Guild Wars 2

Mindtrick.5190:

Stop with the play by play chest thumping nobody cares how you fight. Make a YouTube video not a forum post.

Also to the OP, no. Backstab should and will for ever keep thieves in stealth when missing. Just trying to read your logic made me question your keybinds and everything in your small bubble. Are the walls around you soft and do you have a nurse checking on you every 15 mins

i only wrote the last 2 sentances of that big post. the other part was to make a quote on sebrent. ill try fix it.

Isn’t the punishment for a thief missing a backstab, hitting a frontstab, or a sidestab and getting a significant damage loss? I am sure that is more than enough. If the ability was too miss as a whole and reveal, it should be easier to land.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Isn’t the punishment for a thief missing a backstab, hitting a frontstab, or a sidestab and getting a significant damage loss? I am sure that is more than enough. If the ability was too miss as a whole and reveal, it should be easier to land.

yeah :P its so hard to land as is with decent players and super hard with good players. i cant remember the last time i got a bs landed against me. even on my guardian.

Sebrent.3625:

Travlane.5948:

:P yeah. i know.. thief has 2 months before its dead i think. maybe on the 19th :/

Based on what exactly?

Azraeel.1238:

I couldn’t help myself but login to reply to this thread. I have 4 80s, last of which was a thief. I totally understand the 4 seconds revealed, but a backstab should never cause revealed if it was out of range miss. As far as I’ve seen, block and blind already throws us out of stealth with revealed. Heck if we leave the Shadow’s Refuge we get revealed.

It looks like you are getting nailed by backstab so much that you are taking “bad/average thieves” as an excuse. Backstab is one of the main thief mechanics which by itself is already hard to land. If your mesmer can’t defeat thieves, doesn’t mean they should get punished for throwing a BS far from you. So far I’ve read your arguments and all I found was someone who wants his mesmer to win easily against a thief.

(1) Look at the parts of your post I put in bold. The first one bolded proves that the second one is a lie. Why? Because if you actually read my posts, you would have read that I’ve said several time that I do not think a thief missing backstab for being out of range should reveal them; only if they are countered by an active defense (i.e. block, dodge, etc.)

(2) I have also listed in several posts why I think it should reveal:

• It punishes good non-Thief play (skill goes on cooldown and you still eat a backstab unless you use another 1+ defensive skills) and tt rewards bad play by the Thief (don’t care if you use a key attack against a blocking/dodging/etc. opponent, you’ll just put more of their defenses on cooldown.
• It is how every other attack mechanic works … with there even being a patch in January 2013 devoted to making sure they were working like this.
  • Note: if you’ve read, you’ll know that it’s already been discussed that this involves an assumption that backstab, tactical strike, etc. should work the same way just as it’s an assumption that they should not.

---

If going to put in your 2 cents, actually read what has been posted and focus on that rather than on the people. Your post could be summed up as: “I think you suck and that’s why you are posting what you’ve posted”.

That’s not very mature, does nothing for the conversation, borders on violating the CoC, and simply not true.

And if you read what I wrote, you will realize that I already said doing a backstab on block will reveal you, happened to me several times unless these several times were a coincidence? I’m doubtful. Anyways, the idea behind the backstab revealed is to delay stealth in case someone landed a hit while stealthed. Being blocked is the only logical thing to cause revealed, miss and evade both technically means you haven’t landed a hit yet, and so they shouldn’t reveal you.

Moreover, as a warrior, their F1 skill doesn’t consume adrenaline if they miss or get blocked.

You summed up my post perfectly right, all those that agree with you either got nailed by a thief, or have hard time defeating one, and all those that enjoy backstab build thief, found this suggestion to be ridiculous. No one can deny that.

Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.

Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).

Sunflowers.1729:

Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.

Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).

Guess I got revealed by coincidence then, in any case, your suggestion will sound logical if it was a ranged attack, but a real backstab should remain close very close. The way it is now is challenging and fun, going with any of the two suggestions would kill it.

Azraeel.1238:

Sunflowers.1729:

Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.

Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).

Guess I got revealed by coincidence then, in any case, your suggestion will sound logical if it was a ranged attack, but a real backstab should remain close very close. The way it is now is challenging and fun, going with any of the two suggestions would kill it.

My suggestion is definitely not a very good one

However, landing Backstab now isn’t very challenging because I just go 1111111111 and that’s all there is to it.

Aegis? Blind? I don’t care. 11111111 always works (and it always crits so I don’t even have to care about weakness either).

Sunflowers.1729:

Aegis? Blind? I don’t care. 11111111 always works (and it always crits so I don’t even have to care about weakness either).

If you take the 30 point trait in critical strikes. Which is all attacks from stealth have 100% crit chance.

Not just backstab, any attack from stealth should reveal ON-Attack, not on-hit. This would make dodging, blocking, and aegis vs a stealth thief useful. I was actually going to make a thread on this.

Uhm no? I play with 300+ms ping, I miss backstabs when I’m literally RIGHT BEHIND THEM.

Sunflowers.1729:

Azraeel.1238:

Sunflowers.1729:

Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.

Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).

Guess I got revealed by coincidence then, in any case, your suggestion will sound logical if it was a ranged attack, but a real backstab should remain close very close. The way it is now is challenging and fun, going with any of the two suggestions would kill it.

My suggestion is definitely not a very good one

However, landing Backstab now isn’t very challenging because I just go 1111111111 and that’s all there is to it.

