Guild Wars 2

Shadow protector and shadows rejuvenation. there you go, 500 health per second for more than 50% of the fight. thats a little more than an eles healing if that ele were to spec into one trait tree like the thief, while going full berszerker. Thief trades off one trait tree for the sustainability. with a thief being stealthed for more than 50% of the fight with an avg fight of 10-60 seconds, im sure you now can see the disparity here. I dont mind that thieves can go stealth.. sure, whatever. i dont mind that they can hit 10k in one hit.. well i do, however, you combine that with stealth and 500 health per second? thieves are un killable(almost). do the math. they stealth every 4 seconds, FOR 4 seconds, hitting as their stealth runs out to reap benefits of the regen. 4×500=2000. They are healing for 2000 health over the course of being stealthed every time they stealth. EVERY 4 SECONDS. oh and, im not even counting black powder and heartseeker combo where they can perma stealth till full health. When im fighting thieves, (mind you im a full berzerker build cause thats the only way to come close to trying to bet a thief), i always hit them with my burst and get them down to on avg 10-20%. when they stealth and come out, theyre back to 90-100% ready with another stealth to burst me down again. other than a healway guardian, im ready to call the thief one of the best at healing. (selfishly ofc). Not only that but they can 1-escape from anything, 2-permanently stealth, 3-highest burst in the game. can anyone else see the enourmous disparities here? am i the only one?

I expect, dozens of “l2p”-replies will follow now.
But yea, i agree with you. I play a thief too, but i find the ability to stack stealth and to repeat combos like backstab-heartseeker-cloak&dagger-backstab [and so on, and so on] totally unacceptable.

I wrote about it in other threads and i repeat it again: Stealth is ok, it’s needed. But it should be limited to a few skills with LONG cooldowns.

What i find kinda funny is – thieves tend, more than any other class, to repeat: run a thief, then you will see, how poor we are, how nerfed, how ochgodochgodochgod weak we are.
Yea sure.
How often did you see 1 ranger killing groups of 4-5 non-upleveled players? It happens, but not often.
How often did you see 1 necro killing groups of 4-5 non-upleveled players? Maybe it’s possible, but i never saw that.
How often did you see 1 engineer killing groups of 4-5 non-upleveled players? Pure science fiction for me, but maybe, hm?
etc. etc.
I see thieves doing that day by day (although i admit, that i’m not able to do that on my own thief)
Brave thieves, who know how to play, will probably say: groups of 4-5 non-upleveled palyers who let one single thief kill them are noobs, kittens and desperately need some lessons how to play.

Well, i am an absolutely horrible thief, but i still get more kills as a thief, then as a decent ranger or warrior.
Just think about it for a second.

Thieves are not as great as everyone makes them out to be.

Back when I used my thief as my main I could get a lot of kills using my GC build of 30/30/10/0/0. but they were just instant ganks and against better players it did not perform great. There were also times I could kill a group of 3 or more players but it wasn’t usually because I was a thief, it was because they were poor players. They don’t res downed players, attack near/CC near downed player and so I just picked them off one by one.

I wasn’t a fan of SA arts builds but I didn’t try them for too long.

As my engineer I can perform much better in 1vx situations I feel. Also I have no fear of any build of thieves, however I have yet to come across an amazing thief player. My ratio of wins to losses of thief fights would be something like 30:1 but I can’t even remember losing to a thief as an engineer. SA builds do help them survive but does not give them an automatic win, it just makes their death take longer :P.

WonderfulCT.6278:

As my engineer I can perform much better in 1vx situations I feel. Also I have no fear of any build of thieves, however I have yet to come across an amazing thief player. My ratio of wins to losses of thief fights would be something like 30:1 but I can’t even remember losing to a thief as an engineer. SA builds do help them survive but does not give them an automatic win, it just makes their death take longer :P.

Engineer is a stone wall to Thieves.

Brave thieves, who know how to play, will probably say: groups of 4-5 non-upleveled palyers who let one single thief kill them are noobs, kittens and desperately need some lessons how to play.

I would agree…

Not a thief main, even, only play thief for spvp. Guardian main. Ranger secondary. If you get killed by one thief as a group of 4 to 5 players, you’re not very good players…putting it really politely.

Speaking of thieves being OP on the Thieves Forum is like speaking of Fight Club..rule number one is never…and i mean never speak of..well you get the idea. Dont forget it…

Also Rangers by leaps and bounds hold the record for the greatest healer in game lol , they got troll seeman in a jar to heal their wounds , try to beat that …

Back when I used my thief as my main I could get a lot of kills using my GC build of 30/30/10/0/0. but they were just instant ganks and against better players it did not perform great.

Of course it didn’t because that build is trash.

If you have the regen in stealth trait you can’t get shadows embrace or infusion of shadow. You have to give up one or the other.

So, while you may regen lots of HP, any condition character will destroy you.

OR

You will die because you will run out of init vs. any opponent that lasts fairly long to kill.

Teamkiller.4315:

Brave thieves, who know how to play, will probably say: groups of 4-5 non-upleveled palyers who let one single thief kill them are noobs, kittens and desperately need some lessons how to play.

I would agree…

Not a thief main, even, only play thief for spvp. Guardian main. Ranger secondary. If you get killed by one thief as a group of 4 to 5 players, you’re not very good players…putting it really politely.

I won’t argue with that. But the fact remains: thieves are able to do it, i see it everyday, ever seen a necro or engineer doing it?
I haven’t.
Nevertheless my point was:
As a horrible – really absolutely horrible – thief i still can get dozens of kills everyday without any problems. Something is definitely wrong.

