Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a bunch of NERF thieves posts, cluttered with 18k dmg shots. But i have a serious question… How many level ones to level forties or even level fifties go into WvW? With level 1-60 ect armor. What would happen if say… A level 80 thief, with level 80 geared, fully runed, running glass cannon were to hit a level one scaled to 80. HE WOULD HIT 18K. Stop nerfing builds when thieves in actuallity don’t hit top tier damage on people they shouldn’t. When i’m in Heart of the Mists, a place where the armor is SCALED TO 80. I havn’t once hit over 8k on a lucky crit. Vs a ranger let alone a gaurdian or warrior who pump some massive defense.

What would happen if a level 80 warrior used hundred blades glass cannon and crit on an actual level 1 scaled to level 80 thief? 18k damage. Remember: No Traits, no armor, no runes. Don’t compare them, because in heart of the mists, where gear is equal, i’ve seen every class dominate a thief.

100b is an awful attack to use as an example, lol. it has a 3.5 second animation time where you are completely rooted in place.

i dont care what weapon you use, if you just stand there and let someone hit you for 3.5 seconds you are going to take a lot of damage.

its certainly worlds apart from an instant attack, like say backstab.

@Fritz:

Hundred Blades is a perfect example because when combined with Bulls Charge and Frenzy, it’s unavoidable if you miss the dodge for BC or your stunbreaker is on CD. Also, Backstab is NOT an instant ability. Quit with the bullkitten and stop exaggerating.

The common crit on a backstab as a full glass cannon Thief is around 5k dmg.

Everything else is just bullkitten, and happened in situations where even the Necro Scepter 1 skill would have crit for 8k.

I keep seeing people only show screenshots of the combat log or the death breakdown. However, how can we judge the situation properly and objectively, if you only give a tiny part of the scenario. Those screenshots have nothing about build, equipment, traits, circumstances, or anything else, just some numbers on a page. Then i would see the poster of those screenshots say some numbers about the stats, how do we know you didn’t make it up. Please, be more comprehensive with your screenshots.

I want the Anet staff to actually test it out not just keep nerfing our class.

+1. If you take a lvl 80 glass Thief and have them backstab with full exotics vs each individual class and they have full exotics I’d love to see what the damage actually is.

Fritz.5026:

100b is an awful attack to use as an example, lol. it has a 3.5 second animation time where you are completely rooted in place.

i dont care what weapon you use, if you just stand there and let someone hit you for 3.5 seconds you are going to take a lot of damage.

its certainly worlds apart from an instant attack, like say backstab.

I’ve seen some pretty nasty warriors melt a thief in about 5 seconds tops if they hit their combo right. I hope people realize that if you misjudge something on a thief, you die, other classes you have a few shots. That’s why they do good damage. Higher skill cap.

bump don’t want this post to get hidden.

Hmm, yesterday in Full Khilbrons set Prec/tough/cond I was 100-0’d by a thief. I was wearing the maximum armor available to a mesmer. Full armor runes even.

I have 3 full sets of exotics on my mesmer and have had this happen several times by various thieves. It’s not often but enough to show me there is a couple broken thief builds in WVW.

I’m also a very experienced pvp’r who spent 2 years playing WAR solid. I’ve also played every MMO under the sun seeing as I’m 36.

I don’t know what exactly needs to be toned down on the thief (there was one thread explaining it very well) but i do know something is a little out of wack to get 100-0 in a single timestamp.

BTW ANET………….add seconds to your timestamp. What good is a minute long timestamp? That useless to us. We need .1 seconds broken down on the timestamp.

Err. The equipment choices in sPvP are limited in stats because it’s competitive and needs to be equal; you do less damage because you have lower power and precision in arena gear. Not because of level scaling. That being said, thieves can still get over 10k crits in sPvP against cloth classes with the least toughness possible. 8k crits are commonplace.

