Guild Wars 2

Taril.8619:

Only a 20% chance for that +1 initiative on crit, and it’s 1 initiative per 1.33 seconds.

20% chance is pretty high. 1.33 is roughly 1 sec. (As I did said).

It’s actually relatively easy for most people to burst down GC thieves. Heck, in my GC builds with 14k health and additional toughness from traits and such I can go 100-0% health from a single Illusionary Berserker from a Mesmer, other classes can do other burst like this and of course there’s little need to actually 1-2 shot the thief since even if they go stealth they can still take damage (If a class uses a cripple/chill/immobilize/knockdown/knockback/stun/daze before they go stealth then it should be a guarenteed win from that class)

Considering you to expect people to dodge a C&D’s halved cast with steal, Zerker Phantasm’s summoning and the whirl should be the among slowest things on the world. :\
Honestly tho, even a full whirl hardly can shot you down, unless you were running in the same direction of the phantasm. I was never 1-2 shot in pvp (all classes can spike me down quite easily, but only when I don’t have the stunbreaker[Shadowstep/RfI] on) , and I just have some extra vitality instead of a pure zerk. Also eating plasm from mesmers gives you stability and protection as well.

You know that HiS is a 30 second cooldown right? If they use it twice in a fight while being focused on (With 10k health and no defence, only some regen and heals from HiS) it doesn’t mean it’s a Thief problem, rather a playing against a thief problem.

Which is why thieves use it exclusively to escape. No thief would use it twice unless he has a perfect distance control over the other class, he’d rather run away, try to lure the enemy to himself and then retry the combo with HiS recharged.

-Cough- Shatter Mesmer -Cough-
Also Rifle Warrior (As I showed the math for, dealing more damage than a Ascended geared thief does in 2 skills while in just exotics)
100nades also had this (Though that got nerfed)

This is seriosly WRONG.
Mesmer with sword needs you to be in range 600 (not mentioning that if you fight on an inclined surface the clone won’t even reach you) in order to do that, and he doesn’t shadowstep instantly, he spawns an obvious clone leaping on you, easy to dodge, and even if you get caught because your endurance is more more important, you are not stunned, just immobilized, and especially thieves can use shortbow’s 3 to evade all the shatter and the sword combo standing on the very place.
Phantasms like duelist or berserker can be very annoying if let alive, however a mesmer who has either pistol or greatsword lacks a lot defense and can be kited hard with bow and finished with D/D.
Rifle warrior is like an open book, easy interruptable, almost no defense, no CC, no distance control except for whirwind, simple breakstuns. And by the time his supposed endure pain gets back from CD you could have already landed 3 bursts with your thief.
As I said before, maths alone don’t work. If such statament was right necros should be the most requisted class for tanking in FotM (highest vitality, death shroud, protection with wells), but apparently guardians have something that necros lack.
A shatter mesmer has to spawn at least 2 illusions, get you with sword 3 within 600 range and then his combo starts.
A thief burst same amount of dmg (stun included) in 1 or 2 flat seconds with an almost nonextistant setup that cannot be interrupted.

Shirou.4862:

Phantasms like duelist or berserker can be very annoying if let alive, however a mesmer who has either pistol or greatsword lacks a lot defense and can be kited hard with bow and finished with D/D.
Rifle warrior is like an open book, easy interruptable, almost no defense, no CC, no distance control except for whirwind, simple breakstuns. And by the time his supposed endure pain gets back from CD you could have already landed 3 bursts with your thief.
As I said before, maths alone don’t work. If such statament was right necros should be the most requisted class for tanking in FotM (highest vitality, death shroud, protection with wells), but apparently guardians have something that necros lack.
A shatter mesmer has to spawn at least 2 illusions, get you with sword 3 within 600 range and then his combo starts.
A thief burst same amount of dmg (stun included) in 1 or 2 flat seconds with an almost nonextistant setup that cannot be interrupted.

