Guild Wars 2

Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails on these attempts he can still keep on trying without any consequences.

Next is blind field plus leap. Problem is that as the thief leaps into and enemy and hits the player this does not break stealth. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why this is bad.

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I don’t get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then it must be true.

Don’t forget that statistically, most of the community plays warriors. That is a fact. Second, you second point, I can somewhat agree with though no entirely. In other words you want the stealth to be applied as soon as the heartseeker is activated, that way is HS connects, revealed will proc. As for your first point I never agree the people that want to nerf this.

What i am most impressed about though is the title. You said ‘thieves’ and not ‘thiefs’ or ‘thieefs’ or ‘theifs’ or ‘theephz’ or ‘teefs’ or ‘theephs’ or ‘lolwarriors’ or ‘thiephs’ Nice job on that one OP

After trying out guardian for the first time for about 27 games today.
Seeing how easy it is to apply block, blind and invulnerability everytime the thief enters stealth and in other ways screwing up the entered stealth for the thief (aoe damage).
I completely disagree about the reveal on block part.

I however find Blackpowder quite strong with its frequent pulses of blind, mitigates pretty much 100% of all your attacks if you touch it.
Easy access to stealth, yes annoying, but so is my easy access to blinds, blocks and insane burst.

I really enjoyed my thief hunt earlier.

At one point a thief was “perma-stealthing” at a capture point. I pretty much just jumped around and spammed attacks, with some facerolling involved, avoided some backstabs. And suddenly everything got silent.. and 5 seconds later the thief appears next to me throwing rocks.

Ghostwolf.9863:

After trying out guardian for the first time for about 27 games today.
Seeing how easy it is to apply block, blind and invulnerability everytime the thief enters stealth and in other ways screwing up the entered stealth for the thief (aoe damage).
I completely disagree about the reveal on block part.

I however find Blackpowder quite strong with its frequent pulses of blind, mitigates pretty much 100% of all your attacks if you touch it.
Easy access to stealth, yes annoying, but so is my easy access to blinds, blocks and insane burst.

I really enjoyed my thief hunt earlier.

At one point a thief was “perma-stealthing” at a capture point. I pretty much just jumped around and spammed attacks, with some facerolling involved, avoided some backstabs. And suddenly everything got silent.. and 5 seconds later the thief appears next to me throwing rocks.

Ohp see right there tells me you haven’t touched the thief class once in your life, they throw knives when down, everything you say from now on bares no weight, smh filthy cashulz these days

If the devs were to make my backstab reveal me on block, then I hope they will at least make mesmers casting phantasms from stealth reveal them as well.

Thanks for your replys but the issues haven’t been addressed.

1. What skill does the thief require is there if the opponent cannot block, evade etc backstabs to punish you? Especially when his evasive maneuvers are done as a guess. Its just an issue of trying till you hit. No consequences for not connecting for the thief. And connecting greatly rewards. 3-4 secs later the thief can try again till opponent dies. Little risk.

2. It would not be such an issue with heartseeker if it did not do so much damage. But the issue is doing damage while you blind preventing damage. Go Stealth while you did damage. Backstab. The opponent should be nearly dead. If not try again 3 secs later. What skill does that involve?

There is a reason everyone complains about thieves. The issue is not as big of a problem in PvP as in WvW. Capturing points in a circle is a dumb concept when the games core mechanics are about combat. 1v1 should be the true test of balance for each class.

WvW is balanced around PVE so less changes are made there well yeah. But then again I doubt they will do much more to nerf the class since anymore will probably break it completely then anet has to do work to fix it.

Alex Behemoth.4952:

Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails on these attempts he can still keep on trying without any consequences.

Next is blind field plus leap. Problem is that as the thief leaps into and enemy and hits the player this does not break stealth. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why this is bad.

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I don’t get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then it must be true.

Well with the first one thiefs really don’t have any defense, so we need a way to counter other classes defense. We have a base health of 10k the next lowest class a 15k IIRC. So we need something considering we can’t hit someone have the backstab fail, be revealed and stealth again immediately, stealth is our only real defense. They would have to make backstab not proc the revealed de-buff as long as it does if they failed.

The second point you made would involve them re-working the entire combo finisher system. There is no reason to do it, it’s part of the game mechanic for EVERY class, get over it. Anyone else could use a leap finisher through a smoke field, hit then be stealthed.

Blocks, evades, etc. are defensive abilities which means they are supposed to negate damage and not punish the player. I do believe certain classes and runes do punish players for attacking a blocked enemy. But since blocks and evades do do their job which is to negate damage I see no problem.

Also tell me how a shield on a players arm that is in front of them can block a hit from the back :P

Blocks, evades, etc. become very useful against thieves when they don’t allow the thief to land a CnD. But you also mention OP D/P which doesn’t need someone to stealth off of. IMO D/P is an extremely easy build to play. I do think they need to nerf it but I haven’t decided which part of it should be nerfed.

So I don’t agree with blocks and evades punishing you but I see where you are coming from. But I totally agree there is no skill involved in D/P and something needs to be done about it.

and then you forget the fact that
- thief has to go full glass to do any meaningful dmg
- thief doesn’t have any stability, protection, blocks etc.
- thief has lowest HP pool in game and no traits that support toughness builds
- thief doesn’t have many (if any) hard and long lasting CCs
- thief barely has any team utility
- thief is very combo depended class, if combo fails you might end up sitting at 0 ini unable to do anything but AA

Now if you take all that into account, please tell me how should thief compete with other classes? The king of 1v1 is mesmer, the best support is either ele or guard, in team fights necros and engis have probably bigger presense than a thief. Warriors are just god mode atm. The only reason why thief is taken in pvp atm is their z-axis moblity and single target burst potential.

