Guild Wars 2

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

1) Shadow Arts Trait line: Almost ALL of the thief’s survivability is here. They can spec for Condi Removal, Initiative gain/regen, AND Health regen.

2) They have stupid amounts of stealth; Hide in Shadows, Hidden Thief (Stealth on Steal), Instinctual Response (Stealth on taking more than 10% dmg in a single strike), Shadow refuge, Cloak and Dagger, Blinding Powder, Blinding Tuft (stolen), Throw Feathers (stolen), Combo field with Smokescreen, and of course, the 99% cheese 1% skill D/P thief w/ Black Powder stealth combo field.

Obviously you cannot bring ALL of these, but it is possible to bring quite a few of these options into a single build. These 2 things are the problem, not stealth, and something needs to be done about them. As I said, stealth itself is fine; the access thieves have to it and the shadow arts tree are not fine.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

eye floater.7140:

Static.9841:

eye floater.7140:

Almost any other class can be run down and finished off, but thief can’t in most cases. Yes, much of it is a L2P issue, but I think thieves rely on stealth too much.

Warriors can pretty much outrun anything, those guys can fly off like Usain Bolt when they want to disengage or just decide that they don’t want a fight.

Thieves rely too much on their class specialty? You don’t say…. This is just all amounting to far too much Qew Qew from an inexperienced player.

Roll a thief, learn how it works and you’ll soon learn and understand counters for it.

Qew Qew is good! Who taught you that one?
Anyway, if a thief pops up in a 20-man zerg, quickly tries to dispatch a a player and fails? Well then he can just stealth + tele and gtfo of there in the blink of an eye, 95% of the time. Name one other class that can do that.

Thieves are the most annoying class in the game, and I’m pretty sure most people agree on that. No one want’s to be harassed, but that’s basically the core of thief game-play, and it’s encouraged with the range of downright annoying abilities at their disposal. That’s why people hate thieves; it’s the ultimate troll class, and it kittenes people the kitten off to the point where they feel the need to rage and/or shout for stealth nerfs.
Why do you think there are so many people complaining? Are they just all horrible, inexperienced players?
I get kittened at thieves who stomp me in a crowd of 8 or more of my allies and tele away without death; 1v1 deaths to thieves are mostly not the issue.

I find PU mesmers infinitely more annoying then thieves.

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

Sanduskel.1850:

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

They have 10k base hp thats my point.
If you ever played a theif in pvp you would know there is a really high risk and barely any reward compared to other classes. Usually they are just roaming from point to point but against engineers and necromancers they pretty much have no chance.
Unless their “pets” bugs and start shooting at walls etc.
If you don’t believe me i suggest you try and see for yourself.

Stealth is something you’ll never “get right” in mmorpgs because everyones opinions differ greatly. Some people are just better players than others etc etc..

Oh to OP, if the thief was cloacking ON you, you couldve dodged/blinded/applied aegis onto yourserver.. if this happened 1v6, you should’ve applaud that thief and not jump onto the forums and create a topic about it.

Cloack and Dagger is actually hard to land with blinds, aegis and dodges. I do agree Stealth is broken however, I’ve said it a million times myself. Stealth duration shouldn’t go over 4s (3s +1 from trait), no more combat resetting.. no more perma stealthing of any sort etc.

PU mesmer stealths more than your average D/P thief btw.

eye floater.7140:

Mesmers have the right amount of stealth.
Thieves don’t. They have way too much. An enemy thief in WVW just teled and cloaked every 3-4 seconds in a group of 6 enemies, and didn’t die. No one could hit him, cause he just kept spamming cloak and tele skills. Immobilize and/or KD? No, they just tele and cloak instantly. Can you think of any other class that can survive like that? Yeah they have no armor, but neither do eles, and they get instantly downed in a ground of 6 enemy players.
Every class is supposed to have their own role, and every class can be countered by another, but this is just a little too much. Just take away some cloaking skills; change them, reduce the cloak time or whatever, it’s just way too much right now. Now, since I’ll get raged and cursed at if I just leave it at this, suggestions on how to counter cloaking?

TLDR: read the bottom comments first before you tell me L2P.

Stealth is never a fun way to play, it’s border line stupid.

The only reason Thieves heavily rely on stealth is because a lot of our high damage skill is only active while in stealth, for example Backstab.

