Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why most all Thief weapon sets get QQ’d and raged about. And I said “Most” not all.

Pistol/Dagger -Condition Spam cheese “(P/D Thieves are so cheese)”
Dagger/Pistol -Perma Stealth (Which is justifiable to an extent)
Dagger/Pistol -Perma Blind
Sword/Dagger – Perma Evade, too much base auto attack damage output
Sword/Dagger- “Larcenous Strike boon steal OP”
Sword/Dagger- “Infiltrator Strike/Return so Cheese”
Sword/Pistol- Perma Evade/ High reward/Low risk
Sword/Pistol Semi-perma Stun/Daze lock
Shortbow- Evade,Evade, Evade

The Only sets that has yet to be talked about continuously and cried about are D/D and P/P. I just don’t understand why I hear more talk about Thieves weapons being overpowered than any other class. All I hear is " He’s using (Insert Cheese Weapon here), thats the only reason that Thief won"

I was reading the Pistol whip comments in Structured PvP, and I just had enough, and decided to make this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Pistolwhip-Nerf/page/3#post3720703

I have over 3.3k hours on my Thief. I’ve seen it all and heard it all. Thief is my only class since beta. I get so cheesed seeing so many people cry over Thieves weapons sets, and then Anet starts noticing, and then there goes another incoming Thief Nerf. What should we do fight with our fists? I don’t play S/P Thief, I play P/D. But i have experienced and used all the sets. I have excelled in most all of them. In my opinion Thieves weapon sets are the most controversial than any other classes. (And yes I know it’s controversial due to our no CD’s but rather Initiative system). I just wanted to get my thoughts out. If any of you agree with me, than that’s cool, if not then feel free to post QQ here. I will hold your hand.

bobomb.5209:

I think the real problem is that thiefs get access to a mechanic no other class has access to, wants, and is quite deadly. No it’s not stealth but the ability to spam a certain skill with no CD.

Say what you want but that’s just my opinion

I have no criticism here, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. And yes I do agree that the problem is the 1-5 skill mechanic, and the Spam. These weapon sets cannot separate the high tier skilled from the average, solely due to the fact that you’re using a specific weapon set. And “That’s the only reason he/she won”. it’s tiresome to look at posts like that.

Op, this is not about thieves being controversial or being QQ.

This is about thief class design and it’s philosophy.

No other mmo’s or even guild war 1 had, has such outrageous design and outrageous philosophy of a Super Superior class being Op in all stats and having perma/un-encounterable stealth, whatsoever.

A class/profession who dictates, controls and resets fights in time.

A class who is immune/invulnerable to damage.

A class who sets rules and conditions of guild wars 2 class balance.

By the way…

There have been many, countless devoted thieves players, admitting and exposing thief design and its philosophy

Op,

we the community of non-thief classes should be the one tired, not thieves.

As the saying goes, “if you have never been hurt, why seek punishment for those who are in pain”?

It’s really too bad though. The ability to chain together combos is deadly, and some thiefs do this. But when people just start using the same skill over and over with little variation people get angry, and the developers feel the need to do something. I used pistol whip before the nerf to stuns and I found spamming pistol whip to be incredibly rewarding for 0 skill ( I was just starting thief and I wanted to use a sword). And now adays even with the nerf to the stun I am getting attacked by thiefs using no combos aside from using all the shadow steps possible to close the distance created from any attempt to run, and spamming pistol whip, which further hinders movement.

I suppose there is really no good way to balance thief given the current initiative system, which is too bad as it is very innovative.

Part of me feels like Thief needs a cooldown on skills along with the initiative cost. I’m not calling for a big cooldown, just a small one that makes sense. For example, say Unload has a 3 second cast time. Give it a 5-8 second cooldown so you have 2-5 seconds to wait before using it again. Such a simple thing would do a lot to stop the spam. Not like this effects the stealth spammers. <_<

Burnfall.9573:

Op, this is not about thieves being controversial or being QQ.

This is about thief class design and it’s philosophy.

No other mmo’s or even guild war 1 had, has such outrageous design and outrageous philosophy of a Super Superior class being Op in all stats and having perma/un-encounterable stealth, whatsoever.

