Guild Wars 2

hmm..i admit the thiefs subforum is a very weird place to be..
Reading this topic i learned that thief has not the highest mobility in game,that thief’s burst is perfectably telegraphed and dodgeable and also that thief is the squishiest in the game with no way of building tanky and surviving. My eye even caught a post where it proposed an increase in sustain and survivability with no drawbacks and that thief in wvw is not op at all..
L-O-L!!

i dare the QQ fans to try the thief in a dungeon party and see how good and op our class really is.
dudes, you have to melee with med armor and low hp base pool, you are just 1-2 hits really, and you think is any use using stealth after the boss started to swing the weapon towards you ? no.
on boss: blind 10% effective, weakness+vuln=50% reduction just in case you didn’t knew… poison is a joke. also traps. (see mobs triggering the trap but no effects around the edges, makes you cry … and they are used for just 1 mob, the first that triggers it if goes trough middle of the rectangle)

oZii.2864:

have to make another post because I guess its on another page.

I read that your not saying that a thief shouldn’t have access to stealth and that your saying that it should be balanced.

Basically what I am saying is that if you say for instance took away cnd thieves would pretty much never be played at all.

You would have to change the entire class it wouldn’t be attractive to anyone and those that did play it would be pretty gimped. You would have to increase the base HP pool of the thief and change skills around an entire rework.

Next time your in wvw and say you run into a group of 5-10 players and your with a group of 5-10 players just watch what the thief does.

He will sit back find a target attack it try to get a kill and go back behind the front lines. He isn’t in the mix swing away etc if he is he is probably going to die or he has shadow step up to get out and then what its on a 60 sec cd. and he is back behind the front lines.

No, Thieves probably wouldn’t be played a lot for a while. But a new set of Thieves would come forward eventually. Gameplay doesn’t change much by removing Cloak and Dagger, though. The tactic is the same, you are just using movement a lot more. So instead of dealing damage, and then going into stealth to change position, you deal damage and then dodge/leap/shadow step/stealth away to change position. Basically, you wouldn’t be able to rely on using stealth every time you had to gain distance, meaning you’d have to think about when to use a dodge and when to use stealth, depending on different situations.

I don’t know that the Thief would need more base vitality, as you would still be very efficient at avoiding damage. But Thief skills in general lacks impact in the game, meaning that players feel forced into a damage roll. It has been said ever since beta, that the Thief needs more support skills, but the support options that the Thief has are still miniscule. So yeah, that is another issue besides the current stealth generation.

That is exactly how I play with my Mesmer in WvW combat. Stay back firing ranged attacks, then I find a target that’s a bit off the others, I then pull him to me using focus, or go into stealth to get close to him and start making those illusions for damage. Then when that player is dead, or I’m low on health, I use stealth to get back behind my allies, and start shooting ranged attacks again.

The Thief have more uses in WvW then just dealing damage, though. In a zerg, Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge can be incredibly useful when moving behind enemy lines. Especially when you are moving golems from a spawn to a gate. Pulling down foes from walls with Scorpion Wire is always fun, I do it all the time on my Mesmer with the focus pull skill. Other then that, Thieves are the absolute perfect scouts. There are a lot of times in WvW where players need to know what’s going on at a tower or keep, and whether or not it’s being attacked. And no one can get around faster then a Thief who’s build for movement (no, not even an Elementalist). I fact, after maxing out my Mesmer in WvW, I plan to make exactly such a Thief build. Grab shortbow, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, and Shadowstep. Then trait 15 points into Acrobatics, Shadow Arts, and Trickery, and you got yourself a very fast build.

Warriors have the Highest Mobility, then Elementalists as a close second.

Despite what you think warriors mobility pales in comparison to what a thief with some decent imitative can do with a shortbow in terms of sheer movement distance.

He is right, thieves have a pattern how long they stealth/restealth, and many of them all follow the pattern, take time to learn this and thieves are easier, this is why as a thief I have no trouble killing other thieves.

Not sure I buy this,. thieves are not machines, they don’t all follow a predetermined “pattern”, they’re played by human beings whose actions can’t reliably be predicated so please don’t try to sell me some craziness about “reading their movements”, it doesn’t work and no class should have to consult a crystal ball to try to counter another.

Thieves are quite balanced in WvWvW due to the strengths they have and don’t have, they don’t have the aoe capabilities and survivability and sustained damage other classes have, due to have little to no access to boons, and they do not help there team-mates unless they plan on being useless or gimping themselves.

Thieves don’t need many of these things, why bother with sustained damage when you are so front loaded with burst you can take players from full health to dead in 5 seconds? AoE? Dagger Storm is some pretty amazing aoe in my book. Survivability? If you’re thinking survivability means how many hits you can take then you’re thinking of thieves the wrong way. they’re not meatshields and they were never meant to be. However if you consider that thieves have more “oh crap” buttons than any other class, an uncounterable class skill to escape with some of the highest mobility in the game I’d say they have plenty of survivability.

Thieves actually need more access to boons such as swiftness and fury and a slight nerf to burst, but a big increase to sustained damage.

Slight nerf to burst? Really? They need a fairly large nerf to burst and that damage moved to sustained damage and I’ll agree with you about that. However as they stand now thieves don’t need swiftness when you can move 25% faster all the time, have tons of teleport and movement skills incorporated into your weapons and generally have very little risk while moving from place to place.

Thieves need a lot more survivability in SPVP and PVE.

Not sure about sPvP but in PvE they sure do and that’s totally cool with me

Thieves also have little to no access to crowd control, we have very few abilitys that can knock people down or away.

Crowd control is a very limited thing for most classes and is often used to gain a momentary advantage or some breathing room, with stealth thieves can start and stop combat on a whim so the idea that they need this on top of their ability to disappear and choose when and how to attack makes me think that giving them any other ways to control combat would be a very bad thing.

Thief is also a very narcissistic class, as I mention before, we are “not” team players, which sucks, because this is a very team oriented game.

Dunno I think you guys can do a fair bit, mass stealth can make a huge difference for a team, so moving past defenders and quickly taking out key targets, harassing zergs ect ect

Warrior’s Greatsword “Rush” alone with swiftness can travel FAR, much much further then thieves Short bow and Shadowstep can (almost double for the short-bow.), and the cost of short bow’s 5 is 6 initiative, which is half, its not something that can be immediately used when retreating if you were already attacking an opponent and didn’t have much left.

Warrior’s Sword’s #2 Skill “Leap” with swiftness, can travel further then thieves short bow, but only travel as much as thieves shadowstep can.

Warrior’s Greatsword “Whirlwind” is a dodge that, combined with swiftness, can move you about 700 meters, not as much as the short bow can, but enough.

These are all on short cool downs, Warriors can have perma-swiftness, which is 8% faster then thieves can move.

@Dunno I think you guys can do a fair bit, mass stealth can make a huge difference for a team, so moving past defenders and quickly taking out key targets, harassing zergs ect ect

This pales in comparison to what a mesmer can do, a mesmer can lay down a portal and port an entire team into a portal, then give everyone 11 seconds of quickness. (Double Damage.) completely destroying an enemy team.

@Crowd control is a very limited thing for most classes and is often used to gain a momentary advantage or some breathing room, with stealth thieves can start and stop combat on a whim so the idea that they need this on top of their ability to disappear and choose when and how to attack makes me think that giving them any other ways to control combat would be a very bad thing.

Play an elementalist, almost every skill past 1/2 is a Crowd Control effect, its rediculous how much aoe crowd control this class has combined with its survivability and damage, two of them can pretty much make any class unable to do anything.

@Slight nerf to burst? Really? They need a fairly large nerf to burst and that damage moved to sustained damage and I’ll agree with you about that. However as they stand now thieves don’t need swiftness when you can move 25% faster all the time, have tons of teleport and movement skills incorporated into your weapons and generally have very little risk while moving from place to place.

Compared to elementalist and warriors, there movement abilities kind of stink, the warrior and elem can travel a much further distance and with a lot more speed.

Thieves cannot move 25% faster all the time, they must sacrifice a utility slot to do so.

They indeed have tons of teleports, but only 2 of them can be used to run away, “Shadowstep/Infiltrator’s Arrow.”

If Thieves used these skills to move around like Elementalist/Warrior does, we don’t have anything left to run away from people, so we actually get across the map slower then they do, since our skills have high costs and long cooldowns.

I don’t know the elementalist skills, but I do play an 80 Warrior/Necromancer/Thief, so I can’t say what they have, but I will be rolling an elementalist soon, they seem to be FOTM though.

I haven’t the time to read everything, but I do/have played most classes to 80.

When I started, I died to many many thieves. Didn’t read the forums much or wonder if it was OP. I was trying to learn, and in many cases I just thought that I needed to step up my game.

The idea of thief killing me in seconds from stealth, seemed like the point of the class. A 1v1 killer/assassin. Just as my similar class was in aion. I called gw2 thief – working as intended.

A few months later – much wvw roaming later, with 100+ 1v1’s against thieves of various skill levels at times I did feel cheated. I wanted to rage, came to the forums and then read how many people felt the same. I called that ‘likely imbalance, being overpowered’

Then the assassin signet nerf came. From 50% or we/e to the 5 consecutive attacks.

