Guild Wars 2

Disclaimers:

1. The contents/whining of this post are directed to small/medium scale group combat. Not 1v1’s. Not zergs.

2. I’m a thief main, but i do enjoy playing multiple classes. I play everything except engi and necro. I just play thief a bit more i’d say, so i guess that’s my main. This is mostly a “thieves are too weak” QQ thread.

SO post-changes… every single class can drop 15k dmg on demand in under 1.5 seconds. Every. Single. Class.

it used to be a dd thief special. Mesmers could pull it off with a 4x mind wrack, or a guardian blowing half his defensive cooldowns could do it once at the start of a fight but it was much harder to set up, and not as on-demand as the thief.

Nowadays? Every class either matches, or outdoes my burst, and can do it as frequently. Mostly because they don’t need to blow all their cooldowns for it anymore Damage has skyrocketed so much that every class can do similar burst. While having more survivability. A LOT more. Shadow arts doesn’t give the 300 toughness it used to, meaning i get 1 shot by any classes power burst.

now before you scream “lol l2p just stunbreak, dodge, etc etc, gg”, realize that in a real group fight, with anything more than 3 people per side, you WILL get hit at times when u don’t have cooldowns up, and u wont see it coming. Thieves just don’t have the raw stats necessary to survive this. We used to with the combination of going SA and other classes dealing much less damage. We were still the squishiest and the most prone to getting bursted, but there was room for counterplay because it wasn’t a free 2-button 100% kill for our enemies. Getting focus switched to you in a fight was always a problem. I just feel that right now, thieves can’t realistically deal with it short of having precognition.

I’m not asking for thieves to be uber OP. At least bring it back to the level of strength we had prepatch. And its not damage i ask for. Just give me some survivability. Short of not being in a fight, its impossible to avoid damage. we have no invulns/distortions/blocks/protection buff, etc. we have no mitigation. Stealth is nice and all but only works on kittenty players who don’t realize u can still hit the thief in stealth. Most know u can and will finish you easily when u try to escape using stealth. I think anyone who actually knows what they’re doing will tell you thieves were fairly decent before patch. the class was mediocre in groups fights at best, and even then only in skilled hands. It did well in 1v1’s… but i hope u don’t balance ur game around that.

Continued on next post because of kitten limits on post length:

heres some burst numbers from other classes for examples of what i get hit with:

Static discharge engi crit me for 3.5k static discharge twice + 6.5k spanner hit + blunderbuss for 4k. 17.5k nigh on instantly.

Warrior gs spin will smack me for 7-8k. Arc strike or eviscerate (gs and axe burst skills respectively), crit for 7-8k. Thats 14-16k burst with 2 buttons in around a second. thats more than my cloak and dagger backstab does. blade rush can crit for 6k+ easily. Warrior dmg is insane right now compared to how survivable they are and how much mobility they get. Oh and rampage. Lulz.

Guardians. My buddy jumped into a thief and 2 rangers on his guard and 1-shot them with the combo. All of them. He runs mostly zerk with a tad of condi damage. He drops 18 burns on people + the power burst. I don’t even know how much dmg that is. the burns dont last long but they tock hard. he ticks 1k+ with 3. So thats 6k+ burn dmg added to a guardians power burst, easily another 10k. More if they wanna blow a cd for shield bomb or smite condis.

Rangers. Double rapid fires or double mauls with their trait. They can either do zero dmg or stealth from trapper build for survivability. And their 1500 range being the biggest help to their survivability. They drop more damage than a thief, and they do it from range. AND they can do it from stealth too if they running trappers.

Mesmers. Do i really need to? 5.5k per mind wrack. thats a 10s cooldown shatter that can hit for 16.5k. Aside form other skills, and while they are at range. Mesmers are kittening insanely OP right now.

Ele: The one class that has a hard time out-bursting a thief. I mean they CAN outburst us, but only with a scepter Fresh air build. Those builds are no longer viable IMO. Same reasons of lacking survivability plus bolt to the heart being in competition with fresh air. However DD can still drop a good amount of damage. it may not match the 15k on demand of other classes, but they can easily drop 10k with fire rush + grab. While being INSANELY survivable compared to a thief. I actually feel that eles are in a good spot right now balance wise. Other classes just need to be brought in line.

Necro: I don’t know much about necro, I don’t play one. They don’t seem to have radically changed. Power necros were always powerful, and seem to be doing ok, but not OP right now. Good burst matching a thief’s around 10-13k, insane dps in lich, all while having TONNES more survivability with essencially 3 life bars. their immobility and lack of mitigation keeps them in line tho i think. They seem balanced.

