Guild Wars 2

Fritz.5026:

Ashorah.1345:

If thief was not as OP i dont think we would see Spvp with up to 4 or 5 thieves in every teams.

this quote was from another thread, but this is what will cause thieves to get nerfed faster than anything else.

if every pvp match becomes lopsided with thieves it will leave A-net no choice but to nerf the class. The game is not called thief-wars.

Yes, just by raw statistics (~>50% of every spvp match consists of thieves), it is inevitable that a nerf will come. Hopefully they will truly make things more balanced and make the thief class actually require skill to play.

monepipi.5160:

Fritz.5026:

Ashorah.1345:

If thief was not as OP i dont think we would see Spvp with up to 4 or 5 thieves in every teams.

this quote was from another thread, but this is what will cause thieves to get nerfed faster than anything else.

if every pvp match becomes lopsided with thieves it will leave A-net no choice but to nerf the class. The game is not called thief-wars.

Yes, just by raw statistics (~>50% of every spvp match consists of thieves), it is inevitable that a nerf will come. Hopefully they will truly make things more balanced and make the thief class actually require skill to play.

95% of all statistics are made up.

I usually see teams of all guardians and bunkers.

Daecollo.9578:

monepipi.5160:

Fritz.5026:

Ashorah.1345:

If thief was not as OP i dont think we would see Spvp with up to 4 or 5 thieves in every teams.

this quote was from another thread, but this is what will cause thieves to get nerfed faster than anything else.

if every pvp match becomes lopsided with thieves it will leave A-net no choice but to nerf the class. The game is not called thief-wars.

Yes, just by raw statistics (~>50% of every spvp match consists of thieves), it is inevitable that a nerf will come. Hopefully they will truly make things more balanced and make the thief class actually require skill to play.

95% of all statistics are made up.

I usually see teams of all guardians and bunkers.

The guardians and bunkers are there to counter burst builds, and the worst offender in ‘burst builds’ are the thieves. So, to solve the bunker issue, you have to solve the burst issue 1st, which is the upcoming nerf.

Daecollo.9578:

monepipi.5160:

Fritz.5026:

Ashorah.1345:

If thief was not as OP i dont think we would see Spvp with up to 4 or 5 thieves in every teams.

this quote was from another thread, but this is what will cause thieves to get nerfed faster than anything else.

if every pvp match becomes lopsided with thieves it will leave A-net no choice but to nerf the class. The game is not called thief-wars.

Yes, just by raw statistics (~>50% of every spvp match consists of thieves), it is inevitable that a nerf will come. Hopefully they will truly make things more balanced and make the thief class actually require skill to play.

95% of all statistics are made up.

I usually see teams of all guardians and bunkers.

you can say that, but any person can go to the various forums on this site, and this is the only class section that is covered in complaint threads.

you can pretend its some imaginary issue and that everyone else is just bad, and you are the sole unique person who is not bad in the world, but in the long run its not going to matter. people will see the complaints, they will assume the class is overpowered and they will make that class so they can have easy wins.

i can go to most of the other class forums and find jokes about “to fix your class, just make a thief and spam #2” with a bunch of people laughing about how true it is.

…but whatever, believe whatever you want. if you cant look around and see it, you never will.

Fritz.5026:

you can say that, but any person can go to the various forums on this site, and this is the only class section that is covered in complaint threads.

at the moment, this is true. but, when thief gets nerfed, then it will be another class’s turn, and that fill up with complain threads just the same. complaints to get classes/skills/monsters/anything nerfed always tend to follow the same predictable pattern

you can pretend its some imaginary issue and that everyone else is just bad, and you are the sole unique person who is not bad in the world, but in the long run its not going to matter. people will see the complaints, they will assume the class is overpowered and they will make that class so they can have easy wins.

the thing is, the first half isn’t really the case. many people playing many classes have little trouble beating a glass cannon thief. the thing is, the bulk of them are actually doing it, and not discussing it on the forums. a few have spoken up, but are drowned out by the majority of the posters* who are just complaining.

the second part, however is true. people see all the complaints and make an assumption. but you know what they say about assumptions.

