Guild Wars 2

I don’t understand why so much hate on the OP.
I agree that simply crying about the thieves state won’t bring anything to support the class, but let’s face it, we are not getting the same love some other classes got. Patch after patch we are seeing undeserved “fix” to some of our skills that no one understand and we are not realy get fixed where it realy needs. We sill have a lot of skills\utility bugged or under used because under performing compared to others.
I don’t think we should just cry but making A-Net notice we are unhappy with something is good. At least that is what other classes did and are doing and they received buffs and nerf on the right things. We should voice ourself and not just keep saying that “everything is good cos I can still kill scrubs in wvw”. I don’t want huge buffs to my class but at least seeing the right things fixed.
Also the last patch broke a lot of things that required an hotfix but still A-Net has not done anything about it, even if they said the problem was on their list.
Just 2 things that come to my mind:
-Pistol whip stun duration was broken with the stuns change that was mainly a fix to warriors
-basilisk venom effect (an elite skill) is overwritten by daze if used during the stun duration

Not fixing those 2 un-intended nerfs very soon is like not showing love for us

Youkay.5294:

However, I don’t feel needed as a team member at all (except dishing out damage and looking daaaaamn hot!).

[…]

1) venom utilitiy skills are inferior to other utility skills
2) traiting to maximise the utility of venoms leaves us without very essential traits in shadow arts

Sounds like maybe you aren’t really a team player. Venomshare builds are quite helpful to your party, but require that you make a couple of sacrifices and not be the center of attention. It’s a net win for the group, though.

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

Well disrupting back lines aren’t just 1v1 fights. Blinds are useful in group fights. Look at ranger aoes. They aren’t that good either. Just because single target dps is the strength of the class doesn’t mean that said class can’t contribute to a group.

Sometimes I really have to wonder if you read other people’s comments before replying to them.

Never, at any point, have I said Thieves were useless or can’t contribute at all. However, I said that any role a Thief can perform in a group, another class can perform better. Mesmers and Necros can disrupt backlines, and Mesmers and Eles can both make better distractions. Numerous classes can blind.

I disagree that other classes do these things better.

Youkay.5294:

IAnd D/D is as mediocre as ever and doesn’t get fixed for ages.

why d/d is broken and why d/p is better?

I play Mesmer, Warr, Ranger, Ele & Thief in WvW. Rotate around the classes so I don’t get bored. I wouldn’t say Thief is in a bad place compared to the other classes, especially for solo roaming. They aren’t as good as they once weres sure, but if you think taking a class like Warr or Mesmer will suddenly make you some overpowered WvW easy-mode machine you’re in for a suprise.

To be honest I think the issues with thieves are because Anet balances the class around stealth, which is really quite a hard mechanic to balance. I rarely use stealth in combat and don’t trait for it, I find with the huge mobility thief has it’s not really needed and those trait points can do good elsewhere. If they replaced stealth with special boons that would grant immunity to certain attack types for a shortish duration, much like the gw1 assasin had with stuff like http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shadow_Form_%28PvP%29 then the class would be in the better place. I’d rather people could see me but I could still safely deliver burst whilst having a toolkit of special skills to safely get in and get out rapidly.

Stealth is an underpowered, horrible mechanic that just generates hate toward the class and has little offensive use beyond backstab. Give me more oh-kitten buttons and mobility, then we could see what a thief is really capable of.

Kolly.9872:

I don’t understand why so much hate on the OP.

They don’t like me because I have argued with them in the past. I’ve continually pointed out how their accusations towards this class came out of someone else’s mouth and that those accusations as well as whatever points they present do not outweigh the reality of the profession.

I’ve constantly invalidated their arguments and because of it I am on their kittenlists.

Well many of us enjoy playing our thieves and don’t agree that this class is broken. You attack anyone who disagrees with you on the state of this class.

Sanduskel.1850:

Well many of us enjoy playing our thieves and don’t agree that this class is broken. You attack anyone who disagrees with you on the state of this class.