Aegis? Blind? I don’t care. 11111111 always works (and it always crits so I don’t even have to care about weakness either).

You must be referring to targets that don’t know their dodge roll key. In that case, was this OP more referring to sPvP, PvE, or WvWvW?

Dodge rolling is not difficult, neither is knowing the timer on when a thieves stealth runs out right before he will backstab.

Shemsu.8721:

Sebrent.3625:

We’ve touched on this topic a bit here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-attacking-in-stealth-and-not-revealed/first

• I don’t think a thief missing backstab because they are out-of-range should reveal them
• I do think a thief’s backstab missing because of blind, block, dodge-roll, etc. should reveal the thief. The backstab did not miss. It did “hit”, but was countered so that “hit” is transformed into an “evaded”, “blocked”, etc.

This would make sense, if warriors lost adrenaline when they fail a burst skill. If mesmer had all clone and phantasm abilities put on a GCD anytime they miss a shatter skill. Etc Etc

If mesmer shatters, the shatter ability goes to cl and he loses all phantasms and clones whetever they hit the foe or not.
If warrior uses an adrenaline skill and misses, the adrenaline skill goes to 10sec cl but warrior does not lose adrenaline.

Thief is the only exception here. Stealth Attacks should have a small cool down, personally I suggest 3 seconds. Revealed does not need to proc on missed attack though.

Kaizer.7135:

Uhm no? I play with 300+ms ping, I miss backstabs when I’m literally RIGHT BEHIND THEM.

I KNOW, RIGHT!?!
And to land a CnD can be soooo frustrating!
Even teleports (IS, Steal) seem to not bring use to the target if you play from overseas…

EoNxBoNx.9213:

You must be referring to targets that don’t know their dodge roll key. In that case, was this OP more referring to sPvP, PvE, or WvWvW?

Dodge rolling is not difficult, neither is knowing the timer on when a thieves stealth runs out right before he will backstab.

Isn’t this exactly what this entire thread is about? I don’t need to care if they dodge roll, because there is no penalty to going 11111 forever. No other class can do this.

If they blow their dodges on an attack that I can just keep repeating, that’s awesome. The Shadow Shot Backstab combo takes ~.5 seconds to pull off, works from range, and I just use that when they run out of endurance.

Edit: For clarity, I don’t really have an opinion about whether a dodge roll should cause revealed. Either way is fine. However, you are shooting yourself in the foot there.

Sunflowers.1729:

Azraeel.1238:

Sunflowers.1729:

Doing a Backstab on a block does not reveal you.

Honestly, a pretty fair middle ground is to increase the range of Backstab by a decent amount and slap a 2 second cooldown onto it (even if you miss).

Guess I got revealed by coincidence then, in any case, your suggestion will sound logical if it was a ranged attack, but a real backstab should remain close very close. The way it is now is challenging and fun, going with any of the two suggestions would kill it.

My suggestion is definitely not a very good one

However, landing Backstab now isn’t very challenging because I just go 1111111111 and that’s all there is to it.

Aegis? Blind? I don’t care. 11111111 always works (and it always crits so I don’t even have to care about weakness either).

i am not calling you wrong but ur leaving info out. in order to spam 1 while stealthed. while in stealthed you can only attempt a backstab once per 1 second max sometimes slower idk if its due to lag or what. but 1 per 1 sec is the norm. so in order to go 1111111111 you could have to be invis for around 13 seconds. usually 2-3 to get behind and then smash BS 10x int he next 10 secs. ill go out on a limb and say 4-5 secs is average invis time WHILE trying to go for a backstab. this does mean when people spam 5 2 2 2 5 2 2 to heal up on d/p build. what it means is while going for the actual bs they only have an average of 2 chances to land it max per invis. when BS fails at a rater higher im guessint easily 70%(fail = miss or block or aegis or dodge or face stab or leaving invis without a good bs) this means you have about a 50% chance to fail on both backstabs. VERY high. and in the same respect 9% to land 2 successful ones ina row.

no other class has a “lose this effect when you deal dmg” type of skill. stealth is unique. its comparing apples n oranges.

Travlane.5948:

no other class has a “lose this effect when you deal dmg” type of skill. stealth is unique. its comparing apples n oranges.

Other classes have stealth too, smart guy. They just don’t have the spammable stealth attack.
There are other such “lose this effect when you deal dmg” things too, for example
-mesmer loses his phantasms when he attempts to deal damage via shatters.
-warrior loses adrenaline related bonuses when he deals damage with his burst skill.

all these QQers want stealth nerfed and d/p spam nerfed and backstab nerfed…… last FOTM was mug. our burst is dead. should all of these happen to. they QQ about CND that got nerfed….dancing daggers nerfed….haste nerfed…..pistol whip nerfed…..tactical strike nerfed…..cluster nerfed…… i mean the list goes on. some of those obv deserved it but what im saying is when will it stop?

Master of Timespace.2548:

Travlane.5948:

no other class has a “lose this effect when you deal dmg” type of skill. stealth is unique. its comparing apples n oranges.

Other classes have stealth too, smart guy. They just don’t have the spammable stealth attack.

sorry maybe i missed one. what other class has a skill LIKE stealth that is “remove this skill/effect when player deals dmg” ?

Travlane.5948:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Travlane.5948:

no other class has a “lose this effect when you deal dmg” type of skill. stealth is unique. its comparing apples n oranges.