Blankverse.4927:

Teamkiller.4315:

Brave thieves, who know how to play, will probably say: groups of 4-5 non-upleveled palyers who let one single thief kill them are noobs, kittens and desperately need some lessons how to play.

I would agree…

Not a thief main, even, only play thief for spvp. Guardian main. Ranger secondary. If you get killed by one thief as a group of 4 to 5 players, you’re not very good players…putting it really politely.

I won’t argue with that. But the fact remains: thieves are able to do it, i see it everyday, ever seen a necro or engineer doing it?

Not a necro, but an engineer, yes. Mesmers can also do it, as well as guardians and warriors. Eles can too, i know someone personally who can. Can’t speak for rangers but BM is an extremely strong dueling build. Granted, these must all be against fairly incompetent players on average. There are youtube videos i can link you to.

Mesmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br5Il-d3Ox8
Warrior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHgkx2w4LrY
Guardian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgYhGde9Qmc
Ele
http://www.youtube.com/user/daphoenix555?feature=watch

As a horrible – really absolutely horrible – thief i still can get dozens of kills everyday without any problems. Something is definitely wrong.

They excel at roaming.

swinsk.6410:

If you have the regen in stealth trait you can’t get shadows embrace or infusion of shadow. You have to give up one or the other.

So, while you may regen lots of HP, any condition character will destroy you.

OR

You will die because you will run out of init vs. any opponent that lasts fairly long to kill.

Exactly, I don’t get what the OP is complaining about, he said it himself. The thief is giving up and entire trait line where an ele only needs to get 1 trait to do the same healing while still having access to the best condi removals and burst heals in the game (bought up ele b/c op brought it up first). Sure the thief sucks to fight when they’re using their invis to keep alive but you have access to a ton of counter play.

If you see the thief using d/p to perma invis until they’re alive (with that build), your condis will beat their healing by a lot. They also need to stay near their 6 initiative black powder and use it 3 times minimum to not die. Aoe the crap out of the area around the black powder and you might have a downed thief in 4 seconds.
Don’t forget to NOT blow all your cds when you’re not sure if you can hold the thief down. If you blow it all and don’t get the kill, the thief will run away, reset, and can come back with the advantage.

Teamkiller.4315:

Blankverse.4927:

Teamkiller.4315:

Brave thieves, who know how to play, will probably say: groups of 4-5 non-upleveled palyers who let one single thief kill them are noobs, kittens and desperately need some lessons how to play.

I would agree…

Not a thief main, even, only play thief for spvp. Guardian main. Ranger secondary. If you get killed by one thief as a group of 4 to 5 players, you’re not very good players…putting it really politely.

I won’t argue with that. But the fact remains: thieves are able to do it, i see it everyday, ever seen a necro or engineer doing it?

Not a necro, but an engineer, yes. Mesmers can also do it, as well as guardians and warriors. Eles can too, i know someone personally who can. Can’t speak for rangers but BM is an extremely strong dueling build. Granted, these must all be against fairly incompetent players on average. There are youtube videos i can link you to.

Mesmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br5Il-d3Ox8
Warrior
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHgkx2w4LrY
Guardian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgYhGde9Qmc
Ele
http://www.youtube.com/user/daphoenix555?feature=watch

As a horrible – really absolutely horrible – thief i still can get dozens of kills everyday without any problems. Something is definitely wrong.

They excel at roaming.

Ranger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GMrfoo0ZZk

In my opinion thieves are the easiest class to use for killing noobs, they just don’t know how to react to all that damage and what to do when the thief “disappear”, on the other hand, if you are a good player thief is one of the easier class to kill/make run away, you just have to make them waste they’re ini in the firsts seconds of the fight trying to dodge everything and then hitting hard and spam your aoe as soon as they stealth, and it’s done, it just requires a little to get used to the timing but once you are able to do that you won’t have to worry about thieves anymore, the most difficult thing to do is understand that it has a totally different mechanic compared to other classes

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

AkiraZero.8514:

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

Best mobility, with shortbow yes. This, however, is intended.

Best burst? No, S/D Ele does more burst dmg than dagger mainhand. And thats not even when built glass cannon.
Mesmer does the same amount as a full backstab mug combo…every 10 seconds…AOE.
Guardian and Warrior can both do far more burst than thief if specced for it.
Ranger pet burst can hit upwards of 15k (1shotting a thief)
Engineer 100nades build used to do ~16k+ instantaneously but it was nerfed.

Stealth majority of the fight? With 30 in Shadow Arts and D/P yes and they also lose out on a good ~20% of their dmg—not to mention the time stealthed not capping or helping teammates. That’s why nearly all Thieves in tPvP take 30 in shadow arts yes? Or is it only the super good ones?..

Jumper.9482:

AkiraZero.8514:

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

Best mobility, with shortbow yes. This, however, is intended.

Best burst? No, S/D Ele does more burst dmg than dagger mainhand. And thats not even when built glass cannon.
Mesmer does the same amount as a full backstab mug combo…every 10 seconds…AOE.
Guardian and Warrior can both do far more burst than thief if specced for it.
Ranger pet burst can hit upwards of 15k (1shotting a thief)
Engineer 100nades build used to do ~16k+ instantaneously but it was nerfed.

Stealth majority of the fight? With 30 in Shadow Arts and D/P yes and they also lose out on a good ~20% of their dmg—not to mention the time stealthed not capping or helping teammates. That’s why nearly all Thieves in tPvP take 30 in shadow arts yes? Or is it only the super good ones?..

