW, you should be looking around constantly. Especially when soloing, because anything can get the drop on you if they take you from behind. (Other days a couple warriors spiked me from behind, my guard was down because apparently had hid in the outer area of our keep after we took it.)

I have enjoyed reading this thread immensely.

Thieves are strong in WvW vs the masses. Meaning most people are not good….they just think they are. There are people who are good…and know how to kill thieves in droves or come to a stalemate.

I’ve watched certain Guardian, Warrior, Ele, Mesmer and YES ranger builds do things that a thief could only dream of doing. They also have zero chance to die to a BS thief 1v1.

This thread should be locked for trolling b/c that is all the OP did to begin with.

ps. I loved the 13k HP full defense build that one poster was running ROFLMAO! I loved the horrible thief vidoes people have posted showing exactly how BAD yak players are….more skill less zerg’n to that server please.

This thread has made my day

I surprise people and cc/gank them on all of my toons… while thief does it best, the rest can do it as well. In the end it’s a l2p issue.

I have tons of fun in wvw on my guard vs these thieves btw… feels like they are hitting me with pillows. I’ll fake run away while healing myself + using retaliation. The VAST majority get into the dog like “must catch the running squirrel” mentality and don’t notice their hp dropping. Then I’ll cc, turn and stomp them and laugh and laugh…

Jinks.2057:

I have enjoyed reading this thread immensely.

Thieves are strong in WvW vs the masses. Meaning most people are not good….they just think they are. There are people who are good…and know how to kill thieves in droves or come to a stalemate.

I’ve watched certain Guardian, Warrior, Ele, Mesmer and YES ranger builds do things that a thief could only dream of doing. They also have zero chance to die to a BS thief 1v1.

This thread should be locked for trolling b/c that is all the OP did to begin with.

ps. I loved the 13k HP full defense build that one poster was running ROFLMAO! I loved the horrible thief vidoes people have posted showing exactly how BAD yak players are….more skill less zerg’n to that server please.

This thread has made my day

Keep laughing. I encourage everyone to contact anet and demonstrate your disgust.

Maybe, now bear with me…just maybe. Everyone who plays a thief is just better than everyone who doesn’t……..What?! It’s possible :-P

Aberrant.6749:

I surprise people and cc/gank them on all of my toons… while thief does it best, the rest can do it as well. In the end it’s a l2p issue.

I have tons of fun in wvw on my guard vs these thieves btw… feels like they are hitting me with pillows. I’ll fake run away while healing myself + using retaliation. The VAST majority get into the dog like “must catch the running squirrel” mentality and don’t notice their hp dropping. Then I’ll cc, turn and stomp them and laugh and laugh…

Not everybody is guardian.

Miku.7156:

Not everybody is guardian.

Should probably level one up. They’re pretty OP and nobody complains about them.

I am playing a guardian, and every time I meet a thief I just sigh.
Can’t do anything against a good thief. His burst cannot kill me. As soon as he jumps on me I deal tremendous damage to him. He uses stealth and runs away. I have no means to finish or chase him. I resume what I was doing, knowing that he will be back in few seconds. Same thing happens all over again. There is no way out. I can keep fighting for 30 minutes straight, knowing that he will probably end up killing me through sheer attrition (or with someone coming to his aid), try to find the nearest friendly to help me out, or log out. Great gameplay design guys. Whoever thought that a thief should be able to spam stealth every 2 seconds, and get away or get in any fight as he pleases, gotta be a rare genius. Thank you very much.
That’s why I stopped playing a solo roamer and learned to stick with the zerg. Real fun.

You can’t kill a good thief in wvw.

Art.9820:

Tulisin.6945:

It isn’t the profession that relies on 1v1 ambushes, it is a particular play style. Any profession can stack offense and jump people for quick 1v1 kills, thieves just have the mobility to get away when it fails.

I do kinda share your point, but thieves only being able to get away when they fail? what about warrior endure pain and spamming leap attacks to get away? mesmers using portals and teleport + stealth skills + all their illusions to trick you? necro’s state mode and fear?, d/d eles with mist form + lighting leap (don’t know the name)? etc etc the only classes I can think that suck at running away are guards, engineers and rangers, but rangers the most, guards still have a lot of buffs + invulnerability and some leap attacks and engineers have elixirs <3, I never play ranger I might be wrong :P

Are you kidding me, ranger owns thieves, especially glass cannon one. Ok, sry, I m kidding… Ranger sucks as hell but for stone fingers players like me, ranger is the best and only class that I can use.

Personally I have no problem with glass cannon thieves. 1v1 n I m dead, no hope of escaping. It’s ok because my server thieves will be slaughtering other servers’ rangers.

Prevent camp from being flipped. That’s ok too, because my server thieves would be doing the same to other servers.

Unfortunately, like most of what the posts said, due to thieves being OP, wvw has become like thiefvthief and that’s not ok. Everyone wants to be unkillable, about to escape easily, and best of all, backstabbing opponents to death before they can even react.