Now if they remove stealth and allow us to backstab based on our position relative to our target, then it’s much more fun since I can continuously backstab someone without getting agitated with the long Revealed debuff and my target can actually dance with me trying not to expose their back. Then stun, chill, and immobilize will have more value.

Sanduskel.1850:

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

Wrong again columbai

Glass Cannon Spec’d thief isn’t spec’d into SA line.

Ever since DAoC all you did was complain about your short commings as game imbalances. I’m sure that new game that just released is awaiting your cries of imbalances on their forums.

Long time ago, when I still used a Full Glass Thief (those who actually hit for higher than 10k), I asked a Warrior friend why he wouldn’t use the Warrior Full glass cannon build, since I saw a video of a Warrior hitting for 12~20k with it on players with full exotics.

He answered that it was a joke build, and none actually uses it.

Ever since I play a full stealth build, because I believe Full GC thiefs lack in their own areas of interest.

That one thief can’t do anything, lol. If he tries to stomp he’s practically dead. And he’s only able to utilize that stealth if he has 30 in Shadow Arts. If he’s pure glass canon, there’s no way he can troll around 6 people and live, unless by trolling he’s just using DP 5->2 repeatedly for laughs.

The thief’s “role” here is to fool people dumb enough to chase a thief that’s obviously traited for this precise task of diverting the group’s attention. Actually, I recall Sir Vincent developing a shortbow troll build with like 30 in Acrobatics that had high evades and mobility which can fulfill a similar task. There’s no way either of these builds can destroy 6 people. They’re simply the best to grab a group dumb enough to chase the thief. I say it’s a pretty defined role.

Actually, the mobility warrior does this pretty well too. GS/sword+warhorn traited for mobility and can consistently engage/disengage for groups dumb enough to chase it.

The defined role of the 0/30/30/10/0 thief is arguably the best scout/solo roamer in WvW. Capable of disengaging from zergs, troll small groups, destroy inexperienced solo/duo roamers, and quick enough to get around places. Outside of that, other classes and builds does it better.

Sanduskel.1850:

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

What are you talking about? GC Thieves are nothing but risk. I like my Thief to have at least 15k HP and if I build GC, that loss of 5k HP doesn’t translate to 5K damage.

The reward at running GC is not worth the risk and having 10K HP is like giving your opponent a free 5k damage hit on you.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Sanduskel.1850:

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

What are you talking about? GC Thieves are nothing but risk. I like my Thief to have at least 15k HP and if I build GC, that loss of 5k HP doesn’t translate to 5K damage.

The reward at running GC is not worth the risk and having 10K HP is like giving your opponent a free 5k damage hit on you.

Lol so you agree that 10k hp is an exaggeration?

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

Stealth is very much the real problem. It’s completely unfun to play against and it’s not balanced.

The game is action based combat.

Stealth is huge. It’s the ultimate damage mitigator in this game right now. Thieves without stealth would probably be weak but simply due to stealth they are incredibly powerful.

Almost every class faces a tradeoff between damage and survivability. Thieves and Mesmers can trait mostly damage and with their stealth they survive better than classes in this game.

When you add in that not only are Thieves/Mesmers the owners of stealth – they’re also the classes with the most blinks.

When you design the game around short fights and no dedicated healers – the game is mostly about damage and how much damage you can deal before dying. Mesmers and thieves due to stealth and blinks are by far the two hardest classes to kill. Being hard to kill means you stay alive longer to do damage.

The most absurd part of all is they can stealth and finish them to downed characters. Stealth is an insult to balance in this game without a doubt. No counterplay, the ultimate damage mitigator, the ultimate action-based combat mechanic.

There’s no downside. You’re losing? Stealth away. You’re winning and downed your target? Stealth so they have to guess when you will be trying to finish them. Add that in with absurd amounts of burst damage (with no dedicated healers, burst is the only type that matters 90% of the time) and they’re by far the best characters in the game.

In a game of capture points they might not be game breakers but in any small skirmish, thieves and mesmers have the most to offer.

I’m sick of stealth too. Mainly that I pretty much have to take stealth specs to be at all competitive. All of a thief’s toughness comes from being able to stealth, and remove conditions/heal while in stealth.

All of the non-stealth based abilities are just not as good. Acrobatics gets some access to dodging and healing when using initiative, but the dodging gets shut down by immobilize spam and the healing just isn’t as good as the stealth based healing. Signet of Malice still requires outputting hits, and while it’s great combined with AOE, it’s not as great in a solo fight or if taking big hits. (Simply not as good as Warrior’s signet)

The only saving grace at the moment is the Pistol Whip spam that works pretty well against newbs that don’t know how to counter it.