A class/profession who dictates, controls and resets fights in time.

A class who is immune/invulnerable to damage.

A class who sets rules and conditions of guild wars 2 class balance.

By the way…

There have been many, countless devoted thieves players, admitting and exposing thief design and its philosophy

Op,

we the community of non-thief classes should be the one tired, not thieves.

As the saying goes, “if you have never been hurt, why seek punishment for those who are in pain”?

Burn fall this is a serious post get outta here with your jokes xD

One change to thieves I’d like: dodging, blocking, reflecting or going invulnerable and making a thief’s stealth attack fail should still reveal the thief if the attack connects with the blocking character.

In sPvP I used my took kit to block a predictable thief’s backstab. All I see is “blockblockblockblock” until the thief’s stealth duration runs out. What is that? That’s like how when warriors miss with their burst skill, they keep the adrenaline. This principle applies to engineer and mesmer stealth as well.

Despite me saying that, in PvP thieves aren’t truly in the best place they could be. I think by increasing the risks associated with being a thief (making thieves reveal themselves if they fail a stealth attack is one example), Anet can start looking at better ways to buff thief.

And if heartseeker spam is a problem, why not just make it so that using heartseeker costs 6 initiative instead of 3, but refunds initiative upon downing or killing an enemy?

Thanks for the feedback peepz

Yeah, it’s the “Initiative” that makes Thieves feel cheap compared to other classes. The fact that they can chain the same skill over and over again makes them appear simplistic and highly effective in the eyes on non-Thieves who have to manage their cooldowns.

To be honest though, while I do think Initiative management is a little easier than it should be, managing cooldowns isn’t exactly rocket-science either. Using all your skills, switching weapons, using all those, switching back again isn’t exactly the most skillful element of GW2. It might appear more involving, but it isn’t.

D/P is really the only Thief weapon-set that requires active Imitative management. All other sets can mostly get by using the skills they want, when they want.

Its a combination of the initiative system and that certain skills are so chock-full of extra “goodies.”

#1: For instance, if I am fighting someone on my ele, I know there are certain skills I need to interrupt, like heals, so there is a serious cost to using one of my interrupt skills which have a long cooldown. On a thief, not so much, as long as I have initiative, I can headshot. Even if that fails, I just steal (which, traited, works through stability too). If I am fighting someone on my ele, there are specific strong skills I really have to make sure to dodge/blind, and doing so rewards me with a period where I know they are on cooldown. Against a thief, it doesn’t matter how many times I dodge the hard-hitting skills, they will just be used again. Further, because all skills just have an initiative cost, NO skill has a cooldown that is longer than a few seconds, even though an equivalent skill would have a huge cooldown on other classes. That is the initiative problem, and it could be designed around if it weren’t for the next problem:

#2: The hard-hitting and good skills have so many things packed into them, that even using them sub-optimally isn’t very punishing. Heartseeker is meant to be a finisher that deals extra damage when the opponent is low. However, because it is home and leaps really far, bad thieves can still be very effective just spamming 2 over and over. Because they have enough initiative, it can’t all be dodged either. This makes the fight a race to dodge right and kill first, or else I will be dead myself. Similarly, a skill like pistolwhip has everything: stun, damage, and evade. Its mean to be used for some lockdown damage, but using it at the wrong time has no punishment. As others have said:

Getting hit hard? Pistolwhip
Need to cleave a downed body? Pistolwhip
Need to interrupt a heal? Pistolwhip
Just need to do damage? Pistolwhip+port

Because these skills are so universal, and their initiative is negligible given their current regen, you can do really well using these skills, even sub-optimally. Take away the homing part of heartseeker? Sure spam it all day and waist your initiative then die. Take away the evade or stun on pistolwhip? Sure I’ll just let you swing at air while you mindlessly 3, then kill you.

Dee Jay.2460:

To be honest though, while I do think Initiative management is a little easier than it should be, managing cooldowns isn’t exactly rocket-science either. Using all your skills, switching weapons, using all those, switching back again isn’t exactly the most skillful element of GW2. It might appear more involving, but it isn’t.

