Guild Wars 2

“Thief

Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters."

The answer is AoE and conditions (not just 1 or 2 but large stacks of it). There you go guys, now stop QQing and start AoEing! Remember to put as much conditions as you can on the thief. It’s not like they can remove bleeding, burning, and poison by just stealthing or remove conditions while in stealth. Oh wait…wtf…. /facepalm

skupuz.6940:

“Thief

Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters."

The answer is AoE and conditions (not just 1 or 2 but large stacks of it). There you go guys, now stop QQing and start AoEing! Remember to put as much conditions as you can on the thief. It’s not like they can remove bleeding, burning, and poison by just stealthing or remove conditions while in stealth. Oh wait…wtf…. /facepalm

Apparently the new plan is to keep buffing thieves every patch. I mean they obviously don’t listen to the community and just do their own thing anyways.

Bunzy.8674:

skupuz.6940:

“Thief

Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters."

The answer is AoE and conditions (not just 1 or 2 but large stacks of it). There you go guys, now stop QQing and start AoEing! Remember to put as much conditions as you can on the thief. It’s not like they can remove bleeding, burning, and poison by just stealthing or remove conditions while in stealth. Oh wait…wtf…. /facepalm

Apparently the new plan is to keep buffing thieves every patch. I mean they obviously don’t listen to the community and just do their own thing anyways.

If you can’t beat them, exploit with them! My thief is lvl 15 trying to get her to lvl 80 before the next buff patch.

high single target damage? They can do high AOE as well. So already they broke their own thief philosophy

Solution is AOE against thief? Really? Blowing your limited aoe spell with long cooldown on empty spot because you can’t see or target them.

The key concept is trading survivability for burst. I feel that trade isn’t made; stealth accomplishes both.

He does mention using AoE or large stacks of conditions. But he fails to mention you need to have enough toughness and vitality so you can survive long enough to use these counters.

Or that for the latter, you need to be able to see the thief long enough to actually apply some conditions.

Maybe bads should stop freaking out every time an enemy isn’t constantly visible. As a thief, necro and warrior user, I typically have more trouble with the more visible targets, because they don’t die in 2 seconds when I predict their movement. And thief buffs? You mean, buffs to pistol physical damage? That still remains horrible BTW.

I mean.. It’s like asking the other side at a full-blown shootout in Sarajevo to ‘pretty please show yourselves so we can shoot at you’.

Anet devs have been playing too much Assassin’s Creed 3. Thieves already have the mobility to escape any class if they want and can down most classes in a couple seconds… so they decide to give them more movement speed and damage. Seems legit.

See Thief stealth.
Count to 2 then dodge/block.
Stun Thief and apply all your burst/conditions.
See Thief stealth again.
If you see a little house AOE the house.
Wait for thief to reappear again far away half healed with all his conditions cleansed.
Bask in the glory of countering the thief.
Prepare to do again.

If you want to know how to KILL and DOWN a thief?
Than I don’t know.

I will agree, Shadow Refuge’s stealth duration is still way too high. There’s a reason why almost all thieves have SR on their bar.

A simple solution would be to add diminishing returns on stealth. Thieves are designed to burst and then flee/reset if they fail to kill you. They shouldn’t be in 5-10 minute long wars of attrition, which is what stealth juggling allows them to do.

I’m of the opinion that if you can survive for 60-90 seconds against a thief, then you deserve the win.

Slic.2406:

Maybe bads should stop freaking out every time an enemy isn’t constantly visible.

Of course people are going to freak out about the invisible. We’re not ALL Jedi warriors here.

But the problem isn’t just the stealth itself. It’s being invisible coupled with its inherent and traited defenses, along with an opportunity for high damage openers. The thief gains utility, defense, and offense all from one ability, requiring no choice or trade-off. I don’t think any other class benefits as much from a single mechanic.

Kerithlan.1659:

A simple solution would be to add diminishing returns on stealth. Thieves are designed to burst and then flee/reset if they fail to kill you. They shouldn’t be in 5-10 minute long wars of attrition, which is what stealth juggling allows them to do.

I’m of the opinion that if you can survive for 60-90 seconds against a thief, then you deserve the win.

Well, unless they’re built that way. That’s the most appealing aspect of this game (to me); that you potentially can play any class however you feel. I don’t mind losing to an attrition build who ran circles around me. But I agree with your sentiment 100% if it’s the burst builds you’re facing. The ‘glass cannons’ shouldn’t have ~infinite resets and escape mechanisms when I do actually counter their garbage.