Other classes have stealth too, smart guy. They just don’t have the spammable stealth attack.

sorry maybe i missed one. what other class has a skill LIKE stealth that is “remove this skill/effect when player deals dmg” ?

For example

Warrior: adrenaline is lost when he lands his burst skill.
Mesmer: clones are lost when shatter is attempted, regardless of if the shatter lands or not.
Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger: stealth is lost if they deal damage while stealthed.

Losing stealth on dealing damage is a general feature of stealth and isn’t in anyway unique to thieves.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Travlane.5948:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Travlane.5948:

no other class has a “lose this effect when you deal dmg” type of skill. stealth is unique. its comparing apples n oranges.

Other classes have stealth too, smart guy. They just don’t have the spammable stealth attack.

sorry maybe i missed one. what other class has a skill LIKE stealth that is “remove this skill/effect when player deals dmg” ?

For example

Warrior: adrenaline is lost when he lands his burst skill.
Mesmer: clones are lost when shatter is attempted, regardless of if the shatter lands or not.
Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger: stealth is lost if they deal damage while stealthed.

ok adrenaline is kinda close…but its like backstab….ON damage. his rage will not go away until he fulfills that bloodlust by actually hurting another.

clone shatter is 100% totally different. it does not say deal dmg to surrounding players and shatter if you do. it says shatter then deal damage if there are surrounding players.

if u reread my 2 posts….i said there is no other “remove skill/effect upon dmg” type of SKILL in the game. STEALTH is unique. i never said other players dont have stealth. and i said similar skills. probably just read it wrong. no big deal.

ok adrenaline is kinda close…but its like backstab….ON damage. his rage will not go away until he fulfills that bloodlust by actually hurting another.

Warrior will not lose adrenaline if the burst misses, but the skill will go to a cool down. Backstab doesn’t go to any cool down even if it misses.

clone shatter is 100% totally different. it does not say deal dmg to surrounding players and shatter if you do. it says shatter then deal damage if there are surrounding players.

You are arguing just schematics here.

In essence the point is that there is no penalty from hitting air with backstab. If warrior misses his burst skill, the skill goes to 10second cool down. If mesmer misses his shatters, he loses clones and the shatter skill goes to cool down.

well its all about definition. if u think the definition should be change thats a different story. but think about it in a realistic sense if thats possible bc all this is really Science fiction / fantasy. if you are invis do you think missing an attack is going to reveal you to your enemy or actually physically touching them? i think this is were anet was trying to go with this. plus the way it balances.

even tho everyone seems to ignore the s on successful backstabs. they think it should be under 10? what does everyone thing backstab should be at for a successful hit. lets start with that. you guys cant just ask for change without comprehending the implications of that change. find out what is “fair” then figure a way to get there once you have a goal. right now all ur saying is from YOUR perception its not fair. and from a THIEVES perception it is fair. so how does one / anet decide on how or if to change somethign. they first decide upon a goal….then they figure out the %s of success as currently is. then derive a plan of attack to fix the problem from there. i dont mind if change needs to be made. but the question is….does it?

now just petty arguing….i could compare apples to oranges all day so here we go: according to your analogy…. warriors dont lose adrenaline when their burst misses….does that mean thieves shouldnt lose initiative when their attack misses? …..
well lets compare steal…..steal is a 45s cooldown and if it “misses” or aka “out of range” it ALSO has a cooldown .

there is a difference to a prerequisite condition and a prerequisite cost. intiative is a prerequisite cost…….stealth is a prerequisite condition. shattering mesmers is a cost…. hence not being able to shatter without them.

we have apples and oranges here. they are all designed separate according to what their class needs/ is fair for.

Travlane.5948:

well its all about definition. if u think the definition should be change thats a different story. but think about it in a realistic sense if thats possible bc all this is really Science fiction / fantasy. if you are invis do you think missing an attack is going to reveal you to your enemy or actually physically touching them? i think this is were anet was trying to go with this. plus the way it balances.

Perhaps not. But in reality it isn’t possible to stealth in the first place ;P. And besides, I dont want thief to get revealed from missing an attack. I want stealth attacks to have a small cool down, maybe 3 seconds.

even tho everyone seems to ignore the s on successful backstabs. they think it should be under 10? what does everyone thing backstab should be at for a successful hit. lets start with that. you guys cant just ask for change without comprehending the implications of that change. find out what is “fair” then figure a way to get there once you have a goal. right now all ur saying is from YOUR perception its not fair. and from a THIEVES perception it is fair. so how does one / anet decide on how or if to change somethign. they first decide upon a goal….then they figure out the %s of success as currently is. then derive a plan of attack to fix the problem from there. i dont mind if change needs to be made. but the question is….does it?

I think it would be entirely fine to have 3 second cool down on all stealth attacks. I play a thief a lot and it often feels just ugh, kittened to spam that #1 key… Note that this wont even hurt the good thieves that much:
currently: target has aegis=> spam #1.
after that change: target has block => use dancing dagger to remove the block => back stab.

now just petty arguing….i could compare apples to oranges all day so here we go: according to your analogy…. warriors dont lose adrenaline when their burst misses….does that mean thieves shouldnt lose initiative when their attack misses? …..
well lets compare steal…..steal is a 45s cooldown and if it “misses” or aka “out of range” it ALSO has a cooldown .