The problem is, thieves only need 2 or 3 of 5 skills on their weapon sets to be effective. Therefore spamming them is the most effective way to fight. I too, have only 2 or 3 out of 5 skills that I want to use, the rest being situational or in fact, absolutely useless. Yet, I can only use my useful skills once? And then what, I sit in my weapon set until i can swap, or do I use the rest of my bar instead of 111111? Most people just use the rest of their skills since their best are on cd, and then they are wasting time until they can get a swap to to get to their good skills on their other weapon.

only the worst thieves spam
it cuts your damage when u use to much initiative.
so u r punished for spamming .

lol when u catch them off guard in a middle of a fight .
not head to head vs some one who knows how to play and can make a fool out of u for trying to spam
spammers r a joke

We can argue the effectiveness of spamming two all we want, but I think we can all agree having a spammable execute ability is kittened.

Add Stealth to F2 (with a cooldown) and have it use up initiative when active. More initiative = longer stealth on F2.

Now add cooldowns to weapons like all the other classes and you won’t be able to use initiative to spam skills, but instead you use initiative to stealth. Might also require some balancing on the other stealth utilities to reflect this new stealth as class mechanic.

;)

it CUTS your damage when u spam . most spamable skills don’t do to much damage .
there is.
(heart seeker). lol not going to lie it is pesty when u have a noob thief come in in the middle of a fight and spam heart seeker the sec u get down to 50% hp but kitten happens
not much dif than a lock down mesmer jumping in the middle of a fight or a few specific glass builds

and there is (pistol whip) lol which is just dorky and a clunky move

and i guess . short bow cluster bomb but that is normally saved for thieves in stealth
and is not all ways a good idea

i am not even going to count #3 on p/p..no one uses p/p

they really r the only moves that u can spam that do real damage .

idk it is a noob thing to spam the cut in damage is just not worth it . and it can leave u open for attacks idk i say let them spam it makes them easier to kill

bobomb.5209:

I think the real problem is that thiefs get access to a mechanic no other class has access to, wants, and is quite deadly. No it’s not stealth but the ability to spam a certain skill with no CD.

Say what you want but that’s just my opinion

+1

It is that very mechanic that makes the thief cheesy. You cannot avoid the cheese, the thief must become one with the cheese, the thief IS the cheese, the cheese IS the thief. To think how much more interesting the thief would have been if he had cooldowns like the rest. Because hindsight.

AikijinX.6258:

I don’t understand why most all Thief weapon sets get QQ’d and raged about. And I said “Most” not all.

Pistol/Dagger -Condition Spam cheese “(P/D Thieves are so cheese)”
Dagger/Pistol -Perma Stealth (Which is justifiable to an extent)
Dagger/Pistol -Perma Blind
Sword/Dagger – Perma Evade, too much base auto attack damage output
Sword/Dagger- “Larcenous Strike boon steal OP”
Sword/Dagger- “Infiltrator Strike/Return so Cheese”
Sword/Pistol- Perma Evade/ High reward/Low risk
Sword/Pistol Semi-perma Stun/Daze lock
Shortbow- Evade,Evade, Evade

The Only sets that has yet to be talked about continuously and cried about are D/D and P/P. I just don’t understand why I hear more talk about Thieves weapons being overpowered than any other class. All I hear is " He’s using (Insert Cheese Weapon here), thats the only reason that Thief won"

I was reading the Pistol whip comments in Structured PvP, and I just had enough, and decided to make this thread.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Pistolwhip-Nerf/page/3#post3720703

I have over 3.3k hours on my Thief. I’ve seen it all and heard it all. Thief is my only class since beta. I get so cheesed seeing so many people cry over Thieves weapons sets, and then Anet starts noticing, and then there goes another incoming Thief Nerf. What should we do fight with our fists? I don’t play S/P Thief, I play P/D. But i have experienced and used all the sets. I have excelled in most all of them. In my opinion Thieves weapon sets are the most controversial than any other classes. (And yes I know it’s controversial due to our no CD’s but rather Initiative system). I just wanted to get my thoughts out. If any of you agree with me, than that’s cool, if not then feel free to post QQ here. I will hold your hand.

