Guild Wars 2

ok how bout doing away with the initiative system all together and give thief CD’s like every other class, surely that would help.

Wilow.3061:

Bastionhawk.7120:

Korrtz.3510:

Bastionhawk.7120:

I wonder if you are a thief talking about ‘easy buttons’. That would be interesting.

Really?

Thank you for providing such a perfect reply to my post. Completely removing any sort of personal responsibility and placing the fun of the game, or lack thereof, entirely on the shoulders of a single class you feel plays the game in an unfair way.

And yes, I play a thief. But also a mesmer, guardian, and elementalist, but please, continue to throw excrement like a child and avoid having to rise to any sort of challenge presented by the game.

You may think your post was in jest, but it still proves my point beautifully. You feel cheated and feel the the thief class should be handicapped. In order to improve your gaming experience you are calling for someone else’s to be reduced, how noble of you.

Hyper-defensive as you are, I still got a nice laugh out of your severity. You take yourself and this class too seriously. Facts are facts. The class needs tweaking.

Tweaking yes, every class still needs tweaking. But many of the people attacking thieves are calling for flat out nerfs (ala 50% less damage on abilities). I would be up for abilities doing less damage, but they need to compensate us with something. So far, the balance has been a little one sided, making some abilities flat out not worth using…ever. When a nerf to an ability makes that ability not usable, you go too far.

As for facts are facts, yes, I guess I can’t argue with you there. I still haven’t seen any “facts” in this thread though. I’m sure if you really wanted you could have fraps or something running with your hero window up, and show us something that is broken backed up with your ability (aka not staying still afk, or in the middle of frenzy, or wearing your zerker gear then claiming you have 3k+ toughness with 25k+ health afterwords). Many posters are saying all the see in PvP (they probably mean WvW) are pacts of thieves, so such a video shouldn’t take too long to produce. Just exit your starting area and you are bound to be waylayed by a group of perma stealthed thieves waiting for meat.

I agree. I think it is fair to point out that while a few of people are focusing on my comments I should also point out that I’m not one of those people who think the class should be nerfed.

Bastionhawk.7120:

Korrtz.3510:

I have a really simple solution for the people that seem to have rage all over thieves or anything else that they find challenging.

I propose a difficulty adjuster, so if you encounter an enemy, whether player or npc, you can just adjust it to easy and finish the fight in sweatless style. Getting frustrated with a jumping puzzle? Easy button and there is a path straight to the end! Levelling? Bah, easy button bumps you to 80 while you leisurely enjoy a cup of camomile tea. You too can remove any challenge in GW2 with the easy button!

I wonder if you are a thief talking about ‘easy buttons’. That would be interesting.

NightyNight.1823:

What exacly is their ‘’VALID POINT’‘?’Some screenshots whit some damage, In WvW? If I bring you a screen shot whit kill shot 33k now Warriors are OP?
Everyone can do high numbers, its about dealing them and how they can be countered.Some screens whit some thief killing you doesn’t prove a thing other than you getting killed because you did nothing to defend yourself.
And BS build is hardly viable in tPvP.That build will never work on someone whose actualy using brain.3 hits combo its so obvious ,too stupidly easy to counter.Its a bad build for 1v1 ,only good for killing the large mass of stupid.
That build is so defenceless against most cases its pathetic.Try killing a necro whit 3 health bars, a guardian, a warrior whit 30k HP, an elementalist you know , the kind of elementalist everyone plays .Its never possible.So to come here and request to nerf already a bad build its just insane.

You are far to biased to have a discussion with about this. Thieves could have a one hit one kill button and you’d probably still think there was nothing wrong. Try looking at these issues from the outside and be objective. I think it is you that needs to use your brain a little bit. Also – what valid proof are you looking for? Osaliske laid out some pretty good points. I think you might not have the ability to defend your own case. It is easier to discredit everyone else rather than formulate your own defense isn’t it?

Hah .And based on what you assume all those things about me huh? I play a lot of different classes .I know everything about the outside perspective.You still didn’t managed to bring me a valid proof or even argument to why thief is OP.If your best point is some screen shot numbers then good luck finding someone who will take you seriously.And I’m done here , am tired discussing whit ignorants and stupid.

And Thank you:

As for facts are facts, yes, I guess I can’t argue with you there. I still haven’t seen any “facts” in this thread though. I’m sure if you really wanted you could have fraps or something running with your hero window up, and show us something that is broken backed up with your ability (aka not staying still afk, or in the middle of frenzy, or wearing your zerker gear then claiming you have 3k+ toughness with 25k+ health afterwords). Many posters are saying all the see in PvP (they probably mean WvW) are pacts of thieves, so such a video shouldn’t take too long to produce. Just exit your starting area and you are bound to be waylayed by a group of perma stealthed thieves waiting for meat.

Osaliske.4392:

Burst damage – Yup, thief is suppose to have good burst dps.

This is a failure to understand GW2’s balance system. Anyone running bursty skills, traits, utilities, and gear is supposed to have burst damage, thieves included. Offense is not an innate profession characteristic, even if it is more popular amongst some communities than others. Combat medic thieves wearing full cleric’s don’t have “good burst DPS” any more than full-berserker great sword guardians have good support and survivability.

Shukran.4851:

spvp/tpvp : i think HS does a little too much damage above 50%, hence everyone spam HS(+haste often) to kill

Above-50 % Heartseeker does less DPS than auto attack. People who spam it from 100 % are terrible.

Thief is overpowered. end of the story.

In pve and normal pvp? nope. There they are relative nicely balanced there.