(*posters on the forums, a far lesser number than players in the game. and considering that the bulk of every MMO forum is filled with complaints about, well…… everything, it’s not hard to do the math here.)

i can go to most of the other class forums and find jokes about “to fix your class, just make a thief and spam #2” with a bunch of people laughing about how true it is.

…but whatever, believe whatever you want. if you cant look around and see it, you never will.

actually, a thief just spamming heartseeker is tell that they obviously don’t know what they’re doing, so they are actually pretty easy to kill. if you have retaliation, pop it and laugh as they spam themselves to death. a shield works well enough too, by making them waste all their initiative. if neither of those are possible, you can just go on the immediate offensive. they’ll probably be too incompetent to have any clue what to do at that point and panic. just as long as you don’t try to create a gap they’re not that hard to beat.

Does any other class have a spammable ability that functions as both gap closer and escape, has 0 cooldown and hits for 4-6k?

If its fine for the thief perhaps all the ranged classes should have a ranged ability thats hits for 4-6k and jumps them back to max range everytime they use it on a 0 cooldown?

No? Does that sound grossly overpowered to you?

so from the bs nerf QQ, we reached HS (again), good job ! keep up the good work (the qq ofc)
did we learnt something till now ? no.

tagnut.8621:

Does any other class have a spammable ability that functions as both gap closer and escape, has 0 cooldown and hits for 4-6k?

If its fine for the thief perhaps all the ranged classes should have a ranged ability thats hits for 4-6k and jumps them back to max range everytime they use it on a 0 cooldown?

No? Does that sound grossly overpowered to you?

What is this magical ability?

People who generally were bad at PvP now are under the impression that they have improved and are GODs simply because they’re playing a thief and it is gross and absurd how much they blindly defend some of the OP aspects of this profession. The worst and dumbest explanations for their reasoning are those comparing apple and oranges (ex: look at that profession doing that, as if they were comparing to another thief). Seriously, get some common sense.

A warrior can spec x/20/x/x/30 to get +30% crit dmg and more burst damage. Rifle shots pierce. Signet of Superior Intelligence x2, double rifle, and get a Guaranteed critical piercing shot every 8 seconds. Btw max adrenaline kill shot has 1500 range and hits for 792, backstab has 150 range and hits for 806 dmg. Every 8 seconds.

Once again people not understanding professions, roles, tactics, and team synergy.

Why don’t we see 5x BS thieves winning tPvP tournaments all the time? Why do no competitive matches run 3x BS thieves if it’s so “OP”? The answer is simple and obvious…… because it’s already balanced. I dare you to pick any 10 Twitch.tv streams, rank 40+, paid tournaments, and see if any run 3x+ BS thieves.

For a moment let’s we nerf BS. WvW scenario, 2 groups are doing a 1200 range “poke dance” of 20 vs 20 people.

What role could a thief possibly play when geared for damage? 900 range bow, 1200 range cluster bomb which btw is slow as hell and can’t be spammed because you need to wait for it to detonate for it to begin again. Pistol thief has 900 range.

Quite literally, every single other class has 1200+ ranged harass that can deal heavy damage. So what, let’s say a thief blows shadow step, signet, mug, cnd, bs. They down 1 person. Can they stomp the person without dying? Probably not

Missing the point.

“The guardians and bunkers are there to counter burst builds, and the worst offender in ‘burst builds’ are the thieves. So, to solve the bunker issue, you have to solve the burst issue 1st, which is the upcoming nerf.”

This is exactly what I’m talking about. So wait, the highest single-target burst build in the game is countered by a high defense build? Gasp, nerf the damage! Not to mention that a guardian shield blocks 3 attacks, completely nullifing their whole combo with just 1 skill (it’s also instant cast).