Now go play an Elementalist versus Thief class and you will understand where all this “cheese” is coming from.

People complained until Elementalist was nerfed into the ground, now they will do same to Thieves.

Otaur.9268:

Now go play an Elementalist versus Thief class and you will understand where all this “cheese” is coming from.

People complained until Elementalist was nerfed into the ground, now they will do same to Thieves.

Thief being a strong counter to an ele doesn’t make the thief cheese. What makes things cheese is when it’s high reward/low risk/ease of use.

However players do love to find fault in something other than themselves. I had a necromancer in PvP today call my rabid eng (no AR) “cheeze” (necro hard counters eng harder than thief > ele imo).

I would like to see all these hard counters softened though.

Buildwars 2.

I just wanna know how a spammable execute made it out of pre-production in this game. Some producer failed miserably weeding that out of the team working on weapons =/

Your problem is that “thief is your only class since beta”.
You don’t know how it’s like for the receiving side.

DanSH.6143:

Your problem is that “thief is your only class since beta”.
You don’t know how it’s like for the receiving side.

+1

Most hard-core thief defenders usually have been playing the class since the beginning, most of them suck BIG TIME on them, and they think that the class is ok but they do subpar, or worse; they do decent, which given the easy skill floor on the class and how it is really hard to do bad on them, they think of themselves as decent players and think of the class as decent since thats all they can get out of it.

For all those thieves that keep defending the class so much I advice you to roll a 12k hp ele and take it anywhere in the world and wait for a thief to hit you with a 13k backstab and tell me that the class is ok, or have a thief jump on you 5 times with steal/shadowstep and 3 other teleports from either pistol or the sword in any of their cheese specc and try to shake off said thief, and to actually kill the thief. If they can bring proves of this vs good thief players then they can claim w/e they want.

Until then, I will keep believing my eyes because thieves is all I see in tPvP, they are the apex predator of GC, the untouchables, the ones driving away mesmers and elementalist GC since they stick like glue and can be devastating agaisnt anyone 1v1 if played decently at least.

My personal beefs are: immune to chill (no cooldown with free teleport skills over 5 weapon setups) and kinda tying to it free escape (additional 5 blink/evades on utilities, 3 being in the head of the moment no requirement/pre-setup escapes).

It’s always great to see people constantly attack thief as a profession.

I love how people gang up on thief, a melee class with no armor or HP, which absolutely HAS to evade 80% of all damage from all other classes in order to just keep from being downed in 2-4 seconds, which cannot stand to to toe with ANY other classes except maybe ele, which has NO protect, only ONE stability, 3 stunbreaks (compared to warrior’s 6+), NO condition immunity, very few condition removal traits and only three utilities (including heal) that actually remove ANY damaging conditions at all (and no utilities/skills that remove ALL conditions, unlike warrior/engi/necro/etc.)….

And yet you complain because you suck and die to thief. Only bad players lose to thief. Stop, stop whining about thief. Thief has no invulns, only evades. Warrior, Guardian, Ele, Mesmer, Engi have invulns…

Form.8741:

It’s always great to see people constantly attack thief as a profession.

I love how people gang up on thief, a melee class with no armor or HP, which absolutely HAS to evade 80% of all damage from all other classes in order to just keep from being downed in 2-4 seconds, which cannot stand to to toe with ANY other classes except maybe ele, which has NO protect, only ONE stability, 3 stunbreaks (compared to warrior’s 6+), NO condition immunity, very few condition removal traits and only three utilities (including heal) that actually remove ANY damaging conditions at all (and no utilities/skills that remove ALL conditions, unlike warrior/engi/necro/etc.)….