Well I still like to play this class too, it’s my main and my only lvl 80 since my gameplay is restricted to tPvP and I am too lazy for levelling other chars. But even if you like this class, you cannot say that the thief doesn’t need a lot of serious fix, and patch after patch I am seeing more things broken than fixed, that’s why I am disappointed. We voice our problem or A-Net will always think that thieves are good and don’t need nothing, while we still need a lot. We don’t need buffs on our strongest builds but we need more builds and utilities and traits viable. And the things un-intentionally broken with the last patch MUST have an hotfix, but I don’t see it coming anytime soon, and we know that A-Net is fast at hot fixing when it is a PvE related issue.

Disagreeing with someone, pointing out flaws in logic and bringing blatant ignorance to light is not an attack. This, however, is:

Ryan.8367:

He’s done with the class because he’s bad at arguably the highest reward class in the game. No other class yields as much skill ceiling reward as the thief does when you finally learn other classes and know your own capabilities. He’d rather, instead of doing that, continually complain like a little kitten on the boards everyday about everything he doesn’t have. It’s ok, bads will be bads , go roll necro/warrior Zacharry it suits you better.

Now that doesn’t mean that I don’t attack people as well.

I have and will continue call people “scrubs” so long as they stubbornly remain ignorant to this profession and I believe I have the argumentative room to do so because of my experiences and all of the theorycrafting I have done on it.

The fact is: I have way more experience and there is no reason their word should hold over mine.

I used to play a Thief as my main.

I play an Engineer now.

Everything is better. Thieves are the laughing stock of PvP.

Interceptor.2653:

Sounds like maybe you aren’t really a team player. Venomshare builds are quite helpful to your party, but require that you make a couple of sacrifices and not be the center of attention. It’s a net win for the group, though.

Yes, I mainly compare classes from the main activites that I like to do: PvP and small group/solo roaming. However, if other professions want to switch from self-centered play style to group-centered play style, they either don’t have to change anything or just switch a few utilities to supportive utilities. (and please, I don’t want to hear from anybody that thief only has to switch to SB to support… SB is boring… 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2…)

So yes, you are right on what you said. But that brings up another aspect of criticism regarding the flexibility of thief to switch between self-centered to group-centered play style compared to all other professions.

messiah.1908:

Youkay.5294:

IAnd D/D is as mediocre as ever and doesn’t get fixed for ages.

why d/d is broken and why d/p is better?

I didn’t say it is broken. I said it is mediocre. If you quote someone on one single sentence, make sure you refer to that single sentence correctly. The main issue with d/d is death blossom, which is a skill that is hardly used in crit specced d/d builds.

it’s not mediocre. you just need to know how to use it.

@youkay – if something doesnt get fixed i guess its broken. thanks anyway

i use db mainly for evades when i am short on dodges or when i am immobilized

db is evade skills which does ok dmg as evade skills compare to other set #3 and also compare to other profession evades weapon evade skills adds bleeding so you can come up with 1.5k dmg

I got to rank 51 in spvp on thief exclusively (~4000 games). I started playing warrior and necro in spvp when things started to go down hill with the meta shift but continued to play thief in tournaments. However I recently got on my thief to roll some face in hot-join; or so I thought, and found it is now the most garbage class ever(way more than I even realized after the most recent patch buffing all classes and nerfing thief… again). So I continue to play my warrior taking on 4 players and winning… good times.

If you are still playing thief you are playing wrong.

I do fine on my thief. Perhaps YOU are playing wrong?

Huh? Thief is super fun, cheeze stealth and win.

Sanduskel.1850:

I do fine on my thief. Perhaps YOU are playing wrong?

Oh my divinity that never and ever did 1 single tournament! Oh wait, tPvP is for noob right? WvW is the only thing that matters, where I can kill uplevelled scrubs with all my shiny ascended gears… and my OP foods up.
Only 1 thing, Thieves are not viable in TPVP do you understand dude? I don’t give a kitten of your ability to kill people while roaming in WvW.
Of course thieves are still being used for a fast backup decontesting but they are no way as efficient as other classes, nor in 1v1 nor in a team fight.

And in case you missed that one, go here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Competitive-Builds/3096336/quote and read the Lux answer, it is realy well explained why thieves are not viable in the current meta compared to other classes

Adrift.8596:

Never ever ever would quit a thief for a warrior or guardian. Why? because I don’t like be one of 32% of game population of warriors who picked this class because it’s OP and easier to play than any other.

Lets see mhm:
Best damage?
Best health?
Best defense?
Same movement as thiefs?
Huge buffs? (compared to thief which has 0:D )
Better damage boost traits?