In wvwvw, thieves still can (and often do) over 15k backstab crits against squishy level 80s. It doesn’t matter how you try to sugarcoat it, that’s absurd spike damage, which is something ANet isn’t fond of. That’s why thieves are getting nerfed. I think it’s pretty justified. There are other abilities that are getting buffed to compensate for losing some damage on backstab. It’s not the end of the world for thieves.

I switched to glass cannon thief from cond damage one prior to all nerfs because I got tired of being the kittened guy and now I got 1990 armor, highest backstab crit I took was ~8000 while highest damage I took from 100b was well… instant death from 13k hp essentially being unable to do anything about it. I don’t see why one thing is okay and the other isn’t. Confusing really.
However the game is still young and sooner or later they will fix the classes or I’ll simply reroll. lol

Falcon.8509:

Fritz.5026:

100b is an awful attack to use as an example, lol. it has a 3.5 second animation time where you are completely rooted in place.

i dont care what weapon you use, if you just stand there and let someone hit you for 3.5 seconds you are going to take a lot of damage.

its certainly worlds apart from an instant attack, like say backstab.

I’ve seen some pretty nasty warriors melt a thief in about 5 seconds tops if they hit their combo right. I hope people realize that if you misjudge something on a thief, you die, other classes you have a few shots. That’s why they do good damage. Higher skill cap.

Oh, it can get much worse.
A couple times I was fighting a particular GC Warrior in sPvP on my Engineer, with roughly 1100 Toughness and 1500 Vitality, and by using the Bull Rush > Frenzy > Hundred Blades combo (while he likely had Fury on as well) he downed me in a little over a second. Same person did it two or three times to me throughout the match.

Note carefully, that this was in sPvP.

Just fought a thief 2 minutes ago that did over 17k damage in 1 second. I have 2424 armor in this build.

I can’t even imagine how ele’s or someone playing glass cannon would deal with that.

You got to admit that pretty ridiculous. Not to mention way to easy to do.

Anet sees the metrics so no matter what you think, Anet sees the numbers and will act accordingly.

It’s hard to argue with facts but i know many will.

Godmoney.2048

Hmm, yesterday in Full Khilbrons set Prec/tough/cond I was 100-0’d by a thief. I was wearing the maximum armor available to a mesmer. Full armor runes even.

I have 3 full sets of exotics on my mesmer and have had this happen several times by various thieves. It’s not often but enough to show me there is a couple broken thief builds in WVW.

ANOTHER WVW STORY….

Godmoney.2048

Just fought a thief 2 minutes ago that did over 17k damage in 1 second. I have 2424 armor in this build.

I can’t even imagine how ele’s or someone playing glass cannon would deal with that.

You got to admit that pretty ridiculous. Not to mention way to easy to do.

Anet sees the metrics so no matter what you think, Anet sees the numbers and will act accordingly.

It’s hard to argue with facts but i know many will.

Anet see’s what?? your qq? you got anything to back up your claim?? so far all Anet had done is listen to you guys qq with no form of evidence. Prove it or don’t post it.

Its time Anet actually does some tests before nerfing instead of listening to these whinging B4567ES. I am sure most here agree that we are tired of coming to the thief forum and having to see the word nerf and get irritated.

No matter how many times Anet nerfs the thief class, no matter how many ideas we come up with to improve thief game play its not going to change. You guys are just going to give them something new to whinge about. From Heartseaker, to pistol whip, to assassin Signet and now back stab?? what next??

I bought this game just to play the thief class and now I am very disappointed I am on the edge to quitting. Anet really needs to STEP UP and say NO! to these nerf crying bimbos.

Fritz.5026:

it has a 3.5 second animation time where you are completely rooted in place.

i dont care what weapon you use, if you just stand there and let someone hit you for 3.5 seconds you are going to take a lot of damage.

Why does this sound so familiar… Wasn’t there a thief skill nerfed a while back with the same situation? That had just as much nerf-herders against it as backstab does now?

The problem here is that Anet are not basing the nerf on situations from WvW. They’ve said that WvW is imbalanced and it always will be, I’m pretty sure they aren’t balancing around that.

