As i read along the Thief forums, i barely see anyone asking for advice, how to do this or that, rather, i see rantings on how thief’s should be nerfed due to their permanent stealth, their “insane burst” and so on.
This is a guide to people that have NO insight on how a thief works, and as much as it pains you, this is how it is.
Our Stealth
Our stealth Is ONE of the cornerstones of being a thief. Face it, “THIEF”, you don’t see assassins, rogues, thiefs, muggers, anything like that walking around with white-bright clothes singing along “IM A insert profession here AND I’M GONNA MUG YOU”. No.
You “see” us in every dark corner trying to slip away from everyone’s eye-sight to drop under dead-eye and strike you in the back.
That’s how it is.
Now, technically speaking, we have 4 main stealths. C&D, shadow refuge, Blinding Powder and last but not least smoke screen (not counting with that D/P trick, i think Anet nerfed that).
C&D cost us 6 initiative out of 12 initiative (15 if you’re specced), meaning 2, 3 attacks maximum. Even with init. recovery, we sacrifice burst/damage and condition. That equals in 6 or 9 second invisibility in every 15 second interval with a 3 second revealed debuff on. Unless we just want to kitten you off, we will not kill you by concentrating only on stealth this way since the rest of our skills are also driven by init. So we go to the other skills
Blinding powder: no init cost, 60 sec cooldown, 3 second stealth and a blind. Seriously? is it dangerous? no. Its great to run from a dangerous opponent or if you need some quick health regeneration (AND that is if you are specced for it).
Shadow refuge: more annoying, also a 60 sec CD but it has a dangerous “but if”. “The skill is great BUT IF you get knocked down/forced to move off it, you lose the stealth, wasted IT and a slot.”.
Smoke screen: great for blocking ranged attacks and with a SB and spam 2 you can stealth for a brief brief BRIEF moment and that is if you don’t have anyone in melee range. Because if you do, you get revealed because you accidentally hit him/her.
So… Stealth is OP? we get a few extra skills while in stealth: Backstab was nerfed, immobilize for 2 seconds, pistols get a decent unload and 5 bleeds (actually pretty good, but not for burst, only for condition) and sword gets a nice skill also.
In sum: it isn’t op, its actually quite good as it is.
PLUS a known BUG (yes, it should be a bug if it isn’t and it should be corrected) is when you stealth, if a player is casting something against you, the player will keep following you, targeting you and hitting you. So that is enough of a deal breaker, you still want stealth nerfed?! That just shows how 99% of the player base does not know how to play.
Next we got MOBILITY
This game has a different system, Power, precision, etc.. But in other games, you have Agility. And you have agility for a reason, and all rogues/hunters/,wtvr the kind of the class is, are driven by it. Because RPG-wise they are mobile, fast, all that kind of things.
So it’s normal we are agile and quick.
And finally, our BURST
We had backstab, but now it has been nerfed. In order to do any damage (pvp wise) that isn’t a choice, you cant kill that fast anymore. Players have too much of a window of opportunity to kill us due to our low defenses.
Basically: burst means you kill as fast as you’re killed and a player with minimum defensive capabilities will kill us.
TL:DR
We have fun perks to play with, but in no way we are the deadly kind of class now. Your rants made us kittens in the middle of warriors, guardians and so on.
And if we decide to take burst into account, we will die fast, even with simple aoe from 1 person (take into account i play a full burst specc and i know this for a fact: i dont kill fast enough for my amount of defense)
if we don’t, we will only serve as a group distraction/gain time, since there are no defensive traits in the power/precision tree and the ones on the condition tree are not that good and the offensive gains in the defensive kind of trees are not good enough to cut it.
*Stop ranting, our class is bad enough as it is. *
And i would like, though i doubt, a Dev to read this, and tell me WHY did they choose what they chose on the thief’s build/play style.
I chose it because i knew pre-hand we died fast, we are fragile, though we could pack a lethal if-you-aren’t-careful-you-WILL-die punch. Instead, now i work as a distraction in my sPvP group since i don’t have burst to defend and if i work with a defensive build, i dont have the damage/resources to deal with them. (just saying the same over and over now, but thats how bad it is).