You state about other lacking defense when a thief that builds for a burst thats anywhere near 1-2 second death has NO defense at all beyond the base stats.

Also who brings people to tank in FotM? And yeah guardians have all the many boon defenses and heavy armour and shield that a necromancer lacks.

You keep stating that other people have to do this and that and it inevitably ends up as needing to do LESS than the thief does even in your own arguments… and then you claim thieves can do a whole bunch of stuff on top which would require them to have 8-9 utility slots and an infinite amount of initiative (1.33 is a lot more than 1s by the way, its 1/3 longer and 20% means to guarantee that 1 initiative a second a thief has to crit 5 times a SECOND)

The fact you think the generic thief burst combo is un-interuptable/undodgeable is also something totally wrong, its perfectly interrupter and dodgeable unless you don’t see them before hand (as in they’ve come from behind you/out of a big zerg) which is the same for ANY classes burst, the fact that most people can actually hit as hard if not harder for less effort seems to be fine because they don’t get a move that makes them invisible for 3-4 seconds instead of all the many many ways they get to actually reduce incoming damage.

The only real difference between a thief burst and anyone elses burst is that a thief’s will be over in a shorter time. However to pay for that effect after that burst the thief has used up basically everything they have to do that and have the lowest defense potential in the game, they are also in a much more vulnerable position and they’ve had to work generally much harder to hit that damage potential to begin with.

A thief can be deadly but its not “risk free” its not easy, it doesn’t just happen and it comes with a massive cost. And of course its easily negated by anyone who isn’t just running a glass cannon build in multiple different ways. Because its actually very easy to shut down a thief, they tend not to appear in higher level pvp situations instead they are stuck really only being more effective than anyone else at taking out newbies and bad players that run around a zone designed for large groups by themselves. (at which point they are actually more vulnerable to getting ganked/burst down then anyone else)

Dasorine.1964:

The only real difference between a thief burst and anyone elses burst is that a thief’s will be over in a shorter time. However to pay for that effect after that burst the thief has used up basically everything they have to do that and have the lowest defense potential in the game, they are also in a much more vulnerable position and they’ve had to work generally much harder to hit that damage potential to begin with.

Yes, doing a ton of damage in the shortest time possible is whats burst is all about.

Now if by defenseless you are comparing to a AH guardian/ D/D ele, sure but they are not insta gibbing people.

Otherwise all the classes are pretty much toast if you get caught out of endurance/cds.

The Rifle warrior is instantly dead to the very first thief that spots him in this case, with zero chance of being alive in 3 seconds.

Thief needs to be a very strong damage melee class, getting to melee range is full of danger, doing more damage than ranged is a must.

The initiative system is silly, and makes the rogue too strong, then too weak. The rifle case is a wierd one too, 2 attacks on it hit super hard and the rest are super weak and all have cds.

Arena.net is not going to fix either. They are trying to balance pve/spvp, then finally wvw. A small company overloaded with committees, and frozen with indecision, problems fester for months with no communication or patches.

We will all be getting insta gibbed by stealthers with full initiaitve, and dodging 12k kill shots for another year.

The point was that the difference between the bursts are negligible even the speed of which the thieves happen isn’t all that much faster than anyone elses and of course theives weapon skills have worse cooldowns than other peoples once the initiative has spent due to the fact they can’t just swap weapons to access another lot.

Unless your against top class thieves or are running a glass cannon build then you really shouldn’t be getting insta-gibbed by a thief, its not just a roll a thief press one button and everyone dies, theres a lot of points during which the thief can be blocked, evaded, countered etc etc more so than some other classes burst, at the same time to hit that damage a thief tends to require better gear and a large prep time due to lack of stuff like proper boon access.

The fact that so many people seem the believe thieves are permanently invisible, can spam their skills endlessly, have no risk for going glass cannon and can instant kill anyone with no work what so ever is the problem because all of them are just plain false.