In wvw? Crazy overpowered. Way to much damage, way to much cloacking + culling-extensions. Put 2 or more thiefs in a party and they are an immortal, crazy damage force, that cannot be beaten by conventional players skills. If arenanet doesn’t nerf thief in wvw, i’ll continu to lvl my my own thief. Cause thiefs are mandatory in T1 wvw. Yesterday i got sneak-killed 5x by a thief in 20 mins. I used all dodges (+ vigor) defensive skills i had. Even the stun aura (d/d ele), it didn’t work. He spammed 5x heartseeker, even my pve thief cannot do that. I ‘ride the lightning’ed away. He still jumped on me out of nowhere, while I kept running + swiftness. And after 45 secs of struggling I hoped he would be out of initiative. Wrong. He heartseeked me further to dead. Also why in god’s name did Anet give thiefs stuns? The biggest burst class in game (i don’t consider warrior burst, even though they spike higher), with the easiest escape skill in the game, and still give them a stun? Right… They are hard enough to escape. Backstab impossible, cause you can’t see it coming. HP down at least 5k. Then they only must to 10-15k damage. Hearseeking 4x or more and you are dead. Sure you can dodge two of them, and then what? I used the Dagger air skill 3 (stun aura, if they hit you, they get stunned). And somehow it didnt matter, he kept hitting, as thought he wasn’t stunned.

Nerf thief in wvw. Or force me to make one myself to be viable in wvw. You can call this ‘Qqing’ but it’s my honest opinion. I had 4x lvl 80 professions now, soon thief as well. And my opinion is already made. Thief (wvw only) is superior overpowered.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

And after 45 secs of struggling I hoped he would be out of initiative.

That isn’t how initiative works, it isn’t a once-per-fight thing. If he blew it all at the start of the fight and then chased you a while, he was back up near full for the second round.

WvW as a whole is going to have more balance issues though, just because it is built to be asymmetric. Gear, terrain, server buffs, etc ensure that it is never going to be an even playing field and should not be treated as such.

Tulisin.6945:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

And after 45 secs of struggling I hoped he would be out of initiative.

That isn’t how initiative works, it isn’t a once-per-fight thing. If he blew it all at the start of the fight and then chased you a while, he was back up near full for the second round.

WvW as a whole is going to have more balance issues though, just because it is built to be asymmetric. Gear, terrain, server buffs, etc ensure that it is never going to be an even playing field and should not be treated as such.

In the course of the fight, he used 11x (or more) hearseeker, and cloacked a few times. He also Immobalized me twice, and stunned me once. If i’d let him hit all the time, in the full course of battle, he would have done 50-60k damage. That means i must avoid over 75% of this strikes, to survive… Right. On other professions, you must avoid their ‘hard hits’. On thief you must avoid being hit non stop. I also hate heartseeker is a teleport. They should make if you get distance from thief (even small one), that hearseeker cannot hit anymore. They got enough teleports elsewhere. Semi-spammable teleport + high damage, is ovepowered. Nerf at least on of the aspects of this skill. Either remove teleport, nerf damage, make +50% enemy health spamming it, does zero damage (punished cheap thief playing more, and makes player skill more important).

Or put a ‘you cannot spam any skill more then 4x in 30 secs’ system. So they can regen initiative fast, and use it wisely, but cannot do cheap ‘spam this skill over and over, because it works and it’s easy’. Then they must vary between skills. And use skills like death blossom for instance. I never EVER saw a wvw thief use death blossom. The reason is simple. CnD + Heartseeker outmatch it by far. yet in pve i’m using death blossom all the time. Spike damage skills should do a maximum of 10-15% more damage then death blossom. More is ‘not justified’. That makes CnD/Heartseeker atm to powerfull. If they remove heartseeker teleport I can 100% live with it. Because then moving actually means something. If you move, ‘sorrie thief, you’ll have to be a little smarter and better to heartseek me’. Now they dont.

I repeat this is only for Wvw. There they are overpowered. They absolutely don’t need nerfs in pve or pvp.

In the time it takes a thief to do 11 heartseekers (including restoring the initiative needed), you should have been able to blast his full HP bar 5 times.

Spamming heartseeker does not work! Or at least I never managed to get it to work XD It only works against uber noobs.

Heartseeker does pitiful damage above 50%. Heartseeker doesn’t evade anything. Heartseeker loses all it’s range when slowed. Really, how could you die to this?

Utterly utterly ridiculous overpowered class…….

Usual thief fight again.

Stealth – stabby stabby and stealth again before any response
Stabby stabby – stealth again
Stabby stabby and stealth
Heartseker spam spam spam till dead

80% of any fight invisible and untargetable

Anet wake the hell up – no other class has over 1000 posts of complaints about how ludicrous it is.

stof.9341:

In the time it takes a thief to do 11 heartseekers (including restoring the initiative needed), you should have been able to blast his full HP bar 5 times.

Spamming heartseeker does not work! Or at least I never managed to get it to work XD It only works against uber noobs.

Heartseeker does pitiful damage above 50%. Heartseeker doesn’t evade anything. Heartseeker loses all it’s range when slowed. Really, how could you die to this?

As an ele with full PVT gear 19k hp, he did 4k damage per heartseeker (well 3500 above 50% 4k below 50% 4500 below 25%. But what really scared me was he could combined this with stun/immobalize. Had to sacrafice two stun breakers for this (that i rather time at other moments. He was going for first heartseeker, so stunbreaker alone wasnt enough had to do dodge. The moment i dodge, he did hearseeker again so another dodge. He knew then i was out of Endurance and killed me. (i think with normal attacks, and later one Heartseeker again).

Your post was really intriguing, had me nearly convinced that Thieves really are this unstoppable 1-button killing machine. However…

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Even the stun aura (d/d ele), it didn’t work. He spammed 5x heartseeker…

Once I read this, I laughed so hard, I nearly had an aneurysm.