Yeah kinda because of that:) if Quit then for any other high skill required class like Engi or Mesm.

P.s. Plz give warriors like 10 sec of stealth and few pets then we can actually make a warrior wars 2 begin

I wonder if that would make the population drop same amount like it did on pandas in you know what game:)

No offence just my sarcastic oppinion.

so yeah back to the topic if not thief… Engi, Mesm all the way.

Engi-Engi-what? Sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying through the grenade spam.

In all seriousness, I ‘have’ fought some very good engineers. But 90% of them seem to play faceroll grenade spam. Then again, I can’t count the number of HS spamming D/P thieves I’ve run across either, so I suppose every class gets some facerollers. The only difference is that with some classes (grenaaaaaaaaaades) spamming something is more rewarding than others.

D/P is still grossly overpowered and one of the few builds capable of taking on warriors. The issue is that thieves have no other builds to turn to and are stuck with the cheese. The class does need some serious improvements but those aren’t going to come until D/P has been dealt with.

Fungalfoot.7213:

D/P is still grossly overpowered and one of the few builds capable of taking on warriors. The issue is that thieves have no other builds to turn to and are stuck with the cheese. The class does need some serious improvements but those aren’t going to come until D/P has been dealt with.

Agreed. perma stealth scrub specs are holding this class back.

Fungalfoot.7213:

D/P is still grossly overpowered and one of the few builds capable of taking on warriors. The issue is that thieves have no other builds to turn to and are stuck with the cheese. The class does need some serious improvements but those aren’t going to come until D/P has been dealt with.

It won’t come at all. You turn every viable set in thief to trash and even the bad players will leave.

The current meta isn’t very forgiving to thieves. Conditions can be applied with a blink of an eye while removing them is put on cooldowns and running tanky setups with other classes can do just as much damage as a bursty thief. The meta is wonky.

I personally feel that thieves are being pushed by the developers into playing the creepjacker role.

Gully.7358:

The current meta isn’t very forgiving to thieves. Conditions can be applied with a blink of an eye while removing them is put on cooldowns and running tanky setups with other classes can do just as much damage as a bursty thief. The meta is wonky.

I personally feel that thieves are being pushed by the developers into playing the creepjacker role.

It seems the developers expect us to not get hit ever by using the vast amount of evades we have. However, because all of our evade moves have evades that don’t cover the entirety of the attack, we still get hit with conditions and melt. Since our condition removal sucks and our stunbreaks are only useful as stunbreaks, we are sitting ducks the moment we run out of them.

I don’t get the complaints. Even without much stealth, I don’t get hit much but I use dodge judiciously and i keep moving.

Been watching this thread for a while, but wanted to wait till I had more playtime with the patch underneath my belt before I decided. A-Net pretty much said they want us to burst. The S/D sustain build I was running got nerfed (again) while leaving D/D and D/P untouched. Try a D/P build played like an S/P build. This round of balancing was frustrating because they removed some of our options, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet on my thief. I will keep leveling alts though as I’m not sure they’re done with their balancing.

Kolly.9872:

Guardian dps or elementalist is the right choice

Eh, if you don’t like all the thief nerfs, GL going to elementalist, ele is worse off than thief right now lol

avilo.1942:

Eh, if you don’t like all the thief nerfs, GL going to elementalist, ele is worse off than thief right now lol

Thank you Avilo, I went to elementalist. I enjoy it better than thief. I feel like having much more tools and being more supportive. Thanks for the tip.

There are multiple builds for thief, thief is not broken and is not a bad class. Just like engineer this kitten takes a while to get used to and if you don’t get the hang of it in PvP. GTFO and stop QQing no one likes you and your talking kitten about something you don’t understand well enough.

HeNnAz.8913:

There are multiple builds for thief, thief is not broken and is not a bad class. Just like engineer this kitten takes a while to get used to and if you don’t get the hang of it in PvP. GTFO and stop QQing no one likes you and your talking kitten about something you don’t understand well enough.

Oh yeah ofc we have multiple viable builds. Thats D/P, D/p, d/P and …. oh right d/p.

Little do you know.

Hmmm. Well someone is playing thieves. Still see plenty of them in wvw, so they can’t be all that terrible.