Stop saying it’s comparing apples to oranges when it is not. Just like there is a penalty in missing with every other type of skill in the game, there should be a penalty in missing with a stealth attack.

there is a difference to a prerequisite condition and a prerequisite cost. intiative is a prerequisite cost…….stealth is a prerequisite condition. shattering mesmers is a cost…. hence not being able to shatter without them.

Shatter:
prerequisite condition: have clones or phants to shatter.
cost: lose the clones and phants EVEN IF IT WILL NOT HIT.

Backstab:
prerequisite condition: have stealth.
cost: lose stealth but ONLY IF IT HITS.

we have apples and oranges here. they are all designed separate according to what their class needs/ is fair for.

For gods sake, quit repeating that mantra about apples and oranges.

it is apples and oranges. ….. and thats the biggest problem for people QQing. you are twisting the meanings of backstab/shatter.

backstab : deal double damage from behind.
stealth: only removable on damage (says nothing about attack attempts) hence both being unrelated.

Clone/Phants: Summon each on roll or skill etc.
Mind Wrack: Destroy all your clones and phantasms, damaging nearby foes.
(notice how it doesnt say damage nearbye foes and destroy clones) its all about how it reads/ is defined. everything works as it is.

about the comment you said stealth isnt possible in the first place. well yeah i said try to keep it inperspecting in a realistic sense “if thats possible considering this is all science fiction/Fantasy” ….both means NOT REAL lol reread or re carefully. anyway lemme try put it into something you can understand since that analogy didnt work.

real life example : target foe is fighting you in the dark or is blinded or w.e. (basically he cant see you) now u swipe at him in the air and he ducks down to pick up something he dropped….. does that mean he now knows where you are? almost assuredly no unless ur a clumsy kinda thief :P….what if u actually stab him…in the back or front…. think he will know where you are now? :P

now lets in real life pretend clones are manakins with bombs in them. in order to hurt a target they need to be near. if they are or arent and you blow them up ….regardless they are still blown up. doesnt matter if you deal damage or not.

if these 2 sounds like apples and apples ……well then theres no point in arguing. this is the waythe game is designed …..

ps. i noticed you TOTALLY IGNORED MY POINT/QUESTION : so try answer it this time.

what PERCENTAGE do YOU think is FAIR for thieves to successfully land a BACKSTAB?

Now keep in mind a fail = missed attack….blocked attack….dodged attack….aegis attack….attacking clones/pets/minions……a face stab….and running out of stealth before you could land it.

Sunflowers.1729:

EoNxBoNx.9213:

You must be referring to targets that don’t know their dodge roll key. In that case, was this OP more referring to sPvP, PvE, or WvWvW?

Dodge rolling is not difficult, neither is knowing the timer on when a thieves stealth runs out right before he will backstab.

Isn’t this exactly what this entire thread is about? I don’t need to care if they dodge roll, because there is no penalty to going 11111 forever. No other class can do this.

If they blow their dodges on an attack that I can just keep repeating, that’s awesome. The Shadow Shot Backstab combo takes ~.5 seconds to pull off, works from range, and I just use that when they run out of endurance.

Edit: For clarity, I don’t really have an opinion about whether a dodge roll should cause revealed. Either way is fine. However, you are shooting yourself in the foot there.

Stealth does not last forever, you can’t spam backstab, and I quote, forever. If you are fighting in a 1v1 situation (which happens a lot in tPvP/sPvP which is why I asked) the player can just wait out the 3 seconds from, the Black Powder -> Heartseeker -> Steal -> Backstab, simply by dodging. Steal does not automatically put you behind your target, which is why it makes it so easy to dodge backstabs.

Shadow shot -> Backstab doesn’t put you directly behind them either.

EDIT: A player can also dodge Shadow Shot when you are stealthed, making Shadow Shot -> Backstab pretty bad.

So let me get this, people are suggesting that a melee attack that must be landed on a 3/4 seconds window by the squishiest class, that requires positioning and burning half or more of our resource pool or blowing a high cooldown should reveal on miss/block/evade, thus making said squishiest class targetable and preventing it from trying to create such requirements again?

Yeah, why not.

And why not halving Backstab damage. Why not make Shadow Refuge reveal when the aoe ends. Why not prevent stealth skills from critting. Why not having Revealed last 6 seconds. Why not putting thieves’ weapon skills on cooldowns. Why not getting Revealed when taking damage.

And since I keep reading the “it’s not realistic because in real life I could feel the hit landing on my block so I would know where it came from” argument, why not change guns so first time you get hit you are left with about 10% your hp, with 10 bleeding stacks 8 hours, crippled for two months and stunned for 2 minutes, and critical hits just defeat you bypassing downed? And Mesmers, Elementalists and Necromancers start their adventure in an asylum, and they only get Branch Smack as a weapon skill.

Good strategy guys, keep asking for nerfs, you will get them eventually.

What people seem to miss is that if they just move around, it becomes nearly impossible to land a backstab on them. Those who get backstabbed are the ones who stand still, and in most of the cases a backstab turns into a facestab because we either run out of stealth time, or the guy turns around in the last second. So stop nagging, and learn to play.

Yesterday, the only backstab I got in WvW was ONCE, and that was because a guardian immobilized me.

As for adding a cooldown on backstab, the difference between Thieves and the rest of the classes is that our weapon skills do NOT cause cooldowns, which ALSO means switching weapons won’t gain us extra attacks unless we saved enough initiatives. Moreover, backstab replaces the AUTOATTACK skills, which are SPAMMABLE for all the classes. So deal with it!