And yet you complain because you suck and die to thief. Only bad players lose to thief. Stop, stop whining about thief. Thief has no invulns, only evades. Warrior, Guardian, Ele, Mesmer, Engi have invulns…

• Which Light Armor class doesn’t need to dodge 80% of attacks so they won’t be downed in 2-4 secs? Oh, right. Thief is a medium armor class. My bad. I guess medium armor classes have it worse than light armor classes.
• How many Evades from weapon sets do thieves have and how spammable are they?
• How long does an invulnerability of other classes last and how long is the cooldown compared to evades with no cooldown? Are their Invulnerability skills spammable as well?
• How many classes have access to Condition Immunity?
• Only bad players lose to thieves? Oh, right. There must be lots of bad top tier PVP players. Shame on them for losing to thieves.

Lastly,
• How many classes are able to reset a fight at any given time?

I love how you underestimate the power of Evasion in this game. A solid proof of who’s a “bad player” and who’s not.

Simple fix would be simply …

Thieves now have 16 initiative (20 with the thievery trait)
Intiative regeneration speed is based on initiative remaining. Faster when high slower when low.

The thieves who currently play the way that was probably intended and pace themselves see little to no difference, the ones that spam away in the hopes of killing someone by luck die horribly.

You’re tired but at least you still can kill any other profession with ease.

This thread is 100% useless.

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.
[…]

i coulndn’t resist but to dig out an old quote from aveneo, which is still spot on

Yes it is true I don’t know how it feels like to be on the receiving end, All I have played was a Thief. But what I do know is if you’re so ballsy to run a High Risk, High Reward G.C Build, and complain<—(I’m not trying to offend anybody when I say that) about being 1 shotted, than I’d advise switching up your build to accommodate better survival, and not just fast kills. If you’re an Ele with 12k hp, and get backstabbed for 13k, that is your choice, and vice versa if a Thief wants to run a 12-13k hp specced G.C it’s of thief choosing.
~I would suggest talking to Serane from Agg, He is ONE of the best ele’s (I know), and have experience fighting as a Thief.

who ever complains and QQ saying thieves are op = 90% of noobs that needs to l2p

playing a thief requires lot more skill than any other classess (more than ele and engi imoi got both classess) thief is the class that are extremely less forgiving class upon a single mistake can leads to death unlike other classess. tbh I think warriors are even more op than thief

Fortus.6175:

DanSH.6143:

Your problem is that “thief is your only class since beta”.
You don’t know how it’s like for the receiving side.

+1

Most hard-core thief defenders usually have been playing the class since the beginning, most of them suck BIG TIME on them, and they think that the class is ok but they do subpar, or worse; they do decent, which given the easy skill floor on the class and how it is really hard to do bad on them, they think of themselves as decent players and think of the class as decent since thats all they can get out of it.

For all those thieves that keep defending the class so much I advice you to roll a 12k hp ele and take it anywhere in the world and wait for a thief to hit you with a 13k backstab and tell me that the class is ok, or have a thief jump on you 5 times with steal/shadowstep and 3 other teleports from either pistol or the sword in any of their cheese specc and try to shake off said thief, and to actually kill the thief. If they can bring proves of this vs good thief players then they can claim w/e they want.

Until then, I will keep believing my eyes because thieves is all I see in tPvP, they are the apex predator of GC, the untouchables, the ones driving away mesmers and elementalist GC since they stick like glue and can be devastating agaisnt anyone 1v1 if played decently at least.

I main a thief and have been since beta. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know how other classes work. Yes I have a lvl 80 elementalist and yes i’ve taking it into WvW roaming and killed thieves with it. If you play an ele with 12k and get backstabbed for 13k damage then you are GC, in which case you have 0 right to complain about getting oneshot.

I do agree with you that thief is somewhat a hard counter to eles, I’ve instakilled them before. But then again condibunker engi is a hard counter to thieves and in turn necros are a hard counter to condibunker engis. Every class has his counters/free kills.

azerte.4365:

If you play an ele with 12k and get backstabbed for 13k damage then you are GC, in which case you have 0 right to complain about getting oneshot.

This is where you are wrong. No class in any build should be able to one-shot another class with any build. It doesn’t matter if the one shot is on a single stealth ability, on a F1 with 9s cooldown or a perfectly executed 10 skill rotation which uses all utilities and has a cooldown of 40s.

One-shots should not happen. ever.