Thieves are really balanced. Level 80 thief with full gear will destroy any lowbies or low geared people due to lack of toughness. Pretty much all classes do it only difference is thieves do it really fast. When you go lvl 80 full gear you can kick those thieves kitten Only thing for balance is engineers should be buffed a bit in certain points.

Me to hope friends don’t leaved otherwise me might not play game no more o^Q

Morningstar.6208:

Thieves are really balanced. Level 80 thief with full gear will destroy any lowbies or low geared people due to lack of toughness. Pretty much all classes do it only difference is thieves do it really fast. When you go lvl 80 full gear you can kick those thieves kitten Only thing for balance is engineers should be buffed a bit in certain points.

Inaccurate when you can never see them due to culling.

Art.9820:

Tulisin.6945:

It isn’t the profession that relies on 1v1 ambushes, it is a particular play style. Any profession can stack offense and jump people for quick 1v1 kills, thieves just have the mobility to get away when it fails.

I do kinda share your point, but thieves only being able to get away when they fail? what about warrior endure pain and spamming leap attacks to get away?
mesmers using portals and teleport + stealth skills + all their illusions to trick you? necro’s state mode and fear?, d/d eles with mist form + lighting leap (don’t know the name)? etc etc the only classes I can think that suck at running away are guards, engineers and rangers, but rangers the most, guards still have a lot of buffs + invulnerability and some leap attacks and engineers have elixirs <3, I never play ranger I might be wrong :P

Only difference is those other professions don’t vanish from sight leaving you nothing to follow…
Mesmers may be the trickiest of all of the following to follow but they can. (They can stealth for 3 seconds using torch but that nothing compared to thieves with utilities and a heal that can stealth)
I think if they change the Detected buff (where they cant hide for 3 seconds) and make it so it appears even out of combat it would fix everything. (But break the class… so I would not like to see this implemented, just throwing out ideas.)

Miku.7156:

Hi Everybody,

After playing Gw2 for some months almost all my friends leaved the game and maybe arenanet can take this as a feedback on why so many people stopped playing this amazing game, the reason is balance, the balance on pvp. Currently there is a huge problem with one profession that is making the wvwvw to become a thiefvthiefvthief , all of my friends got sick of getting killed by 2 or 3 hits by an stealth thief who keep stealth for a lot of time even if already hitted you and what is worse killing you stealth while someone is resurrecting you. The other day we went to puzzle and 2 thiefs killed 6 of us because they was hitting stealth almost the whole combat and they hit hard.

Please dont take this only as b.hurt as it is not only the reason of why I am posting this today (never post on forums because I like to play and not to write) but also to take this as feedback on why a lot of people is leaving to other games even when I consider this one of the best games I ever played.

Hope arenanet do something about this.

I suppose you had no Guardian in your group or didn’t know what to do… :/ ?

The reason i’m saying this is that I have no issue with thieves in WvW atleast not when roaming around alone – prior reset two thieves from a german server jumped on me, around the sentry point to garrison. It was some nice lootbags

When I have trouble with thieves is when they suddenly strike in the midst of fighting a zerg or 10-20 man fight and find yourself downed and you don’t know what hit you.. but you see the stealth mechanic but not the player because he didn’t render yet…

Vincavec.8350:

Miku.7156:

Hi Everybody,

After playing Gw2 for some months almost all my friends leaved the game and maybe arenanet can take this as a feedback on why so many people stopped playing this amazing game, the reason is balance, the balance on pvp. Currently there is a huge problem with one profession that is making the wvwvw to become a thiefvthiefvthief , all of my friends got sick of getting killed by 2 or 3 hits by an stealth thief who keep stealth for a lot of time even if already hitted you and what is worse killing you stealth while someone is resurrecting you. The other day we went to puzzle and 2 thiefs killed 6 of us because they was hitting stealth almost the whole combat and they hit hard.

Please dont take this only as b.hurt as it is not only the reason of why I am posting this today (never post on forums because I like to play and not to write) but also to take this as feedback on why a lot of people is leaving to other games even when I consider this one of the best games I ever played.

Hope arenanet do something about this.

I suppose you had no Guardian in your group or didn’t know what to do… :/ ?

The reason i’m saying this is that I have no issue with thieves in WvW atleast not when roaming around alone – prior reset two thieves from a german server jumped on me, around the sentry point to garrison. It was some nice lootbags

When I have trouble with thieves is when they suddenly strike in the midst of fighting a zerg or 10-20 man fight and find yourself downed and you don’t know what hit you.. but you see the stealth mechanic but not the player because he didn’t render yet…

Yeah, we had and they can survive the first deadly combos but on perma stealth is just matter of time to get a guardian down, of course you got one of those “I am the next thief” player that are just learning the thief class but as soon as they know how to be stealth most of the time you will have no chance. I have faced thiefs that are not good but not bad and you can survive them but what we had problems with are the ones with perma stealth and ubber backstab damage which are more and more on this days, there are a lot of videos where people start learning on how to be perma stealth and how to hit a damaged that get your pants off so is also matter of time of having more and more thiefs with perma stealth and ubber damage, they say they have low hp wich is true but if you cant see them what is left is only to predict where they could be and the game turns in to “lets find the ghost” before he do his next ubber backstab damage again.

