Guild Wars 2

The Dunning Krugger effect states:

Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill

This is how I feel about maybe 85% of the people who QQ about the thief. Instead of just calling for nerf after nerf learn to play your own class. I use to play an elementalist and I hated playing against thieves. Then I became one and realized that in order to pull off the backstab combo you have to time at least 4 different moves. If any of these are countered, stunned, or rooted then I just burned all my cd’s and accomplished absolutely nothing. Once my cd’s are burned I’m pretty much 3 hits away from dead. That’s the point of a glass cannon build. I am suppose to do a kitten ton of damage. I’m also very squishy and sit around 14k health. Again you stop any one of the moves I have to do before I set up backstab I’m screwed. Now just because I got it off doesnt mean that backstab is op, it just means in that particular encounter I was able to outplay or out maneuver you. This brings me back to the Dunning krugger effect. Also a thief in a 1v1 situation should be pown face. If however, I am caught in a 1v3 possibly 1v2 I pretty much have to switch to shortbow and bug the kitten out. More than likely if I run into that situation I’m dead.

i love fighting bs thiefs have only met maybe 1 or 2 that made me work for the kill

I bet, once you learn how to counter a bs thief it becomes pretty easy to kill them time after time.

This is a flawed way to argue on so many levels.
To start with: How do you know who is incompetent? Evidence & proof are things that makes no sense here. It is really hard to determine who is incompetent. It might as well be the one judging skills, that are imcompetent at that.

85% … based on what?

1vs1 thieves deserves (why? .. says who) to pwn? Why? Can’t they escape and avoid the fight and return when cd’s are down? Why isn’t survivability a topic?

All I see here is your personal opinion, which is fine. And you drag in some theories, but there is no foundation.

First I am not stating who is incompetent, just that incompetent people tend to over estimate their actual skill and underestimate their opponents. They also fail to recognize when someone is genuinely skilled. For example, one QQ’r stated that they had 1600 toughness and were a full defense build and couldnt understand why they were getting 2 shot by a thief. Well because 1600 toughness isn’t even close to being a full defense build. So right there they are overestimating their own value. Next they complain that a thief snuck up behind them and backstabbed them so backstab must be op. It couldn’t be that the thief genuinely had more skill. Second the 85% was an arbitrary number. I will concede on that. It was more of an over exaggeration to get the point across. Still the majority of posts I see about wanting to nerf backstab isn’t because backstab is op but because the QQ’r lacks the skills needed to counter it. Also I didn’t say thieves deserve to pwn 1v1 but that it makes sense that they do. They are a thief, an assassin. I’m pretty sure they don’t work in packs but instead like to flank alone… I also did say that I pull out my shortbow for mobility and survivability. The short bow works perfect for a D/D backstab thief. That still doesnt change the fact that once my cd’s are burned you can hunt me down and kill me very quickly. Now I have seen people who aren’t thieves lay out exactly how to beat them. I’ve come up against people in Spvp that can counter me a fair amount of times. Over a long enough sample size I’m sure it’d come to about 1:1. Those players know how to counter, and when they get beat they dont QQ because they understand were just out played that instance. The thing is since they dont QQ you dont hear from them on the forums. Also we shouldn’t have to hold people’s hands and tell them how to counter us.

Now if you like we can come up with a methodology that we both agree on to help label what QQ posts are people who are incompetent and people who generally know how to play their class and game mechanics. We can then comb through all the QQ posts and use our methodology to categorize them and then test our hypotheses. I’d say we want as large a sample size as possible. At least 1500 maybe 2000. That way we can generalize our findings to the public at large.

bow.6179:

Next they complain that a thief snuck up behind them and backstabbed them so backstab must be op.

Hardly anyone complains about Backstab itself, most people complain about the Backstab build, you know the build that allows Thieves to teleport right next to you from 900 range, deal damage equal to half of your hitpoints to outright killing you in 1 second while still having good mobility and survivability.

So then you don’t have a problem with bs itself but with steal? I can see that. Possibly shorten the range of steal or require a longer cd. I have seen posts wherein people have mentioned that. They are not the QQr’s I am talking about.