I’m not sure what annoys me more, the fact thieves can just disappear many times after eachother (much more seconds and times than any other profession) or the fact that they keep this behaviour up after you finally downed one, making it nearly impossible to finish them! Going invisible, moving about, well within the time it takes to finish a person… now we just resort to range attack a downed thief….

If thf’s are being annoying, then they are doing their job. Time to stop looking at thief as a “Punching Bag” cause you cant kill one. Look at your own class and figure out whats great about it. Anet just basically handed you the way to kill a thief on a silver platter.
Conditions and Aoe’s. Also, Stun/Root bam bam bam dead…. Just cause some of us use “One trick pony” BS builds doesn’t mean we all should suffer the nerf “QQ’s” We are fragile and mobile. Figure out the counter. It’s easy. Oh a glass cannon thf killed you in a few hits.. well, if you are a glass cannon build yourself, what did you expect? I’m a thf, not a BS Thf, i have 18k hp, And very rarely does a bs thf get the best of me. Learn your dodge and time it. Other than that… i honestly don’t know what to tell ya.

The official response will probably say something like: Learn to play working as intended.

I am honestly surprised they didn’t do anything to heartseeker damage, one of the most damaging and spammable skills in the game that also works as a gap closer. They also didn’t do anything about the fact thieves can stealth for 90% of the time they are fighting you, I am pretty certain they never intended this.

Let’s be real here. Hearing a D/D ele complain about anything is quite laughable….

apart from the ANET staff who are obviously favouring thief, they have another party supporting them : rendering/culling issues….

responding to the official response : yeah right, like AOEing an empty spot where there is no thief would solve the issue…

Dr Acula.3496:

Let’s be real here. Hearing a D/D ele complain about anything is quite laughable….

Happy don’t make me duel you

Waffler.1257:

Anet devs have been playing too much Assassin’s Creed 3. Thieves already have the mobility to escape any class if they want and can down most classes in a couple seconds… so they decide to give them more movement speed and damage. Seems legit.

hell, if that is true i wanna double air assassinate somebodies

I love using “Fear Me” when thieves try to use the AOE cloak.

Invisible=hard to kill (as in, often times 4 guys can’t kill 1 thief)

High single target damage=kill you fast

Hard to kill+kill you fast=they will the War of Attrition too.

Mobility=if the thief loses the battle he can still runs away safely.

AoE=If it takes your team 15 AoE “guesses” to kill a thief, the enemy already won. Skill recharges will tear your team apart.

Drago.1634:

If thf’s are being annoying, then they are doing their job. Time to stop looking at thief as a “Punching Bag” cause you cant kill one. Look at your own class and figure out whats great about it. Anet just basically handed you the way to kill a thief on a silver platter.
Conditions and Aoe’s. Also, Stun/Root bam bam bam dead…. Just cause some of us use “One trick pony” BS builds doesn’t mean we all should suffer the nerf “QQ’s” We are fragile and mobile. Figure out the counter. It’s easy. Oh a glass cannon thf killed you in a few hits.. well, if you are a glass cannon build yourself, what did you expect? I’m a thf, not a BS Thf, i have 18k hp, And very rarely does a bs thf get the best of me. Learn your dodge and time it. Other than that… i honestly don’t know what to tell ya.

Yeah, you are sooo fragile. 2 days ago we needed 12 people with AoE to hunt down ONE single thief in the JP.
And as a Mesmer….well, you mean I should use the 1 AoE skill with horrible CD?

I don’t have a problem countering a thief. They rarely kill me, but killing them?…. The cooldown on stealths needs to be increased, so that they actually have to plan it.

That was pretty funny. So conditions(that get removed) and throwing aoe around is the official counter…

Please can people stop talking about how to kill a thief….i wish to be alive forever…..forever annoying you guys.

Anyone who was trying to pin me down this evening in FA BL and failed…i’m sorry.

My ingame name is Miss May Eye…if you wish to duel me in pvp i welcome it, not because i think i can win..but because i enjoy playing the game.

And anyone who is struggling to kill thieves…..come fight me…i will teach you.

Mister Mustard.7203:

The key concept is trading survivability for burst. I feel that trade isn’t made; stealth accomplishes both.

.

Same. Mobility and stealth gives them the highest survivability in the game.