So surely it would be fine for all ranged classes to gain a fast spammable, no cooldown attack that does 4k per hit and jumps you back out of melee range each time? Oh and it can be used without a target so doubes as an escape mechanism.

Sorry – you say that sounds like a bad idea?

Laika.8795:

Your post was really intriguing, had me nearly convinced that Thieves really are this unstoppable 1-button killing machine. However…

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Even the stun aura (d/d ele), it didn’t work. He spammed 5x heartseeker…

Once I read this, I laughed so hard, I nearly had an aneurysm.

Laugh as hard as you want. In about 7-8 seconds he did 5 of them. I was as astounded as you, without the ‘laughing out’ part.

Watching my traits, this doesn’t seem so hard… cloack, (non initiavie skill), enter battle with backstab, 13 ini (15 points in bottom trait), and ’on crit you gain 1 initiative. This means 14 (backstab autocrit with 30 in crit line, and most take this) initiative. Add 1 more crit, or the normal regen rate, of it, and you got it.

And even above 50% health they do at least 2k, if not 3k damage. My ele has only two, hard to set off, 3k+ attacks. What’s more, moving in combat (somethign that generally makes you harder to be hit in gw2), has no effect vs heartseeker. The leap, makes it hit, unless you dodge.

As a thief myself i feel bad when i read so many of my fellows still trying to defend such a kitten skill like heartseeker…

Above 50% it may hit for less than auto attack, but auto attack is not a fast 450m autoaim gap closer hitting for 5-6k on lesser protected targets, that even ignores an opponent evading behind you (imagine a hunter still shooting behind his back, for example), also heartseeker is always paired with CS trait Opportunist (ok, thats “only” 20% +1ini chance) coupled with normal regen basically means it costs nothing.

Now yes, heartseeker alone is not much of a threat, couple CCs, a bit of repositionning, blind, evade, not much of an issue, even kinda funny as much as a warrior immediately oppening with frenzy-BC-100b.

The fact that it is absolutely spammable right after mug-CnD-missed backstab (coz yes, it is easy to avoid) assuming you repositionned properly and the thief went revealed, is not justifiable. We aren’t even talking about pressure here, as i mentionned above.

It is the 0 degree level of skill required vs efficiency of the entire game, the most rewarding 1 mashable button existing across all classes.

And please take into consideration that i’ve been rolling a BS thief since almost day 1, a build that i decided to drop mostly because of how heartseeker made me feel like an assisted moron rewarded above everything for being able to press a single button repeatedly.
Mug-CnD-BS is fine, as much as 100b burst is fine. It requires to know how to position, lure, fake and also how to escape failed attempts.
Heatseeker is not anything of this. Complain all you want how anyone dying to it is a scrub and how HS got nerfed already, it is still the same over rewarding brainless skill.

Something has to be done in the form of either making it a lot more expensive, either making it absolute crap if not used on a 25%hp’d target, either remove the autoaim and make it a manually aimed attack.

Because rewarding so greatly single button mashing is not healthy and will lead this game nowhere.

I really wished my fellow thieves would share my point of view instead of defending a single skill that dumbs down an entire weapon set, i’m sad it’s not how things are.
Anyway, back to my noob p/p build.

Pestilence.3184:

ok how bout doing away with the initiative system all together and give thief CD’s like every other class, surely that would help.

How about doing away with all those individual cool downs and give everyone their own initiative style bar.

That would help better.

Initiative bar makes thief fun and interesting to play. Other classes should also be fun and interesting to play.

muscarine.5136:

heartseeker is always paired with CS trait Opportunist (ok, thats “only” 20% +1ini chance) coupled with normal regen basically means it costs nothing.

That is a massive exaggeration.

Volrath.1473:

urdriel.8496:

Raise time between invis, now you have a 5 sec debuff, change it to 7-8 sec, thief fixed.

Fist, the “reveled” condition lasts 3 seconds not 5 (whitch shows how much you know about the thief profession) and second if this condition cd is to be increased then the thieves base HP and thoughness need to me raised as well since stealth is the thieves main defense.

It is called missclick dude.

ofc, Anet should change stealth to, you have 100% more HP and armor while you are in stealth.
Thief is totally unbalanced in the game if you compare his damage/survivality with other classes, a glass cannon must die fast, but with stealth + stealth issues a thief is imposible to kill if you are a good player.

And yes, initiative is a broken mechanic too, you can spam fast and without cooldowns ,burst attacks all the time.

For Aion, if an assassin is hit or in combat, he/she is revealed and cannot stealth until combat is over. I think that would be a suitable solution for thieves in GW2, especially because a thief can still surprise a player and kill him/her in a few seconds, but can’t then kill an entire group of players without a chance for them to fight back because of constant stealthing / rendering issues.

This isn’t a post about balance. Just some advice.

He also Immobalized me twice, and stunned me once.

Means he’s running the usual offensive D/D build, with Spider and Basilisk Venom. It’s quite likely the guy’s got no stun breaker. Certainly doesn’t have multiples. Also quite likely he has no way to break immobilize. These are probably the most effective ways to attack him; that or area-effect CC. I’ve also found that Heartseeker doesn’t seem to work as well when they’re crippled.

If you’re just 1v1-ing with a thief in the middle of nowhere, though, sometimes the best policy is to ask yourself, “Do I get anything from fighting this guy? Or can I just retreat?” (P/D thief lurking about inside a keep with several un-released mesmer corpses scattered around… that’s another story. )

HeeHee.5208:

For Aion, if an assassin is hit or in combat, he/she is revealed and cannot stealth until combat is over. I think that would be a suitable solution for thieves in GW2, especially because a thief can still surprise a player and kill him/her in a few seconds, but can’t then kill an entire group of players without a chance for them to fight back because of constant stealthing / rendering issues.