Someday I hope thieves won’t have to rely so heavily on stealth in PvP/WvW. But that will take some more serious reworking of the Acrobatics line before that happens.

Azukas.1426:

Sanduskel.1850:

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

Wrong again columbai

Glass Cannon Spec’d thief isn’t spec’d into SA line.

Ever since DAoC all you did was complain about your short commings as game imbalances. I’m sure that new game that just released is awaiting your cries of imbalances on their forums.

Lol. Is Columbai a new title or insult? Like padawan or grasshopper? Can’t keep up with the interwebs lingo, lol

My point stands. Stealth allows heavy dps AND great defenses.

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol. Is Columbai a new title or insult? Like padawan or grasshopper? Can’t keep up with the interwebs lingo, lol

My point stands. Stealth allows heavy dps AND great defenses.

You’re point is actually invalid. The only time stealth provides “great defense” is when the player its being used against doesn’t know anything about it. Otherwise its just visual manipulation, something mesmer can do just as well if not better.

Regardless, knowledge is power and those who complain about stealth usually don’t have enough.

Like Zacchary said, stealth is only visual. Some people are just great a playing against a thief. Once you know how to play that profession you know where to hit, even when they are stealth. Thief is a pretty predictable profession, especially if you run dagger as a main hand weapon. Thief are overpower against people that have no clue how to fight against them, but are just in the right spot if you know how to fight them. The only problem is that is pretty hard to figure out how to fight a thief until you run one yourself. That’s the difference that make people scream over the thief or PU Mesmer. You have to run that profession or have a lot of experience to understand how the profession work and how to counter it.

Zacchary.6183:

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol. Is Columbai a new title or insult? Like padawan or grasshopper? Can’t keep up with the interwebs lingo, lol

My point stands. Stealth allows heavy dps AND great defenses.

You’re point is actually invalid. The only time stealth provides “great defense” is when the player its being used against doesn’t know anything about it. Otherwise its just visual manipulation, something mesmer can do just as well if not better.

Regardless, knowledge is power and those who complain about stealth usually don’t have enough.

Sanduskel is not new, he speaks the truth and shares his knowledge, ideals and the truth of his class: thief to the masses. He refuses the abuse of wrongdoings and exposes them, in return, he is ridiculed and insulted for it.

" Knowledge is Power but when it is abused, it is no longer Power, it is Ego "

" The Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, Ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is "

The Truth

THESE THREADS ABOUT STEALTH NEED TO STOP. STEALTH ON THIEVES IS NOT BROKEN.

I’m going to be extremely honest, I LOVE FIGHTING THIEVES <3. When I see a class that has nearly unlimited access to stealth, I don’t say “oh man that is op” I say “BRING IT ON BABY!!!”

In wvw I roam around on my mesmer and when I fight a thief mostly one of two things happen:

1) He dies.
2) He runs away.

When I engage a thief in a fight I am very patient and I watch what skills he uses. One of my favorite tactics to use is to get the thief to use Shadow Refuge. Most thieves use Shadow Refuge when their health is low and they want to reset a fight without fully running away. So what I do is I work on getting the thief’s life low by hitting him with burst damage/conditions depending on what build I am using with my mesmer (shatter, phantasm, condition ect..) while at the same time I try to keep my health somewhat in the middle.(if my health is too high and the thieves life is too low, he will most likely fully retreat from the fight) When I see his life starting to get low I make sure my GS is the current weapon I’m using, and as soon as he pops that Shadow Refuge…a big smile appears on my face because I know he just signed his death warrant I then use my knockback wave from my GS which throws him out of his refuge and then I nuke him by either using a phantasm or shattering. The thief is then sitting on his butt and I finish him off I can’t tell you how many thieves I have killed by using this tactic haha. And this is just ONE of many tactics I use when dealing with thieves.