I kill countless BS thieves too easy on my CC warrior. “Fear me” is 3sec fear at melee range. Basilisk lasts for 1.5 sec. Hammer burst skill and you instantly have them in a stun lock. They either shadow return away or die. Guess who’s taking the node? Not them.

Something that most people forget is that you HAVE to be BEHIND the target and be in stealth to get hit by BS, something that the experienced (or not so, in my case) should know. You don’t need it on 100b, not on killshot or any other similar skill as far as i know. As long as you keep your back clean, you are safe from BS.

The CnD-Mug combo needs to be fixed however. But if you remove that, is BS really that overpowered? When i ran a BS build, most of my damage was against people just standing there with a ranged weapon. I just went up to them, did CnD and BS. Yet they whine…

To be fair it’s a l2p issue, just the same as 100b, killshot, mesmers and guardians in general. I had a really hard time against mesmers at the start, but now they are easy (not easy perhaps, but not as ******* confusing) to kill. If you see a thief charging at you with 2 daggers, be prepared. If you turn grey, use at stun breaker and dodge. If not, dodge anyways. And then you are “safe” from it. Is it really that hard?

Also, not doing a BS build anymore. I’m running an “bunker” thief atm (25-0-30-0-15) with Signet of Malice and Bladestorm with a quite powerful Mug. Lifesteal ftw!

The absolute surest sign that a class is going to get nuked from orbit is when defenders of it begin telling everyone that every build someone makes should revolve around surviving their existence.

If we listened to these folks the only glass cannons allowed would be thieves and everyone else must bunker or die.

Notus.5769:

The absolute surest sign that a class is going to get nuked from orbit is when defenders of it begin telling everyone that every build someone makes should revolve around surviving their existence.

If we listened to these folks the only glass cannons allowed would be thieves and everyone else must bunker or die.

this.

Notus.5769:

The absolute surest sign that a class is going to get nuked from orbit is when defenders of it begin telling everyone that every build someone makes should revolve around surviving their existence.

If we listened to these folks the only glass cannons allowed would be thieves and everyone else must bunker or die.

I’m a defender of BS thieves yet I do not use BS myself, why do I do this? Well because I feel playing like that is not worth it. Maybe you should also read what TsurugiOni was saying in his post:

I kill countless BS thieves too easy on my CC warrior. “Fear me” is 3sec fear at melee range. Basilisk lasts for 1.5 sec. Hammer burst skill and you instantly have them in a stun lock. They either shadow return away or die. Guess who’s taking the node? Not them.

The only thing that is needed is a way to avoid or counter the initial burst and they are dead meat, to do this you do not have to revolve your whole build against it but rather thinking rationally when the situation arises, block/dodge/stun break etc.

TsurugiOni.7910:

A warrior can spec x/20/x/x/30 to get +30% crit dmg and more burst damage.

Discipline was nerfed during Beta, now it gives only 0.1% more damage per point, not 1%.

SupraFlush.4932:

Something that most people forget is that you HAVE to be BEHIND the target and be in stealth to get hit by BS
(…)
The CnD-Mug combo needs to be fixed however. But if you remove that, is BS really that overpowered?

“Behind the target” is an 180° arc, so it’s not that easy to avoid.
And pretty much anyone who isn’t trolling has agreed that Backstab itself isn’t the problem but its synergy with other skills and the Shortbow.

DesertRose.2031:

“Behind the target” is an 180° arc, so it’s not that easy to avoid.
And pretty much anyone who isn’t trolling has agreed that Backstab itself isn’t the problem but its synergy with other skills and the Shortbow.

It’s behind, not behind or flanks. It’s more strict than a 180° arc.

stof.9341:

It’s behind, not behind or flanks. It’s more strict than a 180° arc.

The tool tips are not consistent. Sometimes “from behind or from the side” means everywhere expect an about 45° arc in front of your target (example: Crossfire), sometimes it means it only an 180° arc in the back (example: Concussion Shot).
Backstab does double damage if you attack your target anywhere in an 180° arc from behind; test it out in the HotM.