If stealth broke on blocks, every thief would play evade spec which trust me is way more annoying than BS one since you can still hit the BS thieves, evade thieves are actually way harder to kill.

Same goes for BP+HS, if that was nerfed, everyone would play evade spec.

If your suggestions were implemented then it would be fair to ask that blocks/aegis/protection will be ignored if hit from behind, chain CC shouldn’t work on thief at least.

If you think that bs thieves are that OP, i dare you to make one and duel ppl in FC arena. Something tells me they will kitten on you pretty hard.

Azawrath.7304:

Blocks, evades, etc. are defensive abilities which means they are supposed to negate damage and not punish the player. I do believe certain classes and runes do punish players for attacking a blocked enemy. But since blocks and evades do do their job which is to negate damage I see no problem.

Also tell me how a shield on a players arm that is in front of them can block a hit from the back :P

Blocks, evades, etc. become very useful against thieves when they don’t allow the thief to land a CnD. But you also mention OP D/P which doesn’t need someone to stealth off of. IMO D/P is an extremely easy build to play. I do think they need to nerf it but I haven’t decided which part of it should be nerfed.

So I don’t agree with blocks and evades punishing you but I see where you are coming from. But I totally agree there is no skill involved in D/P and something needs to be done about it.

what’s the point of nerfing thief build and some other ones which can be countered if you will use your Brain? /no offence, not directed at you anyway

D/P is an easy build but doesn’t mean it’s flawless and it can be countered by any class.
Problem lies within players and lack of creativity. Mostly works this way:
- if someone beats me up all the time with certain build, it means it’s too OP – wtb nerf.

I’m saying that because I have seen it in lot of games and it always did end up with never ending nerfs on that class – already have seen NCSoft doing that, outcome was horrible.

D/D build with CnD properly used is OP as well – how much does it take to learn how it works and prepare for a counter?

Well, I’ll quote a some admin from other MMO:
- Let’s make everyone have 1 HP and 1 MP and let them pvp – fair and square.

Alex Behemoth.4952:

Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails on these attempts he can still keep on trying without any consequences.

Next is blind field plus leap. Problem is that as the thief leaps into and enemy and hits the player this does not break stealth. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why this is bad.

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I don’t get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then it must be true.

So it’s ok for Mesmer clones to do all the work while the Mesmer themselves is in stealth, but its not ok for a thief to retain stealth for being blocked?

NinjaEd.3946:

So it’s ok for Mesmer clones to do all the work while the Mesmer themselves is in stealth, but its not ok for a thief to retain stealth for being blocked?

Yes.

Alex Behemoth.4952:

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I will get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then they must step up their game and improve

Fixed it for you. Nice try though.

Also, fun fact: the people who are complaining are only (bad) WvWers, as almost no one in PvP is complaining about stealth thieves.

why should block on invisibility break stealth? the idea is bad in and of itself!

u stand still. press block/aegis/inv and then you get automatic reveal on enemy? thats not rewarding good gameplay thats rewarding 1 click win buttons. get real and L2p

hihey.1075:

Alex Behemoth.4952:

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I will get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then they must step up their game and improve

Fixed it for you. Nice try though.

Also, fun fact: the people who are complaining are only (bad) WvWers, as almost no one in PvP is complaining about stealth thieves.

really good point. cant realy play stealth well bc of 4 sec revealed in pvp. i think its way too long. they should have put thieves in medium HP range. not lowest.

I’m glad that I got the responses I got and people did not just put get better or learn to play.

Like I said this issue is an issue in WvW as the amount of damage is huge and the defense you can have from stealth is also the best. Not to say that it doesn’t require skill to be good. But I think there is no punishment for missing backstab. Some people don’t see it that way.

But here is an example. Thief get shadow of refuge. 12-15 secs of invisibility. The person knows the thief is out to backstab. So he dodges and evades the backstab. He dodges again and evades it again. He blocks it and prevents the backstab. Most blocks with counters don’t hurt thieves on backstabs since its not facing them. He uses aegis preventing the backstab again. He then evades again. And after he has exhausted his damage prevention. He gets backstabbed as the thief still had 3 more seconds of invisibility. His damage drops to 1/3 if he is tanky at all. He gets hit by 5 then invisi leap and damage 2. His health is close to 1/2 and now he has to worry about backstab again.

Yes there is counters such as area attacks. But those are defensive and require the thief to knowingly step in the areas. Which any good thief will not do.

Lets see how it would work if the enemy broke stealth on block or evade. Thief goes shadow of refuge and is going to try and backstab the enemy. He sees the enemy blocking so he better wait till the blocking is finished. Thief sees aegis so be should have hit it with the bow before going stealth. Thief know that the enemy will try to evade at a certain time mark after he went invisible so he should try and backstab either before or after. Basically adding more thinking into the game. Which is always good. Now if damage of skills need to be changed to reflect the added challenge that is fine. But the mechanics should involve thinking not just same repeated patterns that work regardless.

I don’t play thief. But I have been trying it on PvP. Using the patterns I pointed out work pretty well. Of course I get owned by experience thieves. But do well against other classes.

Tao.5096:

what’s the point of nerfing thief build and some other ones which can be countered if you will use your Brain? /no offence, not directed at you anyway

D/P is an easy build but doesn’t mean it’s flawless and it can be countered by any class.
Problem lies within players and lack of creativity. Mostly works this way:
- if someone beats me up all the time with certain build, it means it’s too OP – wtb nerf.

I’m saying that because I have seen it in lot of games and it always did end up with never ending nerfs on that class – already have seen NCSoft doing that, outcome was horrible.

D/D build with CnD properly used is OP as well – how much does it take to learn how it works and prepare for a counter?