Boomstin.3460:

That was pretty funny. So conditions(that get removed) and throwing aoe around is the official counter…

I seriously don’t understand how AoE is the official counter to a thief. If anything, it seems like AoE would be less effective against thieves relative to other classes since it requires the target to remain in the same area to do maximum damage. Thieves have by far the highest mobility in the game, so why would they stand in AoE? Unless of course they mean you should just keep spamming AoE on yourself, in which case I would say CDs are too long to continuously do this and thieves would just range attack you anyway.

Mister Mustard.7203:

The key concept is trading survivability for burst. I feel that trade isn’t made; stealth accomplishes both.

Key concept should be trading burst for stealth, its the obvious way to go for thieves. The aoe thing only works if you do it around yourself otherwise thieves will just get out of it. What are we not meant to kill thieves only put aoes down to drive them away.

Real question is, why are you so determined to kill the thieves? If you have a stun break on your bar coupled with semi-decent reactions, and some cleave and/or AoE attacks, the thief won’t be able to kill you. Let them run away and try again later, when his steal+basilisk comes off of cooldown. Those cooldowns are roughly 45 seconds, so by which time the skills you need to not die should be off CD as well.

Thieves will kill you if you let them, don’t chase them. It’s been established many times over that thieves are not easy to catch, so stop trying: continue doing whatever you were doing and be on the look out for little puffs of black w/e it is, or see if a thief is following you at a distance.

Mesmer’s and warriors are two classes which are exceptional at combating thieves. A mesmer running Sword/Pistol has 2 stuns and should be running a stun break a long with distortion, you have a good chance to not die. Warriors have shield stance and then the usual bulls strike+frenzy+100b combo, can also use endure pain. The problem here lies with the fact that many players using these classes don’t use these weapon sets.

A good Mesmer should have a good chance to beat a good thief, as should a good warrior. The counters are out there, the problem lies with people being far too determined to try and hunt down the most mobile class in the game. I can’t offer much in terms of advice for other classes, sadly. All this comes from my personal experience in both s/tPvP, WvW, and PvE, roughly 800 hours on my thief.

Hope this helps some – though I suspect I’ll probably just get flamed for trying to defend thieves.

TL;DR Equip a stun break at all times, don’t chase.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Real question is, why are you so determined to kill the thieves? If you have a stun break on your bar coupled with semi-decent reactions, and some cleave and/or AoE attacks, the thief won’t be able to kill you. Let them run away and try again later, when his steal+basilisk comes off of cooldown. Those cooldowns are roughly 45 seconds, so by which time the skills you need to not die should be off CD as well.

Thieves will kill you if you let them, don’t chase them. It’s been established many times over that thieves are not easy to catch, so stop trying: continue doing whatever you were doing and be on the look out for little puffs of black w/e it is, or see if a thief is following you at a distance.

Mesmer’s and warriors are two classes which are exceptional at combating thieves. A mesmer running Sword/Pistol has 2 stuns and should be running a stun break a long with distortion, you have no real excuse to die. Warriors have shield stance and then the usual bulls strike+frenzy+100b combo, can also use endure pain.

A good Mesmer should beat a good thief, as should a good warrior. The counters are out there, the problem lies with people being far too determined to try and hunt down the most mobile class in the game. I can’t offer much in terms of advice for other classes, sadly. All this comes from my personal experience in both s/tPvP, WvW, and PvE, roughly 800 hours on my thief.

Hope this helps some – will probably just get flame responses in return.

So people shouldn’t try to kill thiefs. Unless maybe warriors and mesmers. Thanks for the tips.

Boomstin.3460:

So people shouldn’t try to kill thiefs. Unless maybe warriors and mesmers. Thanks for the tips.

If a thief tries to kill you and fails, they’re usually just going to run away. Nothing gained by either of you. If they stay, thief heal doesn’t strip chill/cripple/immobilize. An immobile thief isn’t much of a thief. Brings me back to the point of “why chase a thief?”.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Boomstin.3460:

So people shouldn’t try to kill thiefs. Unless maybe warriors and mesmers. Thanks for the tips.

If a thief tries to kill you and fails, they’re usually just going to run away. Nothing gained by either of you. If they stay, thief heal doesn’t strip chill/cripple/immobilize. An immobile thief isn’t much of a thief. Brings me back to the point of “why chase a thief?”.

Call me crazy but shouldn’t there be somekind of possible penalty from a failed attack? I really don’t think having to run away and wait 30 seconds for cooldowns to come back qualifies.

“Real question is, why are you so determined to kill the thieves?”