Sanduskel.1850:

Hmmm. Well someone is playing thieves. Still see plenty of them in wvw, so they can’t be all that terrible.

Believe me, they most of them are terrible.
But the many thieves in WvW dont mean, that they are good (playable) in PvP or PvE.

Dragonax.6487:

Some of you sound like thief is a high skill or brain class, which make me lol. The only thing you ever need to do as thief is mass clicking the stealth button then mass spamming auto attack. That "I have skill " illusion come from so many easy wins by auto attacking nooby players in stealth mode while they could not fight back for there was no hard counter. I suffered a lot from thiefs when I were a WvW noob, but once I figured out how to deal with them, Jesus Christ need to kill hundred crap thiefs to find a decent one. The lowest skill and dumbest class in the game in my opinion.

Then my friend, you haven’t met a thief.

But to you I say, ignorance is bliss. You wouldn’t want to meet those of us who don’t have any stealth in our skill slots.

I love to yak and camp snipe with my thief, especially if i am on a map that i know has a bigger group getting important objectives because they start trying to hunt me (thinking I am a small group) and i can usually get away/hide and move around the map in such a way to keep people off of the main group capping towers and keeps. Its fun. I am also testing a p/p-s/p build now for variety.

Never would I leave my thief. I have other classes at level 70, and a necro at 80, but NEVER would I leave my thief. I love it too much. People conplain and whine, but those are the bad players.

I feel that people restrict thieves to filling a stealth dependant role. I have played every imaginable, as well as a tank like thief. My current build (my favorite one I have played) only uses stealth when gotten from steal. People need to see that thieves can shadow step, poison (less helpful but still decent), heal, pure AoE damage, and many other things. These utilities are so neglected IMO that it makes propel have threads like this. Sorry bout that small rant.

If I would have to go to a different class because they deleted thieves, I would play necro or mesmer.

Thief is most definitely in a bad place. Let me give you my perspective after nearly 9,000 games on it.

For play style background I’ve never been a stealth based play style outside of d/d and a short round of fun with p/d and have mostly played in your face damage with s/p + s/b or p/p ( yeah yeah it is effective if you know what your doing and has been in a bad state and even worse with last patch).

It is sad but I almost have no desire to play him anymore and have opted for other classes when logging in for some hot joins or playing tournaments.

The risk vs reward balance and amount of effort contributed for results delivered has been destroyed with the current condition spamming meta. This sense of risk vs reward seemed to be there at one point but has gone astray. Although this effects thief directly it is also a harbinger of where the game is going from a twitch/reactive competitive aspect. I’d gladly go back to the bursty quick kill or be killed metas rather than this dance around the point conquest bunker crap. ( who wants to watch that?)

I maintain some pride by refusing to play that d/p trash which is sadly one of the most if only effective play styles available. ( yeah let me shoot black powder over and over auto attack then heartseeker through it… rather play solitaire)

Play some other classes and see how many mistakes you can make while delivering the same if not more effectiveness and you will understand. Sure it’s fun to play for pride but it has lost its way when it comes to being effective in comparison to other offerings available.

I haven’t played my thief in a while, but it’s because I want to play other classes. No matter how you dress up a thief is still a thief, the dynamic is still the same.

I’ll play the thief again when I get tired of my other classes.

I think thieves are in a great place right now, but I don’t rely on perma stealth.

Aquin.3192:

Thief is most definitely in a bad place. Let me give you my perspective after nearly 9,000 games on it.

For play style background I’ve never been a stealth based play style outside of d/d and a short round of fun with p/d and have mostly played in your face damage with s/p + s/b or p/p ( yeah yeah it is effective if you know what your doing and has been in a bad state and even worse with last patch).

It is sad but I almost have no desire to play him anymore and have opted for other classes when logging in for some hot joins or playing tournaments.

The risk vs reward balance and amount of effort contributed for results delivered has been destroyed with the current condition spamming meta. This sense of risk vs reward seemed to be there at one point but has gone astray. Although this effects thief directly it is also a harbinger of where the game is going from a twitch/reactive competitive aspect. I’d gladly go back to the bursty quick kill or be killed metas rather than this dance around the point conquest bunker crap. ( who wants to watch that?)

