Guild Wars 2

There have been 20+ major patches since the game released and each of those patches, save the last, took thief from playable to not so much. The thief has had damage nerfed, skills nerfed, their mechanics nerfed, weapon sets nerfed, and their overall viability and diversity nerfed in the process. Is it any wonder that the thief community has become skeptical of Developers who claim to be looking into ways of improving the thief? Is it any wonder that thieves are becoming scarce in the higher eschelon of PvP and WvW?

In the last patch, the thief gained a boon to one ability on one weapon… the ability to steal 2 boons from an opponent. This ability comes with a degree of difficulty, as all good abilities should, in the execution. The thief needs to 1) use an attack which telegraphs itself by rotating in the same direction around a target every time and 2) then land the chained ability in hopes that the opponent does not move after such an obvious animation… it also requires the opponent to have boons up in the first place. Its a great concept and one that thieves were happy to see… however, the impact was not as positive as the negatives the thief has received in the past. It was a single weapon and did nothing to help out other builds that had been nerfed to dust in the past.

Still, with all the nerfs, other classes still cry about how over powered a thief is. They complain that a thief can go into stealth and remain there indefinitely making them indestructible… they complain that the thief can 1 or 2 shot them to death, using numbers that are unreal to illustrate the fact… they complain that thieves that use stealth are cheesy and unskilled… they complain that heart-seeker is overpowered and an automatic death skill… and now, they complain about the ability to remove 2 boons from an opponent. Of course these same people never complain about a Guardian being able to keep retaliation up forever and a day, or a warrior’s ability to continually fear their opponents, or an elementalist who, with one build, is suited for every situation in WvW or PvP… nor do they complain about Necro’s and their ability to reflect conditions or use conditions to strengthen themselves or to put on stacks on stacks of conditions with little effort. Instead, they get onto the thief forum and complain how OP thieves are all the while never actually seeing if they could adapt their play style to effectively deal with the inherent weaknesses of the thief class… weaknesses only amplified by the numerous nerfs and constant changes to the class.

The point here is obvious… players do not like the thief class and no incarnation of it will ever make them happy. No matter what any Dev does to nerf or buff the thief class, those who do not main thieves will continue to find something that makes them OP… case in point, it took only a few hours after the May patch before people were swarming the thief forums complaining about how OP it was. Now that tells me… the complainers didn’t have time to adapt to the situation therefore they were complaining only because they refuse to learn to adapt… as they have constantly told thieves to do… adapt or die.

So, what is the solution…. Its simple really… Get rid of the thief class. Wait, you say, how will this help those who play thieves? Well, its simple. By getting rid of the thief class, the Devs set up a precedent for players to use when they begin complaining about other classes they feel are OP just because they cannot adapt to them. Eventually, GW2 will become a game of one class, one build, one set of gear, one set of accessories, and one set of Runes/Sigils… when that happens, the game will become Star Wars Galaxies and will go by the way of the Do-Do Bird… extinct. Granted, this may take some time… after all EQ is still going even though the game is basically a wasteland of players who know how to press an auto attack button while fixing their favorite nachos.

The thing of it is, players who play thieves will eventually become so bored and frustrated with the constant changes that they will drop thief entirely in favor of another class or stop playing altogether. There will be the die hard thieves who stick it out… but they will be far and few. So why not just do the thief community a favor and end the class? Save Anet the embarrassment of having a class available but hardly played because of what THEY did to the class rather than any real choice of players.

all i wanna know is where that mobility buff

Brassnautilus.2941:

all i wanna know is where that mobility buff

“soon”

I will probably be one of those die-hards while everyone else does this:

I simply don’t enjoy any other profession nearly as much as thief…so when I get discouraged enough by fresh thief nerfs, I stop playing gw2 altogether rather than switching to any of my other chars. I’ve got 5 professions maxed (thief twice). Thief is the most fun for pvp for me. However, it’s also the most disadvantaged and inferior prof right now…and it’s incredibly frustrating.

Is this a group of friends planning to make loads of rant threads on the same day?

Seriously guys, what’s happened today to see all those text brick walls with so many rants? I’m doing great on my Thief in all enviroments, there are many things that need polishing of course, same as other classes, but there is no need of this many text wall rants.

Lokheit.7943:

Is this a group of friends planning to make loads of rant threads on the same day?

Seriously guys, what’s happened today to see all those text brick walls with so many rants? I’m doing great on my Thief in all enviroments, there are many things that need polishing of course, same as other classes, but there is no need of this many text wall rants.