Well, I’ll quote a some admin from other MMO:
- Let’s make everyone have 1 HP and 1 MP and let them pvp – fair and square.

D/P is not flawless, you are right buts its close. D/P has almost all of the benefits of running D/D without many of the disadvantages. Does D/P have counters? Sure you can interrupt them but what else can you do? Please tell me I’d love to know more, I don’t have a brain :O

An OP class IMO is a class that either does not have a counter or is countered by a small number of builds that are either not viable or not used. I could easily destroy any build/class in the game if i was built for it! But the problem is that you can’t be build to counter every build in this game. Thus OP builds need to be nerfed so that more classes can counter them or builds that don’t counter them can still win if tactic and skill is used.

Nothing is worse then a good player losing to a player of lesser skill because of the builds being used.

Also D/D OP if used well? Thats not OP, that’s called knowing the class and build very well and know how to play off of advantages. D/D is far from being OP since stealth relies on actually hitting the target which can be countered by blinds, evades, blocks, etc.

P.S. /No offense still means offense

Someone explained fine how it should broke the thief class if we get revelead by miss an attack from stealth his pseudo start by a O.. can’t remember

“Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails "

Of course it matter!! if you block its writted ’block" near your character, if you evade "it writed “evade” near you character and same for blind

It matter that YOU KNOW THE THIEF IS NEAR YOU, and you can be free for AA, melee skill etc that while hurt him ….

Azawrath.7304:

Does D/P have counters?

The critical counters: You can interrupt the Heartseeker. You can use aoe ranged attacks on the circle or yourself as a defensive measure – thieves (at least thieves who don’t touch anything but their d/p set) hate engies for good reason. You can use skills which overload blind (clusterbomb detonate kills perma stealth thieves, as an example). Don’t stand in the blackpowder circle if you cant overload blinds. Instead, you can wait and time your attack until they heartseeker as you will know their positioning and they will be out of their blackpowder circle.

Ideally, you’re going to want to immobilize the thief as immobilize is very strong against a thief. I’ve won many fights against other d/p thieves (them being usually gimmicky permastealth) simply because the other player doesn’t even touch his shortbow stealth attack and I do. A key time to put pressure on the thief is right when they use their heal, so try and judge when they are going to use it (this is less of an option if they are using Withdraw, since it has a 15 second cd, but withdraw is suseptable to poison). Hide in Shadows can be used while in stealth to cover the long cast time of it, so be aware of this if they use blinding powder after a big hit to them and don’t pop up for a while. The better thief players (usually non-perma stealth thieves) will use their shadowstep as a movement skill. A common tactic for a thief is to blackpowder, heartseeker into a shadowstep. Once he drops out of stealth, bad players will then all chase after the thief, not recognizing the shadowstep buff on him, only to be tricked as the thief ports back. This can go on for many minutes if the group is dumb enough. The way to stop this is to make sure someone is watching the thief’s port spot as there is a white circle about the size of a blackpowder circle indicating its position.

These are what I can think off of the top of my head.

@Original Poster.

i bet you realize that less than 33% of your attempts at backstab hit backstab right?

no imagine you lose stealth everytime.

things an opponent can do:

1) walk backwards
2) dodge at 2 secs
3) aegis
4) block
5) invulnerabilty
6) stealth
7) AOE (immob,stun etc)
8) blind
9) shadowstep/blink/leaps/dashes etc
10) use walls/corners to position body
11) cripple thief/freeze thief or use swiftness so they cant catch you while stealthed
12)Sic Em
13) stealth trap
14) ground traps (ranger/thief and a few others)
15) hide inside of summons (clones/phantasms/pets/thieves/minions etc)

i can list another 10 more but i think you get the idea. some are easy some are a lil more…experienced/intelligent ways….

bottom line is a thief has to be smart and predict…then maneuever and GUESS which way is best to backstab. all this is on the players intelligence , intuition and skilled actions…. THAT SAID….TELL ME WHY….. do you think a player who sits still and presses aegis on f2 should get a thief revealed for hitting backstab on that aegis???? its so obviously a very skilled action VS. a 1button sit still with eyes closed EASY button action

did i also mention you get free hits on a thief by attacking why they are in stealth? i mean… as you say… YOU KNOW they are coming for backstab. . .

Travlane.5948:

hihey.1075:

Alex Behemoth.4952:

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I will get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then they must step up their game and improve

Fixed it for you. Nice try though.

Also, fun fact: the people who are complaining are only (bad) WvWers, as almost no one in PvP is complaining about stealth thieves.

really good point. cant realy play stealth well bc of 4 sec revealed in pvp. i think its way too long. they should have put thieves in medium HP range. not lowest.

I won’t speak about the Reveal debuff being longer in sPvP, but what I say is this:
PvP players (hence those who know how to play, to an extent at least) already know how to counter a D/P thief.
Bad WvWers don’t. And the difference is, in PvP you MUST overcome the difficulties you are facing in order to win. In WvW, you just tell your buddies “heh, stealth op” and come to the forums asking for nerfs.

Azawrath.7304:

Tao.5096:

what’s the point of nerfing thief build and some other ones which can be countered if you will use your Brain? /no offence, not directed at you anyway

D/P is an easy build but doesn’t mean it’s flawless and it can be countered by any class.
Problem lies within players and lack of creativity. Mostly works this way:
- if someone beats me up all the time with certain build, it means it’s too OP – wtb nerf.

I’m saying that because I have seen it in lot of games and it always did end up with never ending nerfs on that class – already have seen NCSoft doing that, outcome was horrible.

D/D build with CnD properly used is OP as well – how much does it take to learn how it works and prepare for a counter?