5v5s is what they balance around. You dont hit 18ks in structured but they obviously feel that spvp backstab damage is still too high

mischwoof.9785:

It doesn’t matter how you try to sugarcoat it, that’s absurd spike damage, which is something ANet isn’t fond of. That’s why thieves are getting nerfed. I think it’s pretty justified. There are other abilities that are getting buffed to compensate for losing some damage on backstab. It’s not the end of the world for thieves.

2 Things in this post.

1.) If they weren’t fond of it and still put it in then they need to take it out.

2.) Lowering the damage of the spike but making damage from other sources higher does not actually help.

What happens is you end up killing the spike (which in this case) makes D/X useless. Even if you increase the damage in other areas that is still either promoting an entirely different build (and therefore playstyle) and still leaving the burst as useless or kills the burst and still makes no other viable builds.

Lowering the damage of a burst == Killing the burst.
Improving damage of fluff skills =/= Improving the burst.

This is why Thieves who like this particular style of play are scared. It isn’t because it’s the most effective and therefore OP, it’s because it’s their favorite. I highly doubt this is going to ruin all the Thieves forever and ever but it IS going to further destroy a viable build that many people enjoy. Why? Frankly because many, many people cannot figure out how to counter it. It’s a proven fact that you can counter it, so why is it that people don’t? Lack of skill? Stubborness? Game glitches? Each case is different and there is no simple answer with the exception of one; Nerf the cause. So yes, it is getting nerfed because of [a general lack of skill in] the player base that is complaining about it.

Someone said there should not be a way to quickly counter a tank. If this was the case then a “tanky” playstyle would the only viable meta.

Tank > Balanced
Glass Cannon > Tank
Balanced > Glass Cannon

Can a Balanced player overcome a tank? Yes, with skill.
Can a Tank overcome a Glass Cannon? Yes, with skill.
Can a Glass Cannon overcome Balanced? Yes, with skill.

The dual dagger option is the only one that honestly has the damage required to go on par with other classes. With that, what does the thief in core do? Stealth. Backstab. Stealth. Backstab. Play smart. Why are players looking for a higher endgame skillcap the ones that play thieves? BECAUSE THEY ARN’T EASY TO PLAY. Especially in PVE. Without that tiny bit of extra damage from backstab i would die 99% of the time. Hands down. I just wouldn’t do enough damage. I am always taking some sort of damage whether it be in PVE, sPvP, WvWvW or anything. You take out the base of their spike damage and they become COMPLETELY, useless. Thieves in this game do not have a ton of free dodge to fall back on. Two endurance rolls and some stealth time until you die, some blind if you play it right. Honestly, thieves will fall off the map completely if they lose their best mechanic. Guardians- Massive heals and sustain. Warriors- Balanced with high damage and sustain. (Arn’t as balanced as most people think because warriors arn’t supposed to have ranged abilites) Mesmer- TONS of illusions, conditions, phantasms, enough to juke a mob of 5 WvW idiots easy. Elementalist- AOE Powerhouse. Nuff said. Necromancer- Minions, Well aoe dmg, 2 possible shields with damage buffs. Ranger, LONG RANGE DAMAGE, and alot of it. If i get swiftness on a ranger with a longbow or shortbow i can sucessfully melt somones face off. Engineer- Turrets, sustain, defense, offense, pretty much any kit they want they can have, no pun intended. What do thieves have when you think about it. Dual pistols? Junk in WvW so don’t complain, A super short range shortbow? Only reason i use it is for the teleport. Sword Pistol? Honestly Weak. Dagger Pistol? Lose alot of damage from either for a little sustain. So the thieves linchpin, what is it? TWO DAGGERS. And what is the only skill that does moderatly decent damage for that? BACKSTAB, take that away and you have a medeocre support profession who can stealth allies and immobolize/ blind foes pumping crap for damage. DONT MAKE THEM A CRAPPY SUPPORT CLASS.

Impossible to get a 18K backstab with new patch changing assassins signet.