Stealth in GW2 was designed around using it inside of combat. Hence why our most readily available method of stealth is a short range melee attack.

A change like this would require a massive rework of multiple trait lines, utility skills, and nearly every weapon set.

Actually, because of this thread’s specific creation, I believe the thief is being lined up for a gameplay change.

Probably going to be a massive nerf to stealth…since it’s extremely OP right now.

I forsee a “stealth” patch soon. Probably something like ‘incoming damage removes the stealth effect on players’ since their main philosophy was basically “AoE defeats thief’s stealth.”

My suggested fixes

Spamming Abilities other than the 1 costs increasing initiative with each back to back cast
Remove Stealth from all weapon skills
When in Stealth Initiative does not regenerate
Cap the damage that can be done to any player at 8K by any class, that is 1/2 a glass cannons health and 1/3 of most tanky classes

My suggestion, as a Thief main myself, is to just delete us. Why? Because the profession will inevitably be destroyed by whiners who will continue to cry even if you continue to nerf them in to the ground to the point where the auto-attack for any weapon is a written apology and a self-reflection of 100% HP to instantly suicide. May as well get rid of us now before we all get fed up of the bullkitten and re-roll by ourselves.

You will NEVER make everyone with happy with a sneaky class. Ever. A re-roll for me is almost definite, because come the January/February “big” updates, I expect the class to be driven underground with the force of a thousand suns. There will be no point to our existence.

Relentliss.2170:

My suggested fixes
Spamming Abilities other than the 1 costs increasing initiative with each back to back cast
Remove Stealth from all weapon skills

More suggestions that’d break the profession. Thieves aren’t just built like every other profession but with initiative instead of cooldowns, they’re fundamentally balanced around the initiative system. A huge revamp to the initiative system (like scaling costs up for repeated ability use) would require a huge revamp of thief skills as a whole.

And removing stealth from weapon skills means rebalancing every build that relies on combat stealth.

Bastionhawk.7120:

Hyper-defensive as you are, I still got a nice laugh out of your severity. You take yourself and this class too seriously. Facts are facts. The class needs tweaking.

It’s not being hypersensitive bub, you nerfers are the one whining and moaning about “imbalance” and crying like 5 year old girls with skinned knees. I’m getting a little tired of this entitlement attitude players have, because its blatantly obvious you are plain lazy.

Myself, I see a situation and get owned a few times while adjusting my playstyle and end up being a better player because of it. I engage in active critical thinking, something which I am guessing you read as too many big words put together. Each class has its pros and cons, as a thief I enjoy mobility and dps yes, but the mesmer is regarded as the best 1v1 class in the game. Ele’s can knock out siege in a way nobody else can, hunters have meatshields, Necros can lay waste to a confined zerg pretty easily, mesmer mobility is highlighted in the EB JP, etc etc. Getting the picture Champ? Sorry if you think losing means the other guy is OP’d, ever stop to think this might not be your game if you can’t sack up and improve?

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

My suggested fixes
Spamming Abilities other than the 1 costs increasing initiative with each back to back cast
Remove Stealth from all weapon skills

More suggestions that’d break the profession. Thieves aren’t just built like every other profession but with initiative instead of cooldowns, they’re fundamentally balanced around the initiative system. A huge revamp to the initiative system (like scaling costs up for repeated ability use) would require a huge revamp of thief skills as a whole.

And removing stealth from weapon skills means rebalancing every build that relies on combat stealth.

Your just in denial defending the most broken class in any mmo.

Being able to stealth repeatedly is OP and everyone but thieves know it.

Having to use class skills would bring this ability, which when tied only to Initiative is incredibly OP, into line with other abilities in the game which are all on CD.

Relentliss.2170:

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

My suggested fixes
Spamming Abilities other than the 1 costs increasing initiative with each back to back cast
Remove Stealth from all weapon skills

More suggestions that’d break the profession. Thieves aren’t just built like every other profession but with initiative instead of cooldowns, they’re fundamentally balanced around the initiative system. A huge revamp to the initiative system (like scaling costs up for repeated ability use) would require a huge revamp of thief skills as a whole.

And removing stealth from weapon skills means rebalancing every build that relies on combat stealth.

Your just in denial defending the most broken class in any mmo.

It is quite possible that we have differing evaluations of what it means to be “most broken”, but the thief is pretty far from meeting that criteria for me, especially in the context of “in any MMO”.

That said, I don’t have a problem with major class attributes being changed, as long as the changes filter down to every aspect and are consistent. Something along the lines of what you’re suggesting is a pretty major profession revamp that should have a decent-sized testing period and would likely require retuning of most of the thief weapon skills as well as traits.

Stealth being an uncounterable ability is silly. Make something counter stealth and prevent it from working for a time.

Sonork.2916:

Stealth being an uncounterable ability is silly. Make something counter stealth and prevent is from working for a time.

Again, a perfectly reasonable suggestion on the condition that thief weapon skills and traits become less reliant on stealth to be effective. People like to isolate one aspect of stealth and say “well, that is broken and I want to take it away”, but you can’t effectively block stealth as a defensive mechanism, for instance, without also nerfing condition based P/D, control-based S/D, traited condition removal, etc. Stealth is heavily interwoven with thief effectiveness, doubly so when someone is running trait synergy for it. Locking down stealth as a whole to fix one particular issue you have with it is like locking down attunement swapping for elementalists.

Korrtz.3510:

Bastionhawk.7120:

Hyper-defensive as you are, I still got a nice laugh out of your severity. You take yourself and this class too seriously. Facts are facts. The class needs tweaking.