Well, I’ll quote a some admin from other MMO:
- Let’s make everyone have 1 HP and 1 MP and let them pvp – fair and square.

D/P is not flawless, you are right buts its close. D/P has almost all of the benefits of running D/D without many of the disadvantages. Does D/P have counters? Sure you can interrupt them but what else can you do? Please tell me I’d love to know more, I don’t have a brain :O

An OP class IMO is a class that either does not have a counter or is countered by a small number of builds that are either not viable or not used. I could easily destroy any build/class in the game if i was built for it! But the problem is that you can’t be build to counter every build in this game. Thus OP builds need to be nerfed so that more classes can counter them or builds that don’t counter them can still win if tactic and skill is used.

Nothing is worse then a good player losing to a player of lesser skill because of the builds being used.

Also D/D OP if used well? Thats not OP, that’s called knowing the class and build very well and know how to play off of advantages. D/D is far from being OP since stealth relies on actually hitting the target which can be countered by blinds, evades, blocks, etc.

P.S. /No offense still means offense

Classes that counter D/P thieves in a 1v1:
-Nade/bomb engis
-Hammer Warriors
-D/D eles (assuming the thief is actually dueling and not just trolling)
-PU mesmers (arguable)
-Zerk Guardians
-Condi Necros

Of course, you have to know your class and know how D/P works in order to beat them.

hihey.1075:

Classes that counter D/P thieves in a 1v1:
-Nade/bomb engis
-Hammer Warriors
-D/D eles (assuming the thief is actually dueling and not just trolling)
-PU mesmers (arguable)
-Zerk Guardians
-Condi Necros

Of course, you have to know your class and know how D/P works in order to beat them.

The majority of these classes counter a brain dead D/P thief. A D/P thief with any skill with perma stealth outside of the Engis AoE and come in for a backstab, run away and stealth. Rinse and repeat.

Hammer Warriors could be a counter but their attacks are very telegraphed and they require to be in melee range which can be a problem with pistol #5.

D/D eles I could actually see being a counter with all of the AoE they have but then again a D/P thief can just stealth until the Ele stops. Just like the Engi.

I would have to say that PU mesmers are not a counter since a D/P thief can perma stealth and completely avoid condis and clones.

Zerk Guardians. I assume you mean the ones that teleport every where and blind constantly. I don’t really see how (maybe you can enlighten me) since blinds really do not affect D/P thieves.

And lastly condi necros. Condis hurt every class and this could be a counter if you can put enough condis on the thief before he stealth.

If anything almost all of these builds/classes are counters to D/D thief. The trend with these classes/builds are they have very high AoE and usually blinds and blocks. Most D/D thieves will get shredded if they stay in range of these classes to try and stealth. The problem is that D/P does not need to be in range of these classes to stealth and then can backstab, run and stealth. Rinse and repeat.

Tonight I dueled a D/P thief many many many times. Lost every time. Not ashamed to admit it. The thing was that I switched to D/P from D/D, and I haven’t used D/P in 4 months. And I won.
It just shows that the thief I dueled did not have as much skill as I did and the second I made the playing field more even I won. Just goes to show that D/P is super easy mode.

hihey.1075:

Travlane.5948:

hihey.1075:

Alex Behemoth.4952:

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I will get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then they must step up their game and improve

Fixed it for you. Nice try though.

Also, fun fact: the people who are complaining are only (bad) WvWers, as almost no one in PvP is complaining about stealth thieves.

really good point. cant realy play stealth well bc of 4 sec revealed in pvp. i think its way too long. they should have put thieves in medium HP range. not lowest.

I won’t speak about the Reveal debuff being longer in sPvP, but what I say is this:
PvP players (hence those who know how to play, to an extent at least) already know how to counter a D/P thief.
Bad WvWers don’t. And the difference is, in PvP you MUST overcome the difficulties you are facing in order to win. In WvW, you just tell your buddies “heh, stealth op” and come to the forums asking for nerfs.

This post isn’t making sense to me. So you are saying that PvP players know how to kill D/P thieves. I’m kinda confused but comparing fighting a D/P thief in Spvp and a D/P in WvW are two completely different things. First off, the builds are different. Spvp D/P thieves have less damage and +1 second revealed. Facing a stealth based thief that has to stay out of stealth for an additional second is game changing. The problem with the 3 second revealed is that you can dodge once able to stealth up again while 4 seconds still gives you a chance to deal damage.

hihey.1075:

Alex Behemoth.4952:

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I will get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then they must step up their game and improve

Fixed it for you. Nice try though.

Also, fun fact: the people who are complaining are only (bad) WvWers, as almost no one in PvP is complaining about stealth thieves.

Thieves in PvP also got several nerfs exclusive to that mode, including an extra second on reveal and a damage nerf on Backstab.

How do you block something you don’t see?

In all seriousness, it seems bizarre to me that you could even block a stealth attack.
Given the glass cannon nature of thief, I would have thought this would be an auto hit.

If I were to have an issue with the class, this isn’kitten
You very much are supposed to lose a LOT of your HP on the thief opening attack.

Mind you, that may just put you even with the very low HP pool of the thief.

Then why doesn’t stealth break when you hit a thief?

That seems even more ridiculous. It’s not even stealth, it’s just invisibility.

Stealth is pretty short, especially d/p one, as it isn’t affected by trait. Blocking backstab DOES punish thief – it buys you time, often resulting* in thief running out of stealth.

*…but yeah, sadly there is a little “l2p” problem. To “punish” thief this way you need to notice that you blocked him and simply turn 180 degrees, so he either wastes BS on facestab and gets revealed, or runs out of stealth trying to flank you again.