After that day, as I leveled alts I realized that thieves had it harder. Because as an uplevelled toon some of the bad level 80’s were still having difficulties at times. The community adapted and soon I was dying again.

I made a thief after this, to learn about his style. His systems. I learnt the cons of initiative, the limits of shadow refuge, its bugs and other things.

All I can say is that you have no idea how much a thief gives up for his gimmicky tricks.

When you are all done with your QQ, trashed the class. The game will be even more irreparably broken for many thieves who actually are simply what you fail to accept – skilled players.

Thief goes down hard. Often all he has is his one trick burst. Nothing else, few cool skills and cooldowns. Sure he can spam, too many play it that way. The easymode lovers flock to it for that ‘frustration power’ it has. Yet is that because its OP? or because people are just kitten with what they cant see or fight back against?

Picture something. If you take a thief, the master of agility and stealth. You cripple both of these. You turn him into someone who plays like everything else. Plays battles of attrition and ‘wait for the cooldown’ where is the fun? where is the diversity.

Im not sure Anet should listen to the words of people who dont really care about the thief community or the profession. Because as SPvP becomes stale, the meta dies, there is already far too little diversity in gw2.

I personally think, aside from a few glitches and other things thief has what he needs to be supreme in 1v1. The stealth, the ‘philosophy’ being centered around him using his brain and his stealth to give him that luxury.

You call it brainless and thats because this game has no deep level. Such as ‘see through stealth skills’ or hard mitigation like a stone boon that instantly drops incoming damage by a dramatic amount.

You should have the chance to react, to roll away, to force the thief to rertreat and adapt. Yet you shouldnt remove the only things he has, because it isnt fair.

Kasama.8941:

No, Thieves probably wouldn’t be played a lot for a while. But a new set of Thieves would come forward eventually. Gameplay doesn’t change much by removing Cloak and Dagger, though. The tactic is the same, you are just using movement a lot more. So instead of dealing damage, and then going into stealth to change position, you deal damage and then dodge/leap/shadow step/stealth away to change position. Basically, you wouldn’t be able to rely on using stealth every time you had to gain distance, meaning you’d have to think about when to use a dodge and when to use stealth, depending on different situations.

I don’t know that the Thief would need more base vitality, as you would still be very efficient at avoiding damage. But Thief skills in general lacks impact in the game, meaning that players feel forced into a damage roll. It has been said ever since beta, that the Thief needs more support skills, but the support options that the Thief has are still miniscule. So yeah, that is another issue besides the current stealth generation.

That is exactly how I play with my Mesmer in WvW combat. Stay back firing ranged attacks, then I find a target that’s a bit off the others, I then pull him to me using focus, or go into stealth to get close to him and start making those illusions for damage. Then when that player is dead, or I’m low on health, I use stealth to get back behind my allies, and start shooting ranged attacks again.

The Thief have more uses in WvW then just dealing damage, though. In a zerg, Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge can be incredibly useful when moving behind enemy lines. Especially when you are moving golems from a spawn to a gate. Pulling down foes from walls with Scorpion Wire is always fun, I do it all the time on my Mesmer with the focus pull skill. Other then that, Thieves are the absolute perfect scouts. There are a lot of times in WvW where players need to know what’s going on at a tower or keep, and whether or not it’s being attacked. And no one can get around faster then a Thief who’s build for movement (no, not even an Elementalist). I fact, after maxing out my Mesmer in WvW, I plan to make exactly such a Thief build. Grab shortbow, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, and Shadowstep. Then trait 15 points into Acrobatics, Shadow Arts, and Trickery, and you got yourself a very fast build.

You will discover very quickly that the thief is not a mesmer. Thieves don’t have nearly the range of a mesmer or the utility at range that a mesmer does. The shortbow is a medium range weapon at best. Also scorpion wire will be obstructed more than half the time when trying to pull a single target off the wall. Also have fun with the wet noodles you’ll be attacking with in close combat unless you spec full zerker armor and trinkets. Just as one more question, how do you suppose you’ll stealth yourself without blowing your support utilities if C&D didn’t exist? You are probably going to go with a DB spam. since you linked a video. Try it out, you might have some success until you run across someone who has seen it before and simply roots you and attacks from a distance. Roll it in sPvP to test it and get back to us. This is not sarcasm, but I think you are far overestimating the capabilities of the thief, especially if you foo against an opponent who has seen it before.

i have few questions

1 Why steal that originaliy has no dmg does 5-6k dmg
2 Why the ability it steals from players is stronger than the abilities that the player actually have ? Eg Necro fear is 1 sec thief fear is based on range but starts from 3 seconds and goes down to 1 ?

btw when will they get fixed ? They need to be cut just a tiny bit like on half with a greatsword

Batlav.6318:

i have few questions

1 Why steal that originaliy has no dmg does 5-6k dmg
2 Why the ability it steals from players is stronger than the abilities that the player actually have ? Eg Necro fear is 1 sec thief fear is based on range but starts from 3 seconds and goes down to 1 ?

btw when will they get fixed ? They need to be cut just a tiny bit like on half with a greatsword

1) No idea
2) Because the ability we get, is usable only once and can only be regained after 45s of cooldown. Necros have acces to fear a lot more than us. The knockdown rifle skill from engineers is 1/10th shorter at least. And so on.

Batlav.6318:

i have few questions

1 Why steal that originaliy has no dmg does 5-6k dmg
btw when will they get fixed ? They need to be cut just a tiny bit like on half with a greatsword

If u had full health, which i doubt, u can QQ. But i doubt u had full hp u probably felt the effect of what thieves do: coup de grace playstyle a.k.a u soaked some dmg and then boom grandmaster thief trait in crit tree – more dmg to peeps under 50% hp. U just got zerged and u read the death breakdown and u said: “whoo op thief killed me!”. But in fact an ele or warrior or w/e did the initial cutting down in half of your hp.
My question to you is why a skill that basically gives u a second hp bar can be turned on again off again at your leisure? When it will be fixed? Necros need to be a tiny bit…well charred to remove contamination (get it? ur toon is death an decay soit needs to be burned…nvm). Learn stuff before posting otherwise is just fishing for nerfs which unfortunately A-net dispenses in abundance to this class.

The thief is a very powerful profession that is deadly in good hands and fatal in poor hands. It punishes players for every mistake but rewards them well for playing wisely. Most of the skills fit well with the thief both conceptually and in terms of synergy. It still needs improvements and fixes but I wish every other profession struck the balance of high-risk/high-reward playing that the thief has.

A thief with a dagger can auto attack at the speed of 1/4 for his/her second and third swings. The first auto attack is instant. You have pretty much every single other class’s attacks at 1/2 and even sometimes at 1s for an auto attack. So the dagger can actually auto attack at double the speed of most weapons. Then in guild wars 2 a dagger is the same length as a two handed sword or a spear. Arena net talked so much about how great its physics system was in GW2. Well a one foot dagger that can somehow reach out 6 feet, and a hill that is only 3 feet high but somehow completely prevents me from jumping over it, just doesn’t seem very realistic to me.

So you have a class that can kill players in a matter of seconds while being completely invisible. They can stay invisible and stomp you. They auto attack at double the speed of a two handed sword, while still having the same range as a two handed sword. Then lets not forget they can always run away from you, but you will never ever get away from them. Since they can just spam 2 (heart seeker) and it will auto track onto you, dodge is almost worthless in this case.

Heartseeker is the most annoying thing besides culling in WvW. Its not that big of a problem in 1vs1 but theres less you can do when you get jumped by a 2-2-2-2 thief in the middle of a fight.

I also noticed many thieves start running as a duo just spamming 22-22-22-22 from out of stealth. Awesome fun.

ATM heart seeker has it all: gap closer, decent damage, cheap/ repeatable. Remove 1 of 3 and its fine.

teg.1340:

Heartseeker is the most annoying thing besides culling in WvW. Its not that big of a problem in 1vs1 but theres less you can do when you get jumped by a 2-2-2-2 thief in the middle of a fight.

I also noticed many thieves start running as a duo just spamming 22-22-22-22 from out of stealth. Awesome fun.

ATM heart seeker has it all: gap closer, decent damage, cheap/ repeatable. Remove 1 of 3 and its fine.

First of all Heartseeker does very low damage when a target is above 30% hp. Try it out in HotM on a full hp target and see that Heartseeker damage will not be able to take a target down by just using Heartseeker. Secondly a good Thief player will never spam Heartseeker above 30-40%, because he will not be able to deal enough damage and more importantly he will run out of Initiative quickly when Heartseeker is spammed.

The point of being jumped by multiple opponents isn’t something you should blame on one profession but rather on your team not defending you or you caught in a bad position. When someone gets primaried by two players, of course hes going down quicker. But it would not have mattered if it was a Thief or a Warrior or even a Guardian.

Anet shouldn’t give the thief Initiative point or a littlebit less Initative point because they can use powerful skills so much but other classes can use their 4th-5th skill only after 20-30 sec.

Yes we can use our 4th and 5th skill more often, but do you know how weak those skills are?
Shortbow: 4 Choking gas, 5 infiltrator’s arrow. Poison field or shadowstep
Dagger: 4 throwing dagger, 5 cloak and dagger. Cripple with minor dmg, stealth with okay damage (far from strong)
Pistol: 4 headshot, 5 Black powder. Daze with minor damage, Blind with minor damage

Our Off hand skills are meant as utilities while they still cost almost half of our initiatives. Right now we already have to pay attention we don’t blow away our initiatives right away, never mind having even less points..