It’s not being hypersensitive bub, you nerfers are the one whining and moaning about “imbalance” and crying like 5 year old girls with skinned knees. I’m getting a little tired of this entitlement attitude players have, because its blatantly obvious you are plain lazy.

Myself, I see a situation and get owned a few times while adjusting my playstyle and end up being a better player because of it. I engage in active critical thinking, something which I am guessing you read as too many big words put together. Each class has its pros and cons, as a thief I enjoy mobility and dps yes, but the mesmer is regarded as the best 1v1 class in the game. Ele’s can knock out siege in a way nobody else can, hunters have meatshields, Necros can lay waste to a confined zerg pretty easily, mesmer mobility is highlighted in the EB JP, etc etc. Getting the picture Champ? Sorry if you think losing means the other guy is OP’d, ever stop to think this might not be your game if you can’t sack up and improve?

Sorry but much of the supposed imbalances with elementalists, hunters, necros and mesmers isn’t a fair comparison at all to thieves current abilities (in fact most of what you describe is either an inconvenience or just plain untrue). So yea while many of us can and do apart to thieves when we encounter them that in no way means that we’re all crazy and paranoid when we complain about thieves, there is reason behind the QQ. Right now thieves have the highest damage in the game, the most mobility, the most “oh kitten” buttons and some of the some extraordinary group utilities, so all this together and thieves are kind of unbalanced.

I admit I play a warrior and while I can take most thieves it’s only if the circumstances are right and the fact is there is far too small a margin of error when dealing with them. It all comes down to staying spot on them to mitigate as many of their abilities as possible and making sure they can’t use their superior mobility however if you mess up at all, you end up either dead or frustrated because they’re able to escape from seemingly inescapable situations. All of this is just because too many of their abilities are far to exploitable/spammable with initiative and work far too well together, so my suggestion to fix thieves is to slightly lengthen the duration of their stealth but dramatically reduce it’s availability by removing it from many skills to make stealth something that comes down to a deliberate choice rather than a throw away button click. Also as others have said add diminishing returns to abilities if they’re spammed over and over to encourage thieves to actually have to play to win rather than just try to see how many times they can drop 1 or 2 skills before they need to vanish and try again.

All in all, while it would be great if just l2p was the answer to thieves but it’s not, they are unbalanced and ArenaNet NEEDS to listen to feedback and do what they’ve been so reluctant to do these last few months and take a very serious look at thieves in spvp and wvw and work on a fix from the ground up, I know personally seeing this issue unaddressed and feeling the consequences of this really makes me wonder if I even want to bother with this game in the future.

tagnut.8621:

Anet wake the hell up – no other class has over 1000 posts of complaints about how ludicrous it is.

^ this. everyday more and more posts are created about this silly overpowered class. Must be we’re all bad or the guy Anet uses to test the thief is missing half his brain.

Its in the numbers, massive damage far more than anything else except for the killshot (which should be toned down as well btw)

They need to control the amazing burst damage so people actually can enjoy a good fight.

tagnut.8621:

So surely it would be fine for all ranged classes to gain a fast spammable, no cooldown attack that does 4k per hit and jumps you back out of melee range each time? Oh and it can be used without a target so doubes as an escape mechanism.

Sorry – you say that sounds like a bad idea?

If this is true and the ability with base dmg (100-50% HP) of 336 does 4K dmg, I wonder why are there noone complaining about a Staff Elementalist fire autoattack which has a base dmg of 312 (Not so much weaker) and has a range of 1200 and its AOE
I’m yet to see the 3500-4000 dmg from my fireball though….
Something is surely weird about this argument, dude….

NightyNight.1823:

Xae.7204:

Thieves need to be nerfed, ASAP.

I’m tired of eating 20k Combos in a kitten bunker spec.

http://i.imgur.com/g3euq.png
That was in a full bunker spec with ~3000 Armor and through protection.

Mug needs to go.

Buff P/P for all I care (Yes it is bad), but this instagib kitten needs to go. This is not 2006 WoW, Comboing someone is dumb.

How about a 33k Kill shot , that has to go too?

I don’t remember the last time killshot landed on me. Hell if I’m running P/S on my Engineer I usually make the Warrior eat it himself with Shield-4.

Something being “overpowered” isn’t just about the amount of damage it deals, it is also about how difficult it is to apply that damage. In the case of Kill Shot it has a huge tell, a massive wind up and travel time.

Meanwhile in WvW Thieves will not even load by the time they down you, making it trivial to hit their combo.

Also in my spec Kill shot hits in the 10k range.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

purpleskies.3274:

Xae.7204:

Thieves need to be nerfed, ASAP.

I’m tired of eating 20k Combos in a kitten bunker spec.

http://i.imgur.com/g3euq.png
That was in a full bunker spec with ~3000 Armor and through protection.

Mug needs to go.

Buff P/P for all I care (Yes it is bad), but this instagib kitten needs to go. This is not 2006 WoW, Comboing someone is dumb.

I completely agree with this. I have been killed several times this weekend, taking over 20k damage in the standard steal-c&d-bs combo. Every piece of armor I have had toughness or vitality and I am speced into a defensive line. It is one thing to do that to someone in full zerker gear, but someone who invests into defense should never be downed almost instantly.

I tried to learn, I made a thief because people who play them said it helps you counter them. I only learned how ridiculous they are and how simply they are to play. There is no set up or skill required to do this combo, it is just a cheap I win combo.

It isn’t a problem with thief class then.

If you are defensive spec’ed then maybe some buff to defensive spec’ed stuff should be in order.

I would have no problems with classes getting a buff that actually invested into defense, however I would not like to see them shrug all defensive investment and still get a buff to defense since they went glass.

If you buff my Bunker build so the point where Thief is “balance” no other class in the game could kill it. It is already very difficult to kill for other classes.