Answer: Because the only reason you are seeing that thief in the first place is he/she stealthed in on you, back stabbed you, and was trying to kill you. Now you want him to go away. You know that if he/she just stealths and runs away, he/she will be back in 1 minute. If you manage to kill him/her, he/she won’t come back to stalk you for at least 5 minutes. And after the thief has been killed by a particular player it will probably look for easier prey.

Boomstin.3460:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Boomstin.3460:

So people shouldn’t try to kill thiefs. Unless maybe warriors and mesmers. Thanks for the tips.

If a thief tries to kill you and fails, they’re usually just going to run away. Nothing gained by either of you. If they stay, thief heal doesn’t strip chill/cripple/immobilize. An immobile thief isn’t much of a thief. Brings me back to the point of “why chase a thief?”.

Call me crazy but shouldn’t there be somekind of possible penalty from a failed attack? I really don’t think having to run away and wait 30 seconds for cooldowns to come back qualifies.

If you’re fast enough to immobilize/chill/cripple, they aren’t going to go anywhere very fast, and it can quite well be an easy kill for you. I know not all classes have easy access to these skills, but thieves generally only have one stun break equipped, many have none. I see your concern, but I feel like you think that a failed attack should result in certain death(s). Thieves may have the best disengage, but they aren’t the only ones who can run away from a failed engage, and thief disengage isn’t impossible to counter.

EDIT:

From the post below, just reminded me of “roll for initiative”. Kind of an inferior skill in all honesty, but apparently some thieves are using it. So guess the snares part in some cases won’t work as a solution.

Funny… my thief can remove conds all day, and teleport from aoe’s like I’m gettin paid for it.
Try again, I’ll do this game all day, thief is stupid OP.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

I see your concern, but I feel like you think that a failed attack should result in certain death(s).

Probably because this is how small/individual fights work in WvW for every other class. When you see another person and attack, either you will end up killing them or you end up dead. The exception of course is if you are turtling right outside of a tower or keep, but those are often few and far between, especially if you are on a losing server just trying to take supply camps.

Boomstin.3460:

So people shouldn’t try to kill thiefs. Unless maybe warriors and mesmers. Thanks for the tips.

Which, incidently, have no AoEs to speak of. Tells you a lot about how successful is ANet with balancing thieves atm.

Bunzy.8674:

skupuz.6940:

“Thief

Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters."

The answer is AoE and conditions (not just 1 or 2 but large stacks of it). There you go guys, now stop QQing and start AoEing! Remember to put as much conditions as you can on the thief. It’s not like they can remove bleeding, burning, and poison by just stealthing or remove conditions while in stealth. Oh wait…wtf…. /facepalm

Apparently the new plan is to keep buffing thieves every patch. I mean they obviously don’t listen to the community and just do their own thing anyways.

You play a D/D Ele….really shouldn’t be complaining about dying to thieves

Maybe you have a serious l2p issue that I can help you with? Lemme know what ya having the most trouble w/ and I’ll see if I can help ya

A lot of talking has started swinging towards D/D ele’s and they certainly are hard targets to take down which will no doubt need balancing. But a lot of what ele’s do is respected, what a thief does is at best annoying, at worst infuriating.

Specifically with thief’s is the issue of stealth. Stealth was always going to be an issue, any MMO that has characters that use stealth has created divides within the community.

What ArenaNet has compounded upon here with the stealth issue is the rendering issue that distorts what thief stealth does.

Tbh I actually don’t know what ArenaNet can do. I think the community has developed an anti-thief/stealth sentiment which is going to be hard to recover from.

FourTwenty.4268:

so many delicious tears. so many of the same names posting over and over too.

im here to say there’s nothing wrong with thieves and people just need to learn to counter them. learn to play the game! dont be lazy

This is quite the air-tight counter-argument. Why didn’t I think to do this?

Rant incoming!

About ten years ago I started doing volunteer moderation/GM work for a small, text-based webgame. The guy who ran the site didn’t expect it to become as popular as it did (the site went viral in late 2002) so there were no mod tools at first. The game was entirely unmoderated for months. It launched in November 2002 (we just turned 10) and I was one of the first mods on staff sometime in March or April 2003.

