Guild Wars 2

Lord Yoshi.6738:

Fix culling and make shadow refuge force the thief to stay in it for the whole duration, none of this 5 seconds of prep for 15 seconds of free stealth anywhere.

Shadow Refuge already forces the thief to stay in it for the entire duration of the utility skill, unless you mean for the entire duration of the stealth granted by the skill.

Boomstin.3460:

… they confuse stealth with invisibility, …

In PvP a little visibility is just as visible as plain visible so anything less then invisibility has no merits whatsoever, unless it adds in a miss-chance or something. You are asking for something visible to see where you’re supposed to hit, but that something would basically defeat partial (in)visibility completely.

Having a single thief run around a with pretty much perma stealth is just becoming annoying and ridiculous at times. Certainly give the thief some abilities to get away, but it should be situtational and not something they can can use in a continuous cycle. Thieves are only visible for a 3-4 seconds between cycling the stealth abilities…. add the magic of culling in there and it’s laughable.

It’s at the point now where so may thieves are specced this way we don’t even bother trying to chase or hunt them down. This is mostly a WvW issue, and perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad if the culling is fixed.

Ahmrill.7512:

Thieves are only visible for a 3-4 seconds between cycling the stealth abilities

You’re looking at only one side of the equation though. Either they’re breaking stealth almost immediately, in which case those 3-4 seconds account for the vast majority of the time, or they’re staying in stealth, in which case they’re basically self-dazing for a large portion of the fight. Stealth is pretty well mechanically balanced in that sense, barring culling.

Quasar.1756:

Thieves don’t need “superior mobility” to dictate favorable range, our “S/P” weapon combo does that fairly effortlessly. I always found stealth to be a “life-saver” and never had any issues, since the betas, of surviving after stealth is used…it plays a major role. Stealth must be a prominent factor to something amazing, since the majority of the posts are on the topic of “stealth”…to downplay the issue is nothing short of ignorance and/or denial (IMO). Thus, which leads to an interesting question based of the last sentence in your reply. If stealth is not the primary defensive mechanic for thieves, then what is? Superior mobility is NOT a valid reason, since MOST professions can obtain it….plz give better thought to your answer before you type invalid posts..Ty

S/P (really only the S) allows dictating range via Infiltrator’s Strike and cripple-on-auto, which are mobility affecting skills. So what you’re actually saying is “Thieves don’t need mobility because they have mobility”.

If “most professions can obtain it”, it isn’t superior mobility. The fact is that thieves have superior mobility, that is mobility above and beyond what is attainable by most professions. This applies both to the average thief and the high-mobility thief.

Stealth’s primary strength is in an opponent’s behavioral weakness, it is not a mechanically powerful defensive mechanism. Mobility, on the other hand, is mechanically powerful and does not rely on an opponent’s ignorance to be effective. Mobility is the thief’s primary defensive asset, as evidenced by the fact that high mobility is a universal attribute of the profession, while stealth use is a specialization choice.

So as a new thief player, here’s my honest impressions so far:

1. Remove blind immunity from Dredge. None of the players care about the “flavor” of Dredge. It’s unfair that such an essential mechanic for Thief is useless against Dredge, and it’s the equivalence of making Risen immune to bleeding.

2. Buff Pistol. The autoattack is waaaay too slow, and Unload’s damage does not justify its cost.

3. Revert Pistol Whip for PvE.

4. MAKE BLIND EFFECTIVE ON BOSSES!

I cannot stress the fourth one enough. Aegis is to Guardians what Blind is to Thief. It’s simply not fair that Thiefs are put at such a disadvantage compared to Guardians. At least buff it up to 75% miss with 25% chance to hit.

Other than that, I am very satisfied with Thief so far. It’s very fun to blind-spam enemies with Black Powder. Smokescreen is also a very useful skill because of its reflect properties. Shadow Refuge of course is also an honorable mention with its massive healing and stealth utility. I would also like to mention Cluster Bomb because it comboes so well as a blast finisher, and the Asura racial skills Radiation Field synergizing so amazing with it for weakness spam on foes.