You misunderstand me, In PvP they seem like they could use a buff in places as it takes a thief a lot more skill to work in PvP team fights as you’re having to purposely stay in one place for point capping/defending, but in WvW… whole different story, since their only purpose seems to be to troll the living hell out of everyone they dont need to worry about capping and helping out with the servers objectives or team play and they dont need to spec for defense since they aren’t there to defend anything.
While I agree that in PvP there are many better classes, in WvW -where point objectives arent a factor, thieves are just totally out of control!

I think its about time the skills we’re completely split and relooked at for all areas of the game, what works in PvP doesnt always work in WvW/PvE and at the moment everything seems to be tweaked for PvP.

As an example of why things dont work the same, Warriors… most OP thing to exist in PvE… really UP in PvP. Things need looking at and balancing out for different areas rather than just balancing for one place and forgetting everywhere else.

Going to post my observations based on the assumption that I do, in fact, need to L2P a bit.

With my Engie and Ranger, I basically have to run with the zerg, because I’m in general, pretty kitten in wvw. I can’t survive on my own yet. It’s rather pathetic. Upon getting my thief to 80, I took a stroll in EB to get some map areas complete, and succeeded in stomping the first two lone roamers I found (having never managed to do this before on my other characters) simply by spamming 5-1-1 on SB, than switching to DD and spamming CD-BS. It hardly took effort. Later I managed to get a zerg to chase me across the kitten map, just using SB mobility and the small amount of stealth I had in that build (this build DID NOT use SR btw).

Thief needs to be a less consequence-free class. There’s no good reason why a pathetically useless player like myself should be able to do so well just because I rolled a thief.

Piogre.2164:

Thief needs to be a less consequence-free class. There’s no good reason why a pathetically useless player like myself should be able to do so well just because I rolled a thief.

In terms of WvW.. this right here is exactly what it comes down to. No risk, all reward!

Jumper, you are a highly skilled Thief in PvP and I totally respect being able to pull off what you do, but in WvW, thief is a no skill required class, if WvW players had to work half as hard as you do in PvP they would probably reroll to a different class!

Piogre.2164:

Going to post my observations based on the assumption that I do, in fact, need to L2P a bit.

With my Engie and Ranger, I basically have to run with the zerg, because I’m in general, pretty kitten in wvw. I can’t survive on my own yet. It’s rather pathetic. Upon getting my thief to 80, I took a stroll in EB to get some map areas complete, and succeeded in stomping the first two lone roamers I found (having never managed to do this before on my other characters) simply by spamming 5-1-1 on SB, than switching to DD and spamming CD-BS. It hardly took effort. Later I managed to get a zerg to chase me across the kitten map, just using SB mobility and the small amount of stealth I had in that build (this build DID NOT use SR btw).

Thief needs to be a less consequence-free class. There’s no good reason why a pathetically useless player like myself should be able to do so well just because I rolled a thief.

That sounds about right for solo roaming but tell me what exactly were you able to accomplish with that solo roaming? How many objectives did you cap? How many castles did you sac? How many keeps did you threaten? The whole deal with solo roaming as thief is to have fun. Why does everyone want to nerf the 1 thing thief is good at doing? Having fun shouldn’t be nerfed when it’s all you can do.

Now let’s counter example. With your engi in a seig/zerg, you can 1500 range into a zerg and melt it with your constant conditions. With your ranger you can 1500 range a zerg and zone entire areas constantly. You can even harass from 5000 range with your pet with 0 consequence. What can a thief do in these situations? They can walk into 900 range, get chewed up by the front line fire, then run away for 20s. You heal up, go back in for about another 5s, run away for 20s, repeat again. Both classes also are significantly tankier and have better ranged dps in those situations. They can shoot/throw faster and further, have better projectile speeds, don’t need to wait for 1 attack to land before being able to throw out another, and have great/reliable aoe.

AkiraZero.8514:

Piogre.2164:

Thief needs to be a less consequence-free class. There’s no good reason why a pathetically useless player like myself should be able to do so well just because I rolled a thief.

In terms of WvW.. this right here is exactly what it comes down to. No risk, all reward!

Jumper, you are a highly skilled Thief in PvP and I totally respect being able to pull off what you do, but in WvW, thief is a no skill required class, if WvW players had to work half as hard as you do in PvP they would probably reroll to a different class!

Do you even WvW? In WvW, the gameplay is all about zergs. A thief is NOT very good at that. So, what you will see are thieves roaming and looking for people who are out of place (away from their zerg) and have no clue what to do in WvW. In other words, the thief is really killing the less talented players in WvW. Those who know how to play, aren’t really worried about a thief.

Nope.

Why would you think regen while stealth is the problem instead of the amount of time a thief can remain stealthed? You said it yourself… half a fight a thief is in stealth. Condition removal and healing while stealthed are things you have to trait for and not everyone gets them. I’d wager most don’t infact.

No, the problem with the thief class is a direct result of the initiative system and the skills/traits that increase the initiative cap and its regen and this is the area that needs to be fixed. Nothing else.

Remove the skills and traits that increase the initiative cap or grant free initiative for stealthing/criting/etc. so all specs of the thief class are the same at their base. Then build the class up.

While this class may offer the highest burst, in the current meta that burst doesn’t account for [censored] against anyone but uplevels and glass cannons. 9 times out of 10 the only people you legitimately kill with your burst (ie 3 hit kills) are other thieves.