Svarty.8019:

Kasama.8941:

This is what was said about stealth for the Thief, when it was first revealed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWm8dTrEyWM

(watch from 2:50 to 3:21)

Interview (http://kotaku.com/5780900/the-guild-wars-2-thief-is-a-rogue-like-none-other):
“Stealth in Guild Wars 2 runs on a timer, which would allow you a few precious seconds of Initiative recharge before the enemy uncovers you again.

The wise Thief player will know when to retreat and recharge."

“Players are used to going toe-to-toe with monsters, and the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.”

Here’s the description of stealth from wiki:
“Stealth — Thieves have access to multiple skills which, for a short duration, make them invisible to enemy players and avoid aggro of hostile NPCs. While stealthed the thief is not targettable, but can still be damaged by attacks which hit them, and attacking from stealth will break the deception.”

And from the 14th december update notes:
“Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.”

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Now look at these resent videos I picked randomly from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9grDRzNT_wg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4m2mGDUL38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7OYniHrGqE

The thing to notice about these videos isn’t only that the Thief is able to have stealth up for what seems to be next to permanently, but also how easily the Thief is able to escape once low on health. That shadow stepping makes the Thief able to easily escape AoE attacks and snares. That with Cloak and Dagger the Thief can keep stealth up without any lose to playstyle, thanks to the fast recharge of initiative. That “Revealed” is not a hinderance for the Thief at all, because the three seconds that the Thief can’t stealth, is the time that’s spend on attacking anyway. That the Thief don’t have to use their utilities for anything, other then gaining more stealth. And that on top of all of this, the Thief can also use skills like Dagger Storm to avoid damage, or Thieves Guild as pseudo clones for distraction.

This is how the majority of Thieves play: Stealth to get the upper hand and maximum damage on first attack, attack for three seconds until Revealed has passed, gain stealth again to regain positioning on your foe, attacking him again when he’s got his back turned, keep attacking him as he tries to run away with 20% health left, alternatively use shadow stepping or cripple to stop him from escaping, stealth again when he’s downed so he or an ally can’t stop you from stomping him, and then stealth/shadow step away, or start attacking the ally who was trying to help the foe you just stomped. If three or more players finally do manage to get you down to low health; use shadow stepping/Dagger Storm/Thieves Guild to get away, go back into stealth to make your foes lose track of you, hide until your health is restored, proceed to attacking again.

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Am I the only one who can see the contradictory between how ArenaNet wants the Thief to play, and how it is actually played? I’m not sure how anyone (other then a Thief maybe) can justify stealth, for the Thief, as being balanced. I mean, how are you suppose to fight a profession that you can’t see for 80% of a fight, and who can easily escape you during the 20% window where you actually do see him? How is this fun to play against?

The thief counters don’t work.

AoE and large stacks of conditions can only be used when you know the thief is there (and conditions have to be used while it is visible!) and by then you are dead.

Maybe I’m not watching the same videos, but what I just saw was 1 thief using his stealth to avoid damage and engage/disengage to recover and still get demolished by a ranger with AOEs, a second thief who used his abilities to flank a mindless zerg to pick off a weak upscaled player, and finally a thief who knows his class and is, as far as I can tell, very experienced, working with a team to slowly pick off the weak in an unorganized mess of a zerg.

In other words, I saw thief gameplay exactly as advertised…

Black Powder – necromancer has a same ability called well of darkness the only difference that its duration is 5 sec and has a DC 60 second…

Cloak and Dagger – One of the most powerful skill for thief. They go in steallth for 3 sec so during that 3 sec they got initiative back and then they can go back in stealth again. Usually the 90% of thieves use this on condition dmg build like: 1111151111115

Infiltrator’s Arrow – Don’t tell me it’s not a powerful skill. In one sec they can be at 1800 range from out of battle

Animi.4617:

Black Powder – necromancer has a same ability called well of darkness the only difference that its duration is 5 sec and has a DC 60 second…

Cloak and Dagger – One of the most powerful skill for thief. They go in steallth for 3 sec so during that 3 sec they got initiative back and then they can go back in stealth again. Usually the 90% of thieves use this on condition dmg build like: 1111151111115

Infiltrator’s Arrow – Don’t tell me it’s not a powerful skill. In one sec they can be at 1800 range from out of battle

A blindingsmoke that takes 50% of your initiatives isn’t something you spam all the time. But I’ve never rly run pistol offhand so I’ll let this rest.
As for C&D, regaining initiatives in stealth is something you have to trait for, it’s also easy to dodge and again uses 50% of our initiatives. You do know that while you guys have cooldown on 1 skill after using it, we only have 1 skill after using c&d twice? Every skill we have shares the same pool of initiatives.

And infiltrator’s arrow, that’s all it do, travelling, how is that a powerful skill during combat? (I’m talking about during combat, for escaping it’s a great skill, hats off for that. But for catching up it’s a terrible idea. Without initiatives, we are nothing but a kittenroach trying to tickle you and disgust you)

On the 28th of January Arena net said that a fix for culling would be in place. They even hinted that this was going to be the fix that would take care of culling for good. Once again though we see nothing, we hear nothing. More than likely we will just be told the same thing that we have always been told, it is coming just wait. We might also be told that its a really hard problem to fix. Which is probably true you can’t fix or work on one part of the game if you’re already working on another part. Its a good thing we got those little backpacks that look like the ones little Japanese girls wear though.

Daecollo.9578:

Warrior’s Greatsword “Rush” alone with swiftness can travel FAR, much much further then thieves Short bow and Shadowstep can (almost double for the short-bow.), and the cost of short bow’s 5 is 6 initiative, which is half, its not something that can be immediately used when retreating if you were already attacking an opponent and didn’t have much left.

Warrior’s Sword’s #2 Skill “Leap” with swiftness, can travel further then thieves short bow, but only travel as much as thieves shadowstep can.

Warrior’s Greatsword “Whirlwind” is a dodge that, combined with swiftness, can move you about 700 meters, not as much as the short bow can, but enough.

These are all on short cool downs, Warriors can have perma-swiftness, which is 8% faster then thieves can move.

Compared to elementalist and warriors, there movement abilities kind of stink, the warrior and elem can travel a much further distance and with a lot more speed.

Thieves cannot move 25% faster all the time, they must sacrifice a utility slot to do so.

They indeed have tons of teleports, but only 2 of them can be used to run away, “Shadowstep/Infiltrator’s Arrow.”

If Thieves used these skills to move around like Elementalist/Warrior does, we don’t have anything left to run away from people, so we actually get across the map slower then they do, since our skills have high costs and long cooldowns.

I don’t know the elementalist skills, but I do play an 80 Warrior/Necromancer/Thief, so I can’t say what they have, but I will be rolling an elementalist soon, they seem to be FOTM though.

This is just not true at all. No doubt, that the Elementalist and Warrior are fast. But no one can reach the capabilities of a Thief. Hell, even a Ranger can be faster then an Elementalist if you know what you are doing.

The Thief has all the swiftness you need if you go 15 points into Acrobatics. This will get you Expeditious Dodger (2 second swiftness on dodge), Feline Grace (dodging returns some endurance), and Vigorous Recovery (gain 10 seconds of vigor when using a healing skill). You should then use Withdraw as your healing skill, since it only has a recharge time of 15 seconds, and can be used to move you forward (use the “turn 180” key). Going 15 into Trickery you can get Preparedness, which gives you three more initiative for a faster Infiltrator’s Strike recharge. Infiltrator’s Strike only has a recharge of little under 8 seconds, by the way (1 initiative = 1.33 seconds recharge). If you target a deer in WvW, you can also use Steal or ‘Shadow Shot’ to move forward. And Steal’s range can be improved to have a 1200 range from the trait Long Reach, or you can get Thrill of Crime instead, which gives you 10 seconds swiftness when Stealing. Both of these are adept traits in Trickery. Stealing also gives you 3 more initiative from the trait Kleptomaniac, which again can be used for Infiltrator’s Strike. You get all this by only spending 30 trait points, and without even touching your utility skills. With utility skills, you can use stealth skills and get “33% movement speed in stealth” from the trait Fleet Shadow, you can use Shadowstep which has a range of 1200, or just use Roll for Initiative in the same way as Withdraw.

The Ranger has faster traveling then a Warrior and Elementalist, partly thanks to a 20% reduced recharge trait on both greatsword and sword, and can have permanent swiftness as long as there is a target near. Movement skills comes from Hornet Sting plus Monarch’s Leap (together they have a range of around 1000), and Swoop (1100 range). And with the trait Martial Mastery, Hornet Sting can get a reduced recharge of only 6,5 seconds, and Swoop can get a recharge of only 9.5 seconds. The Ranger can get 15 seconds of swiftness from Call of the Wild, and 20 seconds of swiftness from birds, if you use pet switch (and as long as there is a target of curse). All without ever touching any healing, utility, or elite skill.

So yeah, despite popular belief, the Elementalist (and Warrior) really isn’t that fast.