Any Thief can kill noobs in hot join. But, how viable/versatile is Thief to the meta in tPvP, really? >.>

or producting dmg or help in wvw zerging :/

Kneru.8014:

Lokheit.7943:

Is this a group of friends planning to make loads of rant threads on the same day?

Seriously guys, what’s happened today to see all those text brick walls with so many rants? I’m doing great on my Thief in all enviroments, there are many things that need polishing of course, same as other classes, but there is no need of this many text wall rants.

Any Thief can kill noobs in hot join. But, how viable/versatile is Thief to the meta in tPvP, really? >.>

I’m not talking about “killing noobs in hot join”, I’m talking about being the reason of my team winning a tournament with my Thief… And not even using the best meta builds.

Seriously guys, Thief isn’t the best profession but suddenly so many rant threads? Really? Is this some kind of plot? I haven’s seen so many consecutive rant threads (at least rant in favor of the Thief) in a looooong time (maybe ever?) and while I agree it needs polishing in many areas, it isn’t SO bad as you guys are making it look like.

lokheit…. the main problem is that thieves are literally the worst in many areas of the game. PVE…..defense…hp pools….boons…blocks…invulnerabilties…..base dmg……. the tradeoff (why we played thief) was good mobility (2nd or tied for 2nd best) and for the highest dmg(now in 3rd overall) which came at the risk of being killed fast/easy …basically making thief class more inclined to be played by pro/experienced players.
allow me to make a chart here to try explain the overall picture that we “feel” . there are 8 classes so each “topic” will be rated 1 (best) down to 8(worst ). ill just compare to to explain INV is invulnerability AD is area dmg(melee or range depending on class) STD is single target dmg CD is conditions dmg(yes thief can make em bleed but its abaout total conditions and dmg) let me also qualify that mobility is more than just moving in combat but also sprinting or catching up…..i know ill get flack for putting thieves 2nd there but ill put a 100g bet to anyone that wants to take it that warriors can get away from thieves without a chance of being paralleled.

CLASS-MOBILITY-STD -AD -DEFENSE-HP-BOONS-EVADES-BLCK-INV-CD

THIEF…..2.5……….2.5……8…………8…………..8……….8…………..1…………….8……..8…..5.5
WAR…….1.5……….1.5……2……….1.5…………1………4.5………..5.5…………..2……….1….5.5

THIEF AVERAGE : 5.95
WARR AVERAGE: 2.60

do your own chart with your own areas and try be as unbiased and define each as you go then see what you come up with for classes. im willing to bet that thief and ranger are worst followed by engineer. top being mesmers warriors and eles and then followed by guards/necros.
this is rough/my opinion it may not be perfect however im sure its not too far off. but as you can see there is a huge swing between both

That chart is VERY relative, while I can agree that in PvE the Warrior has many advantages overal over most professions, I don’t agree on some of those numbers (in some cases you even “manipulate them” how comes there are ties or .5s in some categories but when for example it comes to HP Thief is 8 instead of being tied at 6 with Guardians and Eles? You’re ranking the Warrior too high in some categories where other professions beat him, and the Thief too low in some others) and you didn’t consider some categories that would favor the Thief over Warriors (healing, combos, condition defense, group utility, etc…) and even then it all really comes to how the profession is played and their builds.

There is no way a profession will be ranked the same in all categories with all builds. At the end it’s how it all messes up (for example you say Warriors are as good as us at Condition Damage, but the fact is that Warrior condition builds tends up to be very sh**ty), and while other professions can get more versatility on how to mix things and still be effective (I agree that we could get some more options but it isn’t like we don’t have options at all), the Thief got some interesting stuff for many different roles.

Personally I don’t play the Thief because I was sold on the damage (though I love being very mobile), I’ve never liked backstab builds to be honest. I play a support build (I know many will say I’m crazy and that’s impossible with Thief but that’s very possible and very underrated given the big success I’m having with it) and I’m enjoying every bit of it.

The other day I was playing the new dungeon at a friend’s house trying to sell him into the game, and he made an interesting comment “hey, you’re your team’s kitten!” because I was always running for them when they needed, resurrecting all of them all the time while keeping myself alive, and assisting where assitance was needed.

I found that comment funny, and I love that role, I was the glue keeping everything working on my team. I really could see how I was making a big difference helping where it was needed. I’ve been playing support for a long time now with my Thief and I’ve learned where I should be and what I should do and it comes natural for me now. And this isn’t the only option for a Thief to be effective in PvE, but a lot of people love to run melee glass cannons and then wonder why that fractals boss one-shoted them, but they will never look at alternatives. Not saying it’s your case, but Thief can do far more than that and has access to many interesting builds. As I said, it isn’t about comparison charts, it’s about what your specific build can do and offer to you overal.