Non-Thieves and Honest Thieves: there is no penalty to mindlessly bash 1,1,1,… ignoring if your opponent is blocking, dodging, etc..

Dishonest Thieves: we’re UP, QQ more, you just want to nerf us because we’ve only gotten nerfs in the last couple patches (NOTE: not true, actually check the archives … haste was a universal nerf btw, not a thief one)

Discussion, as usual, has become garbage.

I don’t know why Thieves think when people want things to be consistent in a game it’s people “out to get them”. Heck, we have ZERO knowledge about anti-stealth traps and the thief community thinks those are focused on countering thieves too.

Try to have an actual discussion on the points rather than this “nuh uh, you’re just QQ-ing” garbage your community constantly does.

Heck, I hardly ever agree with Travlane, largely because I feel I never see him post any information to back up claims he makes … but if he made a post saying that “Mesmer Phantasm builds are too powerful for how little skill is involved in using them”, I’d be agreeing 100% … and from reading some of his posts, I imagine he agrees … and this is me saying this as a Mesmer/Ranger player.

You can be honest, or you can contribute to ignorance.

The reason I think that backstab/tactical striek/etc. should reveal you when you are blocked, dodged, etc. is because it promotes better play by rewarding good play and punishing bad.

If something is good regardless of skill, it isn’t good for the game … especially if it wants to be esport-quality.

If something is bad no matter what skill is involved, it isn’t good for the game.

Not having to worry about what defense(s) your opponent is using to counter an attack drastically lowers the skill required for it to be good.

@Sebrent you say its not fair that a thief can use backstab two times in a row if the first misses (lets be real nobody can go 1 1 1 1 unless they just used shadow refuge and are really nubby :P). you are saying you want it to cause reveal and make stealth in the same category as other buffs i suppose. A) why do you want it to be the same as signets or buffs or etc when its obviously made to not be the same? Is this to make thieves easier to kill? i mean the real goal should be a balance in each profession….notice i didnt say a balance BETWEEN each profession.
lets take this one step at a time. i imagine you want balance right? lets pretend you said yes to this as it would be silly not to. now the next question you have to answer.

At what % of Back stab attempts should a thief be successful ? <——-plz answer.

what PERCENTAGE do YOU think is FAIR for thieves to successfully land a BACKSTAB?

I land it about 80% time but it depends on my opponents skill, class and build.
And thats when I play d/x thief. When I play p/d, I land Sneak attack almost always.

At what % of Back stab attempts should a thief be successful ? <——-plz answer.

There is no definite answer to this question.

ps. Travlane, it’s pain for other people to read long posts written in the “flow of thought” -style.

ok lets try swing this from me to another thief that is generically considered good ok?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKzHTFfi3mk
yishis latest video. i only watched like 2 mins so far but his backstabs i counted in those coupel of mins were 5 successful 17 fails. no in order to understand those stats i counted a successful backstab as obvious high dmg. a fail is a missed/blocked/aegis/dodged/hit a clone NPC random mob/or leaving steawlth without being able to get one off.

5 of 17. i could review the whole video if u like for a larger sample population. so if ur at 80% ur are the messiah of thieves and yishis is a noob? plz show an Uncut vidoe of 10-15 mins of fighting plz.

Travlane, the amount of times anyone hits with any class with any skill X is dictated by the skill level of that player as well as the skill level of their opponent.

You could go ask Osicat how often he lands a shatter combo. I imagine against bad players it’d be a higher percent. Against good players (like when he dueled Drakeco), I imagine it’d be much lower. This is how the game is supposed to work.

Just because you or other people have trouble landing something doesn’t mean it needs to be made easier so that skill matters even less.

Heck, plenty of warriors have trouble landing eviscerate.

Let’s make it not go on cooldown either. Many mesmers have trouble hitting shatters … let’s make it not go on cooldown unless 100% of those illusions hit the target with the shatter … and the illusions not pop if they didn’t hit.

Why aren’t these things done? Because the Mesmer, Warrior, etc. are supposed to be punished by a cooldown, loss of resources, etc. when they fail. As is any class … except those with training wheels.

@Seb you keep avoiding my question : ill ask again: what avg % is fair for a successful BS?

you are right it is relative to skill lvl ….so its a good thign we are talking about average or in general. pretend everyone is on the same lvl. i hardly think so many players are that much better going for 30% to 80% on successful backstabs on a target player. pft :P i wanna see 10 mins of fighting UNCUT ….nobody will do that either i bet. (not all upscales and nubs either as it skews with outliers)

I didn’t avoid it … read again, kiddo.

The % should change based on your skills and those of your opponent. If your opponent is bad and you’re good, a majority of the time (>50%) … bad opponents get hit by most everything anyone throws at them. If your opponent is good, I’d say less than 50%. Good opponents are good party because they aren’t just “face-tanking” big hits.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, I’m not sure we can communicate as we’re on two completely different cognitive levels.

I’m not sure what you think a video proves, btw? There are plenty of videos showing both good and bad thieves out there.

Videos don’t prove anything except for “what is possible” … hence when thieves were able to do 30k in under 2 sec, dancing dagger was hitting like a backstab does now, etc..

If videos proved something the way you seem to think they do, then a video of a single heterosexual wedding would be “proof” that all weddings are between a man and a woman. If both were caucasian, then it’d be “proof” that only white men and white women get married.