Alot of this really boggles my mind.

I just rolled up a thief because I’d fiddled with one in the past and never really got to even know the class—1-2 with daggers was enough to piddle around in PvP with and frankly I wasn’t getting any opportunity to really dive in and learn the class because of the foolish ease of this playstyle.

The class actually has a ton of depth, and a wide variety of ways to be played. Not all are particularly effective, but most seem to be yielding at least functional results. That said, the directly overpowered nature of the dagger attacks pretty much obsoletes all of this other stuff, and beyond that diminishes the ability for others to really get behind the changes and bug fixes needed to really make these playstyles something that glows.

A few things mentioned in this thread really strike me as odd.

1. “Backstab is hard to land” Perhaps, if you’re missing digits on your right hand and have your attack keys bound to the numpad. Outside of that, it is not difficult to land at all. It’s simply not difficult. It’s the easiest positional I’ve ever had access to in any game and the back arc is extremely forgiving.

2. “The difficult initiative mechanic”, or some such rot that I saw earlier in this post……are you serious? Being able to spam ANY attack outside of your auto is beyond the grasp of every other class. The thief can use whatever is suitable at any time, even if that means it’s suitable twice in a row—-heartseeker obviates the ease that is the initiative mechanic. Once an enemy is below 50% health(I.E., directly after a successful steal/backstab salvo) Heartseeker is more or less “go to”, over and over. Call it “noob”, call it whatever you want. It works, and that’s just a fact. Ironically, about the only good reasons to not pummel your opponent with this is that they’ve countered with a heal(bringing them out of heartseeker effective range), shown you their back(at which time auto attack is dandy, since it’s backstab chain all over again), or if you’ve jumped into a real melee and can’t really hang long enough and should use an escape.

3. “Thief defense is low”………yeah. No, it’s not. Thief defense is built around escapes and dodges. Vigor is plentiful, endurance is plentiful, caltrop/dodge is easy to get, and a wide variety of stealths and shadow strikes makes getting out of the way pretty easily. Virtually all off-hand attacks are defensive in nature. I’ve been playing a build that fields 23k hp and survivability is remarkable—DPS isn’t as stupid high as the three hit wonder builds that are out there, but it’s plenty to scare the pants off of tough guys and kill weak ones.

I do agree with some assertions, though. Pistol Whip really didn’t need a nerf—it’s damage is very similar to that of 100b(yes, somewhat lower, but comes with a stun built in). The damage is high, but easily avoidable, and not in the “use your psychic powers to dodge my instant stealthed ranged attack from behind” easy, I do mean legitimately easy. The only people that are going to eat it have been set up pretty hard to do so.

Dual pistol seems pretty lackluster. Damage is mediocre, rate of fire on auto attack is mediocre, and its big salvo(unload) often doesn’t even seem to warrant a dodge by opponents. Utility is ok, but it seems to need some more baked in goodies, such as more bleeds and probably a real cripple.

Shortbow has really strong utility, reasonable damage, and requires some level of finesse to actually utilize as it is ground target based.

Anyway, that’s my overall take on the class. Dagger appears to have some major tipping point in imbalance, but the rest seems to have at least some measure of balance to it.

I main a glass cannon ranger which prob the worst thing you can have in this game besides a spirit or pet ranger. And I have a guardian alt.

I basically lvled my ranger in WvW so I think I have enough experience to say about fighting against thieves, burst damage or back stab thieve is not the kind of thieves to be called OP, because they CAN be killed, if you know they are coming and managed to survive their first few attacks. I am totally fine when I was running around alone and get one shotted by a thief when I dont pay attention cuz thats what this class made to be. The real OP thieves are those who traited heavily into stealth and use all 3 slots for escaping/survival skills with crit gears or full condition gears because they are nearly impossible to kill and still can beat you down faster than you can due the overall weapon skill damage.