Azawrath.7304:

hihey.1075:

Classes that counter D/P thieves in a 1v1:
-Nade/bomb engis
-Hammer Warriors
-D/D eles (assuming the thief is actually dueling and not just trolling)
-PU mesmers (arguable)
-Zerk Guardians
-Condi Necros

Of course, you have to know your class and know how D/P works in order to beat them.

The majority of these classes counter a brain dead D/P thief. A D/P thief with any skill with perma stealth outside of the Engis AoE and come in for a backstab, run away and stealth. Rinse and repeat.

Hammer Warriors could be a counter but their attacks are very telegraphed and they require to be in melee range which can be a problem with pistol #5.

D/D eles I could actually see being a counter with all of the AoE they have but then again a D/P thief can just stealth until the Ele stops. Just like the Engi.

I would have to say that PU mesmers are not a counter since a D/P thief can perma stealth and completely avoid condis and clones.

Zerk Guardians. I assume you mean the ones that teleport every where and blind constantly. I don’t really see how (maybe you can enlighten me) since blinds really do not affect D/P thieves.

And lastly condi necros. Condis hurt every class and this could be a counter if you can put enough condis on the thief before he stealth.

About engis: a Engi with any skill will not have any problem in using his blocks and Invulns to avoid being backstabbed if he sees the thief avoiding his AoE. Plus, while Shadow Embrace is a good trait for condi removal, the condis put out by a nade engis are usually too many to only rely on SE for cleansing. Also, the Engi has so many interrupt skills that the thief will have a hard time against a good one. I suck as engi and made one just to understand how they work, and guess what, I melt D/P thieves.

About warriors: Their attacks are telegraphed but a D/P does not have any source of Vigor. The only way he could mitigate damage is with blinds, against which Warriors have zerker stance. Also, using hammerstun near the BP field will force a dodge from the thief, making him waste half of his Ini pool. Not to mention the #4 skill insta-aoe knockback, the #3 cripple (usually an immob) and #2 weakness are all great against D/P.

PU mesmers are a counter because if the thief is stealthed to cleanse their condis the thief will not do any damage.

Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.

Condi Necros have an istant interrupt with Doom. Again, I suck at necro but I kill so many D/P thieves with it that it’s extremely fun.

The only easy thing about D/P is chaining stealth and saying “hey look i’m stealthed you can’t kill me trolololol”. A good player will crush a D/P, period.

Alex/OP, what is your favorite class? Unless it’s ranger, I can list 4 or 5 reasons why it needs nerfed.

I’ll +1 hihey xD

D/P sure is an easy mode and very effective, for both damage wise and survival.
But let’s face it, it’s also a very good build vs kiting opponents like necros.
I did personally learn to not be Backstab dependent since I’ve noticed there are loads of players who know how to counter it.

//not counting Steal +BS since it’s hilariously easy.

Alex Behemoth.4952:

I’m glad that I got the responses I got and people did not just put get better or learn to play.

Like I said this issue is an issue in WvW as the amount of damage is huge and the defense you can have from stealth is also the best. Not to say that it doesn’t require skill to be good. But I think there is no punishment for missing backstab. Some people don’t see it that way.

But here is an example. Thief get shadow of refuge. 12-15 secs of invisibility. The person knows the thief is out to backstab. So he dodges and evades the backstab. He dodges again and evades it again. He blocks it and prevents the backstab. Most blocks with counters don’t hurt thieves on backstabs since its not facing them. He uses aegis preventing the backstab again. He then evades again. And after he has exhausted his damage prevention. He gets backstabbed as the thief still had 3 more seconds of invisibility. His damage drops to 1/3 if he is tanky at all. He gets hit by 5 then invisi leap and damage 2. His health is close to 1/2 and now he has to worry about backstab again.

Yes there is counters such as area attacks. But those are defensive and require the thief to knowingly step in the areas. Which any good thief will not do.

Lets see how it would work if the enemy broke stealth on block or evade. Thief goes shadow of refuge and is going to try and backstab the enemy. He sees the enemy blocking so he better wait till the blocking is finished. Thief sees aegis so be should have hit it with the bow before going stealth. Thief know that the enemy will try to evade at a certain time mark after he went invisible so he should try and backstab either before or after. Basically adding more thinking into the game. Which is always good. Now if damage of skills need to be changed to reflect the added challenge that is fine. But the mechanics should involve thinking not just same repeated patterns that work regardless.

I don’t play thief. But I have been trying it on PvP. Using the patterns I pointed out work pretty well. Of course I get owned by experience thieves. But do well against other classes.

Here’s a secret for you then~ Actually when this happens and you get a Thief to Shadow Refuge in a fight you actually will have the advantage here because he just threw himself into a cage he can’t leave. Shadow Refuge is a false sense of stealth since it tells the enemy exactly where you are. AoE the Refuge, use a knockback or just AA all over the place and you’ll most likely force him to reveal himself early or kill him. The moment the Thief steps out of Refuge’s ring he’ll be revealed whether he attacks or not~ so it won’t matter how many time he fails his backstab when you got so many free fist throws and will still have your block on. I’ve killed countless caged Thieves this way. Some may use Refuge as a distraction and Shadowstep out of it instead since it’s dangerous to use this way against smart players but you’d notice if you’re paying attention.

hihey.1075:

About engis: a Engi with any skill will not have any problem in using his blocks and Invulns to avoid being backstabbed if he sees the thief avoiding his AoE. Plus, while Shadow Embrace is a good trait for condi removal, the condis put out by a nade engis are usually too many to only rely on SE for cleansing. Also, the Engi has so many interrupt skills that the thief will have a hard time against a good one. I suck as engi and made one just to understand how they work, and guess what, I melt D/P thieves.