Obviously, this isn’t how logic works. You still haven’t gathered that though. “Good job”.

Heck, even your comment “no upscales and noobs” illustrates this about you. Upscales is easy to define, but noob is a very relative term.

ski.4927:

I like it.

An alternative might be that while stealthed, pushing the “1” key costs initiative (like 2 or 3). I agree that going stealth and then frantically spamming the 1 key, hoping for a backstab, should be detrimental.

Or make it so that every step while stealthed takes an initiative point, at 0 points we come out of stealth.

A mesmer player saying thieves are rewarded for bad play. It happened more times than I like to admit to down a mesmer when I was at 50%+ health and then getting downed and killed by his phantasms. So he got downed first and by a fair margin… but he won. Sure he wasn’t rewarded for bad play was he?

So it is perfectly fine that a Mesmer can be downed and be carried to victory by his pets but a thief can’t miss a backstab. Makes perfect sense to me. Honestly, I can’t see how you can defend your theory with a straight face.

I understand your point about ignoring defenses, but you have to consider that:

1. We enter stealth mainly with Cloak And Dagger. If CnD is blocked, evaded, misses we just wasted 6 initiative and we’re probably going to die. So you defend yourself from CnD, we can’t ignore failing one.
2. If we enter stealth with smoke field+Heartseeker we just spent 9 initiative.
3. Our stealth cooldowns are at least 40 seconds long and if we blow them we won’t have safe stealth to escape. Or we can waste a heal.

So it’s not like we don’t pay a price to attempt a backstab.

4. When we’re out of stealth we melt.
5. Sometimes we melt even when we’re stealthed, due to our low health pool a couple of aoe or a blind swing can bring us down.
6. Backstab is melee range and requires positioning. It’s extremely hard to land backstab since the target won’t be gentle enough to stay still. Sometimes the target can just run in a straight line and we won’t be able to reach it.
7. We have like 3 seconds to land a backstab.

Your offences are already enough to blast us away in few hits. And what about aegis? We can’t land our backstab at all if block=revealed since aegis doesn’t wear off. Isn’t Protection a hard enough hit to our offensive ability?

Do you have any idea about how many successful backstab are landed at the first attempt? I played thief for more than 800 hours and it’s still not uncommon for me to get out of stealth without managing to land my attack. Can you think how many thieves will quit the class with a heavy nerf like the one you suggest?

Do you have any idea how hard is to land a backstab and even more to land it on your first hit? Yeah, maybe you do because “I played thief blah blah blah” but it seems you don’t care a bit about the class since you just want to make it sink. And you even say we’re dishonest for getting mad at you people for asking more nerfs…

… of course we are, we are thieves!

If knowing that we have to pay a high price to attempt backstab, that is short range, that we have a very short time window to land it and we have to land it in a specific place is not enough to understand why is hard to attack with backstab as it is already hence reveal (on a squishy class) on block, evade, miss etcetera would totally kill it is not enough well…

Also, you’re talking about bad play without considering the difficulty level. Landing backstab is hard, so it souldn’t be punished. It’s like, you lose a chess match against the world champion. Was it a bad play? No, you just failed at doing something very hard. Should you be heavily punished for not accomplishing something hard? Because you know, reveal on block would probably mean disengage or die.

What is bad play? Trying to achieve something difficult but failing, or succeeding at doing something very easy? Failing at something hard is more forgiveable than failing in something easy, in my opinion.

And remember, if we don’t land backstab we already get punished by initiative loss, utility skill loss, being revealed and defenceless at melee range.

I’m fairly certain if the devs wanted stealth attacks to be attached to a cooldown, they would have made them part of the class skills (F2 perhaps) like warrior is. When a warrior misses he keeps his adren, like we keep stealth. his burst skill F1 for that weaponset goes on cooldown (he can still swap and use his other burst skill), backstab is not an F skill, it is an autoattack, Does any class have an autoattack that goes on cooldown when it misses?

Lucky Shot.7650:

A mesmer player saying thieves are rewarded for bad play. It happened more times than I like to admit to down a mesmer when I was at 50%+ health and then getting downed and killed by his phantasms. So he got downed first and by a fair margin… but he won. Sure he wasn’t rewarded for bad play was he?

So it is perfectly fine that a Mesmer can be downed and be carried to victory by his pets but a thief can’t miss a backstab. Makes perfect sense to me. Honestly, I can’t see how you can defend your theory with a straight face.

Excellent job reading my posts … oh wait, you obviously don’t because I said:

Sebrent.3625:

but if he made a post saying that “Mesmer Phantasm builds are too powerful for how little skill is involved in using them”, I’d be agreeing 100% … and from reading some of his posts, I imagine he agrees … and this is me saying this as a Mesmer/Ranger player.

You can be honest, or you can contribute to ignorance.

Lucky Shot.7650:

I understand your point about ignoring defenses, but you have to consider that:

1. We enter stealth mainly with Cloak And Dagger. If CnD is blocked, evaded, misses we just wasted 6 initiative and we’re probably going to die. So you defend yourself from CnD, we can’t ignore failing one.

And you regenerate initiative at 1 per 1.33 seconds, so in 4 seconds you get back 3 initiative. Stealth from C&D lasts 4 seconds if you have sufficient points in Shadow Arts (which thieves relying heavily on stealth should have … else go stand by a phantasm mesmer with 0 points aiding their phantasms).