Kasama.8941:

Daecollo.9578:

Warrior’s Greatsword “Rush” alone with swiftness can travel FAR, much much further then thieves Short bow and Shadowstep can (almost double for the short-bow.), and the cost of short bow’s 5 is 6 initiative, which is half, its not something that can be immediately used when retreating if you were already attacking an opponent and didn’t have much left.

Warrior’s Sword’s #2 Skill “Leap” with swiftness, can travel further then thieves short bow, but only travel as much as thieves shadowstep can.

Warrior’s Greatsword “Whirlwind” is a dodge that, combined with swiftness, can move you about 700 meters, not as much as the short bow can, but enough.

These are all on short cool downs, Warriors can have perma-swiftness, which is 8% faster then thieves can move.

Compared to elementalist and warriors, there movement abilities kind of stink, the warrior and elem can travel a much further distance and with a lot more speed.

Thieves cannot move 25% faster all the time, they must sacrifice a utility slot to do so.

They indeed have tons of teleports, but only 2 of them can be used to run away, “Shadowstep/Infiltrator’s Arrow.”

If Thieves used these skills to move around like Elementalist/Warrior does, we don’t have anything left to run away from people, so we actually get across the map slower then they do, since our skills have high costs and long cooldowns.

I don’t know the elementalist skills, but I do play an 80 Warrior/Necromancer/Thief, so I can’t say what they have, but I will be rolling an elementalist soon, they seem to be FOTM though.

This is just not true at all. No doubt, that the Elementalist and Warrior are fast. But no one can reach the capabilities of a Thief. Hell, even a Ranger can be faster then an Elementalist if you know what you are doing.

The Thief has all the swiftness you need if you go 15 points into Acrobatics. This will get you Expeditious Dodger (2 second swiftness on dodge), Feline Grace (dodging returns some endurance), and Vigorous Recovery (gain 10 seconds of vigor when using a healing skill). You should then use Withdraw as your healing skill, since it only has a recharge time of 15 seconds, and can be used to move you forward (use the “turn 180” key). Going 15 into Trickery you can get Preparedness, which gives you three more initiative for a faster Infiltrator’s Strike recharge. Infiltrator’s Strike only has a recharge of little under 8 seconds, by the way (1 initiative = 1.33 seconds recharge). If you target a deer in WvW, you can also use Steal or ‘Shadow Shot’ to move forward. And Steal’s range can be improved to have a 1200 range from the trait Long Reach, or you can get Thrill of Crime instead, which gives you 10 seconds swiftness when Stealing. Both of these are adept traits in Trickery. Stealing also gives you 3 more initiative from the trait Kleptomaniac, which again can be used for Infiltrator’s Strike. You get all this by only spending 30 trait points, and without even touching your utility skills. With utility skills, you can use stealth skills and get “33% movement speed in stealth” from the trait Fleet Shadow, you can use Shadowstep which has a range of 1200, or just use Roll for Initiative in the same way as Withdraw.

The Ranger has faster traveling then a Warrior and Elementalist, partly thanks to a 20% reduced recharge trait on both greatsword and sword, and can have permanent swiftness as long as there is a target near. Movement skills comes from Hornet Sting plus Monarch’s Leap (together they have a range of around 1000), and Swoop (1100 range). And with the trait Martial Mastery, Hornet Sting can get a reduced recharge of only 6,5 seconds, and Swoop can get a recharge of only 9.5 seconds. The Ranger can get 15 seconds of swiftness from Call of the Wild, and 20 seconds of swiftness from birds, if you use pet switch (and as long as there is a target of curse). All without ever touching any healing, utility, or elite skill.

So yeah, despite popular belief, the Elementalist (and Warrior) really isn’t that fast.

So basicly to get that fast (only half as fast as a warrior btw.), a thief has to waste a stealth, a condition removal, and a lifetap and basicly sacrifice your “6” healing ability.

And he has to sacrifice all his damage (Or just a lot of it.), and just try to kill people with autoattack?

I hope I run into this thief in pvp…

Oh yeah, Withdraw moves and dodges you BACKWARDS… (I think any thief player would know this… )

So all in all, I don’t think you play a thief OR a warrior at all and are just making things up based on the skills descriptions and not real play.

Meanwhile, a Warrior/Elementalist sacrifice very little to nothing to gain the same effect.

But then again, I don’t even know if you play an elementalist either.

Kasama.8941:

Interview (http://kotaku.com/5780900/the-guild-wars-2-thief-is-a-rogue-like-none-other):

The wise Thief player will know when to retreat and recharge."

“…the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.”

Here’s the description of stealth from wiki:
“Stealth — Thieves have access to multiple skills which, for a short duration, make them invisible to enemy players and avoid aggro of hostile NPCs. While stealthed the thief is not targettable, but can still be damaged by attacks which hit them, and attacking from stealth will break the deception.”

And from the 14th december update notes:
“Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game…”

I’m afraid that I don’t quite grasp your problem. From those quotes, stealth is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. Outside of Shadow Refuge, stealth is short-duration, and is most often used for positioning and mobility.

I’ll say it again: the whole niche of the Thief is infiltration and guerilla warfare. If stealth no longer existed, why would the Thief exist? The class would go from a fragile spiker to a Warrior made out of newspaper.

For stealth to receive a sweeping nerf, Thieves would need compensation. Most likely, Thieves would be given a shadowstep mechanic like Assassins—which would allow a Thief to just teleport away. And then the forums would see incalculable rage about how no one can catch them and it’s so unfair and why can’t they just commit to fights. Removing the stealth mechanic would just be trading in one escaping problem for another.

Kasama.8941:

Now look at these resent videos I picked randomly from YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9grDRzNT_wg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4m2mGDUL38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7OYniHrGqE

The thing to notice about these videos isn’t only that the Thief is able to have stealth up for what seems to be next to permanently, but also how easily the Thief is able to escape once low on health. That shadow stepping makes the Thief able to easily escape AoE attacks and snares. … And that on top of all of this, the Thief can also use skills like Dagger Storm to avoid damage, or Thieves Guild as pseudo clones for distraction.

About the videos: the stealth in the first was a far cry from “next to permanently.” In the second and third links, a lot of those deaths looked completely avoidable. And I would have been more concerned if the Thief hadn’t been able to escape, since that’s the playstyle for the class.

I’d also like to mention that Dagger Storm does not give invulnerability. More often that not, I see Thieves just pop DS for a second or two, and then roll right back out of it because it makes them too vulnerable. And Thieves Guild is less distracting than Mesmer clones: they are distinctly different from the player.

Kasama.8941:

This is how the majority of Thieves play: Stealth…attack…stealth again to regain positioning…keep attacking…then [after he’s dead] stealth/shadow step away, or start attacking [his] ally…If [you get to low health] use shadow stepping/Dagger Storm/Thieves Guild to get away, go back into stealth…hide until your health is restored, proceed to attacking again.

A competent player can counteract this with traps, wells, or other ground-based effects; heavy aoe and/or condition damage; blocking; invulnerability; channeled skills (which continue to hit a thief after they have stealthed, revealing their position); shatter burst; immobilize; daze; stun; and dodging. That’s all I could think of off the top of my head.

Kasama.8941:

Am I the only one who can see the contradictory between how ArenaNet wants the Thief to play, and how it is actually played?I’m not sure how anyone (other then a Thief maybe) can justify stealth…as being balanced.

The only contradiction I see is the lack of promised versatility. And non-Thieves can’t justify stealth because they’ve never used it. People should only contribute to this conversation if they actually have experience with the class, so they know what they’re talking about.

Kasama.8941:

I mean, how are you suppose to fight a profession that you can’t see for 80% of a fight, and who can easily escape you during the 20% window where you actually do see him? How is this fun to play against?

You fight stealth by thinking critically, the same way you counteract any other class. I don’t think it’s fun to play against bunker Eles, trap Rangers, or Guardians, but I’m not over on their forums crying nerf.

Jonny.9370:

Maybe I’m not watching the same videos, but what I just saw was 1 thief using his stealth to avoid damage and engage/disengage to recover and still get demolished by a ranger with AOEs, a second thief who used his abilities to flank a mindless zerg to pick off a weak upscaled player, and finally a thief who knows his class and is, as far as I can tell, very experienced, working with a team to slowly pick off the weak in an unorganized mess of a zerg.

In other words, I saw thief gameplay exactly as advertised…

That`s what i`ve been pushing for the last 2 days and yet ppl seem to not get it through their thick heavy insulated, heavy armed yet surprisingly oblivious skulls: we are last hit grievers. Most successful thieves are the ones that either go duo: on starts on melee “burst” get their tiny hp halved retreat in stealth then the other guy goes with executioner trait goes for bs then a couple of double 2 taps. Or a thief working with a party quickly engaging/disengaging to pick off weaker/weakened targets. A solo thief will NEVER kill a bunker build w/e (with the exception of a bunker thief, go figure).

Thieves only dominate new/unsuspecting WvW players. Once people get used to fighting against them (e.g. not standing still, using AoE) they aren’t nearly as effective – then they’re more like a normal glass cannon that kills fast but dies fast.

WvW presents players with a huge area and they never know when a thief will strike. I think that it is a fun dynamic to have, take away that burst damage and you’ve ruined one of the most frightening aspects of WvW. I like that sensation.