Fritz.5026:

100b is an awful attack to use as an example, lol. it has a 3.5 second animation time where you are completely rooted in place.

i dont care what weapon you use, if you just stand there and let someone hit you for 3.5 seconds you are going to take a lot of damage.

its certainly worlds apart from an instant attack, like say backstab.

Know what else has a 3.5s animation time and roots the player in place and NEVER did as much damage as 100b?

PISTOL WHIP

guess what happened to it?

100b did like 2x the damage of pistol whip, and you have about double the health and 150% the armor.

Warriors fine, thieves op, thieves get nerf, autoattack does more damage than pistol whip gg.

Alistair Cardozo.2560:

Godmoney.2048

Hmm, yesterday in Full Khilbrons set Prec/tough/cond I was 100-0’d by a thief. I was wearing the maximum armor available to a mesmer. Full armor runes even.

I have 3 full sets of exotics on my mesmer and have had this happen several times by various thieves. It’s not often but enough to show me there is a couple broken thief builds in WVW.

ANOTHER WVW STORY….

Godmoney.2048

Just fought a thief 2 minutes ago that did over 17k damage in 1 second. I have 2424 armor in this build.

I can’t even imagine how ele’s or someone playing glass cannon would deal with that.

You got to admit that pretty ridiculous. Not to mention way to easy to do.

Anet sees the metrics so no matter what you think, Anet sees the numbers and will act accordingly.

It’s hard to argue with facts but i know many will.

Anet see’s what?? your qq? you got anything to back up your claim?? so far all Anet had done is listen to you guys qq with no form of evidence. Prove it or don’t post it.

Its time Anet actually does some tests before nerfing instead of listening to these whinging B4567ES. I am sure most here agree that we are tired of coming to the thief forum and having to see the word nerf and get irritated.

No matter how many times Anet nerfs the thief class, no matter how many ideas we come up with to improve thief game play its not going to change. You guys are just going to give them something new to whinge about. From Heartseaker, to pistol whip, to assassin Signet and now back stab?? what next??

I bought this game just to play the thief class and now I am very disappointed I am on the edge to quitting. Anet really needs to STEP UP and say NO! to these nerf crying bimbos.

Then quit? I wasn’t whining…..I think most people here would say you sound like the whiner.

No matter what you say Anet see’s the metrics. They are nerfing because behind the scenes they’re seeing the TTK being too high on some classes and builds. Thieves happen to be one of these specs. Combined with culling issues it become game breaking for many WvW players. No one likes to fight thieves in permanent stealth who can hit you with several abilities in 1 second for 17,800 damage in one time stamp.

If you can’t kill people in 1 second like the thieves i fight in WvW that just means you’re not as good as them. Don’t be angry just because you’re not as good as other thieves and able to use the current mechanics to their potential.

@Godmoney
Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and actually post some screenshots instead of just spewing numbers like a parrot. I can make up numbers too, here’s some:

I got downed by a warrior with 100b in less than 1 second, i have 2k toughness and 1.5k vitality, omg warriors op

I’m amused that people still think that toughness is how you counter burst damage.

Using WvW as a basis for pvp nerfing/buffing is a very bad idea. It’s not even balanced pvp, nowhere near. It’s equivalent to WoW battlegrounds, just a zergfest with no real strategy. Spvp is equivalent to arena, where they should be balancing around.

It’s not the fault of my thiefs damage that they are supposedly perma stealthed in WvW ( I don’t play that crap) that is the fault of the stealth or render bug. Fix that, don’t nerf my damage…

Not everyone runs the kitten glass cannon BS thief, and BS isn’t even the problem. It’s a combination of traits and utilities to pull off a plethora of damage in a short amount of time. Nerfing BS is just DUMB

Ensign.2189:

I’m amused that people still think that toughness is how you counter burst damage.

Toughness is underpowered, I agree, that’s something that needs to be addressed more than any 1 “OP” skill out there.