Pistol/Dagger -Condition Spam cheese “(P/D Thieves are so cheese)”
Dagger/Pistol -Perma Stealth (Which is justifiable to an extent)
Dagger/Pistol -Perma Blind
Sword/Dagger – Perma Evade, too much base auto attack damage output
Sword/Dagger- “Larcenous Strike boon steal OP”
Sword/Dagger- “Infiltrator Strike/Return so Cheese”
Sword/Pistol- Perma Evade/ High reward/Low risk
Sword/Pistol Semi-perma Stun/Daze lock
Shortbow- Evade,Evade, Evade

Many other classes cannot do those without heavily investing in it, even then those classes cannot do those things without a long cooldown. Thieves can just wait a few seconds and go back into spamming those skills again.

Griswold.2054:

Aveneo.2068:

This game would have been better off if the Thief class had never existed. Stealth in and of itself is inherently broken in most MMOs and giving one class access to a dynamic initiative system while keeping all others on a static cooldown system was a recipe for disaster.
[…]

i coulndn’t resist but to dig out an old quote from aveneo, which is still spot on

Heh heh, yeah. I still believe the problems originated with the implementation of stealth in general as well as giving one class a dynamic initiative system while all other classes are on a static cooldown system.

Fast forward to this game I believe that it may still be salvaged if the initiative system would be used for stealth-on-F2 (where more initiative allows for longer stealth duration like an actual class mechanic) and then adding cooldowns to all the weapon skills; just like all the other classes.

pmnt.4067:

azerte.4365:

If you play an ele with 12k and get backstabbed for 13k damage then you are GC, in which case you have 0 right to complain about getting oneshot.

This is where you are wrong. No class in any build should be able to one-shot another class with any build. It doesn’t matter if the one shot is on a single stealth ability, on a F1 with 9s cooldown or a perfectly executed 10 skill rotation which uses all utilities and has a cooldown of 40s.

One-shots should not happen. ever.

Well guess what they’re here and thieves aren’t the only one who have access to them, even eles can deal 12k dmg. So i’d say learn to live with them.

Pistol whip in WvW is w/e plenty of room to move out of the way. I look at PW thieves as easy kills even with sleight of hand. Always make me chuckle when I see a PW thief spamming it in WvW. The only class I have that feels remotely threatened by pistol whip spam is my thief cause it has like 2.1k armor. It’s a threat in WvW if you don’t have anything up or you get caught by surprise with low health.

In sPvP is different because of the point fighting

Dynnen.6405:

We can argue the effectiveness of spamming two all we want, but I think we can all agree having a spammable execute ability is kittened.

Dynnen.6405:

I just wanna know how a spammable execute made it out of pre-production in this game. Some producer failed miserably weeding that out of the team working on weapons =/

My Nightblade has a spammable ranged execute. Jussayin.

azerte.4365:

Well guess what they’re here and thieves aren’t the only one who have access to them, even eles can deal 12k dmg. So i’d say learn to live with them.

I knew it was too subtle, but I mentioned thief, warrior and ele in my post, but that’s not even the point. The point is, that one-shots – regardless of class – are not a “deal with it” issue, but an alarm sign of broken balance.

And sorry, I can’t take anyone who defends one-shot mechanics seriously in a balance discussion.

pmnt.4067:

azerte.4365:

Well guess what they’re here and thieves aren’t the only one who have access to them, even eles can deal 12k dmg. So i’d say learn to live with them.

I knew it was too subtle, but I mentioned thief, warrior and ele in my post, but that’s not even the point. The point is, that one-shots – regardless of class – are not a “deal with it” issue, but an alarm sign of broken balance.

And sorry, I can’t take anyone who defends one-shot mechanics seriously in a balance discussion.

If you built to 1 shot then you probably can also get 1 shot. You can’t really one shot anyone unless they went glassy which I am sure they factored in their decision to go glassy. When bunker soldier builds are getting one shotted then we have a problem.

oZii.2864:

pmnt.4067:

azerte.4365:

Well guess what they’re here and thieves aren’t the only one who have access to them, even eles can deal 12k dmg. So i’d say learn to live with them.