Do what they said in the state of the game interview several months ago and increase auto damage as burst has already been toned down enough. Increase the thiefs health to be on par with the ranger class, or provide it additional tools to survive in a game where instead of 25% of the time a thief is visible to about 75% of the time.

Atherakhia.4086:

No, the problem with the thief class is a direct result of the initiative system and the skills/traits that increase the initiative cap and its regen and this is the area that needs to be fixed. Nothing else.

Remove the skills and traits that increase the initiative cap or grant free initiative for stealthing/criting/etc. so all specs of the thief class are the same at their base. Then build the class up.

And in order to balance around that, all cool downs from all other classes are tripled. That would be the effect of a nerf like that.

randomfightfan.4091:

Atherakhia.4086:

No, the problem with the thief class is a direct result of the initiative system and the skills/traits that increase the initiative cap and its regen and this is the area that needs to be fixed. Nothing else.

Remove the skills and traits that increase the initiative cap or grant free initiative for stealthing/criting/etc. so all specs of the thief class are the same at their base. Then build the class up.

And in order to balance around that, all cool downs from all other classes are tripled. That would be the effect of a nerf like that.

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

style.6173:

In WvW, the gameplay is all about zergs. A thief is NOT very good at that. So, what you will see are thieves roaming and looking for people who are out of place (away from their zerg) and have no clue what to do in WvW.

I disagree about the zerg-part. WvW is a pvp/pve territory with different objectives. Zergs fighting each other are a part of it. But there are also camps to capture, dolyaks to kill – tasks that can be done single players – as well as lone players or small groups exploring this world and looking for small-scale fights.
These players are also important and they have a right to play WvW the way they like, not as a part of the zerg. No clue what to do in WvW? Hell, no. They just have different preferences then the zerg-kind of players, thats all.

Sometimes i roam as a ranger, sometimes as a thief.
My ranger doesn’t have problems with 7 of 8 classes. However with my build i have extreme problems to face thives, i admit it. But do i really have to change my build which is effective against 7 classes just to be able to kill one class?

My thief is pathetic and unskilled, although while roaming i still get a satisfying number of kills. Maybe 7 of 10 1vs1 fights. Maybe more.
If my ranger was so bad like my thief is, i would win exactly 0 of 10 fights. Zero. Null. Nada.
If this isn’t a proof that this class is pretty unbalanced, than i don’t know what is.

Blankverse.4927:

style.6173:

In WvW, the gameplay is all about zergs. A thief is NOT very good at that. So, what you will see are thieves roaming and looking for people who are out of place (away from their zerg) and have no clue what to do in WvW.

I disagree about the zerg-part. WvW is a pvp/pve territory with different objectives. Zergs fighting each other are a part of it. But there are also camps to capture, dolyaks to kill – tasks that can be done single players – as well as lone players or small groups exploring this world and looking for small-scale fights.
These players are also important and they have a right to play WvW the way they like, not as a part of the zerg. No clue what to do in WvW? Hell, no. They just have different preferences then the zerg-kind of players, thats all.

Sometimes i roam as a ranger, sometimes as a thief.
My ranger doesn’t have problems with 7 of 8 classes. However with my build i have extreme problems to face thives, i admit it. But do i really have to change my build which is effective against 7 classes just to be able to kill one class?

My thief is pathetic and unskilled, although while roaming i still get a satisfying number of kills. Maybe 7 of 10 1vs1 fights. Maybe more.
If my ranger was so bad like my thief is, i would win exactly 0 of 10 fights. Zero. Null. Nada.
If this isn’t a proof that this class is pretty unbalanced, than i don’t know what is.

My biggest complaint with what you said, and you’re 100% right don’t get me wrong, is that no class should be useless at specific parts of a game. And the current meta in WvW and sPvP really doesn’t have a place for the thief class right now.

The trick is giving them a purpose in these areas without further throwing things out of whack in the small scale combat (because the thief is quite strong at roaming and people often use the whole ‘well I suck in zergs so I should be an OP roamer’ argument).

But you’re right… there is more involved in WvW than just killing badguys enmass. Problem is it’s not enjoyable or rewarded very highly so most don’t want to do it.

Whats wrong with thief is not stealth. Just the healing from stealth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrVdPMetZ2o

Atherakhia.4086:

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

So your solution is to make the thief more like a guardian? All these ‘fixes’ just make the game more bland. Keep unique classes unique. Also, back to the original topic, no one uses shadow protector because the other traits like 2 init on stealth, blind on stealth, or remove condition on stealth are so much more powerful. So he’s crying about a trait no one uses…? With only shadow rejuvenation my thief heals for 342/s….. hardly impressive for 30 points.

I forgot to add that a lot of the other professions can heal as well, such as Guardian, Ranger, Ele… the difference with them is they can also attack while they receive that passive healing… Thief is just helping the opponent recharge his cooldowns in the same situation.

People that say thieves are useless in the current meta of WvW out themselves as terrible WvW players. Thieves are likely the single most influential class in WvW because thieves and thieves alone can shut down supply in a map with little to no risk.

Maybe 12 thieves is enough to completely control supply in an entire map. You pair up into teams of 2-3 and each take a camp. A good thief can easily solo a camp but 2 makes it a lot faster with more room for error and better chances for escape if things go south.

You then go out of the camp and keep an eye on it from a good position, kill groups attempting to retake comprised of up to 4-6 members. Maybe even upgrade camps. If more than you can handle you let them take and kill any yaks leaving and retake.

Without supply the enemy cannot attack effectively. Without supply all towers and keeps will fall eventually. 100 supply pillaged occasionally from camps is not enough and quick thinking thieves can zero supply right before enemies arrive with an upgrade, then LOL away.

