Guild Wars 2

“So yes, a thief, when playing defensively, can nearly perma-stealth.”

Yes, as long as they never attack you, in which case you don’t need to worry about them because they are taking themselves out of the fight by not contributing to it. Attacking breaks Stealth, regardless of the duration of the Stealth boon remaining. This is a simple concept.

“Dodge roll in which direction? What if he is running away because he is on low health? How can you know that D/D thief is using Stealth offensively to get behind you and not defensively? Those you are proposing are only speculation, not actual counters.”

Did you even read what was typed? Because you’re only projecting more hyperbole to defend your opinion.
Of course it’s speculation, I’m not going to play your class for you, and it’d be a boring game if Anet designed it that way. These are hypothetical examples based on experience I have fighting other Thieves (i.e. Thieves do fight other Thieves, we don’t just sit there and stare at each others’ Stealthing effects) most Thief players are lulled into a sense of security in Stealth because of bad players who sit around when they lose the target lock and wait to get hit.
Stealth is purely a defensive mechanic, so all Thieves will either use Stealth to set up an attack (negating it’s defensive benefits, IMMEDIATELY), which prevents re-Stealth for 3 seconds, or sit in Stealth the full 4s and try to regen HP, drop conditions, regen initiative.
(Which are all defensive in nature, if he isn’t attacking he’s, what? Right! Defending!)

“Swiftness isn’t the only source of IMS. There is the passive signet plus some traits. Also, swiftness can be applied while in stealth (just a dodge) and, you know, you can’t see boons of a stealthed entity. Again, yours is only pure speculation.”

Clearly you’ve never played a Thief to any great length or you would notice that the passive effect of Signet of Shadows drops in combat. Meaning the Thief is no longer moving 25% faster. This and Fleet Shadow are the ONLY passive movement speed increases the Thief has access to.

Secondly, you’d have to be a piss-poor player to not be able to pressure a Thief enough while he’s Revealed not to force at least 2 dodge rolls. We only get 3 in a row with Feline Grace, and the Swiftness granted from Expeditious Dodger only lasts 2.6s if the Thief is 30 Acrobatics. Again, your reply denotes a serious misunderstanding of the capabilities of the Thief and I’m beginning to suspect intentional exaggeration on your behalf.

“Again, I see only speculations here. They can slot both traits, they aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Yeah, ArenaNet sure should nerf those 150 point Trait builds. Or do you know of a build that maintains the levels of burst damage you claim while retaining both Mug & 30 Critical + 30 Shadow & Fleet Shadow (that’d be 80 Trait points right there).

You “see only speculations” because that’s all you want to see. You are willfully remaining ignorant of FACT and trying to supplant objective reality on the issue with your own, subjective and narrow understanding of the Thief as a class.

“You don’t get the point.
Look at the suggestions you gave. Those need an huge amount of attention to be put on just one entity to counter a broken mechanic in order to have just an unsure chance to counter it.”

The problem isn’t my suggestions or the tactics I employ to counter Thieves myself the problem is a spoiled and entitled playerbase that are largely refusing to truly analyze and assess GW2’s class capabilities and develop effective counters to the one dimensional threat the Thief poses.

“You can’t afford to put all this attention to one enemy without ignoring the others, that’s the point.”

And your insistence to hold this argument as valid is getting you killed.
Prioritize your targets by threat-level. If you’ve had any experience in any competitive environment, you’d already intuitively understand this process. I’m having a hard time believing that you are refusing to accept this as true.

The Thief is two things:
High-end damage dealer.
Very squishy.

That makes them the Rattler at your feet.
Call target and stomp that Thief ASAP, because allowing yourself to get distracted by those other people over there is all the window a decent Thief needs to make you drop.