So, I am against a nerf to thief damage. They should eat glass cannons for breakfast. I’m okay with that. They should frighten new players. It creates a degree of intensity you couldn’t get if a thief didn’t burst you down so fast. Also, it helps to balance the meta. Play a glass cannon and you know the risks. Risk number one being thieves and other glass cannons that get the jump on you.

Anything we do to make zergs more powerful will, in my opinion, be bad for the WvW meta. The upcoming AoE nerf could do that. However, the thief shortbow AoE (2) could stand to be changed. But single target burst damage shouldn’t. (I think the short bow will be the next nerf for thieves anyway. And that’s probably for the best.)

Thief plays great. The only problem is the active on Signet of Malice and the uselessness of traps but everything else works very well and if creative enough, leads to some very useful builds in pve and pvp. It sickens me when I hear/see people crying thieves are OP…

NinjaEd.3946:

Thief plays great. The only problem is the active on Signet of Malice and the uselessness of traps but everything else works very well and if creative enough, leads to some very useful builds in pve and pvp. It sickens me when I hear/see people crying thieves are OP…

80% of ppl “crying” that thieves are OP and the remaining 20% are thieves….. I think at Anet everyone plays a thief thats why they don’t want to change anything about it and they won’t… I never saw a game where stealth was great it always were OP in every game. They shouldn’t put in the game at the first place in GW1 assasin was great without stealth. Bring down the stealth of thieves like if you come out from stealth you can’t go in stealth again for 6 second or you can have stealth but you cant stack it up fot 500 second and also they should have only 2 sec stealth and an elite for bigger stealth.

So my goal with this post is to give people who struggle with stealth the tools to counter it. This is all information you need to know to predict and dodge stealth effectively.

- Activation time has a casting animation so you can see when a Thief is going to stealth.
- Cooldown time lets you know how frequent you can expect a stealth.
- Initiative cost is information you must know. Thieves have 12 Initiative total by default and use Initiative for all skills.

Traits
- Meld with Shadows – Stealth skills last 1 second longer.
- Hidden Thief – Stealing grants you 2 seconds of stealth.

Profession Mechanic
- Steal (activation time: 0, cooldown: 45) Shadowstep to your foe and steal from them. This skill will go on a 5 second cooldown when the target is out of range.

Weapon Skills
- Dagger Main-Hand #1: (Stealth skill; while in stealth the Thief changes his #1 skill) Backstab (activation time: ¼) Attack your foe from the shadows, striking for double damage if you hit from behind.
- Dagger Off-Hand #5: Cloak and Dagger (aka CnD; activation time: ½ , Initiative cost: 6 ) Stab your foe and vanish in stealth, leaving them vulnerable. Stealth: 3 s

Healing Skill
- Hide in Shadows (activation time: 1, cooldown: 30) Vanish in stealth and gain regeneration. Cures burning, poison, and bleeding. Stealth: 3 s

Utility Skills
- Shadow Refuge (activation time: ¼, cooldown: 60, must stay in the ring to gain a full 10 s stealth) Create a pulsing refuge at the target area that heals allies and cloaks them in stealth. Stealth: 10 s
- Blinding Powder (activation time: 0, cooldown: 40) Blind foes in the target area and grant stealth to nearby allies. Stealth: 3 s

Death Henk.7143:

So my goal with this post is to give people who struggle with stealth the tools to counter it. This is all information you need to know to predict and dodge stealth effectively.

- Activation time has a casting animation so you can see when a Thief is going to stealth.

Blinding Powder and Steal do not have any activation time, however steal will go on a ~3 second cooldown if you use it while your target is out of range. Just thought I’d point that out.

NinjaEd.3946:

Death Henk.7143:

So my goal with this post is to give people who struggle with stealth the tools to counter it. This is all information you need to know to predict and dodge stealth effectively.

- Activation time has a casting animation so you can see when a Thief is going to stealth.

Blinding Powder and Steal do not have any activation time, however steal will go on a ~3 second cooldown if you use it while your target is out of range. Just thought I’d point that out.

Thanks, I added activation time to Blinding Powder and Steal for clarification and it’s actually a 5 second cooldown.

Daecollo.9578:

So basicly to get that fast (only half as fast as a warrior btw.), a thief has to waste a stealth, a condition removal, and a lifetap and basicly sacrifice your “6” healing ability.

And he has to sacrifice all his damage (Or just a lot of it.), and just try to kill people with autoattack?

I hope I run into this thief in pvp…

Oh yeah, Withdraw moves and dodges you BACKWARDS… (I think any thief player would know this… )

So all in all, I don’t think you play a thief OR a warrior at all and are just making things up based on the skills descriptions and not real play.

Meanwhile, a Warrior/Elementalist sacrifice very little to nothing to gain the same effect.

But then again, I don’t even know if you play an elementalist either.

How could the Warrior ever be faster? The movement skills on the Warriors weapons either have longer recharges or shorter distance, then the Thief has with Infiltrator’s Strike. And the Warrior only has 10 second swiftness on the warhorn, while the Thief can have swiftness up almost permanently with dodging. And that’s without touching any healing or utility skill, or counting Steal as a movement tool. Further more, the Thief has several ways to get more initiative, while the Warrior is stuck with a 20% faster recharge on the greatsword.

You do not sacrifice anything as a Thief, as long as you play into your recharges in a smart way. Learn to figure out the time it takes to get from one place to another, and then figure out the best combo, which allows you to have the initiative you need when you get there. E.g. your healing skills is the most valuable, so it’s a good idea to use that first. You can then ride on the 10 seconds vigor you get from that, to get constant swiftness. In between that you can use two Infiltrator’s Strike shots and then only use one shot after that, to save at least 3 initiative. Once you get to where you need to be, you then start by using Steal on your opponent, which will give you 3 initiative. So you end up having 7 initiative up when you get to where you need to be. However, if you use ‘Roll for Initiative’ after Steal, you will end up with full initiative instead.

Withdraw rolls you forward if you turn 180 degrees first. You can do it easily with a click of a button (there is a “turn 180” key), or manually with a bit of practice. Something all players should know…

As a Warrior, you will have ended up losing all your gap closers by the time you get there, which means you have next to zero options for getting close to your opponent with your greatsword and sword. As an Elementalist, Ride the Lightning is also best combo starter you have, so it’s a waste to use as a constant travel skill. Burning Speed only has a range of 600 and a long recharge time (so does Ride the Lightning), and Magnetic Grasp you need a target for. So all the Elementalist really has going for him, compared to the Thief, is permanent swiftness.

I’m not sure what it is you think I’m making up here. It is quite obvious that the Thief is the most mobile profession in the game, it just requires a little thinking.

@ Kasma, I don’t think you’re fully understanding. Thieves, in order to do the “OP dmg” they do, sacrafise a ton of defensive stats and with such low health pool and only access to medium armor (not complaining about that) it balances out. Warrior on the other hand, can go full power/vit/toughness, have minimal crit dmg and still plow through people. They’re brutes in both defence and damage nothing to sacrafise for them so they hardly even need mobility with how much damage they can take. I’ve messed around on a bunker build warrior with a hammer in spvp a couple times. I lived, with 3 or so players attacking me for almost a minute. Was hardly fighting back, I just would dodge, stun break, or knock down/back a couple times. I also managed to down a player but he got back up since I was unable to finish them off. Point being, even a complete idiot at warrior (me) they can perform greatly. Thief takes knowledge to get the skill you’re describing, which not many have (talking to you, HS spamming thieves out there).

NinjaEd.3946:

@ Kasma, I don’t think you’re fully understanding. Thieves, in order to do the “OP dmg” they do, sacrafise a ton of defensive stats and with such low health pool and only access to medium armor (not complaining about that) it balances out. Warrior on the other hand, can go full power/vit/toughness, have minimal crit dmg and still plow through people. They’re brutes in both defence and damage nothing to sacrafise for them so they hardly even need mobility with how much damage they can take. I’ve messed around on a bunker build warrior with a hammer in spvp a couple times. I lived, with 3 or so players attacking me for almost a minute. Was hardly fighting back, I just would dodge, stun break, or knock down/back a couple times. I also managed to down a player but he got back up since I was unable to finish them off. Point being, even a complete idiot at warrior (me) they can perform greatly. Thief takes knowledge to get the skill you’re describing, which not many have (talking to you, HS spamming thieves out there).

Heres a video that demonstrates just that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsy1wmn1--U

My guardian is loved in fractals for the healing and boons, solo’s quick and easily, and can stand and continue my hammer attack chain through things everyone else rolls out of. The last patch actually upped the amount of healing you get, just for standing next to me! My guardian continues to get stronger, and my poor thief, which I actually enjoy better feels so broken as a class.
We don’t need back stab or stealth nerfed, they need to fix culling. We don’t need more damage, or better healing, what we really need are abilities THAT HELP THE GROUP. Thieves are the only class I’ve ever seen banned or kicked for dungeons or fractals, and sadly, I actually understand why. Give us reasons for groups to bring us along, and stop the mentality that we have to do more damage than anyone else because that’s the only thing we bring to the party.
Fractals laughed at the thief’s main survival game plan, ‘kill it before it kills you’, and then it kicked it in the junk. Controlled burst damage is our most hyped up class mechanic, and the highlight of any of the class concept blurps. But they didn’t stop there! They made our damage mitigating debuffs, weakness and blind irrelevant with the dredge, and by handing out Defiance like bread at an all you can eat buffet. None of the fractals are a dps race, and most all of them are about survivability, staying power, and team work.
When I asked my guild, and map chat in Lion’s Arch, “What do you like about grouping with thieves?” I got answered with a bunch of the expected crap and sarcasm, and when I picked through it all to find the real answers, I was not reassured by the general consensus that ‘Thieves have one convenient and useful talent to share with the group. Shadow Refuge/Revive. Joy.