Spike dmg will likely be toned down across the board based on what the dev said. It didn’t read to me that it only was targeting thieves.

The only other thing that should probably be toned down for Thieves specifically is shortbow#5’s ability to ignore root/stun. I know everyone who uses it will tell me to chew foil but that one skill alone is a get away crutch that we shouldn’t need and causes a ton of indirect Thief QQ.

bow.6179:

So then you don’t have a problem with bs itself but with steal? I can see that. Possibly shorten the range of steal or require a longer cd.

The problem with Steal is more that it can be used simultaneously with other skills with can potentially allows for huge spike damage. Making it impossible to use Steal during the activation of others skills and giving it a short aftercast delay would lengthen the spike from ~1 second to 2-3 seconds, giving the other player the chance to avoid the combo.
Range isn’t much of a problem imo, and a longer CD would hurt other builds and didn’t actually solves the issue because it doesn’t prohibits those combos, just making playing and playing against a Thief more boring.

overrated wall of text, mainly professor" I’m pro u suck l2p" style…
sir no offense in that be aware, but honestly i don’t think any thief should tell anyone: before QQ l2p since, let’s face it, the thief is the most OP class on GW2 (damage wise).

I hate people crying just because they don’t know how to dodge that’s true, or they expect to survive going on glass cannon build while standing afk.

But still guys…in terms of damage no single class can compare to you, and i am not taking account of the perma stealth bug.

Again let’s be honest, i am not a fan of nerfing, IMHO there is much work to do and around other classes before nerfing thief.

First they should fix the rendering bug which i believe is the main cause of the hate vs thief,(at least mine) then they should boost other class damage to make pair with thieves nonsense burst damage(if specced glass cannon), then least but not last toughness should count much more in terms of defense.

IF they do that(but they wont) you will have more balance, glass cannon players could happy 2 shot each other while tankish players wont complain about getting 10k backstab.

Long story short for the devs:

Increase the % of damage absorbed for every point of toughness AFTER a certain amount is obtained, like 1500.

Increase damage for every class who spec power/precision, if thief or warrior(lets forget thief for a sec) can do 15k damage instant from 1500 range why should a ranger(glass cannon) be doing 8k on a 5 sec channeled?

if you do that people will stop to QQ for a while giving you time to go in each class and fix it, simple as that.

Shilian.5873:

Increase the % of damage absorbed for every point of toughness AFTER a certain amount is obtained, like 1500.

Armor is already a sliding scale depending on your attacker’s power. Higher Toughness/Armor scales better vs higher power. The system just makes it so full bunkers don’t do completely ignore-able damage.

Never said I was pro and never implied that other people suck. Just that they haven’t learned their class mechanics well enough yet.

excuse me but that’s what i read in the topic heading:
QQ backstab, instead learn to play.
my interpretation is a bit more crude but there are multiple way to say the same thing. peace and let’s hope anet balance everyone instead of just nerf u guys.

I understand where you are coming from. A little frustrated after reading every other post and seeing it was someone QQ’ing.

The only nerf acceptable to me is cnd right after a steal. What the point of traitors 2s stealth after steal if people use cnd before they steal then steal + mug then bs…

swinsk.6410:

The only nerf acceptable to me is cnd right after a steal. What the point of traitors 2s stealth after steal if people use cnd before they steal then steal + mug then bs…

Also, this trait is/was bugged if I remember correctly (doesn´t turn off the autoattack, so it instantly revealed you after the steal usage.).

DesertRose.2031:

bow.6179:

Next they complain that a thief snuck up behind them and backstabbed them so backstab must be op.

Hardly anyone complains about Backstab itself, most people complain about the Backstab build, you know the build that allows Thieves to teleport right next to you from 900 range, deal damage equal to half of your hitpoints to outright killing you in 1 second while still having good mobility and survivability.