I maintain some pride by refusing to play that d/p trash which is sadly one of the most if only effective play styles available. ( yeah let me shoot black powder over and over auto attack then heartseeker through it… rather play solitaire)

Play some other classes and see how many mistakes you can make while delivering the same if not more effectiveness and you will understand. Sure it’s fun to play for pride but it has lost its way when it comes to being effective in comparison to other offerings available.

“I maintain some pride by refusing to play that d/p trash which is sadly one of the most if only effective play styles available. ( yeah let me shoot black powder over and over auto attack then heartseeker through it… rather play solitaire)” <—————-READ THIS BLACK POWDER BUNNIES.

Sanduskel.1850:

I think thieves are in a great place right now, but I don’t rely on perma stealth.

At this point, you’ve given your opinion on how great you think Thieves are over 10 times in this thread. It seems less like a contribution now, and more like unproductive spam.

We understand. You think Thieves are doing just spiffy keen.

Someone needs to offset the victim mentality in that’s rife in this thread.

Sanduskel.1850:

Someone needs to offset the victim mentality in that’s rife in this thread.

I disagree with the phrasing of “victim mentality,” since it implies that people who dislike the state of the Thief class are less entitled to their opinion than you are entitled to yours. I could call your comments "ignorant bloat,” but that doesn’t make it true.

And, assuming that there is a “victim mentality,” how is that offset by repeating the same thing a dozen times? General statements that don’t present any kind of an argument seem more like monotonous grandstanding than an opposing viewpoint.

other are repeating their negative blather over and over again. go after them.

@Sanduskel

Others lay out an argument as to why the thief is inferior to “X” either percieved or true. While not all of your posts are just “thieves are fine” and “lol I don’t need permastealth” your comments lack the reasoning behind them. An example of the format that would lead to more constructive discourse: “thieves are fine because on my [build] I can still accomplish [thing unique to thief]. Try this and modify it and you’ll see what I mean.” If people agreed or disagreed with you, you’d have far more sway than just saying “we’re fine, you rely on permastealth too much.”

Sanduskel.1850:

other are repeating their negative blather over and over again. go after them.

Can you provide an example of one individual repeating or rephrasing the same negative comment about Thieves 10+ times in this thread? I haven’t seen it, but perhaps I simply lack your keen perception.

Maguetarr has provided an excellent example about how you could improve the constructive nature of your posts. I would encourage you to take his advice.

I still play and very much enjoy my thief. It’s still my main and I cannot see that changing any time soon. It’s just too much fun to give up. That said, I do agree that the thief has had some undeserved nerfs.

The last time I was in WvW I was chasing a lone warrior. Seeing as the thief (as stated by the devs themselves) is supposed to be the king of mobility, it really should not have been an issue to chase him down. I had dagger main hand and shortbow, so I had the best tools for the job. I could not catch him. In fact he was increasing ground between us. This to me was one of the biggest indicators that the balance is broken at the moment. When the most mobile profession cannot keep up with a class that is supposed to be a front line fighter, not a roamer.

I also feel that in terms of survival, stealth really is the thief’s best option. It shouldn’t be this way. We should be able to play the thief ‘our’ way, and if our way is to play an acrobatic evasive thief, then we should be able to do so without being at any kind of disadvantage to those who use stealth. But we are.

I understand that balancing any MMO is a tricky business and it takes time to get things to a good level, but it seems to me that things are starting to get worse for some professions, not better. Balancing should be slow gradual improvements, with the odd regression, but things for some are more regression that improvement.

I hope the devs can fix these changes for the better in the next few balance patches. As it can be a little disheartening to see your favourite character underperform in roles they are supposed to shine in.

Yea it also makes me laugh when people say thief is the most mobile class when it’s not . We don’t even have swiftness which is a complete joke to me .

Sword\warhorn and greatsword + bullcharge warrior can outrun anybody and it shouldn’t happen .

If you can’t get around on your thief, you are doing it wrong.

cheshirefox.7026:

it’s hard to get around on my thief

How are you having trouble? Infiltrator’s Arrow and Heartseeker are great for mobility. I also enjoy the “Expeditious Dodger” trait in Acrobatics.

I’m not going to stop playing my thief but I dont know, something lately just doesn’t feel “right”. I can’t explain it or pin point it so yea, I have that feeling that others seem to have.

“every other class can just simply do this better”.