No other class can pull this off near as well as thief. Not even close. But this style of player is generally boring so most people just end up killing randoms is high reward little risk situations all day long.

Hype.8032:

Atherakhia.4086:

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

So your solution is to make the thief more like a guardian? All these ‘fixes’ just make the game more bland. Keep unique classes unique. Also, back to the original topic, no one uses shadow protector because the other traits like 2 init on stealth, blind on stealth, or remove condition on stealth are so much more powerful. So he’s crying about a trait no one uses…? With only shadow rejuvenation my thief heals for 342/s….. hardly impressive for 30 points.

I forgot to add that a lot of the other professions can heal as well, such as Guardian, Ranger, Ele… the difference with them is they can also attack while they receive that passive healing… Thief is just helping the opponent recharge his cooldowns in the same situation.

Giving a boon to one class that is already given to another doesn’t somehow make the game more bland or the one clkitten unique. It’s simply a tool. The playstyle of the Thief class is already quite unique. If anything, your complaint should have been that making the thief remain visible so often would make it more like a Warrior.

The end result regardless of approach should be a balanced game. Having played tons of MMO’s in my lifetime, I have to say that GW2 has probably the absolute worst implementation of the ‘stealth fighter’ I’ve ever seen. And it shows by the number of complaints aimed at the class. And they’re not random crying from uninformed players. The people are right… this class can be overpowered. People who play it know that simply nerfing what they want nerfed will leave the class useless though.

Far better to fix the issue akittens source and improve the class as needed rather than nibble at the fringes until you really do have a boring, one note class.

Ralathar.7236:

People that say thieves are useless in the current meta of WvW out themselves as terrible WvW players. Thieves are likely the single most influential class in WvW because thieves and thieves alone can shut down supply in a map with little to no risk.

Maybe 12 thieves is enough to completely control supply in an entire map. You pair up into teams of 2-3 and each take a camp. A good thief can easily solo a camp but 2 makes it a lot faster with more room for error and better chances for escape if things go south.

You then go out of the camp and keep an eye on it from a good position, kill groups attempting to retake comprised of up to 4-6 members. Maybe even upgrade camps. If more than you can handle you let them take and kill any yaks leaving and retake.

Without supply the enemy cannot attack effectively. Without supply all towers and keeps will fall eventually. 100 supply pillaged occasionally from camps is not enough and quick thinking thieves can zero supply right before enemies arrive with an upgrade, then LOL away.

No other class can pull this off near as well as thief. Not even close. But this style of player is generally boring so most people just end up killing randoms is high reward little risk situations all day long.

That’s not true at all. Rangers and Mesmers have absolutely no trouble taking camps single handedly. They also aren’t useless in any aspect of WvW or sPvP as they make excellent roamers and zergers.

Scouting also isn’t something the thief class excells in alone as Rangers are just as quick running around the map thanks to the insanely short cooldown on swoop. They also escape exceptionally well when attacked. And they have a real bunker spec.

So you’re saying thieves should have no sustain in a fight no matter what they run? Wut?

Another one of these haha. Every one of these threads is just complaining. I’m sorry but if you want to remove thief burst and stealth then increase thief stats, give us boons/stability/buffs/a way to survive fights (congratulations we’re warriors now). You said it yourself, you constantly get thieves to 10-20% health. If you remove their escape abilities and healing then they are just free kills. Basically a squishy warrior. If you took the time to look around you’d see every class has a near permanent survival build or some kind of damage build. Thieves are no different, you either go sustain or burst. When it comes down to it your post makes you sound like you just don’t like fighting thieves and their mechanics, not that they are actually overpowered. If that’s the case, who cares, A-net won’t change the basics mechanics for classes because of multiple reasons.

As a side note any group of 4-5 players dying to 1 thief in the current meta in WvW are just not good players.

Atherakhia.4086:

Hype.8032:

Atherakhia.4086:

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

So your solution is to make the thief more like a guardian? All these ‘fixes’ just make the game more bland. Keep unique classes unique. Also, back to the original topic, no one uses shadow protector because the other traits like 2 init on stealth, blind on stealth, or remove condition on stealth are so much more powerful. So he’s crying about a trait no one uses…? With only shadow rejuvenation my thief heals for 342/s….. hardly impressive for 30 points.

I forgot to add that a lot of the other professions can heal as well, such as Guardian, Ranger, Ele… the difference with them is they can also attack while they receive that passive healing… Thief is just helping the opponent recharge his cooldowns in the same situation.

Giving a boon to one class that is already given to another doesn’t somehow make the game more bland or the one clkitten unique. It’s simply a tool. The playstyle of the Thief class is already quite unique. If anything, your complaint should have been that making the thief remain visible so often would make it more like a Warrior.

The end result regardless of approach should be a balanced game. Having played tons of MMO’s in my lifetime, I have to say that GW2 has probably the absolute worst implementation of the ‘stealth fighter’ I’ve ever seen. And it shows by the number of complaints aimed at the class. And they’re not random crying from uninformed players. The people are right… this class can be overpowered. People who play it know that simply nerfing what they want nerfed will leave the class useless though.

Far better to fix the issue akittens source and improve the class as needed rather than nibble at the fringes until you really do have a boring, one note class.

I can tell you’ve thought about this but I can’t agree that making the thief more like the other professions is the right move. Does protection fit with an agile low health high damage class? I don’t think it does and neither does Anet judging by how they built it.