Here’s the build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mzkzzc0zMMTowmMTowmxx9MacmsMcqV8kiG7kiH7khA7070M7kNb70V7ofD8ofY

Point me to the additional mobility and/or survivability, please. There’s a reason all those videos displaying this build only showed clips of them killing 1 guy at a time instead of entire play sessions. And, just to mention it, this build is a little slower to kill it’s opponent with the A-Signet change.

The well rounded thieves are the ones to be wary of, not these gimmicky fools.

Perfectly said.

@Judas

And the well-rounded Thieves will rise to the top when Anet adjusts your profession. For top players, the adjustment won’t matter much and they’ll still faceroll. The FotM rerolls, will reroll to something else.

The problem, crewthief, is that everyone is shouting for them to nerf the wrong thing. Backstab is fine as it is. The circumstances leading up to it in a backstab oriented build are not. If they nerf backstab, something else is just going to take it’s place.

I prefer a more well-rounded build and always will. It allows for a more drawn out battle and lets me actually survive a 2v1 situation more readily…..but I still like the idea that you don’t just turn your back and run from a thief or ignore him when he goes invisible. I think that Backstab currently punishes properly in a build that doesn’t seek to optimize that one skill.

Here is my opinion.

Yeah, I saw…and i’d think Anet is aware of that as well. Hopefully they don’t just blindly nerf things without any further investigation…which I have faith they will.

Judas.5432:

Here’s the build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mzkzzc0zMMTowmMTowmxx9MacmsMcqV8kiG7kiH7khA7070M7kNb70V7ofD8ofY

Point me to the additional mobility and/or survivability, please. There’s a reason all those videos displaying this build only showed clips of them killing 1 guy at a time instead of entire play sessions. And, just to mention it, this build is a little slower to kill it’s opponent with the A-Signet change.

Yes, posting the one-trick pony variant of the Backstab build totally proved your point…

And btw, they’ve said they’re thinking about giving Steal a cast time and/or an aftercast delay.

Funny to see that is always thieves yelling “L2P”, “Just dodge noob”. Well, i hate to break it to you guys, but the build that most of the thieves are using atm is the same cheesy burst build that they just copied from others. And I hope you all agree with me that it doesnt take much skill to run around killing pretty much anything that is not a bunker in a few hits. How much skill does that take ? It takes considerable more effort to achieve the same results on a necro, ele or engi for example (i`m playing a necro so i`m maybe biased).
The one who actually need to L2P are the players who just rolled a thief because its the current fotm, and this ended up giving a lot of bad rep to the whole thief community.
The guy that started the whole thread even admits that he`s an ele who rerolled to thief for the easymode it provides when specced in a certain way. Now he is probably scared that he will have trouble adapting if his build will get nerfed (which will happen) and he`s just yelling L2P.
Honestly i can`t say i care, atm its a good thing that all the sheep run the same build because once you know what to expect in a fight everything becomes a lot easier.

bow.6179:

I bet, once you learn how to counter a bs thief it becomes pretty easy to kill them time after time.

The thief community will kill me for giving up the SECRET to counter BS thieves (i do not play backstab and very rarely die to one)

DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK AT HIM!

he will hit you for HALF the backstab dmg! imagine that….

These treads always turns into fights of opinions with no evidens, not that they are needed.
Maybe we should let thieves stay in thier subforum and so for the other professions. If you wanna suggest a nerf go to the suggestion subforum, if you disagree, great. But no need to be so offensive in your statements.
I do agree that most QQ do it out of rage and with little reason, though that is my opinion. Though just balance adjustment os needed, but not only for thieves.
We could incluede:
Mesmers, not that bad, also mostly skilled players, but they got some great, close to op, asseset.
Engineers, though some kits are broken, they still got insane mobility, yeah this come from a thief, and surprise very good dmg despite what some would try to prove wrong.
Warriors.. Were do I begin with warrior? Well first of all they need some fixes with misses and so, but they are very powerful and close to being canned assassins.
Guardians are powerful n bunke builds.
Elementalist are very powerful in contrerary to common belief, but need skills, so actually okay with that.

We could go on, but I think Anet should focus on fixing, as stated so much before, and not balancing.. How do you balance around broken stuff? It would simple be stupid imo.