It is much easier to nerf one overpowered “build” than it is to buff the hundreds of other builds in the game to compensate for it.

Faeyd.5094:

There is a demographic at play here and that is that rogue type classes attract more Nostromo and Naga users per capita than anything else… reason is to get them right you have to twitch.

Healing classes are for chicks or lads who want to meet/be chicks and tanky types are almost always blokes with goatees.

My tongue may be in my cheek… but there is fire in the smoke. The thief class has chewed a few 50% damage reduction nerfs already and still the tears flow. They will flow after the next round. If it ever gets nerfed hard enough to move this crowd onto mesmers the river of tears will simply drown the lands. My ranger (which is a well-geared level 80 WvW / PvP toon) treats GC thieves as food and walks away from condition thieves (stalemate). And in high level PvP I simply do not see any. PvP is the best test of balance and power.

This game unfortunately pits the best of the FPS twitch community against the non RvR / PvP / WvW community and of course there will be shock and horror at the inhumanity of it all.

Not really, but keep telling your self that.

I routinely play FPSes and even played CS1.6 competitively. Other than Guild Wars 2 I normally play FPS games, like Natural Selection 2 (played the original competitively as well), Planetside 2, and LOL (last season ranked top 20%). I also have a “gaming mouse” that you seem to hold in high regard.

Anytime you think “oh, the ‘problem’ is that only the best people played this class” you are wrong. The Thief doesn’t even have half the skillcap of a class like elementalist. Thieves are complained about because they are overpowered. It ins’t just some “Stealth Class Curse”, believe me no one kittened about release Witch Hunters in WAR.

I did again fights against thiefs. Use all my ‘CC’ available, survived about 1min, they still crushed me down.

My gripes:

Dagger auto attack way to much damage, slamming 1 = zero skill cap.

A thief should not be able to spam backstab. At most 1x per 30 secs, hell 1 min in my opinion. Make it like ranger opening strike. You get one ‘backstab’ bonus, then you are equal to all other profession without overpowered mechanisms.

Cloack should not be spammable. Heal + Shadow refuge are enough as they are. Either make CnD cost 12 initiative (i’m not joking, that would actually give it a 10 sec cooldown aprox, wich it really needs) or remove it.

Thirdly Thievery is not punished in any way. For such crazy strong combination (cloacking + burst damage), i’d say if you fail to burst enemy down, you should get a punishment for it. Like all stats halfed. (was that way in another game, half armor when cloacked, i loved it, they still kicked kitten but only when used by skilled players). If player comes out of cloack they get a 5 sec window, after that, they get a debuff of some kind. And in cloack they should take double damage, making it an actual risk and gample.

My Ele nor guardian can’t actually spit out 4k damage without berserker gear wich fails on them (lousy trait lines, no super trait likes +1 initiative chance when crit hit). A Thief can do loads of them non stop.

Initiative recovery while in stealth? what a joke. Remove all trait that boost cloack initiative, and stop initiative from regening when cloacking. Now they rush all iniative, you are almost dead. They cloack. You cannot do a kitten. They regain plenty iniative. They strike again. If you by miracle still survived that, they just rinse and repeat. This is no burst, they can sustain it way to good.

Very simple anet, nerf thief in wvw (look at your charts, wich prof kills most enemies, thief by far on top, we all know it), or force me to make one myself to abuse their overpoweredness. I don’t like thief playstyle. But i neither like to be underpowered, and killed over and over by same profession. It’s your choice Anet. If you ignore, i’ll make thief. If you actually do something, i’ll be happy to continu my other mage professions.

I think the devs should maybe watch this video in regards to how to make abilities (such as stealth/invisibility) function in games.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/counter-play

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

… Now they rush all iniative, you are almost dead. They cloack. You cannot do a kitten. They regain plenty iniative. …

And time ticks away your cooldowns while they’re in stealth and not hitting you. You think your cooldown timers should stop when you block, have protection on or use any other boon or skill for relief/protection? The initiative used for Cloak And Dagger is replenished in 10 seconds. Waste it and you have gained a 10 second lead.

Very simple anet, nerf thief in wvw (look at your charts, wich prof kills most enemies, thief by far on top, we all know it),

Rest assured that that is what they do all the time. At least for sPvP.

… or force me to make one myself to abuse their overpoweredness.

Why wait? It’s one way to learn their strengths and weaknesses and use it against them.

I had great fun playing on my thief. It is built for lots of stealth and regen health whilst in stealth. Almost impossible to kill and really messes people up in SPvP when they assume they should focus the thief in a team fight!

Papaganoosh (SPvP Officer, The Unnamed EU)

http://www.the-unnamed.com/spvpapp – recruiting skilled players for TPvP

No class should be able to deal 20k+ damage in under 3 hits before they are unstealthed.

imo thief is completely and utterly useless…. after 500 hours on it i deleted it.. no longer will i be aggravated by this horrible class

Thieves are severely underpowered atm. I have max lvl warrior, ranger and elementalist and all 3 of them are much powerful in any scenario in comparison to my thief.

I truly believe that the only people who are saying that thief is fine or OP, are the ones who dont know how to play against thief in order to avoid or mitigate thief’s burst dmg. And these people are mostly talking about PVP scenarios, in which thieves are still underpowered. Please don’t condemn a class on account of your lack of awareness.

In PVE scenarios, thieves are almost next to useless. With my warrior, ranger and elementalist, i have so much variety to switch between roles and be almost equally effective, but with thief even with D/D glass cannon build i deal lot less damage, even if i manage to survive the whole fight. Other builds, with more survivability, are almost no use at all as the damage is even less due to relative increase in survivability but even then survivability sucks, in comparison at least above three classes.