Now I am not some OP/best ever dueler/never die in wvw guy by a long shot. I get killed in wvw everyday from duels to getting jumped. However I do try to learn as much as I can from my loses and from implementing new strategies against opponents

Now here is a MAJOR complaint I hear people saying about thieves and the solution to it is EASY

Lets say I fight the thief and I kick his butt so he decides to disengage and runs away to reset. He comes back, I kick his butt, he resets. He comes back, I kick his butt, he resets. Now…I know he IS going to come back…and by this time as a mesmer…all of my stealth abilities are on cooldown so I know I am going to die…So what do I do? This is what I do….I WP BABY!! That’s right!! I WP back to my safe area of the map. And you know what? I WON. I beat that thief 3-0 SON.

If you fight a thief and beat him so he disengages to reset the fight, just WP back. You beat him fair and square in a 1vs1 so why give him the satisfaction of killing you? He ran away which = he lost and he knows it. Most honest thieves will tell you straight up they HATE running away to reset a fight. They want to KILL you, its what makes them HAPPY haha. So when you beat them straight up and WP back, you leave them with a VERY BAD taste in their mouth. I guarantee you if everyone did this, there would be A LOT OF RAGING THIEVES haha instead of a lot of people crying “thief stealth is OP blah blah blah”.

Not only that but if you kill a thief in 1 vs 1 you KNOW he is RAGING( or at least very dissatisfied). The primary reason why he made that build is to go roam and kill people. So when you kill him, you completely obliterated his Guild Wars 2 gaming experience. Its like you sucked his soul from his body…haha j/k.

Now I understand other professions dont have access to stealth like me however most roaming thieves are ONLY GOOD FOR 1 vs 1 and small group combat. Their build is NOT viable for pve or for zergs whereas yours IS.

Do I see thieves in dungeons? NOPE. Do I see thieves in Fractals? NOPE. Do I even see thieves in champ trains??!! NOPE. Now I know there are thieves that do PVE (My main PVE toon is a thief, however if I take him to wvw, I get eaten for breakfast) but I hardly see them in comparison to other classes.

If you change the way a thief can now use stealth, the class wont be as fearsome in 1 vs 1 duels or roaming….and really that is the ONLY thing thieves can claim as what separates their class from the rest.

So in summary, STOP THE HATE. I wish more people were open minded instead of being like “OMG he got INIFINITES stealth so thief is OP and stealth mechanic is BROKEN.” It’s like 1) Take off your diapers 2) Put your man pants on & 3) Either make a build to L2P to kill him or realize the limitations of his build and move on.

I even put it into a simple math equation for those of you who didn’t want to read all this:

Most roaming thiefs builds = horrible in zergs and pve which = thief class not OP and stealth mechanic NOT broken which = STOP THE HATE.

( I know that is probably the worst equation ever haha but now I’m going to eat some cookies )

Burnfall.9573:

Sanduskel is not new, he speaks the truth and shares his knowledge, ideals and the truth of his class: thief to the masses. He refuses the abuse of wrongdoings and exposes them, in return, he is ridiculed and insulted for it.

" Knowledge is Power but when it is abused, it is no longer Power, it is Ego "

" The Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, Ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is "

The Truth

Of course he is not new. He has been derailing threads in the thief forum since he started posting about half a year ago. But ego or not, knowledge > hearsay. And hearsay is all anyone who has ever complained about thieves ever had.

They are just a bunch of screaming kids throwing a tantrum because they got killed “unfairly”.

Zacchary.6183:

Burnfall.9573:

Sanduskel is not new, he speaks the truth and shares his knowledge, ideals and the truth of his class: thief to the masses. He refuses the abuse of wrongdoings and exposes them, in return, he is ridiculed and insulted for it.

" Knowledge is Power but when it is abused, it is no longer Power, it is Ego "

" The Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, Ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is "

The Truth

Of course he is not new. He has been derailing threads in the thief forum since he started posting about half a year ago. But ego or not, knowledge > hearsay. And hearsay is all anyone who has ever complained about thieves ever had.

They are just a bunch of screaming kids throwing a tantrum because they got killed “unfairly”.

So much skill involved in pressing a button, going invisible and taking advantage of that fact. So much skill. Button pressed. Skill.

Stealth is the only mechanic in this game without a legitimate counter. You can work around stealth but there is no way to counter it.

Leger.3724:

Zacchary.6183:

Burnfall.9573:

Sanduskel is not new, he speaks the truth and shares his knowledge, ideals and the truth of his class: thief to the masses. He refuses the abuse of wrongdoings and exposes them, in return, he is ridiculed and insulted for it.