If you are still getting face rolled by a BS thief it is a L2P issue.

If you haven’t figured out by now that you need to move away when they stealth. L2P
If you don’t layout any AOE for a thief you realized is stealth. L2P
If you run without a stun break and/or damage mitigation skill in PvP. L2P
If you are running 30/30/x/x/x spec with zerk amulet and are getting gibbed. L2P
If you don’t know any of the sound cues for the CnD, steal, BS combo, you probably wont know when to dodge. L2P
A thief misses CnD or BS he screwed. If you don’t use blinds for thieves. L2P
If you survive the initial burst and don’t use any form of CC after. L2P

Once you have survived the burst thieves can only do like once every 45 secs, give him a paper cut and you win.

Echo Truth.9645:

If you are still getting face rolled by a BS thief it is a L2P issue.

If you haven’t figured out by now that you need to move away when they stealth. L2P
If you don’t layout any AOE for a thief you realized is stealth. L2P
If you run without a stun break and/or damage mitigation skill in PvP. L2P
If you are running 30/30/x/x/x spec with zerk amulet and are getting gibbed. L2P
If you don’t know any of the sound cues for the CnD, steal, BS combo, you probably wont know when to dodge. L2P
A thief misses CnD or BS he screwed. If you don’t use blinds for thieves. L2P
If you survive the initial burst and don’t use any form of CC after. L2P

Once you have survived the burst thieves can only do like once every 45 secs, give him a paper cut and you win.

Unfortunately, according to a post in this sub forum, Anet disagrees with you. L2P is a very, very tired argument dude. Pretty much, if you DO use that argument, the first time you pull it out…most people will stop reading right there.

@crewthief he just explained you what to do to counter a thief in detail.

crewthief.8649:

Echo Truth.9645:

If you are still getting face rolled by a BS thief it is a L2P issue.

If you haven’t figured out by now that you need to move away when they stealth. L2P
If you don’t layout any AOE for a thief you realized is stealth. L2P
If you run without a stun break and/or damage mitigation skill in PvP. L2P
If you are running 30/30/x/x/x spec with zerk amulet and are getting gibbed. L2P
If you don’t know any of the sound cues for the CnD, steal, BS combo, you probably wont know when to dodge. L2P
A thief misses CnD or BS he screwed. If you don’t use blinds for thieves. L2P
If you survive the initial burst and don’t use any form of CC after. L2P

Once you have survived the burst thieves can only do like once every 45 secs, give him a paper cut and you win.

Unfortunately, according to a post in this sub forum, Anet disagrees with you.

Link to the post?

[/quote]

Pretty much, if you DO use that argument, the first time you pull it out…people will stop reading right there.

[/quote]

Maybe that’s the problem. Instead of learning how to counter a class people just QQ forums. If good advice is included with a L2P comment then it might be worth your while to take a look.

Furthermore, the title of the post has L2P in it. If you stopped reading right there, why are you here trolling?

NightyNight.1823:

@crewthief he just explained you what to do to counter a thief in detail.

I don’t need that explained to me.

Echo Truth.9645:

crewthief.8649:

Echo Truth.9645:

If you are still getting face rolled by a BS thief it is a L2P issue.

If you haven’t figured out by now that you need to move away when they stealth. L2P
If you don’t layout any AOE for a thief you realized is stealth. L2P
If you run without a stun break and/or damage mitigation skill in PvP. L2P
If you are running 30/30/x/x/x spec with zerk amulet and are getting gibbed. L2P
If you don’t know any of the sound cues for the CnD, steal, BS combo, you probably wont know when to dodge. L2P
A thief misses CnD or BS he screwed. If you don’t use blinds for thieves. L2P
If you survive the initial burst and don’t use any form of CC after. L2P

Once you have survived the burst thieves can only do like once every 45 secs, give him a paper cut and you win.

Unfortunately, according to a post in this sub forum, Anet disagrees with you.

Link to the post?

Pretty much, if you DO use that argument, the first time you pull it out…people will stop reading right there.