I am only talking about thieves in comparison to warrior, ranger and elementalist, because these are the only classes i have played other than thieves.

P.S. Please learn to do PVP against stealth based classes, dont condemn a class if you suck at pvp against stealth based and burst dmg classes.

Xae.7204:

If you buff my Bunker build so the point where Thief is “balance” no other class in the game could kill it. It is already very difficult to kill for other classes.

It is much easier to nerf one overpowered “build” than it is to buff the hundreds of other builds in the game to compensate for it.

It is easier to buff other classes aspects lines instead, just take away some of the damage that they do to balance it out.

I feel that if you built bunker, other classes besides thief, should not one shot you as others can one shot if built to do that. It is only for those that built bunker specifically. I also think that if you built bunker, you really shouldn’t be able to do more that 100 damage per swing since you dumped stuff into being a bunker. If thiefs get hit with a heavy nerf bat, I’m going to start asking for nerfs to all the other classes. I haven’t because I’m a better player than that but it sure has sucked when I got 100b on a warrior that jumped me. Then there are the guardians that have laughed at me when I tried a backstab. Scenarios that people keep trying to say is common isn’t. Scenarios like people claim require everything to be set perfect for that thief.

Nerfs and buffs work both ways. You may not like my suggestions, I also don’t like yours.

You people asking for nerfs to thief will gut it and make it worthless to play or you will hamstring us to the point that there will be only one way to go. You all complain about damage but if you nerf that, then we won’t stand any chance against a warrior or guardian because they have better defense and HP, even when only a little bit of bunker is built into the character. You’ll gut the damage to the extent that no thief build will be worth having around. Then there is the stealth nerf others cry for, frankly there isn’t anything wrong with it and the claims that people are making are not taking in a real perspective because they are all claiming that I can do everything when the reality is thieves cannot. Back stab thieves are not healing or removing conditions in stealth. If they are then their damage is gutted and they are not one shotting and any one that claims do be able to is lying. I’ve tried it myself and there just ins’t enough damage against a warrior, guardian or the engineer(one’s I’ve encountered all survived my backstabs and they took the full brunt.) They are also not likely to approach in stealth since they will miss out on applying a vulnerability and damage. So they can get away. Big deal. Players that insist on revenge for a failed attempt should probably look at their personal philosophy because revenge isn’t everything and that is the main reason people want stealth removed.

What do you people really expect from a squishy profession in the first place? A bunker? You really believe we are going to put stats into toughness when our armor is going to suck anyway unless we just gut all our damage potential.

Too many false claims made by non thief players because they don’t know how the profession actually works. I would love to have that 30/30/30/30/30 that people think I have. When I was backstab, I never had regen in stealth because that would screw my chance at a one shot. I never had any condition removal in stealth because again, it would screw my damage. Stealth healing and backstab do not mix well because you have to take away from a damage line to boost that.

Even still, people are focusing on WvW and ANet had stated that WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced. Too many factors involved like other players and buffs they may offer, food, gem store. Then if you actually make WvW like sPvP, you’ve lost potential PvE focused players because why would I want to go into WvW after working to get the look and stats that I just shelled out gold for, or why should I go into PvE from WvW when I’m going to need another set of gear so you’ve lost potential PvE players.

WvW imbalance is what makes that fun plus you get to have a different kind of build and try it out, otherwise you may as well as sPvP.

It isn’t hard to counter a thief. I can survive a backstab attempt. I know I’m not the best player so if you people are all that you claim, you all should be able to survive one. I think that those that claim to fail are either glass or lying because they don’t like the profession.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Xae.7204:

If you buff my Bunker build so the point where Thief is “balance” no other class in the game could kill it. It is already very difficult to kill for other classes.

It is much easier to nerf one overpowered “build” than it is to buff the hundreds of other builds in the game to compensate for it.

It is easier to buff other classes aspects lines instead, just take away some of the damage that they do to balance it out.

I feel that if you built bunker, other classes besides thief, should not one shot you as others can one shot if built to do that. It is only for those that built bunker specifically. I also think that if you built bunker, you really shouldn’t be able to do more that 100 damage per swing since you dumped stuff into being a bunker. If thiefs get hit with a heavy nerf bat, I’m going to start asking for nerfs to all the other classes. I haven’t because I’m a better player than that but it sure has sucked when I got 100b on a warrior that jumped me. Then there are the guardians that have laughed at me when I tried a backstab. Scenarios that people keep trying to say is common isn’t. Scenarios like people claim require everything to be set perfect for that thief.

Nerfs and buffs work both ways. You may not like my suggestions, I also don’t like yours.

You people asking for nerfs to thief will gut it and make it worthless to play or you will hamstring us to the point that there will be only one way to go. You all complain about damage but if you nerf that, then we won’t stand any chance against a warrior or guardian because they have better defense and HP, even when only a little bit of bunker is built into the character. You’ll gut the damage to the extent that no thief build will be worth having around. Then there is the stealth nerf others cry for, frankly there isn’t anything wrong with it and the claims that people are making are not taking in a real perspective because they are all claiming that I can do everything when the reality is thieves cannot. Back stab thieves are not healing or removing conditions in stealth. If they are then their damage is gutted and they are not one shotting and any one that claims do be able to is lying. I’ve tried it myself and there just ins’t enough damage against a warrior, guardian or the engineer(one’s I’ve encountered all survived my backstabs and they took the full brunt.) They are also not likely to approach in stealth since they will miss out on applying a vulnerability and damage. So they can get away. Big deal. Players that insist on revenge for a failed attempt should probably look at their personal philosophy because revenge isn’t everything and that is the main reason people want stealth removed.