So please, give us some group buffs or shouts. How about the ability to catch a projectile before it hits a group member, or negate a killing blow by pulling them out of the way? You could make mesmers share their monopoly over ’helpful group utilities’ and give us shadow portals, or an elite debuff thats the opposite of time warp. Maybe we could disarm traps, instead of setting them.
Our traps are useless and the opposite of the “thieves are the mobility class” ideal, and most seem bugged or broken. The venom’s are weak, and our venom share that people keep bringing up like its the bees knees is weak, because venoms are weak, which is almost a moot point, considering everyone has to crawl into my lap at the same time for it to work. We have less abilities under water than any other class, and are the only class with ONE water proof elite. (Since I mentioned it, just how ‘elite’ can a 1 second stun that often fails, or misses, for a 1.5 second casting time actually be?)
The developers go on and on about community, and cooperation, and group efforts, and remind us daily its what the game mechanics are based around. Many people have this narrow minded idea that thieves are loners, or selfish, or not a support or team player concept. If you think all of us want to slink around taking cheap shots at your kidneys while your back is turned, you need to open your mind. Thieves could be swashbucklers, pirates, musketeers, archers, duelists, bards, and acrobats. Not just hooded assassins uninspired gamers clone endlessly. You keep encouraging us all to be team players, and I think a lot of players would love sign up. You just have to give us the tools to play, or let us bring our balls from home. =p

Kasama.8941:

Daecollo.9578:

So basicly to get that fast (only half as fast as a warrior btw.), a thief has to waste a stealth, a condition removal, and a lifetap and basicly sacrifice your “6” healing ability.

And he has to sacrifice all his damage (Or just a lot of it.), and just try to kill people with autoattack?

I hope I run into this thief in pvp…

Oh yeah, Withdraw moves and dodges you BACKWARDS… (I think any thief player would know this… )

So all in all, I don’t think you play a thief OR a warrior at all and are just making things up based on the skills descriptions and not real play.

Meanwhile, a Warrior/Elementalist sacrifice very little to nothing to gain the same effect.

But then again, I don’t even know if you play an elementalist either.

How could the Warrior ever be faster? The movement skills on the Warriors weapons either have longer recharges or shorter distance, then the Thief has with Infiltrator’s Strike. And the Warrior only has 10 second swiftness on the warhorn, while the Thief can have swiftness up almost permanently with dodging. And that’s without touching any healing or utility skill, or counting Steal as a movement tool. Further more, the Thief has several ways to get more initiative, while the Warrior is stuck with a 20% faster recharge on the greatsword.

You do not sacrifice anything as a Thief, as long as you play into your recharges in a smart way. Learn to figure out the time it takes to get from one place to another, and then figure out the best combo, which allows you to have the initiative you need when you get there. E.g. your healing skills is the most valuable, so it’s a good idea to use that first. You can then ride on the 10 seconds vigor you get from that, to get constant swiftness. In between that you can use two Infiltrator’s Strike shots and then only use one shot after that, to save at least 3 initiative. Once you get to where you need to be, you then start by using Steal on your opponent, which will give you 3 initiative. So you end up having 7 initiative up when you get to where you need to be. However, if you use ‘Roll for Initiative’ after Steal, you will end up with full initiative instead.

Withdraw rolls you forward if you turn 180 degrees first. You can do it easily with a click of a button (there is a “turn 180” key), or manually with a bit of practice. Something all players should know…

As a Warrior, you will have ended up losing all your gap closers by the time you get there, which means you have next to zero options for getting close to your opponent with your greatsword and sword. As an Elementalist, Ride the Lightning is also best combo starter you have, so it’s a waste to use as a constant travel skill. Burning Speed only has a range of 600 and a long recharge time (so does Ride the Lightning), and Magnetic Grasp you need a target for. So all the Elementalist really has going for him, compared to the Thief, is permanent swiftness.

I’m not sure what it is you think I’m making up here. It is quite obvious that the Thief is the most mobile profession in the game, it just requires a little thinking.

I will just quote everything you said, its pretty much proof that you don’t play either of the classes.

This is why we have such a problem, people are just screaming OP when they have no idea how to deal with thieves.

Its more of a learn to play problem then anything.

I mean, everything you said in the post above is absolutely ridiculous, none of that is viable, why would you waste your heal/your dodges/and be forced to TURN 180 degrees to roll back, do you have ANY idea how clunky and stupid that alone sounds?

Trying to play CM story with a 4 thief 1 ele pug has highlighted for me just how WEAK the thief is in PvE. I’m sure some people can make it work, but for me its the hardest profession to play, worse then mesmer, which is pretty simple once you get down the spamming and destroying clones and creating combo fields.

Thieves lack in both DPM and survivability, leaving what? Warriors with just about any weapons have similar or superior DPM, and defensive skills. Guardians regenerate health. Both have heavy armor. As for ranged combat, pistols damage is low, and shortbow is boring – spam normal attack plus combo fields + explosion finisher.

Stealth’s power is overrated in combat. Its a great utility for breaking aggro and running off, but when you have to stand and fight and contribute to the group DPM, like in a dungeon, stealth is only useful for resing people.

Sometimes evading and stealthing just isn’t an option. The thief needs more usable defense skills.

Thief gameplay for me as a PvE oriented player is horrid, people tend to turn every thread regarding thieves in an entirely pvp related kittenstorm about how OP everything is. But over the course of the first few months that this game is live i’ve learned that thieves in PvE are generally the class that require the most attention/upkeep (you have to constantly pay attention because if you miss a visuel que you’re done for.) In short as a thief you have to bring your A-game to be as effective as any other class,

I’ve played all classes to 80 except for engineer and as a thief I can’t check my phone/respond to people talking to me IRL or anything of the sort because the moment I turn my head back to the screen I’m downed, whereas my warrior is basically an invulnerable metalmonster where I only need to keep in range, press 2 on CD and spam shouts as they become relevant.

For a proper balance in both PvE and PvP the skills should be split again just like it did in GW1 because skills that proved OP in a PvP setting and got nerfed resulted in a blow for the skill in PvE

Weaponwise PvE I came to find that most weapons are utterly useless and this leaves me with little room for creativity or preference.

Pistols in offhand are essentially useless in dungeons, aoe blind field has 0 use unless culling some trashmobs which every player skips where possible anyway. On bossfights I don’t bother to waste initiative on it. as for the dazing shot. It comes in handy during a handful of situations that need a quick tactical response (i.e. shooting a scavenger off of somebody because they can’t dodge) however once the boss is reached this skill becomes useless as well because it has 0 damage and stunning a boss takes 3-5-7 (even higher in tier2 and up fractals?)
The dual skills for pistols in offhand are decent when combined with another pistol to get some damage in or with a sword to whip out some decent damage (although this doesnt really go higher than 5-6k in balanced gear, just for reference my warrior has 12-18k on final hundred blades hit in full PVT gear. ) S/P is decent but then 4/5 would again lack in decent usefulness to actually work with consistently.

Daggers have the capability to dish out some decent damage however there is little room for creativity here as you will generally use heartseeker and backstab in damage builds or fly around with death blossom if running a condi build.
mainhand dagger combined with pistol gives a nice blind and gapcloser which have little use in PvE oriented situations where defiant basically ruins the entire use of the skill
Sword is my weapon of choice because of stable damage on the autoattack which gives some sustained damage (if I wouldnt melt whenever a boss looks at me wrong)
I combine this with a dagger to get an extra evasion along with two shadowsteps which I use whenever theyre off cooldown to have places to evade to. the CnD has less functionality in bossfights and I try to use it every now and again to get a tactical daze in.
Shortbow is probably the only weapon which I find useful enough to remain untouched in dungeons, I can blast some combo fields to be mildly supportive along with a leeching venom share build * . the autoattack bounces so thats nice for spreading poisons and the shadowstep and backjump can be utilized to get out of trouble when stuffs out to get me.
Anyway thats for the weapons, this obviously shines through to builds. The entire trait system was an agonizing change when coming from gw1 where Id get unlimited possibilities and all that I needed was creativity. For a thief in GW2 my options are extremely limited. I now use a venom share build to provide some minor heals, some might and little condition stacking, however I feel that I lack in damage using it, the big joke is basiliks venom which allows for (if coordinated well) 8-12 second stuns on bosses with a 30second cooldown.