TLDR: Thieves are kittened. We need survivability. Desperately. And some classes need their dmg brought down. engies need static discharge build nerfed slightly. their survivability on this build is relatively weak, so the nerf needs to be either very slight, or be compensated with some survivablity. warriors need an overall drop in dmg. a sizeable one. Warriors were honestly fine pre-patch. I play one and they are insane right now. mesmers seriously need a drop in dmg. a heavy one. They have a bucketload of survivability and utility options, and now u give them the ability to one-shot almost every class. Rangers need a very slight tone down. Honestly they need a rework so they arent a 2-button class 80% of the time, because nerfing that can kitten them if u overdo it, but if u do a slight nerf it might be ok. U really should rework the kittening class tho its a joke in terms of design right now. Leave Eles and Necros. i feel like they are in a good spot for now.

slot some defensive gear. you miss that toughness? slot some Knights gear.

all stats are in gear now, if you want more defensive stats get them. im big into celestial trinkets right now. work great on my zerker medi guard, zerker engi, and my rampagers engi too. damage has increased for every class by a lot, maybe you need some defensive gear now. you can still maintain 2k+ power if you just swap a few trinkets.

choovanski.5462:

slot some defensive gear. you miss that toughness? slot some Knights gear.

all stats are in gear now, if you want more defensive stats get them. im big into celestial trinkets right now. work great on my zerker medi guard, zerker engi, and my rampagers engi too. damage has increased for every class by a lot, maybe you need some defensive gear now. you can still maintain 2k+ power if you just swap a few trinkets.

The problem is that even with offensive gear im barely matching the damage of some of the lower damage that other classes can put out.

if i slot defensive gear, it doesnt solve the overall balance issue. Its not a gear issue, its a trait issue. The stat loss from traits hurt thief the most. With the planned removal of vitality from guard stacks, this is going to hurt even more.

And no i cant gank people. But they sure as hell can gank others. Like im doing on my warrior right now because its hella easy.

Benevolence.8019:

choovanski.5462:

slot some defensive gear. you miss that toughness? slot some Knights gear.

all stats are in gear now, if you want more defensive stats get them. im big into celestial trinkets right now. work great on my zerker medi guard, zerker engi, and my rampagers engi too. damage has increased for every class by a lot, maybe you need some defensive gear now. you can still maintain 2k+ power if you just swap a few trinkets.

The problem is that even with offensive gear im barely matching the damage of some of the lower damage that other classes can put out.

if i slot defensive gear, it doesnt solve the overall balance issue. Its not a gear issue, its a trait issue. The stat loss from traits hurt thief the most. With the planned removal of vitality from guard stacks, this is going to hurt even more.

And no i cant gank people. But they sure as hell can gank others. Like im doing on my warrior right now because its hella easy.

maybe you need to sort out your build. my pals d/d thief does stupid damage and he’s constantly getting angry whispers.

A thief complaining about balance for roaming in WvW whatever next, why do you think over the last three years thief has been by far the most common roaming class in WvW, because it is underpowered and unforgiving?, LOL.

choovanski.5462:

maybe you need to sort out your build. my pals d/d thief does stupid damage and he’s constantly getting angry whispers.

Doing stupid damage is a “one shot”, so themoment your opponent defends himself, you’re dead – and I don’t think that was the playstyle the OP was looking for.

Granted I’m a new to game player but my avatar’s are not wearing anything less than exotic.
Not one of my toons are what you would call glassy.

I have 3 level 80’s (Ieveled fast with crafting and WvW), a guardian, a ranger, and a warrior, and all but the guardian has died from a thiefs one-shot.
On more than one occasion I have watched a thief take out a group of three experienced players, one by one.

Burst+Speed+Stealth+ the ability to escape most immobilizing attacks put them on a pedestal well above all other classes.

Thieves are still killing in WvW. They just have to think twice about trying to attack a group now.

Choovanski: The build is fine. Deadly art/shadow arts/crit strikes. ive swapped trickery instead of crit strikes too. The boon rips and steal cd is nice, but not worth the dmg loss. If you read, Im not complaining about the loss in damage. I’m complaining about the loss of survivability. Specifically in Shadow arts, though acrobatics got the shaft to for the sword thieves out there. Either way, other classes do similar damage. And yes, I can dunk on some scrubs too. Any player that isnt bad can avoid or mititate enough to survive. I don’t have those options anymore with the loss of the toughness.

Zinkz, thief was the most popular for roaming in solo/duo. Once u started getting 3, 4, 5+ people, basically small-medium group combat, thief dropped in popularity compared to warriors guardians rangers, and was on par with eles and mesmers. was above necros and engies tho. Also, I’m not talking about what was before, im talking about what is now.