Idk exactly what others are doing, but I’m enjoying the Thief a huge lot in all enviroments, and I’m having tons of success and fun at the same time with it. I don’t think things shouldn’t be fixed here and there (my biggest woe is that P/P aesthetically looks really sweet, but I can’t play it without losing efficency), of course there are always things to polish and the Thief would welcome new weapons for some variety, but from that to this wave of rant threads… I don’t know if it’s a counter to the “Thief is OP” threads or what, but it’s exagerated (the same way the OP threads are exagerated too).

Yeah travlane is very biased, in case you didn’t notice.

As for defense, he didn’t factor in stealth as a defense. Mobility, as of now there is no class more mobile than the thief, especially passive movespeed in stealth (if traited). Only GS warriors have the mobility that you speak of, 1200 range rush, 900 range whirling attack, 900 range bull rush, that’s if THEY WERE NOT USED IN THE FIGHT. You want to bet that no thief can catch up to that? Hell, even my GUARDIAN can stop them with CC.

Ruggan.4102:

or a warrior’s ability to continually fear their opponents

Lol, stopped reading right here

The problem is the same in all communities.
Players instead of try to find a new way\build\skill\combo to defeat another class start to cry and cry and cry and ask for nerf.

It’s more easy cry then try to find an alternative solution.

Warrior annoy me with combo Immobilize\hit hit hit hit but i never ask a nerf for this.

D/D ele?
Need 3/4 players to take down.

So much drama…I’m having a great time with my thief at the moment and have no problems whatsoever and I’ve got better playing one. I thank Areanet for reducing haste which was a crutch preventing me from exploring alternative game play. If you think thieves have no defense its probably because you think everything should be offense. Thieves are slippery as can be and even with 14k hp I rarely go down.

Well said, Elmuerto!

I completely agree!

ski.4927:

So, people coming here and complaining that GW2, or 1 particular class is garbage is not bannable…

How is me complaining about complainers being garbage bannable?

I don’t get it.

I have been waiting for months now to /lol at thieves who thought they were THAT good of a player all along. Take it like a man, baddie…

you are free to express your opinions, as are we all the problem is that you do not respect other people’s nor the people that post them and not happy with that you keep insulting them.

Not that I don’t agree with you, the way to go about it it’s arrogant, offensives, destructive and does not benefit the devs nor the community.

But I am doing it for a reason. I am not acting this way because it’s me. I am a pretty nice and helpful guy!

For months, we tried to explain to the thief community what the deal was and we were met with the same trash I am spewing now (L2P).

I vowed months ago that WHEN, not IF, but WHEN this time came, I was going to come here and slap a giant “I told you so” in here. I understand that it may be offensive, or mean, but that’s is the point of it all. Don’t worry, it won’t last. But these impatient, no logic, kitten-havin’ 14 year olds deserved it.

I vowed months ago that WHEN, not IF, but WHEN this time came, I was going to come here and slap a giant “I told you so” in here.

This makes you no better than the so-called 14yo kids you’re taunting.

That’s cop-out reasoning.

Real world example:

If someone is hanging around outside a minimart, harrassing good people, pushing them around, knocking things out of their hands, etc… Walking away/ignoring them is not the “mature” thing to do. People need to eat their words, taste their own medicine, be talked to in a way they’ll understand. You don’t take the high road. You punch them in the mouth.

These 14 year old kids don’t respond to the high road. They troll on it. Thus….taunting.

Walking away/ignoring them is not the “mature” thing to do. People need to eat their words, taste their own medicine, be talked to in a way they’ll understand. You don’t take the high road. You punch them in the mouth.

You are just validating my original assessment.

14 year old kids don’t respond to the high road. They troll on it.

The high road doesn’t work with them.

They need taught a lesson?

Umm…I don’t know how else to say it?

Nothing has actually changed to the extent where Ski would stop dieing to every thief anyway. The patch notes are a placebo for him.

I think it’s all a matter of perspective (to some extent). I played a D/D Ele for a main and while I agree that class needed most of the nerf’s they got, I could still be dropped in seconds by a skilled thief. I actually was so impressed with a thief I was fighting that I quit playing the Ele and rolled a thief as my new main.

For roaming in WvW, nothing really shines as well.