Toughness isn’t underpowered, but its strength is that it’s a force multiplier for your healing as well as your maximum health. That strength in multiplying your healing is totally irrelevant against lolspikes – you need vitality, which is roughly twice as powerful as toughness for spike resistance, to do that.

Ensign.2189:

Toughness isn’t underpowered, but its strength is that it’s a force multiplier for your healing as well as your maximum health. That strength in multiplying your healing is totally irrelevant against lolspikes – you need vitality, which is roughly twice as powerful as toughness for spike resistance, to do that.

Well, I think that it doesn’t scale well and that stacking toughness doesn’t increase survivability against spikes well at all. I think it should reduce damage by a much more substantial amount.

so…. we’re looking at maximum possible results here we’ll say a thief with 25 stacks of sigil of bloodlust (250), 25 stacks of might, the target has a condition (we’ll say 25 stacks of vulnerability, for good measure +25% extra damage on them) for an extra 10% damage from a trait, 5% extra damage from daggers, they’re under 50% health for an extra 20% from executioner, they’re over 6 pips of initiative for an extra 10% damage, and an extra 5% damage for being behind their target, with an of force dagger (5% extra damage), the hit is a top end of weapon range hit and is a critical strike, and since this is sPVP, the max critical multiplier is 2.12, and the base power on the thief is 2199 and top end weapon rating is 983. We’ll assume % based increases stack multiplicatively, though that could be wrong.

On an elementalist with no toughness, just base armor.. 1836 defense.. okay first let’s establish what backstab does all on it’s own: 983 * 2199 * 2.4 / 1836 = 2826 damage normal, 5990 crit.

With all those extra modifiers.. 8974 normal, 19025 crit, see how much a difference the build/extra factors make rather than just the skill being “op”?

Now let’s take that same hit on a warrior, base armor 2127. 7747 normal, 16423 crit, so that extra 291 defense from heavy armor decreased damage by 14%.

Stack toughness on that warrior, even throw a shield on him, we’ll even say he’s got turtle’s defense for an extra 200 toughness because he’s immobilized, and he’s got a banner of defense up and has dolyak signet equipped but not on cooldown. That’s 4146 total defense, that’s taking it to an extreme. On a crit he still takes 8425 damage. That’s still quite a bit. He had to stack everything he could possibly do, all conditions in his favor to reduce damage, 2019 extra armor, almost double his base armor, more than double a light armor wearer, 2310 armor over that first ele, and it reduced damage by 56%. That’s an unrealistic amount of toughness to stack btw, that’s toughness at the expense of everything else. Realistically they’d probably have about 800 less toughness than that, even specced down the defense line. That’s pretty much capping out how much damage mitigation you can build for in this game with toughness, both the 4100+ warrior and the thief with 25 might 25 bloodlust and 25 stacks of vuln on the target are perfect storms (minus wvw orbs, this is spvp)

I personally think toughness shouldn’t scale so linearly. It would be more of a hard counter to direct damage if it scaled in such a way that at say, 3600 armor, you reached a damage reduction cap of 75% (to prevent making people TOO tanky), and then you could reduce damage a further 33% after that with protection. If a perfect storm backstab only hit a tanky warrior for 4800 damage, that’d be a more effective counter.

That’d be something like, for every toughness past the base 916 you’d multiply it by 4.5 for damage calculations.

and I should add that while stacking toughness and being a bunker would hard counter direct damage, conditions would hard counter people stacking toughness.