[/quote]

Maybe that’s the problem. Instead of learning how to counter a class people just QQ forums. If good advice is included with a L2P comment then it might be worth your while to take a look.

Furthermore, the title of the post has L2P in it. If you stopped reading right there, why are you here trolling?[/quote]

Well, I did say ‘most people’…didn’t say, ‘ME’. Reading comprehension perhaps? And the thread i’m referring to is in this very sub forum, lmao. 5-6 threads down, the one with the Anet response in it. They’re toning down your classes spike damage (at least BS, from what I got), sorry :/ Of course, if most of you are as pro as you claim to be, the nerf will do very little to affect how much you faceroll your opponent…right?

crewthief.8649:

Well, I did say ‘most people’…didn’t say, ‘ME’. Reading comprehension perhaps? And the thread i’m referring to is in this very sub forum, lmao. 5-6 threads down, the one with the Anet response in it. They’re toning down your classes spike damage (at least BS, from what I got), sorry :/ Of course, if most of you are as pro as you claim to be, the nerf will do very little to affect how much you faceroll your opponent…right?

You said people. You are a person right? Species comprehension perhaps?

They are looking at it because the squeaky wheel gets greased (For the record I do support the tweaks that have been made to thief so far). If they do nerf bat our spike damage then you will QQ about stealth and then our condition stack builds. (Maybe angry birds or Pokemon is a better game for you?)

And history repeats itself. In EVERY MMO people QQ about the stealth class.

I too support the changes that have been done to the Thief.But now the BS is fine.The damage is no where near overpowered.5-8k? give me a break.The damage is fine.
I wouldn’t care much either since I play S/D mainly and I would love some buffs there instead of BS but people are wrong .

@Echo Truth

Ah yes, the ‘maybe <insert game name here> is more suited for you’ argument. Funny, the only people that seem to be vehemently defending Thief on a constant basis are Thief players. Do you see the same amount of QQ in ANY of the other profession sub-forums? I’m aware there’s QQ toward stealthers in other MMOs, been playing them for 10 years. One thing i’ll tell you, i’ve never seen a stealther in another MMO that i’ve played with the amount of in-combat stealth that GW2 Thieves possess. But hey, maybe you’re right…MAYBE this is a learn-to-play issue for EVERYONE else and the Thief community as a whole is just on a totally different skill level. I suspect that isn’t the case though. What are you going to reroll to when they nerf the BS build?

There’s an old saying, it’s been around for a long time for good reason; Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

crewthief.8649:

@Echo Truth

Ah yes, the ‘maybe <insert game name here> is more suited for you’ argument. Funny, the only people that seem to be vehemently defending Thief on a constant basis are Thief players. Do you see the same amount of QQ in ANY of the other profession sub-forums? I’m aware there’s QQ toward stealthers in other MMOs, been playing them for 10 years. One thing i’ll tell you, i’ve never seen a stealther in another MMO that i’ve played with the amount of in-combat stealth that GW2 Thieves possess. But hey, maybe you’re right…MAYBE this is a learn-to-play issue for EVERYONE else and the Thief community as a whole is just on a totally different skill level. I suspect that isn’t the case though. What are you going to reroll to when they nerf the BS build?

There’s an old saying, it’s been around for a long time for good reason; Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Thieves aren’t a problem for EVERYONE else. I leveled a thief to 80 and put the time in to learn how to counter the class. I love seeing a thief trying to take my ele or war 1v1. Not gonna happen unless half my CD’s are down and all theirs are up.

To the re-roll comment. Ele already my fav class and I prefer condition build on thief over BS. I’m not a glass cannon fan in general.

The point to my original reply to this post was to point out that BS is a joke if you know how to play against it.

@crewthief You proved my point…If you go on any other thread there isn’t even close to the same amount of QQ posts. That’s because everyone comes to the thieves sub forum to QQ about how they got facerolled by a bs thief. BS thieves, in fact, are very easy to kill once you learn how to counter them. It’s sad that we have to hold people’s hands and tell them how to do it instead of them…learning to play… If there werent so many QQ posts this post would be irrelevant and never posted.