One of the first things I noticed when I started doing GM work was that many people played the game seemingly only to make others upset. I was still young and hadn’t yet realized how much enjoyment people derived from making random strangers on the internet angry. Over the subsequent years, as multiplayer gaming took off, I started to see this tendency materialize in other games. Arena-style multiplayer shooters serve almost no other purpose: kill people until they rage quit or go to sleep. The games themselves are fun enough on their own, but for lots of gamers, the possibility of witnessing or causing anonymous anger eventually becomes impossible to resist. Single-player campaigns in modern shooters exist almost as afterthoughts; in my experience, few pay much attention to them. People don’t want to fight AI anymore, they want to fight other people and not just because people are “smarter” or “better opponents.” I don’t play shooters very much anymore, but when I did I often found myself questioning that line of reasoning. I’ve seen human players do some incredibly stupid things.

How does this relate to MMOs, you ask? Activated stealth. As near as I can tell, stealth classes tend to be among the more popular selections for PvP in just about every game in the genre. Being able to engage enemies at will—and successfully run away 99% of the time if you can’t win—is the single best strategic advantage I can think of in most PvP situations, and its users know that it has a high frequency of degrading their opponent’s gameplay experience. Activated stealth also makes strategy for your class much easier, and marginalizes your class’ shortcomings to a degree enjoyed by no one else in the game. Things like lower armor rating or movement speed or whatever else MMO devs come up with to “balance” stealth become meaningless, for the simple reason that you can’t hit or chase what you can’t see.

I don’t mind that the thief has incredible burst damage. What I mind is the fact that he can engage who he wants, when he wants, and if he has half a brain he will suffer no consequences for it most of the time. RIFT was like this too: I played a cleric with re-skinned valor gear and every once in a while a rogue would pop out of stealth to try and kill me in open world, not knowing how well geared I was. After about 5 seconds of me kicking their kitten they would just go invisible and run away. Some would try again, others just moved on to other targets.

What is the takeaway from this? Stealth is bad balance even when it doesn’t “work.” Even in games where it is not quite as powerful (Global Agenda is a great example of this), gameplay suffers because everyone still wants to play the stealth class. In my view, all classes should suffer consequences if they engage a target they cannot kill. I don’t mind evade or IMS skills, but the whole concept of “welp I can’t do this, better press a button and go invisible so I can run away” has GOT to go.

If you feel like stealth HAS to be part of your game that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be as easy as it is (not just in GW2 but most MMOs) to drop into stealth while in combat, and permastealth should not be possible unless there is a universally available skill or item that can counter it. I wouldn’t mind stealth so much if there was a (5) or (6) rune bonus that gave me area detection ability, for example.

Only way counter thief is go full bunker.

When will you ele’s quit complaining and start learning to counter? I’ve been beaten plenty of times by good elementalists using d/d. They could also outrun me before the signet buff this patch. I would quite happily trade my stealth in for increased survivability, burning, confusion, blowouts, knockdowns, water fields, 1200 range and AoE.

Note: The perfect Thief profession for me wouldn’t use stealth, venoms or traps. Instead of stealth I would have rather just have each of my weapon abilities have a different skill related to whether i attack from the front or from the flank (Similar to how backstab works, but without the stealth).
Instead of venoms I would have utility skills like bluff, taunt, feint and blindside.
Instead of Traps I would have acrobatic skills like trip, disarm, riposte and lunge.

I’m very disappointed in GW2’s representation of the Thief. It’s not a thief at all, it is merely a re-skinned Assassin combined with a rogue from EQ/WoW. It’s a wolf in thief’s clothing.

Elthuzar.9478:

I would quite happily trade my stealth in for increased survivability, burning, confusion, blowouts, knockdowns, water fields, 1200 range and AoE.

Then roll ele.

Seriously though, just because you can be beaten by a d/d ele doesn’t mean thief isn’t broken. D/D eles also deal insane damage if executed properly, and are also soft targets… but they can’t go invisible.

EDIT: I completely agree with this:

The perfect Thief profession for me wouldn’t use stealth, venoms or traps. Instead of stealth I would have rather just have each of my weapon abilities have a different skill related to whether i attack from the front or from the flank (Similar to how backstab works, but without the stealth).

When I was leveling my ranger, I liked a lot of what I saw from his sword/dagger weapon set. While not especially damaging, it incorporated a lot of dodging and lunging. At one point I pointed at my character and said to my brother: “THIS is what thief classes ought to look like in MMOs.”

I used to play a lot of Werewolf: The Apocalypse in high school (I’m a killer with the ladies) and one of their classes had a gift called “Blur of the Milky Eye.” It didn’t make its user invisible per se, but it made perception rolls against him a bit more difficult. I would like to see more of that kind of thing in MMOs, as opposed to LOLOLOL I INVIS NAO

Bunzy.8674:

Apparently the new plan is to keep buffing thieves every patch. I mean they obviously don’t listen to the community and just do their own thing anyways.