Lucky Shot.7650:

2. If we enter stealth with smoke field+Heartseeker we just spent 9 initiative.

Yep, and a smart thief will have built to be able to compensate for this and/or position to do so. Theare are several traits that make this not that costly.

Furthermore, the beauty of stealth is that you can position yourself without your opponent seeing your positioning to know exactly how to counter it … they don’t know if you’re creating or closing space … they can guess though. Good thieves use this to their advantage. Good non-thieves generally have a feel for if you’re “on the offensive” or “on the defensive”, but the advantage lies with the one who can see their foe.

Lucky Shot.7650:

3. Our stealth cooldowns are at least 40 seconds long and if we blow them we won’t have safe stealth to escape. Or we can waste a heal.

No cooldown on C&D.
Hide in Shadows is a 30s cooldown
No cooldown on black powder + leap finisher

Lucky Shot.7650:

So it’s not like we don’t pay a price to attempt a backstab.

And mesmers pay a price for their illusions … but they still consume them and a shatter cooldown even if their shatters miss.

Lucky Shot.7650:

4. When we’re out of stealth we melt.

Only when not good enough to dodge roll, position, etc.

Lucky Shot.7650:

5. Sometimes we melt even when we’re stealthed, due to our low health pool a couple of aoe or a blind swing can bring us down.

Only when not good enough to avoid melee attacks, aoes, etc. A thief who waits to be low enough for stray attacks to kill them before they stealth is a bad thief.

Lucky Shot.7650:

6. Backstab is melee range and requires positioning. It’s extremely hard to land backstab since the target won’t be gentle enough to stay still. Sometimes the target can just run in a straight line and we won’t be able to reach it.

Good thieves don’t have this problem except against good players … in which case it’s a problem for all classes landing their hard hits.

If you can’t land a backstab against a player just running in a straight line, you need to re-evaluate your build and/or your sharpen your skills. The only thing easier to backstab is someone standing still.

Lucky Shot.7650:

7. We have like 3 seconds to land a backstab.

3 seconds in a game where many things are measured in 0.25s is quite a long time.

If you are actually relying on stealth, you should trait for shadow arts in which case your stealth is now 4 seconds.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Your offences are already enough to blast us away in few hits. And what about aegis? We can’t land our backstab at all if block=revealed since aegis doesn’t wear off. Isn’t Protection a hard enough hit to our offensive ability?

See the aegis, let stealth run out (so no revealed), tap them with a quick hit, restealth. They’ll run out of sources of aegis before you run out of stealth.
Good thieves do this all the time to keep restealthing when they are trying to recover in a fight … except they are tapping away the aegis so they can C&D … or they just smokescreen + heartseeker.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Do you have any idea about how many successful backstab are landed at the first attempt? I played thief for more than 800 hours and it’s still not uncommon for me to get out of stealth without managing to land my attack. Can you think how many thieves will quit the class with a heavy nerf like the one you suggest?

Landing backstabs is a product of thief player’s skill + foe’s skill. If you aren’t landing them, then the ratio here is more in favor of your foe than you. Up your skill.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Do you have any idea how hard is to land a backstab and even more to land it on your first hit? Yeah, maybe you do because “I played thief blah blah blah” but it seems you don’t care a bit about the class since you just want to make it sink. And you even say we’re dishonest for getting mad at you people for asking more nerfs…

… of course we are, we are thieves!

That’s a silly excuse. You play a thief in a game. I play a Mesmer. I don’t care if they nerf phantasm builds. Why? Because I’m honest enough to say that a Phantasm Mesmer gets too much “bang for their buck” compared to how much skill is required to use that build. It’s a horrible ratio. Low skill for high effect.

Lucky Shot.7650:

If knowing that we have to pay a high price to attempt backstab, that is short range, that we have a very short time window to land it and we have to land it in a specific place is not enough to understand why is hard to attack with backstab as it is already hence reveal (on a squishy class) on block, evade, miss etcetera would totally kill it is not enough well…

If knowing that a player doesn’t have an infinite number of counters to attacks, why should their counter be completely wasted when they use it intelligently while yours is not wasted by you using it unintelligently? That is favor unintelligent play over intelligent play … something wrong there.

Lucky Shot.7650:

What is bad play? Trying to achieve something difficult but failing, or succeeding at doing something very easy?

Bad play is failing to correctly react to what is going on. If you completely ignore someone is blocking, dodging, etc. you should be punished when you waste attacks on their blocks, dodges, etc just as the should be punished when they attack you when you are dodging, evading, etc.

Shemsu.8721:

I’m fairly certain if the devs wanted stealth attacks to be attached to a cooldown, they would have made them part of the class skills (F2 perhaps) like warrior is. When a warrior misses he keeps his adren, like we keep stealth. his burst skill F1 for that weaponset goes on cooldown (he can still swap and use his other burst skill), backstab is not an F skill, it is an autoattack, Does any class have an autoattack that goes on cooldown when it misses?

(1) If it was an autoattack, you could use it without any preconditions … this is not true, so it is not an auto-attack. The number/button you push does not make something an auto-attack … else me changing my hotkeys would allow me to make any skill an “auto-attack”

(2) The warrior keeps his adrenaline, but he can’t use that burst skill now. You get blocked/dodged/etc. and then immediately do it again. Big difference there.

can we has your HP pool as a trade off ??