Last thing my biggest dissapointment in a thief is how I have to sacrifice the thief’s “superior” single target damage, to get toughness and vitality to be remotely viable in higher level fractals for instance. How useful and fun to play a thief is in PVP thats exactly how terrible it is in PVE.
lack of viable build/weapon combo’s and things that make a thief “unmissable” in dungeons (I myself don’t have trouble finding groups but it pains my heart to see people on the fora saying how they cant get in parties because theyre a certain class, also seeing how people I know rerolled classes to actually play proper endgame saddens me, and makes it unmistakably clear that PvE should change, alot.) ruined my thief playexperience

One of the personal changes i wanna see is from pistol off hands, having the ability to place where you want your black powder to be. I do not understand the animation of it, where you’re shooting “powder” from your gun but it drops to your feet? Imho, that is quite laugable. The animation does take kinda long to complete [just like cloak and dagger] but the only difference is that you can actually instant give cnd w/ steal. You should be able to use skill#5 black powder as though you are using infiltrator’s arrow. I think that makes a lot more sense then the current powder skill. Back to Headshot. the skill needs to get re-named or have a slight dmg buff imo. Headshot (along w/ black powder) does the most poor damage in the thieves weapon options. when i say poor, i mean having 55+ crit dmg along with 2k power, and only being able to do 200 dmg for headshot (and black powder). I’m not saying give them super buffed up damage, but when a fire sigil does more dmg then ur 4-6 initiative skill, you know something’s wrong there.

Lets compare Dancing dagger with Headshot

Dancing dagger: Throw a dagger that cripples nearby foes and returns to you.
Damage: 336
Maximum targets: 4
Crippled: 5 s
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 900

(let me just throw numbers out there) with the dmg nerf, im pretty sure thieves can still do 2.5k crits at least with em with 1.4k crit minimum.

headshot: Daze your foe with a head shot.

Damage: 84
Daze: ¼ s
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 900

Head shot is a finisher.. it’s not an opener. Sometimes when you’re in that heated battle and u’d just wish if it did at least half the damage as dancing dagger or cnd. but instead you get 260+ w/ crits. (quite laughable) Some combo finisher, huh?

Now lets compare #5 skills Cloak and dagger and black powder

Fire a black powder shot, blinding nearby foes with the smoke cloud.

Dancing dagger: Stab your foe and vanish in stealth, leaving them vulnerable.
— Damage: 504
Stealth: 3 s
3 Vulnerability: 5 s
Range: 130

I do a very satisfying 3k+ crits to your daily players in wvwvw. What really makes this skill awesome is that you can have traits to give it buffs (during stealth). Oh and may i say Stealth is awesome? Stealth beats blind anyday in my book (especially when you’re stomping ppl)

Now.. lets look at black powder:Fire a black powder shot, blinding nearby foes with the smoke cloud.

Now.. lets look at black powder:Fire a black powder shot, blinding nearby foes with the smoke cloud.Damage: 84
Duration: 4 s
Combo Field: Smoke
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 900
^lol they put 900 range on the description on default cuz of the pistol but reality is that the range is 1.

Same dmg as headshot, 250+ hit w/ crit. Oh and it takes 1/4 seconds before you can cast it. It might not sound much but it does when you’re in a heated battle w/ that warrior.. or that bunker guardian. Shooting black powder that falls to your feet, how pathetic is that? You’d think it’s something epic or something that’s got more survibility like cnd. Don’t get me wrong, blind is superior (only in pve).

Now… If you have reached this far, I am in no way, saying or implying that dancing dagger and CnD is OP. I am in fact stating how inferior pistol off hand is.

If you actually buff Headshot and black powder, I can guarantee you the p/p would actually be up to par and not inferior.

So can we please discuss about what’s important and not about how warriors are more mobile then thieves? If you’re a die hard thief player, you’d know that thieves do it best (along w/ eles)

Animi.4617:

80% of ppl “crying” that thieves are OP and the remaining 20% are thieves….. I think at Anet everyone plays a thief thats why they don’t want to change anything about it and they won’t… I never saw a game where stealth was great it always were OP in every game. They shouldn’t put in the game at the first place in GW1 assasin was great without stealth. Bring down the stealth of thieves like if you come out from stealth you can’t go in stealth again for 6 second or you can have stealth but you cant stack it up fot 500 second and also they should have only 2 sec stealth and an elite for bigger stealth.

Honestly, I don’t get why ppl cry about thieves at all? Compared to the assassins of GW1 we are nothing. Assassins in GW1 were all supposed to kill their targets in 3 seconds or less, or their builds aren’t “meta”. I remember being able to take down targets in jade quarry without them even having a chance to react (because they were knocked down twice and die before getting up the second time).

Anyway: Stealth can only be stacked to 15 seconds, it has a time limit. Stealth is also limited to 3 seconds (4 when traited) with a single skill, with the exception of shadow’s refuge, which is exactly what it is for: REFUGE. An elite that gives big stealth is hardly a strong elite, since stealth is broken once you hit anything with it and it doesn’t even provide any absolute defences. (Imo the mesmer elite “mass invisibility” is a worthless skill… but meh).
As for the 6 seconds cooldown on stealth, we’ll need something else to replace the 3 seconds we are more vulnerable now though. Right now we thieves are (when not traited for it) pretty defenceless without stealth. Lacking protection, blocks, knockbacks, our only defence is “avoiding damage”, which is what stealth excels at.

Cheesiest class in the game for PvP.

Not 30 minutes ago i chased a Thief for 10-15 mins (ima Guard). catching her skirmishing over and over again. I’d win the skirmishes, shed smoke bomb, use her safe house or whatever these abilities are. She had about 3-5 ways to go into stealth or displace herself without a short bow. Basicly pressing her, “I dont lose ever” buttons and walking away, stalling for her HP to regen or her heal to come back up.

I don’t think Thieves should regen while stealthed. It’s being abused. Or the timer for being in combat shouldnt run out while in stealth because them maintaining stealth is for a combat reason.

-Note, at any point in time she could stall like this and WP away from a bad engagement. No skill required.

How is this fun or fair for the opposition? The ammount of skill it takes to press your invisibility button is quite low, while you could argue theres not much you can do to ensure a kill on a good thief.

Stealth is super strong in every MMO it comes out with. The ability to pick and chose who and when you fight, and also when you pull out of combat is incredibly powerful. Where is the balance? This is next gen gaming right? Why is this still an issue? Deminishing returns on stealth, slow their movespeed significantly, nerf the ammount of ways they can aquire it.

Or maybe melees should have a way to see stealth or atleast get a hint at which way shes going briefly. Going invisible in plain sight 2 inches infront of a guy hammering on you is pretty rediculous.

Currently, I have to use my gap closers once she on the map again. Then she uses hers to get away and stall for her cooldowns to run even more. How fun. Good job designing this. This must be intended, cause even in theorycrafting you could tell this was the end result.

I did get her down though, cause she engaged again for no real reason. Thats another issue. For “balance” purposes, you should be able to outplay your opponent OR Capitalize on their mistakes.

Theres no way for me to outplay someone who is this elusive. I have to wait for her to slip up (a smart thief wouldnt) and THEN i get to have a chance. Thats dumb. This class should require finess not just button mashing to spam invis when real competition comes along.

Anyway, once downed guess what she did. She stealthed away again. Didn’t reappear until she was healed about 90-95%, I judges interventioned over, too late, she disapeared. Didn’t catch her the last time, had no idea where she went. I think she WP’d away. This was an issue that they said they would fix back in the freaking Beta. Do you all play Thieves? wtf.

After catching this stupid person who cant fight or pvp worth a kitten about 8 times or more, she gets away. Thanks. I deserved it I guess right? For daring to fight a Thief at any particular skill level?

Cheesiest class in the game for PvP

Im never going to pvp in any form ever again. Your game is good. Your PvP sucks. Just because i don’t like being the pansy who stabs people in the back, i don’t get a fair chance at a fight. Thanks for punishing me

Animi.4617:

80% of ppl “crying” that thieves are OP and the remaining 20% are thieves

98% of statistics on forums are made up on the spot.

I never saw a game where stealth was great it always were OP in every game.

On this forum I only care about this game, this forum is only for discussing this game.

They shouldn’t put in the game at the first place in GW1 assasin was great without stealth.

Guildwars 1 is one of those other games that this forum is not for. But sins were OP in PvE, and I didn’t enjoy playing them.

Bring down the stealth of thieves like if you come out from stealth you can’t go in stealth again for 6 second or you can have stealth but you cant stack it up fot 500 second

• Stacking stealth is limited to 10 or 15 seconds.
• There is already a mechanism that prevents stealth for 3 seconds when ending stealth by dealing damage.
• Stealth is a precondition to some skills that will likely need to be buffed to compensate for being available less frequently or it would make the burst builds that everyone loves and which would not be affected the only viable thief option.

Why do people always make suggestions that would force every thief into the burst role?

and also they should have only 2 sec stealth and an elite for bigger stealth.

Little consequence, might require rebalancing of some shadow arts traits, to compensate for shorter duration, making stealth potentially stronger. Right now you have a trade-off between staying in stealth for up to 4 seconds, maximizing effectiveness of some traits, and hitting them before that time. By reducing stealth duration you make this decision easier.

You don’t play a thief, do you?

I’d like to see some of the bugs fixed in our class. Like hidden killer buff to last entire duration of stealth.

Several abilities like shadowstep and others can give you the illusion that you have broken stealth when in fact you have not. I’ve had a few fights where I thought I was revealed when I really wasn’t and tried to land a CND cause of this.