" Knowledge is Power but when it is abused, it is no longer Power, it is Ego "

" The Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, Ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is "

The Truth

Of course he is not new. He has been derailing threads in the thief forum since he started posting about half a year ago. But ego or not, knowledge > hearsay. And hearsay is all anyone who has ever complained about thieves ever had.

They are just a bunch of screaming kids throwing a tantrum because they got killed “unfairly”.

So much skill involved in pressing a button, going invisible and taking advantage of that fact. So much skill. Button pressed. Skill.

Stealth is the only mechanic in this game without a legitimate counter. You can work around stealth but there is no way to counter it.

There actually is counter to stealth, its is called knowledge.

I was going to write a long boring post explaining how stealth is balanced for thieves but after reading some raving, misinformed, lying posts I think I won’t waste my time.

I will say, instead: look at thief’s new traits. 3 out of 5 are based on stealth. Stealth is here to stay and developers like that thieves rely so much on it to the point they encourage its use with new stealth based traits. If the existence of stealth makes the game unpleasant for you to the point you can’t stand it then feel free to leave for another game that doesn’t have this annoyance.

Zacchary.6183:

There actually is counter to stealth, its is called knowledge.

Another weak argument.

Essentially you’re throwing out platitudes and hoping everyone buys it. I don’t.

There is no counter to stealth, it’s the best damage mitigator in the game and only two classes have access to it (with one having crazy amounts of access to it). Ridiculous.

How about this? Give Rangers who trait hard the ability to one shot thieves. If they don’t dodge it – too bad, so sad. Knowledge.

The problem here is the ANet team doesn’t know how to calculate just how much mitigation stealth provides – it’s clear that the amount is large though.

Leger.3724:

Zacchary.6183:

There actually is counter to stealth, its is called knowledge.

Another weak argument.

Essentially you’re throwing out platitudes and hoping everyone buys it. I don’t.

There is no counter to stealth, it’s the best damage mitigator in the game and only two classes have access to it (with one having crazy amounts of access to it). Ridiculous.

Not true. Just because Thieves are in stealth, doesn’t mean it mitigates damage. Otherwise the new SA trait that mitigates damage would be overkill.

How about this? Give Rangers who trait hard the ability to one shot thieves. If they don’t dodge it – too bad, so sad. Knowledge.

Sorry, Warrior dibs on one-shotting Thieves.

Besides nobody like Rangers so no buffs for them.

The problem here is the ANet team doesn’t know how to calculate just how much mitigation stealth provides – it’s clear that the amount is large though.

You accuse Anet for not knowing how to calculate and what you can offer is a gross estimation of “it’s clear that the amount is large though”? Go ahead and make the calculations and post the specifics, Anet might even take you seriously.

Leger.3724:

Zacchary.6183:

There actually is counter to stealth, its is called knowledge.

Another weak argument.

Essentially you’re throwing out platitudes and hoping everyone buys it. I don’t.

There is no counter to stealth, it’s the best damage mitigator in the game and only two classes have access to it (with one having crazy amounts of access to it). Ridiculous.

How about this? Give Rangers who trait hard the ability to one shot thieves. If they don’t dodge it – too bad, so sad. Knowledge.

The problem here is the ANet team doesn’t know how to calculate just how much mitigation stealth provides – it’s clear that the amount is large though.

You say the problem is stealth, your post proves the problem is not stealth, but rather ignorance like yours, 2 classes have access to stealth? You should really learn about what your talking about before you open your useless mouth, half the classes in the game have stealth (you forgot ranger and engi) as far as having the abillity to one shot thieves, every class can do that since thieves have NO damage mitigation yet, after upcoming patch they will if they give up the strongest healing trait they have, on top of the lowest health pool. In regards to the ranger comment, not only can rangers track their bow shots THROUGH stealth, they can also reveal thieves.

Please, before posting read a little, your far to ignorant of the actual mechanics to post on this topic

There are counters to stealth. They include no cool down high radius aoes, mind reading and 1000m leaps with no cool downs!

I think some people don’t know what hard counter means, lol

Thieves don’t have the lowest health pool. Sorry that is simply false. Bow shots don’t reveal thieves, lol.

Sanduskel.1850:

There are counters to stealth. They include no cool down high radius aoes, mind reading and 1000m leaps with no cool downs!

I think some people don’t know what hard counter means, lol

Thieves don’t have the lowest health pool. Sorry that is simply false. Bow shots don’t reveal thieves, lol.