Perfect balance isn’t what we want.. slight imbalances keep the meta changing and keep it fun to play. I love stealth but I would accept changes to the class if they continue to lessen its viability. However, adding stability and protection sure as hell isn’t the right way to do it.

Hype.8032:

I can tell you’ve thought about this but I can’t agree that making the thief more like the other professions is the right move. Does protection fit with an agile low health high damage class? I don’t think it does and neither does Anet judging by how they built it.

Perfect balance isn’t what we want.. slight imbalances keep the meta changing and keep it fun to play. I love stealth but I would accept changes to the class if they continue to lessen its viability. However, adding stability and protection sure as hell isn’t the right way to do it.

Protection is a damage debuff and while it could represent thicker armor, why can’t it also represent that the thief has the upperhand in combat and has his opponent offbalance so his swings aren’t as fast or strong.

Aegis could reflect a person raising their shield or large weapon to guard against an attack, but why can’t it also represent the thief riposting an attack to create an opening?

But yea, simply giving the class ranger level health would be sufficient (they have about 4k more hp) for the longevity aspect of the class to bring sustained damage to bear. Still need to resolve the lack of burst issue (for example, introduce a third strike for the autos. One for auto, a second positional, and a third from stealth. Backstab for example would do 150% damage from the back if not from stealth. As an example only).

And yes, perfect balance is what we should strive for. The way you get an engaging meta is how does 3 rocks fight off 2 scissors and a paper. Or by making sure not all rocks are polished marbles, but some are fashioned into arrow heads or some such nonsense.

Atherakhia.4086:

Hype.8032:

I can tell you’ve thought about this but I can’t agree that making the thief more like the other professions is the right move. Does protection fit with an agile low health high damage class? I don’t think it does and neither does Anet judging by how they built it.

Perfect balance isn’t what we want.. slight imbalances keep the meta changing and keep it fun to play. I love stealth but I would accept changes to the class if they continue to lessen its viability. However, adding stability and protection sure as hell isn’t the right way to do it.

Protection is a damage debuff and while it could represent thicker armor, why can’t it also represent that the thief has the upperhand in combat and has his opponent offbalance so his swings aren’t as fast or strong.

Aegis could reflect a person raising their shield or large weapon to guard against an attack, but why can’t it also represent the thief riposting an attack to create an opening?

But yea, simply giving the class ranger level health would be sufficient (they have about 4k more hp) for the longevity aspect of the class to bring sustained damage to bear. Still need to resolve the lack of burst issue (for example, introduce a third strike for the autos. One for auto, a second positional, and a third from stealth. Backstab for example would do 150% damage from the back if not from stealth. As an example only).

And yes, perfect balance is what we should strive for. The way you get an engaging meta is how does 3 rocks fight off 2 scissors and a paper. Or by making sure not all rocks are polished marbles, but some are fashioned into arrow heads or some such nonsense.

Um no. Perfectly balanced metas lead to static metas. It happened in Chess and Star Craft 1.

How does 32k- 32,692 backstab sound?

What would you say if i tell you that they can achieve 50k.. see Op

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Lets-talk-about-Backstabs/first#post2147745

Yet Elitist Stealth Thief is “weak and not that great”

How about this next one… . 36, 517k backstab

Elitist Stealth Thief- Highest Backstab thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Your-highest-backstab-ever/first#post2127144

Is Elitist Stealth Thief still “weak and not that great”?

I Beg To Differ

Atherakhia.4086:

randomfightfan.4091:

Atherakhia.4086:

No, the problem with the thief class is a direct result of the initiative system and the skills/traits that increase the initiative cap and its regen and this is the area that needs to be fixed. Nothing else.

Remove the skills and traits that increase the initiative cap or grant free initiative for stealthing/criting/etc. so all specs of the thief class are the same at their base. Then build the class up.

And in order to balance around that, all cool downs from all other classes are tripled. That would be the effect of a nerf like that.

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

So how would giving protection and stability balance the thief when you have made it so they can use at max 3 abilities before being completely out of initiative for a long time and no way to get it back? It would be the same as a warrior using hundred blades and whilrwind then only being able to use 1 ability total every 5-10 seconds. Any other class gets to use 4 abilities, swap weapons, 4 abilities, swap, use w/e is off cd, swap, etc. How do you not understand that gutting thief initiative would mean a thief would be fighting with 3 skills vs the 8 skills of all other classes. It’s obvious you’ve never played thief.

As a thief player, I don’t want my thief to be tanky, boring class that has no more mobility than a hammer guardian. Thief is meant to be a high risk class. Giving them a major sustain buff takes away the risk, taking away the initiative gain means you can either get into the group fast but not be able to use any abilities, or not use any abilities getting into the group, or while you’re in the group, so you can use them to get out. Just leave the class balancing to the professionals please.

Burnfall.9573:

How does 32k- 32,692 backstab sound?

What would you say if i tell you that they can achieve 50k.. see Op

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Lets-talk-about-Backstabs/first#post2147745

Yet Elitist Stealth Thief is “weak and not that great”

How about this next one… . 36, 517k backstab

Elitist Stealth Thief- Highest Backstab thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Your-highest-backstab-ever/first#post2127144

Is Elitist Stealth Thief still “weak and not that great”?