Jana, spot on. yea, ina group fight I can of course jump in on someone half hp and drop them… but so can any other class. The difference is they can survive doing so much more reliably. In group fights thief is now relegated to being a shortbow-bot. Might as well play ranger.

Kamara: Ur ranger can drop 0dmg, as can your warrior. Your guard can block and uinvuln. They all have the base hp to survive a standard steal cnd backstab opener (biggers thief burst). there is zero reason for you to be getting one-shot by a thief when they can all become invulnerable. Unless u were half hp? but then ud get 1 shot by any power class blowing their burst on you. Yes, i used to kill 3-4 people at a time on occasion too. If they were bad. The moment someone ur fighting actually knows how a thief works, even prepatch, those odds wouldnt work. cloak and dagger is stupidly predictable, and the moment u avoid it the thief is kittened. same for smoke field/heartseeker, its very easy to interrupt doing so leaves the thief low on ini and royally boned. there is no reason anyone competent should ever lose in a 2v1 vs a thief. u dont even need to be good, just competent.

Theves are still killing in WvW. Mostly its solo/duo roaming and ganking scrubs. In a group setting the thief just doesnt pull their weight. they need to get carried a bit to keep the pressure off em, because they have no response to it themselves.

Benevolence.8019:

Kamara: Ur ranger can drop 0dmg, as can your warrior. Your guard can block and uinvuln. They all have the base hp to survive a standard steal cnd backstab opener (biggers thief burst). there is zero reason for you to be getting one-shot by a thief when they can all become invulnerable. Unless u were half hp? but then ud get 1 shot by any power class blowing their burst on you. Yes, i used to kill 3-4 people at a time on occasion too. If they were bad. The moment someone ur fighting actually knows how a thief works, even prepatch, those odds wouldnt work. cloak and dagger is stupidly predictable, and the moment u avoid it the thief is kittened. same for smoke field/heartseeker, its very easy to interrupt doing so leaves the thief low on ini and royally boned. there is no reason anyone competent should ever lose in a 2v1 vs a thief. u dont even need to be good, just competent.

Theves are still killing in WvW. Mostly its solo/duo roaming and ganking scrubs. In a group setting the thief just doesnt pull their weight. they need to get carried a bit to keep the pressure off em, because they have no response to it themselves.

Let me remind you that as a new player in WvW I’m penalized and do not have guard stacks (I’m close on the fortitude). Aside from that there are many post about the thief one shot, so I’m not alone. Again none of my toons are glassy and are in a mix of soldiers and knights with trinkets that maybe zerker. /shrugs …I guess I’m a scrub.

Kamara.4187:

Let me remind you that as a new player in WvW I’m penalized and do not have guard stacks (I’m close on the fortitude). Aside from that there are many post about the thief one shot, so I’m not alone. Again none of my toons are glassy and are in a mix of soldiers and knights with trinkets that maybe zerker. /shrugs …I guess I’m a scrub.

Lack of guard stacks would account for you being within 1-shot range. Although ur mix of tanky gear might put you back up above it. Just realize the thief is even lower base stats that you. Much lower. ranger is 16k+ base hp, war is almost 20k. thats with full offensive setups. The guardian ironically is the squishiest of ur 3 classes in terms of base defensive stats, being about the same as thief at just under 12k, and is the most prone to one shots. Guards get a lot of tools to mitigate or ignore damage though, so they gain much more of slotting an hp items or two in terms of effective hp. The thief suffers from slotting too much defense because of how hard it impacts damage and how little mitigation the thief gets.

Benevolence.8019:

Kamara.4187:

Let me remind you that as a new player in WvW I’m penalized and do not have guard stacks (I’m close on the fortitude). Aside from that there are many post about the thief one shot, so I’m not alone. Again none of my toons are glassy and are in a mix of soldiers and knights with trinkets that maybe zerker. /shrugs …I guess I’m a scrub.

Lack of guard stacks would account for you being within 1-shot range. Although ur mix of tanky gear might put you back up above it. Just realize the thief is even lower base stats that you. Much lower. ranger is 16k+ base hp, war is almost 20k. thats with full offensive setups. The guardian ironically is the squishiest of ur 3 classes in terms of base defensive stats, being about the same as thief at just under 12k, and is the most prone to one shots. Guards get a lot of tools to mitigate or ignore damage though, so they gain much more of slotting an hp items or two in terms of effective hp. The thief suffers from slotting too much defense because of how hard it impacts damage and how little mitigation the thief gets.