Columba.9730:

Morningstar.6208:

Thieves are really balanced. Level 80 thief with full gear will destroy any lowbies or low geared people due to lack of toughness. Pretty much all classes do it only difference is thieves do it really fast. When you go lvl 80 full gear you can kick those thieves kitten Only thing for balance is engineers should be buffed a bit in certain points.

Inaccurate when you can never see them due to culling.

Except the countless ones you do see. Least I’ve seen them fine. I’ve seen them fine during a siege on our inner garrison. But then I’ve got a powerful machine. It’s getting really old Columba. And your excessive use to absolutes does your credibility no favours.

Dual.8953:

Columba.9730:

Morningstar.6208:

Thieves are really balanced. Level 80 thief with full gear will destroy any lowbies or low geared people due to lack of toughness. Pretty much all classes do it only difference is thieves do it really fast. When you go lvl 80 full gear you can kick those thieves kitten Only thing for balance is engineers should be buffed a bit in certain points.

Inaccurate when you can never see them due to culling.

Except the countless ones you do see. Least I’ve seen them fine. I’ve seen them fine during a siege on our inner garrison. But then I’ve got a powerful machine. It’s getting really old Columba. And your excessive use to absolutes does your credibility no favours.

So everyone else is lying too? The culling bug gives thieves enormous, unintended advantages. It must be fixed.

Columba.9730:

Dual.8953:

Columba.9730:

Morningstar.6208:

Thieves are really balanced. Level 80 thief with full gear will destroy any lowbies or low geared people due to lack of toughness. Pretty much all classes do it only difference is thieves do it really fast. When you go lvl 80 full gear you can kick those thieves kitten Only thing for balance is engineers should be buffed a bit in certain points.

Inaccurate when you can never see them due to culling.

Except the countless ones you do see. Least I’ve seen them fine. I’ve seen them fine during a siege on our inner garrison. But then I’ve got a powerful machine. It’s getting really old Columba. And your excessive use to absolutes does your credibility no favours.

So everyone else is lying too? The culling bug gives thieves enormous, unintended advantages. It must be fixed.

The fact that I don’t have a problem with their culling means that “always” and “never” are not true. Honestly I’m thinking culling’s not 100% a server side problem. Though you may need a more powerful rig for it not to be (mine’s an Asus G75V with 16 Gigs of RAM). When you look at it that way it’d explain why culling’s not relatively easy to fix, bug fixing is hard, and rewriting a program so it runs it probably even harder.

Kodiack.2783:

Come to think about it.

GW2 is the first MMO I’ve played that has a stealth class , with no stealth detection mechanic available to counter stealth kitten

so yea.. the current mechanics behind stealth are a gamebreaker for some.

-K

Must have not played Aion. The equiavalent to thief is the Assassin. You couldnt detect them and they can stealth for like 5minutes.

SWTOR had two stealth classes. Both classes could stealth for long periods of time and one did enormous damage out of stealth.

The stealth class is a ganker class. People who play it preferably like ganking. There main damage is to a single target as they have little to no aoe. It has always been a popular class and is why it is carried over from one MMO to the next. Your friends leaving because of 1 class, my guess is they were going to leave anyway. Usually, the people that stay playing a game are the hardcore MMO. Your friends sound like the same people who would have quit AION, or SWTOR or any MMO where they get ganked. If you think ganking is bad in WVW because of the thief you should have played AION or TERA in a PVP server. At least in GW2 you dont have to PVP if you dont want to unlike AION or TERA (PVP server). If you join WVW and upset about being ganked you shouldnt because its part of WVW. They have the option to not join WVW.

This culling issue has nothing to do with how good your machine is. Everyone please stop saying this.

Thanks.

EvilSardine.9635:

This culling issue has nothing to do with how good your machine is. Everyone please stop saying this.

Thanks.

agreed. besides i have 16 gb ram an nvidia 670 card. still an issue.

I’m just going to say the next:

Tank / Control / Support

The key to success.

Yamiino.1827:

I’m just going to say the next:

Tank / Control / Support

The key to success.

so are you saying it requires 3 players to fight one thief?

Columba.9730:

EvilSardine.9635:

This culling issue has nothing to do with how good your machine is. Everyone please stop saying this.

Thanks.

agreed. besides i have 16 gb ram an nvidia 670 card. still an issue.

Then how come culling effects some more then others vs thieves? Or is it that when they say “perma-stealth” they’re blowing it out of perportion?

Dual.8953:

Columba.9730:

EvilSardine.9635:

This culling issue has nothing to do with how good your machine is. Everyone please stop saying this.

Thanks.

agreed. besides i have 16 gb ram an nvidia 670 card. still an issue.

Then how come culling effects some more then others vs thieves? Or is it that when they say “perma-stealth” they’re blowing it out of perportion?

no idea. however, anet indicates that it’s broken and still needs to be fixed.