I Beg To Differ

LOL Look at that thread again son. The picture where the backstab landed for 32k was against a naked person with 25 vuln. The thief had 25 might, assassin signet, fury, full damage traits, and a bunch of other stuff. The 50 backstab was the same thing but against a naked warrior using frenzy back when it doubled your increased damage. How do you expect people to take you seriously when you bring up joke threads in your arguments? You mine as well have used the 1 million backstab on a bunny as your example. Just as valid.

randomfightfan.4091:

Atherakhia.4086:

randomfightfan.4091:

Atherakhia.4086:

No, the problem with the thief class is a direct result of the initiative system and the skills/traits that increase the initiative cap and its regen and this is the area that needs to be fixed. Nothing else.

Remove the skills and traits that increase the initiative cap or grant free initiative for stealthing/criting/etc. so all specs of the thief class are the same at their base. Then build the class up.

And in order to balance around that, all cool downs from all other classes are tripled. That would be the effect of a nerf like that.

Uh no…

You build the thief class up. You give it more health like the Ranger or you give it access to tools to help it remain viable outside of stealth. Things like protection, stability, etc. We already know ANet is considering boosting the Thief’s auto attack damage to help with the sustained fight.

So how would giving protection and stability balance the thief when you have made it so they can use at max 3 abilities before being completely out of initiative for a long time and no way to get it back? It would be the same as a warrior using hundred blades and whilrwind then only being able to use 1 ability total every 5-10 seconds. Any other class gets to use 4 abilities, swap weapons, 4 abilities, swap, use w/e is off cd, swap, etc. How do you not understand that gutting thief initiative would mean a thief would be fighting with 3 skills vs the 8 skills of all other classes. It’s obvious you’ve never played thief.

As a thief player, I don’t want my thief to be tanky, boring class that has no more mobility than a hammer guardian. Thief is meant to be a high risk class. Giving them a major sustain buff takes away the risk, taking away the initiative gain means you can either get into the group fast but not be able to use any abilities, or not use any abilities getting into the group, or while you’re in the group, so you can use them to get out. Just leave the class balancing to the professionals please.

I’m not a designer, let someone else come up with the details, but I’ve already given some ideas.

Introduce a third mechanic on stealth skills. Take backstab for example. Autoattack from the front. Attacks from the back deal 150% damage. Attacks from the back from stealth deal 200% damage.

Could also give more tied abilities like the vale dancer in DAoC. Backstab followed by a dancing dagger causes your next X auto attacks have a +XX% chance to crit. But if you follow dancer dagger with a whirling blade, it provides 6 bleeds instead of 3.

Or you just do the incredibly easy. Heartseaker does XX damage at 50% and XXX damage at 25%

Make it so the warrior is the upfront in your face basher where the thief is the finesse/acrobatic dancer.

But yes, I play a thief. It’s my ‘main’ if that means anything in this game. The point behind initiative is supposed to be to provide pressure. A lot of the skills aren’t good and certainly aren’t worth their cost. If Initiative is balanced, maybe these skills would be the ones to start with (dancing dagger for example).

Atherakhia.4086:

Introduce a third mechanic on stealth skills. Take backstab for example. Autoattack from the front. Attacks from the back deal 150% damage. Attacks from the back from stealth deal 200% damage.

Could also give more tied abilities like the vale dancer in DAoC. Backstab followed by a dancing dagger causes your next X auto attacks have a +XX% chance to crit. But if you follow dancer dagger with a whirling blade, it provides 6 bleeds instead of 3.

Stuff like that would be pretty cool and really increase the skill ceiling of the class. The only thing you’d need to worry about is would that make playing/playing against the thief a burden of knowledge? If you don’t know what that means it’s basically that it punishes players for not knowing every possible combination of abilities from a class. One such burden was the invoker from dota. Some people were good at it but most people hated it due to it being so incredibly hard to pick up and play.

“But stealth benefits!” falls into the classic trap of failing to see the downside of stealth.

Stealth uptime is combat downtime. You cannot attack if you want to continue to benefit from stealth. This is a huge disadvantage for the thief, and far too little exploited by people fighting stealth combatants. Oh nos, they’re stealthed 50 % of the fight? That means half the fight they’re willfully walking around not attacking while you can attack all you want. If you’re standing around waiting for the thief to appear again instead of tracking down and killing the thief you’re the one creating that advantage for them, they aren’t doing it themselves. All of those fancy traited advantages evaporate if the thief gets smacked once or twice while stealthed. They’ve traded in their ability to attack, in that case, for nothing.

Tulisin.6945:

“But stealth benefits!” falls into the classic trap of failing to see the downside of stealth.

Stealth uptime is combat downtime. You cannot attack if you want to continue to benefit from stealth. This is a huge disadvantage for the thief, and far too little exploited by people fighting stealth combatants. Oh nos, they’re stealthed 50 % of the fight? That means half the fight they’re willfully walking around not attacking while you can attack all you want. If you’re standing around waiting for the thief to appear again instead of tracking down and killing the thief you’re the one creating that advantage for them, they aren’t doing it themselves. All of those fancy traited advantages evaporate if the thief gets smacked once or twice while stealthed. They’ve traded in their ability to attack, in that case, for nothing.

Are you still trying to sell stealth as a disadvantage? I think I have heard it all. Surely you are aware that backstab and sneak attack require stealth? Maybe we should jump to the single greatest benefit stealth provides. Invisibility. Did you really just say track the thief down? I need to find out which class has “Release the Hounds!”. Between heartseeker, shadow return and shadowstep no one is going to catch me on me thief after i stealth. Maybe Anet should just change stealth to a debuff rather than a buff? Keep this stuff coming, its comedy gold.

AkiraZero.8514:

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

then again wich class isnt squishy as full glass cannon that “we are squishy” argument is completely invalid they are the only class that runs glass cannon and doesnt get punished for mistakes .