Guards, eles, and thieves all have the lowest HP pool of 10.8k base

Sanduskel.1850:

Bow shots don’t reveal thieves, lol.

He said “tracks” not reveal. In fact, all channeled ability does.

Sanduskel.1850:

There are counters to stealth. They include no cool down high radius aoes, mind reading and 1000m leaps with no cool downs!

I think some people don’t know what hard counter means, lol

Thieves don’t have the lowest health pool. Sorry that is simply false. Bow shots don’t reveal thieves, lol.

Pay attention. thieves/ele/guards have the bottom tier health pool, that is simply a fact, nobody said bow shots reveal, but many of them do track and deal damage to a thief even when they stealth. rangers have a utility that puts reveal on an enemy as well.

Really Sand, for such a long time troll i expect more of you

Leger.3724:

Zacchary.6183:

There actually is counter to stealth, its is called knowledge.

There is no counter to stealth, it’s the best damage mitigator in the game and only two classes have access to it (with one having crazy amounts of access to it). Ridiculous.

Thief, ranger, mesmer, any class with a norn as race.

Heard engi does as well, but I have no knowledge of them personally.

Sanduskel.1850:

tom.7468:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Stealth isn’t the problem. Stealth is perfectly balanced. I’ll tell you what the real problem is:

They have 10k hp. They need some defense otherwise they will be freekill everywhere.
I don’t think thieves would like if anet suddenly turned them into a warrior that is just worse than everything warriors do.

They only have 10k because they can spec glass cannon. That’s a choice. Unlike other classes, there’s no risk speccing glass cannon on a thief.

I’d gladly ask you to pick a GC thief and play it for 1 hour either roaming wvw or pvp, then return and honestly say there is no risk. Then again, you won’t do it, and continue to say thief requires no skill to play so no one will really ever win.

Here is a summary of the thread. Anti-thief players want thief nerfed, with no compensation. They don’t want thief to be “balanced” for the game the want thief to be “balanced” for them for “Fair” fights. Some one here managed to post that thief has no counters, and follow it with “There are ways around it” (11 posts up, by leger). Leads me to think some of these people aren’t willing to accept that stealth has counters that aren’t build specific and aren’t very attentive which is a terrible flaw when going up against a class that deceives for a living.

There are 2 things wrong with stealth as far as thieves go (won’t even touch Mesmer).

A. Lot of defenses related to it. Far better defense than “perma evade” because you can choose when and where to engauge. Because of this, many players abuse the limitless durations and waste time in fights which I think anyone can agree is not fun. Problem is, there is no alternative due to how quickly a thief can be downed and you can’t bunker as a thief without looking goofy and hitting like a wet noodle. Stealth is the most viable defense for a thief especially a new thief, so you betchya they’re going to abuse it a little.

B. Practically built into thief. Even the new acrobatics GM trait (which is simply aweful but anyway) works off of stealth. Apparently anet want’s thieves to be in stealth, despite the countless pleas to give better out of stealth sustain. Just like guardians who don’t want more condi attention especially when anet can’t seem to figure out why condi guards don’t exist, many thieves don’t care for more stealth related attention.

Couple ways to continue this 1.5 year old rant.

1. Ask for changes, not nerfs. Think about the nerf you are asking for and take the time to decide if its something that is there for a reason.

2. Ask questions. Many people (not just thieves) say there are counters, and many of them “Eat them for breakfast”. Clearly some people aren’t looking at this as a dire situation, yet there are endless thief nerf posts and even a thread dedicated to collecting them. If people took the time to not only ask but accept advice or atleast try it without just huffing and puffing, we can tone the thief nerf posts from 30 a week to maybe 10.

I have played a gc thief, lol. it’s easy mode. massive dps and i can stealth and evade out of danger. Agree we should have fewer skills tied to stealth, but that doesn’t make the perma stealth in this game acceptable.

i’d still like to see the ranger reveal…sic em? no that prevents restealthing, not a reveal.

as I said, thieves don’t have the lowest health pool since two other classes have the same. Lowest means singular, not shared with others. among the lowest maybe. even then, thieves can equip some vitality boosts if they chose to do so. it’s a choice to be squishy, sorry.

Cronicle.5691:

I think almost every thief on this forum thinks right now this was them thats being posted about… am i right? :P

But yea… Elementalists and Warriors have just as much survivability as a thief… only difference being that a thief has the potential of being able to stay in the battle zone longer. Warriors just GS the kitten out of the place. Ive seen a fair good amount of players on almost all classes now where when played right, are just as OP as a thief is.