I dont care those of the most stupid thieves who just spam heartseeker or waste all their initiatives in 1st 10 sec they meet you. Warriors are a better class for those thieves btw.

But thief is incredibly overpowered when they try to play smart, not even play really smart, just try to play smart.

The OPness of theif is not the damage output, its the overall thief stealth mechanic that is way too cheap in this game.

BlusterWolf.2103:

I main a glass cannon ranger which prob the worst thing you can have in this game besides a spirit or pet ranger. And I have a guardian alt.

yada yada

The OPness of theif is not the damage output, its the overall thief stealth mechanic that is way too cheap in this game.

thx for you input.

how about we remove stealth completely from the game? it will make all 7 other classes happy.

This thread is the typical example of how the terribads get owned because of l2p issues and then they come on the forums to cry for nerfs.

I am not the type of guy that will take his time to constructively reply to all those whines. So this is all I will say

1- The stealth rendering fix should make things a lot different, I am looking forward to it

2- To all of you who keep posting that you get 3 shot by a thief while you are on a tank class (that really made me lol hard) , it just shows that you are as good as the training golems in the mists. You know what they do? They stand still, they don’t dodge, they don’t use utilities, and they don’t try to counter what you do

3- If you are mad, it’s because you are bad. L2p

4- This thread is entertaining, please carry on

The thing you forget is with everyone getting bumped to max in spvp and to 80 in wvw is it takes about 5 minutes to play a thief and another 10 more to realise how overpowered it is relative to any other class.

Raw spike combos of the backstab build will get addressed but I would imagine BS will remain as is.

the “combo setup” (Steal/Mug/Cloak and Dagger) before the backstab is actually more powerful than the backstab itself and is the large spike of raw damage that will get toned down

Infiltrators signet will not apply MUG damage and can therefore be overlooked

3 more days to go until the fix.

Notus.5769:

The absolute surest sign that a class is going to get nuked from orbit is when defenders of it begin telling everyone that every build someone makes should revolve around surviving their existence.

If we listened to these folks the only glass cannons allowed would be thieves and everyone else must bunker or die.

Truth, in word form.

Reading this thread I had flashbacks to Witch Elves and Bright Wizards in Warhammer.

“All, you have to do is spec your character, gear your character and compose your team to counter my class. You just have to use teamwork and coordination to counter me. But my class isn’t overpowered.”

seriously, i dont know how you guys can do so much dmg with backstab. in the mist on heavy golems with glass cannon build and armor etc. i got only 4-7k crit with backstab.

I honestly wouldn’t mind thieves and their kitten burst if only it required more than monkey level of computer proficiency.

Same goes for mesmers.

I thank myself for my input.

And since I’m on thief forum – hurp durp!

knyy.8276:

seriously, i dont know how you guys can do so much dmg with backstab. in the mist on heavy golems with glass cannon build and armor etc. i got only 4-7k crit with backstab.

Whatever you hit for on that golem you can nearly double it on a well defense speced player.

Personally I think BS needs a GCD and HS just needs the jump removed. Stealth needs to be reworked with a longer cool down. I am fine with thiefs having big burst but not with easy mode crap from stealth.

Oh and pls NERF CLUSTER BOMB too

StugLyfe.2134:

Whatever you hit for on that golem you can nearly double it on a well defense speced player.

If that’s the case then longbow rangers are dealing 20k with rapid fire.

Webley.1295:

Raw spike combos of the backstab build will get addressed but I would imagine BS will remain as is.

the “combo setup” (Steal/Mug/Cloak and Dagger) before the backstab is actually more powerful than the backstab itself and is the large spike of raw damage that will get toned down

Infiltrators signet will not apply MUG damage and can therefore be overlooked

3 more days to go until the fix.

Yup they are all chainable cast in 1 second on razor naga .. it’s a joke really 20K is possible on a squishy.

as you saw the spikes have decreased, can we close the thread now, or the QQ still continues even after the nerf ?