@DevilDoc

Where did you get these numbers for thief crit? There are many more variables to be added that you havn’t added. 1- Thieves don’t often get 25 stacks of might 2- in SPvP thieves don’t often get 25 stacks of bloodlust (unless the opposing time is the worst time ever made.) If a thief is running D/D How is he supposed to stack 25 Vuln? (Can’t because if i did any of these proposed things i would be under 6 “pips” Of initiative.) Next your base attack in HoTm is 2139, if you pop assassins signet it lowers the bonus after the next hits. Next you didn’t add the VS Toughness, you only calculated raw damage, so yes if i was hitting a naked level 1 with no toughness and 18k hp i could probably hit a good 18k the “5990” would actually end up to be the average crit after all of that was added it. i tested this out under all of your theories and here is what i get, proving that whole arguement is so far off base that it is impossible. How does hitting a target from the behind with the correct traits produce that low of damag? Noting this chain is ONLY possible every 45 seconds. The reason you are complaining is because you see that high burst and say HEY THIEF OP, but the thief doesn’t just backstab, added airstrike from air runes 1.5k dmg. steal for 3k, initial burst, because you arn’t hitting them from full HP with backstab or it does way less damage. So 5.5k i will say for the backstab. thats 10k DMG in 1 secound. THAT is the burst you are seeing, not backstab alone. So then you must ask, is that too fast? If so Nerf the burst surrounding backstab, not the skill itself. Say mug damage? Or air rune damage? Every class has access to air runes. Then ask yourself, is the damage truely that great? You may not have time to react to the inital burst, but after that you have health. You can choose to heal or stun or do something else besides try to hurt the thief and just roll over. The problem isn’t the thief. Once the inital burst is gone there is a THREE SECOND WAIT on another stealth, and even then they wont get the same burst, only a measly portion of the inital one. It comes down to player intelligence. And you can NEVER buff player intelligence. Backstab is not that strong. It is everything added in, this is called a build.

@Falcon
While I don’t disagree with you points, I’m quite sure Devil knows those conditions aren’t feasibly reachable. He was pointing out the maximum damage possible and the effects of toughness..

Falcon.8509:

@DevilDoc

Where did you get these numbers for thief crit? There are many more variables to be added that you havn’t added. 1- Thieves don’t often get 25 stacks of might 2- in SPvP thieves don’t often get 25 stacks of bloodlust (unless the opposing time is the worst time ever made.) If a thief is running D/D How is he supposed to stack 25 Vuln? (Can’t because if i did any of these proposed things i would be under 6 “pips” Of initiative.) Next your base attack in HoTm is 2139, if you pop assassins signet it lowers the bonus after the next hits. Next you didn’t add the VS Toughness, you only calculated raw damage, so yes if i was hitting a naked level 1 with no toughness and 18k hp i could probably hit a good 18k the “5990” would actually end up to be the average crit after all of that was added it. i tested this out under all of your theories and here is what i get, proving that whole arguement is so far off base that it is impossible. How does hitting a target from the behind with the correct traits produce that low of damag? Noting this chain is ONLY possible every 45 seconds. The reason you are complaining is because you see that high burst and say HEY THIEF OP, but the thief doesn’t just backstab, added airstrike from air runes 1.5k dmg. steal for 3k, initial burst, because you arn’t hitting them from full HP with backstab or it does way less damage. So 5.5k i will say for the backstab. thats 10k DMG in 1 secound. THAT is the burst you are seeing, not backstab alone. So then you must ask, is that too fast? If so Nerf the burst surrounding backstab, not the skill itself. Say mug damage? Or air rune damage? Every class has access to air runes. Then ask yourself, is the damage truely that great? You may not have time to react to the inital burst, but after that you have health. You can choose to heal or stun or do something else besides try to hurt the thief and just roll over. The problem isn’t the thief. Once the inital burst is gone there is a THREE SECOND WAIT on another stealth, and even then they wont get the same burst, only a measly portion of the inital one. It comes down to player intelligence. And you can NEVER buff player intelligence. Backstab is not that strong. It is everything added in, this is called a build.

I was putting forth the “perfect storm” ie the maximum damage you can do against a level 80 in various levels of armor, mostly to show the effect of armor. Posting maximum values gives larger differences so it’s easier to see changes.

I already said yes, it’s a perfect storm, not something realistic. Realistic would be something like 7 stacks of might (poison and signet might traits), maybe 10 stacks of bloodlust if they’re even using that sigil. I also forgot to calculate in assassin’s signet so values would be a little higher, but anyway, my point was, toughness could stand to be more effective.