I’ll probably understand better if I ever get motivated to finish leveling out my thief. Playing a class always gives you a better picture

Benevolence.8019:

Disclaimers:

1. The contents/whining of this post are directed to small/medium scale group combat. Not 1v1’s. Not zergs.

2. I’m a thief main, but i do enjoy playing multiple classes. I play everything except engi and necro. I just play thief a bit more i’d say, so i guess that’s my main. This is mostly a “thieves are too weak” QQ thread.

SO post-changes… every single class can drop 15k dmg on demand in under 1.5 seconds. Every. Single. Class.

it used to be a dd thief special. Mesmers could pull it off with a 4x mind wrack, or a guardian blowing half his defensive cooldowns could do it once at the start of a fight but it was much harder to set up, and not as on-demand as the thief.

Nowadays? Every class either matches, or outdoes my burst, and can do it as frequently. Mostly because they don’t need to blow all their cooldowns for it anymore Damage has skyrocketed so much that every class can do similar burst. While having more survivability. A LOT more. Shadow arts doesn’t give the 300 toughness it used to, meaning i get 1 shot by any classes power burst.

now before you scream “lol l2p just stunbreak, dodge, etc etc, gg”, realize that in a real group fight, with anything more than 3 people per side, you WILL get hit at times when u don’t have cooldowns up, and u wont see it coming. Thieves just don’t have the raw stats necessary to survive this. We used to with the combination of going SA and other classes dealing much less damage. We were still the squishiest and the most prone to getting bursted, but there was room for counterplay because it wasn’t a free 2-button 100% kill for our enemies. Getting focus switched to you in a fight was always a problem. I just feel that right now, thieves can’t realistically deal with it short of having precognition.

I’m not asking for thieves to be uber OP. At least bring it back to the level of strength we had prepatch. And its not damage i ask for. Just give me some survivability. Short of not being in a fight, its impossible to avoid damage. we have no invulns/distortions/blocks/protection buff, etc. we have no mitigation. Stealth is nice and all but only works on kittenty players who don’t realize u can still hit the thief in stealth. Most know u can and will finish you easily when u try to escape using stealth. I think anyone who actually knows what they’re doing will tell you thieves were fairly decent before patch. the class was mediocre in groups fights at best, and even then only in skilled hands. It did well in 1v1’s… but i hope u don’t balance ur game around that.

Continued on next post because of kitten limits on post length:

Thing is, nowadays, thieves are no longer a guaranteed win. They still beat me but they have to work for it. So I disagree with you andI think things are actually balanced better this way.

Also, remember, while you can get 1 or 2 or 3 shot real fast, you can actually 1 or 2 shot full tank / supp builds yourself. Most of the time get them very low, and guaranteed 1 shot on squishies.

This is ideal for small group since your 1 or 2 teammates can actually help you with the set up. You need to play and practice together a bit on this.

You cant just mindlessly jump into the fray anymore and be on top or reset combat 90% of the time, I think this is great. Remember, use your set-up, and its not necessarily the class / spec anymore, but rather who gets the jump on whom. So switch around your playstyle.

toughness has become more weaker stat than it was before, playing in knigh gear feels like im playing in zerker.

When i read players saying guardian feels balanced when builds are doing all the work for them… or saying thy need more damage on fire condition… not much to hope if anet really balances the game out…

Looking for balance in WvW (the least balanced part of GW2) is silly. WvW is unbalanced in far more fundamental and significant ways than class X is UP or OP. I enjoy WvW but I don’t play it for any sort of balanced gameplay. If I want that I go to PvP.

Aberrant.6749:

Looking for balance in WvW (the least balanced part of GW2) is silly. WvW is unbalanced in far more fundamental and significant ways than class X is UP or OP. I enjoy WvW but I don’t play it for any sort of balanced gameplay. If I want that I go to PvP.

WvW is not balance due player numbers and coverage not classes imbalances, based on high damage values where the groups that has more X class with X build wins, on WvW each class had several roles in combat and that actually is extant.

Aeolus.3615:

Aberrant.6749:

Looking for balance in WvW (the least balanced part of GW2) is silly. WvW is unbalanced in far more fundamental and significant ways than class X is UP or OP. I enjoy WvW but I don’t play it for any sort of balanced gameplay. If I want that I go to PvP.

WvW is not balance due player numbers and coverage not classes imbalances, based on high damage values where the groups that has more X class with X build wins, on WvW each class had several roles in combat and that actually is extant.

For a large part yes it’s numbers/coverage. It’s also the PvE gear stats + food + gear differences… and the list goes on and on. WvW would need a massive overhaul to be even remotely balanced. I doubt A-net wants to put that many resources into it.