I knew it was too subtle, but I mentioned thief, warrior and ele in my post, but that’s not even the point. The point is, that one-shots – regardless of class – are not a “deal with it” issue, but an alarm sign of broken balance.

And sorry, I can’t take anyone who defends one-shot mechanics seriously in a balance discussion.

If you built to 1 shot then you probably can also get 1 shot. You can’t really one shot anyone unless they went glassy which I am sure they factored in their decision to go glassy. When bunker soldier builds are getting one shotted then we have a problem.

It wasn’t too subtle, just rephrased what you said And as the person above me said it’s a choice you make GC is pretty good balanced I think in this game it’s either kill or be killed. I have yet too see a bunker warrior get oneshot unless they’re braindead and don’t know how to evade/block the initial burst.

If you’re built for damage, then that’s cool, you just better be able to handle the risk that comes with that power. "With great power, comes greater risks. " So if you want to complain about being one shotted then switch your build around so you’re actually able to sustain damage done to you. If you can’t take what you yourself dish out, then you have no business getting mad.

Difference being a fire grab is visible, telegraphed, and has an actual cost (CD) when the target blocks/evades/invulns through it. No such sacrifice to something like backstab. If I manage to predict someone’s timing and evade their backstab when I can’t even see them, it doesn’t matter. They’ll just tap one until it lands, or at best, back off and refresh their stealth.

The common reoccurring themes in the OP are: “Perma”, and “Evade”.

I think the QQ problem may lie within.

I think what most people fail to realize is that unlike all the other non- heavy armored classes, thieves has to be up close in melee range in order to deal any serious damage. Without any access to protection, stability, or invuls, that “downtime” when you are waiting for init to regen can be deadly, especially when you are forced to be up close.

Everyone thinks that just because we’re on the init system that somehow we can spam moves non stop. It’s not like that at all. You spam (if you consider spamming to be 2-3 times in a row before your init pool runs dry “spamming”) at the cost of all your other skills. For example, I’m sure many D/D thieves run into this common scenario: You do your cnd-steal-backstab combo and your target creates some distance. You can close the gap with a heartseeker, at which point you won’t have enough init for another cnd, or you can try to run up to him and cnd again at which point he will see you coming and most likely dodge, leaving you with little to no init left. This also makes dodging thief moves a lot more serious since if you dodge another classes, they will just use whatever that is not on cooldown vs if you dodge a thief, they run out of init and can do nothing. We can’t just use another skill, even on our 2nd weapon set once we run out of init, where another class can just change weapon sets and do something else if they miss their burst.

I think the problem mainly stems from WvW where food, guard stacks, sigil stacks makes these spammable skills hit extremely hard (even against tanks) and extremely rewarding for no effort at all. In PvP I find theives to be more balanced and since you are usually fighting in a smaller space it is much harder for them to just run and reset than in the wide open fields of our borderlands.

Form.8741:

It’s always great to see people constantly attack thief as a profession.

I love how people gang up on thief, a melee class with no armor or HP, which absolutely HAS to evade 80% of all damage from all other classes in order to just keep from being downed in 2-4 seconds, which cannot stand to to toe with ANY other classes except maybe ele, which has NO protect, only ONE stability, 3 stunbreaks (compared to warrior’s 6+), NO condition immunity, very few condition removal traits and only three utilities (including heal) that actually remove ANY damaging conditions at all (and no utilities/skills that remove ALL conditions, unlike warrior/engi/necro/etc.)….

And yet you complain because you suck and die to thief. Only bad players lose to thief. Stop, stop whining about thief. Thief has no invulns, only evades. Warrior, Guardian, Ele, Mesmer, Engi have invulns…

All other classes would be better off in terms of build variety if thief were removed from the game.

Enough said.

if it makes you feel any better every single ranger build that hit meta in Spvp has been nerfed leading to the current rendition of spirit ranger and almost nothing else viable for ranger pvp. hahaha at least thief still has options and many as that since you listed a several. this is how the ranger community feels as a whole, hell not even one dev played ranger in any of their pvp matches when they did the dev pvp tourney.

there was one spectator ranger that neither team captain picked for the entirety of the 3 matches.