For the crit values. Base crit is 1.5x damage, 6 runes of divinity is an additional +0.12 multiplier, 30 points in critical strikes is an additional +0.30, and berserker amulet is an additional +0.20, for a total of 2.12. In PVE/WvW it can get higher.

BTW realize I’m not saying backstab is OP, I’m saying toughness is UP.

Devildoc.6721:

Falcon.8509:

@DevilDoc

Where did you get these numbers for thief crit? There are many more variables to be added that you havn’t added. 1- Thieves don’t often get 25 stacks of might 2- in SPvP thieves don’t often get 25 stacks of bloodlust (unless the opposing time is the worst time ever made.) If a thief is running D/D How is he supposed to stack 25 Vuln? (Can’t because if i did any of these proposed things i would be under 6 “pips” Of initiative.) Next your base attack in HoTm is 2139, if you pop assassins signet it lowers the bonus after the next hits. Next you didn’t add the VS Toughness, you only calculated raw damage, so yes if i was hitting a naked level 1 with no toughness and 18k hp i could probably hit a good 18k the “5990” would actually end up to be the average crit after all of that was added it. i tested this out under all of your theories and here is what i get, proving that whole arguement is so far off base that it is impossible. How does hitting a target from the behind with the correct traits produce that low of damag? Noting this chain is ONLY possible every 45 seconds. The reason you are complaining is because you see that high burst and say HEY THIEF OP, but the thief doesn’t just backstab, added airstrike from air runes 1.5k dmg. steal for 3k, initial burst, because you arn’t hitting them from full HP with backstab or it does way less damage. So 5.5k i will say for the backstab. thats 10k DMG in 1 secound. THAT is the burst you are seeing, not backstab alone. So then you must ask, is that too fast? If so Nerf the burst surrounding backstab, not the skill itself. Say mug damage? Or air rune damage? Every class has access to air runes. Then ask yourself, is the damage truely that great? You may not have time to react to the inital burst, but after that you have health. You can choose to heal or stun or do something else besides try to hurt the thief and just roll over. The problem isn’t the thief. Once the inital burst is gone there is a THREE SECOND WAIT on another stealth, and even then they wont get the same burst, only a measly portion of the inital one. It comes down to player intelligence. And you can NEVER buff player intelligence. Backstab is not that strong. It is everything added in, this is called a build.

I was putting forth the “perfect storm” ie the maximum damage you can do against a level 80 in various levels of armor, mostly to show the effect of armor. Posting maximum values gives larger differences so it’s easier to see changes.

I already said yes, it’s a perfect storm, not something realistic. Realistic would be something like 7 stacks of might (poison and signet might traits), maybe 10 stacks of bloodlust if they’re even using that sigil. I also forgot to calculate in assassin’s signet so values would be a little higher, but anyway, my point was, toughness could stand to be more effective.

For the crit values. Base crit is 1.5x damage, 6 runes of divinity is an additional +0.12 multiplier, 30 points in critical strikes is an additional +0.30, and berserker amulet is an additional +0.20, for a total of 2.12. In PVE/WvW it can get higher.

BTW realize I’m not saying backstab is OP, I’m saying toughness is UP.

First off go to a different thread then… This was about THIEF DAMAGE. Not about TOUGHNESS, now then, you did not once add toughness to your equation values statistics ect. You just wont hit that high on a full toughness guardian with protection. It’s impossible then and it’s impossible now. The only way that a thief can hit for what people think is overpowered damage is if the people they are hitting are doing something wrong and complaining about it. Is pretty much creating a fallacy about overpowered classes that is not necessarily true because you are useing ad populum to base your arguements. Example: That picture shows a thief hitting 18k, and the non-thief community says they are over powered, therefore they must be over powered. That is just not true. Because the only other point in your logic is statistics from the thief, that are not yet complete, please add equations for backstab VS toughness, which you didnt, you did raw backstab damage attacking nothing. I understand if you have complaints, but if you are going to argue a point, atleast make it a solid one.