What do you people really expect from a squishy profession in the first place? A bunker? You really believe we are going to put stats into toughness when our armor is going to suck anyway unless we just gut all our damage potential.

Too many false claims made by non thief players because they don’t know how the profession actually works. I would love to have that 30/30/30/30/30 that people think I have. When I was backstab, I never had regen in stealth because that would screw my chance at a one shot. I never had any condition removal in stealth because again, it would screw my damage. Stealth healing and backstab do not mix well because you have to take away from a damage line to boost that.

Even still, people are focusing on WvW and ANet had stated that WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced. Too many factors involved like other players and buffs they may offer, food, gem store. Then if you actually make WvW like sPvP, you’ve lost potential PvE focused players because why would I want to go into WvW after working to get the look and stats that I just shelled out gold for, or why should I go into PvE from WvW when I’m going to need another set of gear so you’ve lost potential PvE players.

WvW imbalance is what makes that fun plus you get to have a different kind of build and try it out, otherwise you may as well as sPvP.

It isn’t hard to counter a thief. I can survive a backstab attempt. I know I’m not the best player so if you people are all that you claim, you all should be able to survive one. I think that those that claim to fail are either glass or lying because they don’t like the profession.

This. 1,000 times this. The players crying out for nerfs are not interested in game balance. They’re only interested in winning without putting in any effort for it. And supposing the thief does get heavily crippled by the nerf bat, don’t think for a moment they’ll stop at the thief. Any of the other 7 classes will be on their hit lists. all it takes is a single defeat and “ERMAHGERD, OVURPOWERD, NURF!!!11!1one!1one!1!”

I am interested in game balance. Thief has far and away the most damage, mobility and survivability (through its stealth mechanic). Something has to give.

There is a huge difference between “survivability : i escaped a battle without dying” and “survivability : i can tank a solid chunk of damage while dealing some myself” and i don’t understand how you guys can honestly make the confusion.

@CreativeAnarchy: Surviving a thief, and killing a thief are two total different things. If i only focus on survival, then a thief prolly wont kill me. Just hit ride the lightning, POOF, thief is out of my way. However killing on is next to impossible without dying yourself.

Also explain this: if thief is no better then other professions, why is it so popular in wvw? Why are there 30 thiefs for every Engineer i see?

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

@CreativeAnarchy: Surviving a thief, and killing a thief are two total different things. If i only focus on survival, then a thief prolly wont kill me. Just hit ride the lightning, POOF, thief is out of my way. However killing on is next to impossible without dying yourself.

Also explain this: if thief is no better then other professions, why is it so popular in wvw? Why are there 30 thiefs for every Engineer i see?

Could be the server you are playing against.

I’ve seen plenty of engineers on on my server and against me. They are tough buggers and some of their turrets can be a problem. Several engineers can be a real problem if they are working together. Nature of WvW means you are moving from door to door and when I see engineers, they have turrets up. If the zerg locked onto that turret, it goes down fast, really AOE takes turrets out fairly quickly. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they are not there. People only see and note what they want to see, not what is reality.

Relentliss.2170:

I am interested in game balance. Thief has far and away the most damage, mobility and survivability (through its stealth mechanic). Something has to give.

Damage – Thieves don’t have better than average damage with two exceptions. The first being in the 1-3 second timeframe where the thief can couple openers with instant abilities to deliver more damage than any other profession. The second being stacking finisher-style abilities to do more damage to low-HP targets. The reason thieves get a reputation for high damage is because thief defensive mechanisms are not stat-based, meaning more thieves run high-offense equipment.

Mobility – Yes, thieves have the best mobility.

Survivability – Yes, thieves have excellent survivability, but you’re one of many many people who still doesn’t understand why. It isn’t from stealth, it is from mobility. An immobile stealthed target is easy to kill, a highly mobile unstealthed target is hard to kill. Given that this survivability comes almost entirely from timing and skill choice as opposed to stats, it scales much better with player skill. Compare to a warrior’s primary defensive mechanism, the ability to absorb hits better than most professions. This defensive mechanism is easy to use as a new player but doesn’t get much better as the player gets better. Thieves get the inverse, a defensive mechanism that leaves new thieves very frustrated as they get destroyed in PvE but scales very well once they find out how to manipulate their mobility to avoid damage. The question is, is this system balanced? If thief survivability is made less dependent on player skill by giving thieves better HP/armor, are other profession defense mechanisms going to be retuned as well?

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

This. 1,000 times this. The players crying out for nerfs are not interested in game balance. They’re only interested in winning without putting in any effort for it. And supposing the thief does get heavily crippled by the nerf bat, don’t think for a moment they’ll stop at the thief. Any of the other 7 classes will be on their hit lists. all it takes is a single defeat and “ERMAHGERD, OVURPOWERD, NURF!!!11!1one!1one!1!”

Fine, Lets just buff everyone to deal with Thieves!

Every Non thief Class will now do 10x more damage.
Every Non thief Class will now have 10x more HP.

No nerfs! So I must be interested in balance right?

The only thing “nerfs” do is separate people who can think logically and those who can not. Power is totally relative. A nerf to one class is a buff to every other. A Buff to one class is a nerf to every other.

The only “advantage” of Buffs only is to soothe the egos of bad players using overpowered classes as a crutch to overcome their own incompetence.

Many people are leaving WvWvW in disgust because of god mode thieves. One guy last night " I am not going to waste my time complaining, I will just go play something else…" He’s not alone. I’ve heard this many times in the last few weeks.

Highest dps, perma stealth due to culling and best mobility in ONE class? I’ve never seen a worse implementation of stealth in any game. I
While you are trying to fix culling in WvWvW, please lengthen stealth cool down times. You are losing customers. Many of us refuse to buy from your store to support such a poorly balanced system. Thank you.