About warriors: Their attacks are telegraphed but a D/P does not have any source of Vigor. The only way he could mitigate damage is with blinds, against which Warriors have zerker stance. Also, using hammerstun near the BP field will force a dodge from the thief, making him waste half of his Ini pool. Not to mention the #4 skill insta-aoe knockback, the #3 cripple (usually an immob) and #2 weakness are all great against D/P.

PU mesmers are a counter because if the thief is stealthed to cleanse their condis the thief will not do any damage.

Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.

Condi Necros have an istant interrupt with Doom. Again, I suck at necro but I kill so many D/P thieves with it that it’s extremely fun.

The only easy thing about D/P is chaining stealth and saying “hey look i’m stealthed you can’t kill me trolololol”. A good player will crush a D/P, period.

A D/P thief can perma stealth. Last time I checked engis do not have perma invuls so eventually the thief will get the backstabs. A thief with a brain isn’t going to stay in the AoE of the engi so there won’t be a lot of conditions to remove. And lastly if the engi wants to interrupt the thief usually they have to see them unless they are using a AoE stun.

For warrior. Now all thieves run the standard 10/30/30/0/0 so there is a chance they are running vigor traits. Secondly for a thief, stealth is a great damage migration tool (Pro Tip) Also the warrior can be stunned to prevent a combo attack or the thief can blind. Berserker stance is only a 8 second skill on a 60 second CD, gives plenty of time for the warrior to be blinded. The problem with D/P is that it is a very very forgiving build to play. So even if the thief gets stunned or immob it really doesn’t matter because they can just perma stealth and regen up to full (The warrior might also be regenerate but it was by the thief’s choice, not the warrior.) And weakness can be removed in stealth before he backstabs.

For PU mesmer: If I recall correctly, PU mesmers really only have bleeds, torment, and confusion, and maybe some others like burning but it doesn’t happen very often. Since they rely on mainly 3 conditions its very easy for a thief to either use Hide in Shadows which will remove the burning, bleed, poison, and another condition. Now they are cleansed and ready to strike again.

“Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.”
Umm haha? I really don’t see how D/P affect by blinds. Their stealth is not hit based so blinds don’t affect it. And if they need to backstab, they miss once and can just stab again since they don’t unstealth. Hence one of the reasons for the OP’s post.

Excuse my asking, but when you evade a back stab it doesn’t break their stealth but it does show the works “evade” very clearly. Does this also apply to “miss” from blind? Cuz if so, then blind does in fact counter d/p thief backstab because the enemy will then see where the enemy is (behind them….).

I don’t see Azarath’s counter to condi engi to be at all plausible. You can’t avoid the aoe’s forever. A smart thief will avoid aoe’s, but a smart engi will know where to put them. It works both ways, you can’t avoid the condi spam from engi especially for 1 condi every 3 seconds. Even still, condi engi aren’t squishy so even if you manage to get a backstab off, you won’t kill them. Spam hs and you’re likely dead by then (1. for being a fool, 2. for being new). Can you put a dent in them? Absolutly, but again smart engi can outlast any d/p thief with their amount of heals/evasions. It’s even more apparent in pvp, where condi engi is absolutely insane and power thief is meh except against other glass builds, which seem to be in small numbers these days.

Azawrath.7304:

hihey.1075:

About engis: a Engi with any skill will not have any problem in using his blocks and Invulns to avoid being backstabbed if he sees the thief avoiding his AoE. Plus, while Shadow Embrace is a good trait for condi removal, the condis put out by a nade engis are usually too many to only rely on SE for cleansing. Also, the Engi has so many interrupt skills that the thief will have a hard time against a good one. I suck as engi and made one just to understand how they work, and guess what, I melt D/P thieves.

About warriors: Their attacks are telegraphed but a D/P does not have any source of Vigor. The only way he could mitigate damage is with blinds, against which Warriors have zerker stance. Also, using hammerstun near the BP field will force a dodge from the thief, making him waste half of his Ini pool. Not to mention the #4 skill insta-aoe knockback, the #3 cripple (usually an immob) and #2 weakness are all great against D/P.

PU mesmers are a counter because if the thief is stealthed to cleanse their condis the thief will not do any damage.

Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.

Condi Necros have an istant interrupt with Doom. Again, I suck at necro but I kill so many D/P thieves with it that it’s extremely fun.

The only easy thing about D/P is chaining stealth and saying “hey look i’m stealthed you can’t kill me trolololol”. A good player will crush a D/P, period.

A D/P thief can perma stealth. Last time I checked engis do not have perma invuls so eventually the thief will get the backstabs. A thief with a brain isn’t going to stay in the AoE of the engi so there won’t be a lot of conditions to remove. And lastly if the engi wants to interrupt the thief usually they have to see them unless they are using a AoE stun.

For warrior. Now all thieves run the standard 10/30/30/0/0 so there is a chance they are running vigor traits. Secondly for a thief, stealth is a great damage migration tool (Pro Tip) Also the warrior can be stunned to prevent a combo attack or the thief can blind. Berserker stance is only a 8 second skill on a 60 second CD, gives plenty of time for the warrior to be blinded. The problem with D/P is that it is a very very forgiving build to play. So even if the thief gets stunned or immob it really doesn’t matter because they can just perma stealth and regen up to full (The warrior might also be regenerate but it was by the thief’s choice, not the warrior.) And weakness can be removed in stealth before he backstabs.

For PU mesmer: If I recall correctly, PU mesmers really only have bleeds, torment, and confusion, and maybe some others like burning but it doesn’t happen very often. Since they rely on mainly 3 conditions its very easy for a thief to either use Hide in Shadows which will remove the burning, bleed, poison, and another condition. Now they are cleansed and ready to strike again.