The idea that you do great in WvW becouse you could run away from a zerg and kill 2 lone wanderers is whats wrong here…

WvW is all about groups and server strategy.
You run from the zerg, great, that zerg is now taking your tower. You did nothing
You killed a guy? No big deal, hes back at spawn and going to join some people to take a camp…

Rezzet.3614:

AkiraZero.8514:

I love when Thieves use the “l2p” response or try to claim that they are the squishiest class in the game – Lets face it, when you have the best mobility, best burst and are able to stay in stealth the majority of a fight… your squishy-ness really is meaningless!

then again wich class isnt squishy as full glass cannon that “we are squishy” argument is completely invalid they are the only class that runs glass cannon and doesnt get punished for mistakes .

Precisely, if I went GC on any of my character I would expect to put out some insane burst… I’d also expect to end up dead after I’ve gotten through my skills. At no point would I expect to be able to casually stroll away from the fight heading to kill my next group of unsuspecting targets.

Put it this way, when 1v1 dueling comes into the game, how are you really going to defend the thief when we can all pretty much agree that even bad Thieves aren’t going to be losing many 1v1 battles.

You do realize this is in the defensive trait line right? also they don’t heal 500 unless they use healing power only 330. stealth is how thieves defend themselves they are spies. if they are going to remove stealth then they better give them more defensive skills. They also have a revealed debuff when they attack from stealth without it i would agree it would be op.

Seriously? To be able to do 10k+ BS you need to go full Glass Cannon, and to be able to regenerate while in stealth you need 30 points in Shadow Arts for Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Regenerate health while in stealth). You can’t get both. Now I won’t say learn to play, but at least learn what thieves are capable of and what they aren’t capable of before nagging.

Azraeel.1238:

Seriously? To be able to do 10k+ BS you need to go full Glass Cannon, and to be able to regenerate while in stealth you need 30 points in Shadow Arts for Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Regenerate health while in stealth). You can’t get both. Now I won’t say learn to play, but at least learn what thieves are capable of and what they aren’t capable of before nagging.

Remember that you’re talking to an average MMO player on a forum. If they hate on something, they will lie, cheat, and steal to “prove” their point. Can thief hit 10k backstab? yes. Can thief regen 500 per second in stealth? yes. Can they do both at the same time? no. Does that matter to the haters? no. Their argument could be against a 30-30-30-30-30 thief and still there’d be a legion of haters come in to support the hate.

I’m not saying anything against the guy you’re responding to personally, just the thief-hate community in general.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Shadow protector and shadows rejuvenation. there you go, 500 health per second for more than 50% of the fight. thats a little more than an eles healing if that ele were to spec into one trait tree like the thief, while going full berszerker. Thief trades off one trait tree for the sustainability. with a thief being stealthed for more than 50% of the fight with an avg fight of 10-60 seconds, im sure you now can see the disparity here. I dont mind that thieves can go stealth.. sure, whatever. i dont mind that they can hit 10k in one hit.. well i do, however, you combine that with stealth and 500 health per second? thieves are un killable(almost). do the math. they stealth every 4 seconds, FOR 4 seconds, hitting as their stealth runs out to reap benefits of the regen. 4×500=2000. They are healing for 2000 health over the course of being stealthed every time they stealth. EVERY 4 SECONDS. oh and, im not even counting black powder and heartseeker combo where they can perma stealth till full health. When im fighting thieves, (mind you im a full berzerker build cause thats the only way to come close to trying to bet a thief), i always hit them with my burst and get them down to on avg 10-20%. when they stealth and come out, theyre back to 90-100% ready with another stealth to burst me down again. other than a healway guardian, im ready to call the thief one of the best at healing. (selfishly ofc). Not only that but they can 1-escape from anything, 2-permanently stealth, 3-highest burst in the game. can anyone else see the enourmous disparities here? am i the only one?

For starters, if you played a thief you would know shadows protector is on a 5-6 sec internal cooldown. So…

Second, unless a thief is running away or backing off to heal up, he/she will not stay in stealth for the full 4 sec.

Thrid, we don’t use shadow protector…

Forth, out of combat healing is so powerful. How dare you regen all your health at 3000 units away!

Fifth, guardian/ele/ranger regens is about twice as much as a thief regen in stealth. I guess you didn’t know that.

Meurto.8520:

Are you still trying to sell stealth as a disadvantage? I think I have heard it all. Surely you are aware that backstab and sneak attack require stealth? Maybe we should jump to the single greatest benefit stealth provides. Invisibility. Did you really just say track the thief down? I need to find out which class has “Release the Hounds!”. Between heartseeker, shadow return and shadowstep no one is going to catch me on me thief after i stealth. Maybe Anet should just change stealth to a debuff rather than a buff? Keep this stuff coming, its comedy gold.

So what you’re saying is that thief survivability comes mainly from mobility, and I agree. Stealth is not, and never has been the culprit here. Stealth is not an effective means of escape if you’re not faster* than the non-stealthed person. Stealth is consistently blamed as a mechanical reason that thieves are able to win or escape, but stealth meta is grounded in skill, not stats. Mobility is mechanics based in that some professions and builds are statistically faster.

The debate is going to continue to run in circles until the people opposed to thieves finally admit that they want thief mobility nerfed, or in fact don’t want mobility nerfed and are simply too bad to combat stealth itself.

*"Faster" and “mobility” here to mean the aggregate effects of dodge, runspeed, movement skills, evasion skills, and runspeed-reduction conditions. Not only things like swiftness, but all things that give an advantage in movement and evasion.