Dasorine.1964:

The point was that the difference between the bursts are negligible even the speed of which the thieves happen isn’t all that much faster than anyone elses and of course theives weapon skills have worse cooldowns than other peoples once the initiative has spent due to the fact they can’t just swap weapons to access another lot.

this is a 100% false statement, nothing comes close to dagger burst on a thief by a mile.

I realize no amount of reality will alter your perception, its simply a matter of the devs fixing it or fading away.

Oh totally… no one has any moves that have a higher skill coefficient, higher damage per strike or easier method of delivering that damage totally! Even though thieves have some of the lowest damage coefficients and the more difficult delivery methods

But your right! Thieves somehow manage to take those lower damage coefficients and somehow make it so they are actually 10x higher than everyone else!

Not even the examples actually posted in this thread!

Just about the only difference in speed of delivery of burst is really mug/steal combo due to its instant cast, everything else has cast and animation times and position times etc that balance it out with anyone elses burst combos

However other peoples burst combos tend to involve much higher skill coefficients, separated cooldowns allowing them to still actually attack AFTER the burst and much easier delivery systems.

Shirou.4862:

Considering you to expect people to dodge a C&D’s halved cast with steal, Zerker Phantasm’s summoning and the whirl should be the among slowest things on the world. :\

Considering when the iZerker instantly attacks when summoned, and is summoned right next to the target (Sometimes behind it so if the camera isn’t fully zoomed out it can be off the screen) it’s not unreasonable for someone to be hit by it on occasion (Especially if they were built around the target not living long enough to use abilities)

If you’re glass cannon and you don’t dodge the iZerker? A large portion of your health will be lost, add on to that weapon skills it’s pretty easy to take down a GC Thief (I know, I do it all the time)

This is seriosly WRONG.
Mesmer with sword needs you to be in range 600 (not mentioning that if you fight on an inclined surface the clone won’t even reach you) in order to do that, and he doesn’t shadowstep instantly, he spawns an obvious clone leaping on you, easy to dodge, and even if you get caught because your endurance is more more important, you are not stunned, just immobilized, and especially thieves can use shortbow’s 3 to evade all the shatter and the sword combo standing on the very place.
Phantasms like duelist or berserker can be very annoying if let alive, however a mesmer who has either pistol or greatsword lacks a lot defense and can be kited hard with bow and finished with D/D.
Rifle warrior is like an open book, easy interruptable, almost no defense, no CC, no distance control except for whirwind, simple breakstuns.

I like how you ignore all the conditional requirements a Thief burst requires (Behind the target, full initiative, 1 second cast to get Basalisk Venom on, Steal mid CnD that a single dodge will dodge both of, and then to get a Backstab off)

Also just because a Mesmer needs to be close or a Warrior can be interrupted (If he somehow lets you close 1500 range without noticing and running another 1650 range away and utilising Swiftness to mean you can only catch up the distance with Leaps and Teleports) doesn’t change the fact if you don’t dodge/shadowstep/evade at the right time, you’re going to take a full shatter/KS to the face and most likely die as a result (See – 20k+ KS that are achievable)

A thief burst same amount of dmg (stun included) in 1 or 2 flat seconds with an almost nonextistant setup that cannot be interrupted.

But it is interruptible, you can see them using Basalisk Venom and either interrupt that or go apply pressure to them (Or use it as a reference to know that their next attack will be CnD > Mug due to them needing to utilize the stun to stop people easily negating the Backstab)

You can also see them swap to Daggers while at 900 range (If they’re using SB to wait for opportunity to do the burst combo) and know that their next ability will be CnD > Mug since having daggers out at range has no other useful ranged abilities.

You can also look for the big shiny Signet usage symbol above their heads which will often be used just before the CnD > Mug combo.

Or I can say stupid things to like:

“Thief is like an open book, easy interruptible, literally no defence, no CC (Outside BV), no distance control, long cooldown breakstuns that don’t add much other utility”

Taril and daserine – agree 100%

The others just aren’t experienced enough to understand, I bet they didn’t even know engi had the highest burst ingame before the latest patch