Scorpion Wire, sounds amazing, rarely works right.

There are a few other skills traps and such that are not working correctly.

I feel the thief is balanced and could just use some tweaks to fix current abilities and traits.

I’m sure I have not mentioned all the things broken in the thief class but these are a few examples.

I chose to play Thief because I like sneaky, stealthy, opportunistic game play, which rewards tactics and timing with high burst damage. If you take this away as the soul of the Thief by nerfing things, then there is no Thief class.

I’ll go vent on a different thread.

Stealth is broken in so many ways. And I’ve done the same things swinsk.6410 has as well with the cnd – when thinking I’m revealed and not still in stealth. Annoying. And yes the THief class is balanced but need tweaks to stable the gameplay.

Collin Jones.9781:

Cheesiest class in the game for PvP.
Deminishing returns on stealth, slow their movespeed significantly, nerf the ammount of ways they can aquire it.

Or maybe melees should have a way to see stealth or atleast get a hint at which way shes going briefly. Going invisible in plain sight 2 inches infront of a guy hammering on you is pretty rediculous.

Anyway, once downed guess what she did. She stealthed away again. Didn’t reappear until she was healed about 90-95%, I judges interventioned over, too late, she disapeared. Didn’t catch her the last time, had no idea where she went. I think she WP’d away. This was an issue that they said they would fix back in the freaking Beta. Do you all play Thieves? wtf.

1) Our movespeed IS significantly reduced when stealthed. Only when you trait for it, you move “quickly”, not a lot of ppl actually take this trait (there are better). Also, she probably used infiltrator’s arrow twice and shadowstep, this means she used every single initiative she has and put an utility on 60s cd just to escape from you. If a roamer would encounter her by accident where she appeared, she would die, immediately.

2) There are 3 utilities, 1 healing skill and 3 ways with weapons to acquire stealth. 2 of the known utilities, a trap (which means you have to trigger it first). Cloak and dagger, leap through smoke field or blast on a smokefield. The last one are hard to actually pull off when in combat, so we’re not going to discuss that one. The trap isn’t something thieves rly use for as far as I know (though Imo it should be a quite interesting utility for sPvP). Shadow refuge (the house) and blinding powder are the utilities, they are interesting skills for survival when the enemy is able to make you waste most of your initiatives (block, blind, dodge). Cloak and dagger is the primary way for a x/D to gain stealth, it uses 6 initiatives (which is half our pool) and stealths us for 3 seconds. (And then there is Heartseeker through a smokefield using smoke screen or using black powder). —→ In practice a thief has maximum of 4 ways to achieve stealth in combat. With my build the skills have following cooldown: 6s, 30s, 40s and 50s. So only 3 of the 4 skills are meant to be used before combat (so they can regenerate during combat) or as last resort.

3) Yes there is a way for melee-oriented characters to find stealthed players. You obviously aren’t really experienced in PvP yet in this game. Your auto-attack has a 3-skill-chain. When you hit a thief, the chain will continue. This is how I counter a thief, find him with auto-attack, use cloak and dagger on him.

4) A thief who just got downed has, like every other profession, his third skill on cooldown. Your opponent couldn’t stealth herself when you decided to finish her immediately and even if she did, it would’ve only lasted 2 seconds. What really happened is this:
You tapped on “finish him”, she used shadowstep somewhere behind your back. You didn’t look around, just thinking she stealthed. She probably used stealth before you found her. By the time you FINALLY see her, she has healed herself tremendously.
This is what you should’ve known when you had more experience and didn’t come on this forum to cry immediately after one loss.
a) A thief ALWAYS shadowsteps away just before you finish him .. I mean .. why not? You don’t want to die
b) If timed right, the thief will be able to cast stealth just before you finished him the second time. He is still there! Just slash away, his shadowstep is on cooldown and won’t be back on time. He reappears again, finish him now.

Here is what you can do to hasten up the process. Have him on locked-target. Interrupt your “finisher” before it connects, this wins you 1 or 2 seconds. Use a teleportskill (since he only shadowstepped, you’ll still be locked on him) and immediately follow with finisher.
As a thief there is one much much faster way though. Our shadowstep doesn’t interrupt the finisher (I think the guardians teleport does, the mesmer’s blink doesn’t ..) so we can use our teleportskill while finishing.

Collin Jones.9781:

….Currently, I have to use my gap closers once she on the map again. Then she uses hers to get away …

Sounds like you were stalking someone, which is probably a violation of the game’s TOS. And you have the nerve to complain here that your victim managed to get away.

I like how im being told what went down by a person who wasnt there and is basing their information on assumptions.

1 – No bow, stated that.
2 -All i know is she kept going stealth, and when she’d appear id close in on her and i’d try to #5 with the greatsword, easy dodge. So i had to feint it, didn’t matter, she’d go invis again.

Your saying it costs half your pool like its a big deal, you can use it 3 times if my math serves correctly cause you also gotta count the time stealthed where your getting initiative back. Not like it would be hard to buy another second or 2 with a dodge roll + caltops either. That one ability sounds like it could single handidly get you out of a lot of kitten if neccesary ( as it did earlier today im sure ). Don’t worry though, you’ve brought 3 more abilities to fill in the gaps when you flub it up somehow. What a ninja.

Thats besides the fact that there is a whole slew of ways to regain your initiative in your traits.
3 -Swinging wildly hoping to hit an invisible person. Good strat. I don’t doubt it’s validity, just rediculous what your resorted to. What I want is a mechanic for people who say, got knocked down while the person is in stealth or maybe they are crippled and are not in immediate melee range to capitalize on your strategy. Some signal to keep an eye open for.
4 -Yep, you tell me what happened. >_>

I didn’t immediatly finish her cause she was invisible when she went down. I thought dmg revealed stealthed people, maybe dots dont? Then again i hit her pretty recently, Didn’t see her. Thats all.

Then she appeared out in the open by some water at 90-95%. I didn’t miss her, I checked there 3 or 4 times prior, she either wasnt loaded or was already stealthed. I judges interventioned over to her and she disapeared. No partical effects which is why im guessing she got up and WP’d out.

By the way, i don’t ever “Finish” Thieves, i beat the life out of them while they lay on the ground. It’s easier. For me atleast.

Your “locked target” is a moot point as I wouldn’t have gotter her to a downed state if she had a clue and didn’t all in me randomly, but thank you for sharing.

frans.8092:

Collin Jones.9781:

….Currently, I have to use my gap closers once she on the map again. Then she uses hers to get away …

Sounds like you were stalking someone, which is probably a violation of the game’s TOS. And you have the nerve to complain here that your victim managed to get away.

A fight broke out, she ran/I chased. and im in violation of the terms of service? /Slap

Well I browsed enough to retort to the ridiculous demands in this thread. I’ll post my response in order of ridiculousness.

1. Remove stealth – …are you kidding me? Lowest health pool, bad toughness, and shadowstep being the only escape means thief would be garbage tier over night. How about they losing the ability to use daggers?

2. increase stealth cool down – Could be viable if done right, but don’t nerf the class because people are kitten about cloak and dagger

3. Being able to interrupting stealth – Stealth is easy to get around unless the thief blows a dodge and your meta game is terrible.

4. No healing or removal of conditions in stealth – I can see where that comes from, but if heal doesn’t remove conditions then the thief essentially has no condition removal like almost EVERY OTHER CLASS. Shadows refuge and similar utilities heal in stealth if the player traits it. Same thing with movement speed.

5. Nerf damage – The reason people get roflstomped in pvp is because if you see a thief with d/d he is 98% likely a crit build. Until thieves’ condition damage, or condition damage in general, is improved upon that’s pretty much the only viable option of damage.

now that the top 5 stupid suggestions are over I’m going to give you pointers on how to catch a thief. O.K. kiddies put on your listening ears because I want people to pay attention to improve their meta game.

1. Crowd control – every class has a chill, cripple, snare, root, or other form of immobilization. Stealth is broken for 5 seconds so get ready to use it. the only options for escape is steal and shadowstep (if on the toolbar). forcing a thief to use it on your terms is a lot better than using it on his. Both are a minute cooldown by the way.

2. When you see the blue glow interrupt because its a heal. This should go for all classes.

3. Dots- More dots. Heal is the only thing a thief has that can break condition damage (that will be on the toolbar anyway). So there’s a thousand or 2 damage even if you’re not a condition build, or hundreds in the case of bleed.

4. Dodge – CD stealth lasts for 4 seconds, dodge away when you see the thief leave, count to 2.5 then dodge again and he’ll get out of stealth without landing the backstab.

5. Knockback and prevention methods- warriors, elementalists, and guardians especially can prevent a thief from landing that pesky backstab by pounding/bubble shielding around the ground around them, which will damage and throw the thief back. Mesmers can use desception ( and I know its BS but mesmers can target thief through stealth [ANET fix that plz]), nerco’s fear, and engies have a netgun, so refer to step 1.

No reason for all the complaining because people cant wise up and take advantage of the obvious faults in an opposing class.

Edit: splng erros

following are some suggestion for thief ( playing thief for only 1 month or so in pve not in pvp or wvw)

- i think when thief in downed state its skill 3 need some work (need to increase the range in my opinion)

- dual pistol is a useless

- traps are useless utility skills ever. do not help in killing foes.