You want Mesmer’s HP pool? Sure. Share Mesmer’s HP pool, but both classes suffer from the 4 second reveal again ;-)

• Nerf to Mesmer
• Nerf to Thief
• Buff to Thief

When a thief makes enough mistakes to die, that little bit of HP isn’t going to save them.

Sebrent, you have never played a thief. You have no clue what it takes to play a thief, yet you come on the thief forum to tell thieves how their profession should work.

You completely ignore the points we give you because for some ungodly reason you (a mesmer) believe that we (thieves) need to suck up the nerfs and up our game. Guess what… our game is already upped and we have no choice but to do so because the other communities are too lazy to up their game. As a community, thieves are tired of being scapegoated which is the whole point to these threads.

Play a thief before you tell us how to play.

Actually, missing Backstab should give us a Might buff to compensate for other peoples’ OP ability of moving out the way.

Zacchary, a few things while these two posts are still visible.

(1) You are quite incorrect. I’m often in Dragon’s private dueling server in sPvP playing my thief (as well as my Mesmer and my Ranger) … I also sometimes frequent that one with “grenades” in the title when Dragon’s is empty.

(2) Your post is nothing more than an attack against me … please review the Code of Conduct.

(3) If there are points you think I’m ignoring, point them out. If it’s something childish like “post a video”, don’t bother. There are plenty of videos and I’ve replied to those posts so many times now that I can’t imagine why they are still mentioned.

(4) I’m not telling people how to play … my 2 main points on this thread have been:

• There was a major patch to get skills to be “consumed” in one shape/form/fashion even when they are blocked/dodged, miss, etc. Backstab and Tactical strike still don’t adhere to this.
• Backstab/Tactical Strike/etc. allowing thieves to ignore if their opponent is using an active defense to counter them promotes bad play over good play as the good play “activating a well-timed block/dodge/etc.”, does not prevent the attack as the thief is rewarded for their bad play since they can simply hit that same attack again and again while stealthed until it lands … landing the hit and putting the defensive counter on cooldown.

Doggie.3184:

Actually, missing Backstab should give us a Might buff to compensate for other peoples’ OP ability of moving out the way.

Lmao. Of course it should ;-)

It should actually proc Runes of Lyssa x6 to be fair :-p … but obviously only if you have all 6 of them.

A decent player will know where the thief is: behind them. So yeah, they know where the thief is so they can move out of the way. Or randomly swinging the mouse to get a front stab.

And yeah, we melt even when dodging and avoiding aoes.

Investing in shadow arts means lowering our damage, so no, CnD doesn’t last 4 seconds on a damage spec.

If you fail to understand why something hard to accomplish shouldn’t be punished as hard as failing something easy to accomplish well, I don’t have anything else to say.

And, since you cry for honesty, you may as well as cut the hypocrisy and go back to your mesmer forum and cry for nerfs for your class, since you seem to think some of your mechanics are unfair.

Sebrent.3625:

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The reason I think that backstab/tactical striek/etc. should reveal you when you are blocked, dodged, etc. is because it promotes better play by rewarding good play and punishing bad.

If something is good regardless of skill, it isn’t good for the game … especially if it wants to be esport-quality.

If something is bad no matter what skill is involved, it isn’t good for the game.

Not having to worry about what defense(s) your opponent is using to counter an attack drastically lowers the skill required for it to be good.

It doesn’t promote more skill, at all. It’s not like GOOD PLAYERS don’t already use aegis to block a backstab, or dodge. What you would be doing is literally is attacking thieves for something that is balanced just fine. If a thief has to attack a guardian at any point in time, it will never be able to kill. Good job, you are promoting more skill.

Don’t see what is so hard to see that backstab, is only spammable because it replaces auto-attacks, (everyone’s auto-attacks are) and if it were on a CD, the thief’s stealth would run out before the backstab cd would.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

Sebrent.3625:

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The reason I think that backstab/tactical striek/etc. should reveal you when you are blocked, dodged, etc. is because it promotes better play by rewarding good play and punishing bad.

If something is good regardless of skill, it isn’t good for the game … especially if it wants to be esport-quality.

If something is bad no matter what skill is involved, it isn’t good for the game.

Not having to worry about what defense(s) your opponent is using to counter an attack drastically lowers the skill required for it to be good.

It doesn’t promote more skill, at all. It’s not like GOOD PLAYERS don’t already use aegis to block a backstab, or dodge. What you would be doing is literally is attacking thieves for something that is balanced just fine. If a thief has to attack a guardian at any point in time, it will never be able to kill. Good job, you are promoting more skill.

Don’t see what is so hard to see that backstab, is only spammable because it replaces auto-attacks, (everyone’s auto-attacks are) and if it were on a CD, the thief’s stealth would run out before the backstab cd would.

(1) The cooldown idea was not my post.

(2) It promotes bad play by allowing players to completely ignore/disregard if their opponent is using a counter as well as the incorrect application of reward/punishment that I’ve posted far too many times now. Scroll up for details as I’m tired of typing it.

(3) If you feel that this makes a class “unbeatable” for specific thief builds, then the problem isn’t whether or not backstab reveals you, it’s that you feel that your class revolves too much around landing a single attack in order to defeat specific builds … this should lead to a discussion on such scenarios … some of which I’m sure to agree with you … such as the ridiculousness of retal bunker builds against Thieves that do not take sword+dagger.