Elementalist share the same survivability? How? We need to spec nearly 80-90% of our traits and specs to be tanky and be anywhere near the survivability that a thief has while speccing maybe 20% into survivability. Same goes for the warrior… I’ve played all three classes and while I do agree that thief requires a certain skill lvl a teleporting stealthing backstabbing thief can insta gib any elementalist that hasn’t traited a full 100% to be tanky. Also you don’t need 5 thiefs to beat those 6, 2 or maybe even just 3 should be enough. 3 backstabs each 6k dmg… 18k dmg enough to take down more than half light armored classes and a few medium armor classes. and 6k is a low estimate.

Ya’lls answer of running and hitting him when he reveals himself… he’ll backstab even easier if you run away…

Lucky Shot.7650:

I was going to write a long boring post explaining how stealth is balanced for thieves but after reading some raving, misinformed, lying posts I think I won’t waste my time.

I will say, instead: look at thief’s new traits. 3 out of 5 are based on stealth. Stealth is here to stay and developers like that thieves rely so much on it to the point they encourage its use with new stealth based traits. If the existence of stealth makes the game unpleasant for you to the point you can’t stand it then feel free to leave for another game that doesn’t have this annoyance.

Its the same as it was in gw1, certain classes are hard counters to others. The hard counter to elementalist is thief. But what is the hard counter for thieves? Guardian and warrior maybe?

Sanduskel.1850:

i’d still like to see the ranger reveal…sic em? no that prevents restealthing, not a reveal.

What is that status that sic em inflicts again…? oh yes! it’s called ‘revealed’… hmmmm…

Sanduskel.1850:

as I said, thieves don’t have the lowest health pool since two other classes have the same. Lowest means singular, not shared with others. among the lowest maybe. even then, thieves can equip some vitality boosts if they chose to do so. it’s a choice to be squishy, sorry.

Lowest means that there is nothing below it in value… among the lowest MAY imply that there are things even lower. Don’t mean to be a grammar kitten but… your ignorance is scary.

emi

Leger.3724:

There is no counter to stealth

Cloak and Dagger : Blind, Aegis, Block, Dodge, etc
Hide in Shadow : Interrupt
Shadow Refuge : Push or Pull

The only 3 stealth that are really hard to counter are Blinding Powder, Blinding Power when you reach a low level of hp and Blinding Tuft. But then you can counter the burst damage that will come from this stealth.

I have a question, since I don’t have ranger – how does Sic em work? Is it instanteous targeted reveal? And does it prolong the curent reveal(like – you have 3 – they become 7s when used on you)? Because if so, I am baffled about how rangers complain not being able to kill a thief 5v1. I mean – just get OOC, swap 1 utility for sic em and stay on the side observing… when you see the thief initiatation – boom, sic em and if you 5 still have troubles killing the thief in 7s you should never get away from the zerg.

Sanduskel.1850:

I have played a gc thief, lol. it’s easy mode. massive dps and i can stealth and evade out of danger. Agree we should have fewer skills tied to stealth, but that doesn’t make the perma stealth in this game acceptable.

i’d still like to see the ranger reveal…sic em? no that prevents restealthing, not a reveal.

as I said, thieves don’t have the lowest health pool since two other classes have the same. Lowest means singular, not shared with others. among the lowest maybe. even then, thieves can equip some vitality boosts if they chose to do so. it’s a choice to be squishy, sorry.

clearly you don’t play the same game here if you think gc thief has no risks tied to it. Then again I’ve seen several people call you a long lived “t-word” who has been around before Gw2. If you’re only here to derail and make jokes then maybe you should move on to some other game.

Sic em applies reveal, common sense you should put it on right before the thief enters stealth. You can easily predict this by seeing them near dead, soon after reveal wears off, them running away from you or getting behind an obstacle. Its an instant cast with a very long range. It’s like complaining about aegis not blocking an attack because you cast it after the hit.

As Emi posted, lowest means nothing is below. If you are honestly going to argue that thief isn’t the lowest health pool, then here. Thief has the lowest tier of health. Now, please stop posting non-sense.

@ Pavel: “Sic em” applies reveal to your target for 4 seconds as long as they’re within range. It can’t be obstructed or blinded but I don’t know about aegis/evasion. Anyways for being an instant cast you can time it fairly well so neither of those should cause a persistent issue.