Elmuerto.9840:

So much drama…I’m having a great time with my thief at the moment and have no problems whatsoever and I’ve got better playing one. I thank Areanet for reducing haste which was a crutch preventing me from exploring alternative game play. If you think thieves have no defense its probably because you think everything should be offense. Thieves are slippery as can be and even with 14k hp I rarely go down.

This is the real debate, though. GC thief isn’t viable. Period. They simply aren’t nerfing the right things, and the solution that players are coming up with to support such nerfs are “change your build” when the game itself is designed to play in such a matter where every and all builds are supposed to be viable based on how the player acts. Remember what this game is praised for and how it was marketed; diversity in play and balanced-across-the board combat. Simply what we’re seeing is that the thief is not a balanced class in itself and there is no diversity in its play due to all of these nerfs.

I’ve played a 30/30/0/10/0 build since day 1. I love the build and have absolutely no problem with running 12k health. I understand well that I can’t go in and tackle a 1vX scenario with ease and never will be able to do so, nor am I asking to be able to do that. What does bother me, though, is that building GC yields no net damage increase versus a toughness/vit build. It’s just wasted points with no real merit.

I won’t complain that thieves are underpowered or overpowered. Fact of the matter is that there’s no real reward for building a full-offense thief. The risk involved and the skill necessary in running pure GC on a thief has no benefits, and that’s where the buff needs to take place. Buff the power tree to actually be good and allow a GC thief to do what it was designed to do: Burst stragglers down. As they stand, they just kind of whack and skirmish a few hits and take quite a long time to really kill anything because most heals and stuns shut down their damage/“burst” too easily. They have fine DPS, but they seriously lack burst. Before QQ, consider a real 80’s scenario. Your BS is hitting for 9k max. More realistically is closer to 7. Meanwhile the enemy is running around with an additional 14k health and is out-DPS’ing/bursting you. You still caught them off-guard, but there’s no reward for doing so.

It’s not a matter of buffing the entire class but of buffing the power tree to make it more rewarding. To complain about someone at level 80 running around with 12k health and 0 bonus toughness is kind of laughable considering that’s just someone pubstomping noobs who can’t counter-play stealth. People cry way too much about thieves’ stealth+burst here. R:BF has their assassins’ stealth on a toggle which lasts infinitely long and has no sustained cost, and these assassins can one-hit overkill literally anything in the game, even the tankiest of tanks who have 5x the damage reduction and 10x the health of a comparable DPS class. Are they OP? Nope. Because people quit whining and learned how to play with reveal effects and one-hit-kill them before they get close enough to burst. People who don’t see it coming are just baddies who shouldn’t be taken seriously and don’t know how to PvP.

We should be encouraging build diversity by playstyle, not telling people to just change their build and playstyle because the game no longer support it in any form.

style.6173:

No one asks for nerfs on the class they play. People who get pwned by a class ask for nerfs. I guess we see which side you are on. Feel free to post your game vids if I am incorrect.

You could find a couple vids of my ranger on youtube or in the Ranger forums. Look up GW2 Turkish Krul.

I only have 1 vid up of thief so far, but I am relatively new to it compared to the ranger. However, thief has been my new main for a little bit now and I am a beast.

I am on the side that thieves, in WvW, were ridiculously strong, have been toned down, and are now much more in line with how things should be. I had always said that thieves used to say it was L2 kitten ues for everyone else because they were jaded. Now that thieves have been normalized, they seem hard to all of the people who are either bad, or have only ever played a thief. This whole time that people have been roflstomping with thieves in WvW, the other classes had a much rougher time of it.

So, to the thieves who now feel extremely weak I say, you are NOT extremely weak when compared to everyone else. You are now experiencing what everyone else has. It just feels weak compared to what you’re used to. This is not a case of us being nerfed into the ground. It is a case of us no longer being spoiled.

All I can say is that I stopped playing thief because it was too easy. In WvW they are now more even to other classes than before but if you find a second thief to join you, you can decimate 4-5. With a good guard maybe 3-4. Makes for boring WvW now though. I dust em off every now and then and still the easiest class to play so I can’t complain.

Lolz you guys haven’t been hit that bad on damage nerf. Lets see.
6k C&D, 9k backstab and 7k heartseeker to a 1.9k toughness ele/mesmer (been the victim to it as a ele/mesmer)
Those are the top 3 OP skills of thief, and STILL haven’t been nerfed, what are u on about buddy, and more, in SPvP, i did some 8.5k heartseekers with my thief….

you DO realize that all of them were criticals, no ?
done with max glass cannon

on the cof1 effigy i do maximum ~5k backstab under 50% (30 in CS) with +90 critical damage