“Blinds not affecting D/P thieves is the most fun statement I’ve read in this thread.”
Umm haha? I really don’t see how D/P affect by blinds. Their stealth is not hit based so blinds don’t affect it. And if they need to backstab, they miss once and can just stab again since they don’t unstealth. Hence one of the reasons for the OP’s post.

10/30/30/0/0 build thief has no access to vigor. Your point of view is WvWvW i presume. Someday you will learn that d/p thief is the most difficult class to master in this game on pvp level. Thief is very weak against condies compare to other classes. Everything you said is so wrong … And PU mesmer which is banned on most 1v1 server? Where did you come from buddy?

NinjaEd.3946:

Excuse my asking, but when you evade a back stab it doesn’t break their stealth but it does show the works “evade” very clearly. Does this also apply to “miss” from blind? Cuz if so, then blind does in fact counter d/p thief backstab because the enemy will then see where the enemy is (behind them….).

I don’t see Azarath’s counter to condi engi to be at all plausible. You can’t avoid the aoe’s forever. A smart thief will avoid aoe’s, but a smart engi will know where to put them. It works both ways, you can’t avoid the condi spam from engi especially for 1 condi every 3 seconds. Even still, condi engi aren’t squishy so even if you manage to get a backstab off, you won’t kill them. Spam hs and you’re likely dead by then (1. for being a fool, 2. for being new). Can you put a dent in them? Absolutly, but again smart engi can outlast any d/p thief with their amount of heals/evasions. It’s even more apparent in pvp, where condi engi is absolutely insane and power thief is meh except against other glass builds, which seem to be in small numbers these days.

First off, I am pretty sure that if a thief is blind it will not say “Miss” the way it says “evaded” for the enemy.
I think we have a different definition of “countering”. Because a blind on a D/P is not a counter in any way, its merely an inconvenience. Countering is when it completely messes you up. For instance a blind on a D/D thief it not carefully watched and taken care of can easily mean the death of the thief.

Secondly, I don’t know what D/P thieves you have been facing but they are stealthed until they backstab. So unless a engi can put AoE everywhere I don’t see how it can be done. Also most condi engis are extremely squishy. I can kill most with a D/D burst or take them past 50% health.

Third. Do not compare Spvp thief/engi to that of WvW. A thief in Spvp is totally difference class and an engi in Spvp is even more powerful then in WvW.

vrilek.4038:

10/30/30/0/0 build thief has no access to vigor. Your point of view is WvWvW i presume. Someday you will learn that d/p thief is the most difficult class to master in this game on pvp level. Thief is very weak against condies compare to other classes. Everything you said is so wrong … And PU mesmer which is banned on most 1v1 server? Where did you come from buddy?

I mistyped and i meant to say that not all thieves run 10/30/30/0/0 which means that they can have access to vigor.

Yes I’m talking about WvW.

Can’t tell if you are trolling but D/P thief is one of the easier builds in game. In any game mode in GW2. Period.

You are right, thieves are weak to conditions. Never said they weren’t. I just said that thieves have stealth as a migration to avoid getting attacked or conditions in the first place.

I originally came from Yaks Bend and then transferred to HoD. When PU mesmer first came out I was having a hard time, but I learned how they worked and used their clones against them. What makes thieves so strong is we have all the time in the world and when you realized that you will be a way better thief. I’m still working on it myself.

Maybe in dueling PU mesmers are OP because it is frowned upon to wait in stealth which is why I really don’t duel on my thief.

Also I have thought that we could be in different tiers where average skill is different, maybe we are just facing different difficulties of players which is the reason why our views are conflicting.

Azawrath.7304:

vrilek.4038:

10/30/30/0/0 build thief has no access to vigor. Your point of view is WvWvW i presume. Someday you will learn that d/p thief is the most difficult class to master in this game on pvp level. Thief is very weak against condies compare to other classes. Everything you said is so wrong … And PU mesmer which is banned on most 1v1 server? Where did you come from buddy?

I mistyped and i meant to say that not all thieves run 10/30/30/0/0 which means that they can have access to vigor.

Yes I’m talking about WvW.

Can’t tell if you are trolling but D/P thief is one of the easier builds in game. In any game mode in GW2. Period.

You are right, thieves are weak to conditions. Never said they weren’t. I just said that thieves have stealth as a migration to avoid getting attacked or conditions in the first place.

I originally came from Yaks Bend and then transferred to HoD. When PU mesmer first came out I was having a hard time, but I learned how they worked and used their clones against them. What makes thieves so strong is we have all the time in the world and when you realized that you will be a way better thief. I’m still working on it myself.

Maybe in dueling PU mesmers are OP because it is frowned upon to wait in stealth which is why I really don’t duel on my thief.

Also I have thought that we could be in different tiers where average skill is different, maybe we are just facing different difficulties of players which is the reason why our views are conflicting.

Dude im not trolling. If you are thinking WvW is pvp we are losing time seriously. Come try it you will realize thief is soo bottom tier unless you are reallllly pro d/p thief player..

In all honest I don’t Spvp on my thief a lot. Come to think of it I rarely do Spvp to begin with. I don’t know the state of thieves in PvP but apparently it is a lot worse then WvW. Sorry for wasting your time.

vrilek.4038:

Dude im not trolling. If you are thinking WvW is pvp we are losing time seriously. Come try it you will realize thief is soo bottom tier unless you are reallllly pro d/p thief player..