Lol. Have you tried to use sic em?? Hahahahaha, lol at that as a hard counter.

Among the lowest doesn’t imply that others are lower, lol. Learn English. It denotes belonging to a group of equally low classes.

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol. Have you tried to use sic em?? Hahahahaha, lol at that as a hard counter.

Among the lowest doesn’t imply that others are lower, lol. Learn English. It denotes belonging to a group of equally low classes.

Who said sic em was a hard counter? Simply pointing out your horrible interpretation of the skill and how it is meant to be used. Please, keep up or move along.

Emi.4152:

Sanduskel.1850:

as I said, thieves don’t have the lowest health pool since two other classes have the same. Lowest means singular, not shared with others. among the lowest maybe. even then, thieves can equip some vitality boosts if they chose to do so. it’s a choice to be squishy, sorry.

Lowest means that there is nothing below it in value… among the lowest MAY imply that there are things even lower. Don’t mean to be a grammar kitten but… your ignorance is scary.

emi

It seems that your bias had clouded your judgment. I may not agree with Sanduskel in many occasions but I’m afraid that you are in the wrong here.

Emi.4152:

Sanduskel.1850:

i’d still like to see the ranger reveal…sic em? no that prevents restealthing, not a reveal.

What is that status that sic em inflicts again…? oh yes! it’s called ‘revealed’… hmmmm…
emi

Poor choice of words on Sanduskel but I get what he’s talking about.

To rephrase;

“… no that prevents restealthing by applying revealed status, it does not take Thieves out of stealth.”

Much better?

As a ranger, i can tell you how many times Sic-em failed on the thief/thieves yet they immediately were able to re-stealth over again and again.

So,

pretty much, Sic-em “working as attended”.

( see >Fail stealth trap)

Revealed is a terrible term for what sic em does, it should be called, delayed. We need a “break them out of stealth” skill. Clear now?

Yes, we. I’ve expanded my horizons. You should try it.

Sanduskel.1850:

Revealed is a terrible term for what sic em does, it should be called, delayed. We need a “break them out of stealth” skill. Clear now?

“We”? I thought you only played thief and had 5 thief characters.

Sanduskel.1850:

Revealed is a terrible term for what sic em does, it should be called, delayed. We need a “break them out of stealth” skill. Clear now?

“Sic ’em” is a terrible name for a skill, thus deserve a terrible functionality.

I think the Devs confused “sic ’em” to “seek ’em” — not surprising really.

What Rangers need is something like Hunter’s Mark from WoW and call it “sniff ’em out” or something.

And I still wonder why is that people who are actually good at this game love fighting other thieves (if they’re thieves) or just thieves in general. Going to tell you why – roughly 9 out of 10 thieves that I meet in WvW are free kills and I’m sure that other competent people in this subforum will back me up on it. Now, only few of those remaining thieves actually put up a good fight and and not just ‘try to survive and stall you’.
People who come to this forum and cry that stealth is what makes a thief OP will not notice the difference between a bad thief and a good thief – they just turn ‘Teef OP’ mode when they see one.
If you’re ever vs Desolation I offer rookie-school for nubs on ‘How-to-handle-average thieves’.
WvW dueling is not about what class you play but how good you’re in general, imo. Outplayed many and got outplayed by many.

scabrous.7835:

And I still wonder why is that people who are actually good at this game love fighting other thieves (if they’re thieves) or just thieves in general. Going to tell you why – roughly 9 out of 10 thieves that I meet in WvW are free kills and I’m sure that other competent people in this subforum will back me up on it. Now, only few of those remaining thieves actually put up a good fight and and not just ‘try to survive and stall you’.
People who come to this forum and cry that stealth is what makes a thief OP will not notice the difference between a bad thief and a good thief – they just turn ‘Teef OP’ mode when they see one.
If you’re ever vs Desolation I offer rookie-school for nubs on ‘How-to-handle-average thieves’.
WvW dueling is not about what class you play but how good you’re in general, imo. Outplayed many and got outplayed by many.

This is why Thieves are OP.

Are you seriously saying that thieves have too much stealth? Have you ever heard of a game called WoW? Rogues can be in stealth as long as they arent placed into combat, i think the stealth for thieves is perfectly fine, you just need to find ways to counter stealth its very easy. If what you are complaining about thieves is their stealth you are in need to more practice.