Oh look, someone else who can’t counter thieves and needs to have a minor weep on the forums.

A few patches a go, we were nerfed to hell. Yet warriors are now more OP than ever. That’s fine. Balance is balance. I suggest you go and crawl back in to the hole you crawled out of.

There are way to many terrible thieves out there for me to worry about how to counter them. It’s only when they group up with another thief, or a mesmer, that ruins my day.

@Fiennes
How are warriors OP? LOL

Wow. There are so few warriors out there for you to make that argument. If any class should wreck a thief, it should be the warrior. Especially high crit ones.

Official response on how to counter thieves? More of an official indication of their lack of time in-game.

For me to counter thieves I thought about what exactly am I countering. It isn’t the class mechanics or culling, it’s trolling. Somewhat in the vein of Arkanfel’s post. I am countering a bad players desire to ruin my fun, to feel powerful and skilled using a broken build.

Intially I had Alt+F4 to deny this sort of person some of their motivation. That is no longer an option.

Now I move to option 2 – /sit.
If the player behind the thief shows any indication of the classic troll thief (found in many MMO’s who repeatedly make the same mistake in class builds) I won’t waste my time, I will /sit, die quickly and WP back into game to continue an honest fight.

The player behind the thief will get their badge and hopefully a piece of vendor trash but will not get a second of satisfaction or validation that they are an elite pvp’er.

This is only the action of one player but my time in EVE Online has shown that the customer can choose their gameplay style against the indifference of developers and force change.

Maybe one day the developers will have to choose between the tears of troll thieves who can’t get any fights outside of a zerg or the “civil disobedience” of the rest of the playerbase.

It could be worse. I played MUD where another class was able to steal gear you were wearing, and permanently damage it beyond repair. I didn’t play it anymore after I found that out.

I’m more interested in backstab damage being nerfed into the ground, than worrying about stealth issues. I don’t mind a thief being able to do quick damage, but they shouldn’t be doing more damage than a Keep Lord in the first 3s.

katniss.6735:

@Fiennes
How are warriors OP? LOL

Wow. There are so few warriors out there for you to make that argument. If any class should wreck a thief, it should be the warrior. Especially high crit ones.

I disagree with your assertion that warriors are not OP… that said, I love your username (L)

Respawn.6802:

Official response on how to counter thieves? More of an official indication of their lack of time in-game.

For me to counter thieves I thought about what exactly am I countering. It isn’t the class mechanics or culling, it’s trolling. Somewhat in the vein of Arkanfel’s post. I am countering a bad players desire to ruin my fun, to feel powerful and skilled using a broken build.

Intially I had Alt+F4 to deny this sort of person some of their motivation. That is no longer an option.

Now I move to option 2 – /sit.
If the player behind the thief shows any indication of the classic troll thief (found in many MMO’s who repeatedly make the same mistake in class builds) I won’t waste my time, I will /sit, die quickly and WP back into game to continue an honest fight.

The player behind the thief will get their badge and hopefully a piece of vendor trash but will not get a second of satisfaction or validation that they are an elite pvp’er.

This is only the action of one player but my time in EVE Online has shown that the customer can choose their gameplay style against the indifference of developers and force change.

Maybe one day the developers will have to choose between the tears of troll thieves who can’t get any fights outside of a zerg or the “civil disobedience” of the rest of the playerbase.

I’ll still alt-f4. I never did it to deprive other players of badges or loot (in fact I didn’t even know this was happening until the recent fix), for me it’s about skipping that particular fight and getting back into the match. It’s faster for me to re-log and WP back in than it is to /sit and die. They can have their badges, I just don’t see the point in actually fighting them in any 1v1 or most yak escort situations. Usually I’ll give it a shot once to see if they happen to be bad enough to die, but most of them aren’t unless they’re under 80 (I’m mostly a WvWer).

That said, devs know by now (and us players should too) that it is simply good business to design a broken burst DPS stealth character at launch. More people will buy the game if they think they can troll with it, and some of them may even move on to other classes as the game ages. So in the sense that it likely boosts sales and participation, I don’t mind so much. When you get right down to it, it’s not really the devs’ fault, it’s the playerbase’s. It only makes sense to give the playerbase what it wants, and in my experience, trolling is generally a stronger motivator than sportsmanship or challenge regardless of player class.