You mean sPvP, the game mode that leads to 90% of the unnecessary nerfs across the board in this game? The game mode everybody curses because it destroys class balance everywhere else whenever something is buffed/nerfed due to it?

vrilek.4038:

Azawrath.7304:

vrilek.4038:

10/30/30/0/0 build thief has no access to vigor. Your point of view is WvWvW i presume. Someday you will learn that d/p thief is the most difficult class to master in this game on pvp level. Thief is very weak against condies compare to other classes. Everything you said is so wrong … And PU mesmer which is banned on most 1v1 server? Where did you come from buddy?

I mistyped and i meant to say that not all thieves run 10/30/30/0/0 which means that they can have access to vigor.

Yes I’m talking about WvW.

Can’t tell if you are trolling but D/P thief is one of the easier builds in game. In any game mode in GW2. Period.

You are right, thieves are weak to conditions. Never said they weren’t. I just said that thieves have stealth as a migration to avoid getting attacked or conditions in the first place.

I originally came from Yaks Bend and then transferred to HoD. When PU mesmer first came out I was having a hard time, but I learned how they worked and used their clones against them. What makes thieves so strong is we have all the time in the world and when you realized that you will be a way better thief. I’m still working on it myself.

Maybe in dueling PU mesmers are OP because it is frowned upon to wait in stealth which is why I really don’t duel on my thief.

Also I have thought that we could be in different tiers where average skill is different, maybe we are just facing different difficulties of players which is the reason why our views are conflicting.

Dude im not trolling. If you are thinking WvW is pvp we are losing time seriously. Come try it you will realize thief is soo bottom tier unless you are reallllly pro d/p thief player..

this is VERY true. stealth in PVP is bad. very bad. 4 sec revealed is also VERY bad. now that said let me also point out that thieves have to go condi andbunker. if they go direct dmg they are at the mercy of other classes.

put it this way 0 0 30 10 30….full zerk warrior….23k hp….high toughness…high hp high armor… high healing high condi cleanse high dmg and eveyrthing else too.

10 30 30 0 0 thief full zerk = medicore healing…..decently high dmg but inconsistent….10.8k hp (this alone says we should do double dmg over warriors persay in a math perspective) medicore condi cleanse (1 trait basically) low toughness low armor .

but the REAL bias is this…… 66% crit dmg cap. who does thishurt more on these builds? obv the thief is VERY reliant on dmg….. the warrior has good defense healing and condi cleanse so a lil hit wont affecth im overall very much…… this crushes thethief tho bc he cant just go bonkers and drop 3-4 attacks in a row and get a guy to 25%.

SPVP is biased against thief bcof the nerfs and crit dmg cap. thief is low tier spvp player by far.

Going to have to state that due to Aegis’s availability and high uptime I don’t think adding in revealed is a good idea. It’s already the single best hard counter to stab builds in the game, especially when you look at D/D.

D/P is a problem build as mentioned above due to the fact it can stealth on its own without needing CnD. Its abundant blind access and extremely easy stealth access make the build simply better than most of the other build combinations. D/D is very much a fair build for it’s countered almost exclusively by player skill and timing disregarding aegis spam, whereas D/P finds a lot more loopholes while still maintaining said damage throughput and added CC/blindness.

As someone mentioned, balancing these two builds is difficult due to the weapon skill mechanics. Hard to nerf the strong build and not nerf the fair one.

phaeris.7604:

Then why doesn’t stealth break when you hit a thief?

That seems even more ridiculous. It’s not even stealth, it’s just invisibility.

You can’t really compare gw2 stealth with other game. Although I do prefer other games stealth, but those will have extra buff with it such as 50% evades etc. But in gw2, we don’t have that. You just go invisible, nothing more nothing less. That being said, making stealth to be broken when you get hit in gw2 is not really a good idea.

RyuDragnier.9476:

vrilek.4038:

Dude im not trolling. If you are thinking WvW is pvp we are losing time seriously. Come try it you will realize thief is soo bottom tier unless you are reallllly pro d/p thief player..

You mean sPvP, the game mode that leads to 90% of the unnecessary nerfs across the board in this game? The game mode everybody curses because it destroys class balance everywhere else whenever something is buffed/nerfed due to it?

Its more balanced because you can’t get outrageous stat values in there or exclusive food buffs like passive vigor-like substitutes or power on kill. I wouldn’t go as far to say pvp IS balanced atm but it is much easier to handle than walking through wvw knowing people have 120%+ crit dmg or 2k condi dmg. They receive nerfs in there because some meta’s became far to strong or were simply destroying build diversity (why play with a water gun when you can get a 12 gauge?).

Can only wait and see for the upcoming march patch. We’re expecting new amulet choices/stat grouping, reworked runes/sigils, double sigils on 2h weapons, and various class balances. It’s too early to say if any of those “balances” are just flat nerfs, but the rune rework definitely sounds promising.

Where was this thread 8 months ago when this wasn’t a beaten dead horse?! Oh right, it’s older brother was saying the exact same thing.

Typical of most gamers, who fail to see how their suggestions are one-dimensional, this would end up causing a ripple affect that would affect (nerf) multiple classes. Aegis duration would have to be nerfed significantly (1-5 sec duration) to balance this, and that would just upset everybody.

deepwinter.9015:

Typical of most gamers, who fail to see how their suggestions are one-dimensional, this would end up causing a ripple affect that would affect (nerf) multiple classes. Aegis duration would have to be nerfed significantly (1-5 sec duration) to balance this, and that would just upset everybody.

good point. prolly much less than 5 sec. 2-3 secs max

Alex Behemoth.4952:

Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails on these attempts he can still keep on trying without any consequences.

Next is blind field plus leap. Problem is that as the thief leaps into and enemy and hits the player this does not break stealth. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why this is bad.

This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I don’t get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then it must be true.

Ok, you lose the ability to Magically block some guy who is stealthed BEHIND you, and I’ll give up my retries while stealthed.