I am in love with my Thief more than I am my Warrior. So I hope its minor problems are addressed, as the rest of the class is so dang fun!

Kain Francois.4328:

4. MAKE BLIND EFFECTIVE ON BOSSES!

I cannot stress the fourth one enough. Aegis is to Guardians what Blind is to Thief. It’s simply not fair that Thiefs are put at such a disadvantage compared to Guardians. At least buff it up to 75% miss with 25% chance to hit.

This is a good point that is so often overlooked. By design a thief brings a ton of utility to the table via easy access to blind/weakness, which are the offensive equivalent of aegis/protection. But nobody actually cares because most situations where this utility would be useful it is totally destroyed by boss immunity. Many thieves (including myself) would like to see access to more defense-oriented boons, but it’d be much easier to just rectify the existing mechanics to make thief debuff utility worthwhile. The weakness of conventional thief utility on bosses tends to railroad many thieves into a pure damage role.

This is why glass cannon thief builds are OP — I was on my Hunter who has a complete set of exotics with +Vitality and +Toughness in additional to jewelry as well Build spec with +300 vitality … I literally died instantaneous (see attached screenshot).

Glass cannon or not, a build is excessively OP when it can dish out 22,000 dmg in less than 1 second.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2j0nnm9.jpg

Quasar.1756:

The P in S/P can also contribute to favorable range as it can stop the cast of a skill that can affect the range between two or more avatars. Fourth skill for P is amazing…IMO. What I was saying is thieves don’t need “superior mobility” to dictate favorable range. I think you answered your own question about other professions having superior mobility. Since ALL PROFESSIONS have MOBILITY, saying our prime defensive mechanic is mobility as just as bad and insultive as saying a prime mechanic for a profession is attacking…doesn’t add the luster if ALL can do it, that makes it BASIC. What makes a profession unique, what gives this profession it’s mark, what can this profession bring to the table to help others? These are the questions most people ask and it’s how they bring you in a group or not. Mobility is nice BUT it does not take down enemies in battle.

Daze is, perhaps, in the loosest sense a mobility skill. If you’re dictating favorable range, you have better mobility than your enemy, simple as that. It is the thief’s ability to do so that is their strongest defensive asset.

The power of mobility is all in the differential. As you say, everyone can move, but the person who can consistently move better, faster, and more often will be much harder to kill. It isn’t analogous to everyone being able to attack, since a differential in attack doesn’t serve to eliminate the benefit of the other person’s damage (unless they’re instantly killed).

Thieves can bring several things to the battlefield that other professions aren’t as effective at, and mobility is not least among them. However, when it comes to the reason why thieves are hard to kill, it is because they get to dictate range and therefore when to begin and end a fight. “It is because of stealth” is a misconception borne out of a lack of understanding about how stealth works. Stealth alone is not a very good escape mechanism (as evidenced by the fact that you can catch and kill stealthing enemies if you’re more mobile than they are), mobility alone is the most powerful escape mechanism in the game.

Stealth is a choice a thief makes, like specializing in venoms or traps. It happens to be a far more effective combat mechanism to specialize in, but it isn’t an innate attribute of thieves.

Devs: why did you nerf Pistol Whip yet not Heart Seeker SpammingDeath ? Bit confused how this has been overlooked.

Love the class, I think we’re pretty great as is, but D/D thieve builds need some serious DPS tone-downs.

Caelib.2497:

This is why glass cannon thief builds are OP — I was on my Hunter who has a complete set of exotics with +Vitality and +Toughness in additional to jewelry as well Build spec with +300 vitality … I literally died instantaneous (see attached screenshot).

Glass cannon or not, a build is excessively OP when it can dish out 22,000 dmg in less than 1 second.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2j0nnm9.jpg

I assume you mean ranger. Yes, with full bunker build on my ranger. (27K vitality, 3k armor) I still drop in 2 seconds. I never see the attacker either. My poor pet doesn’t attack either because no enemy is visible.

Fix s/d #3 ability, flanking strike so it can land in pvp. Thanks!

New-ish player here, but I will say you can’t nerf an ability a straight up 50%, that’s not a good way to balance something. Speaking of dancing daggers, it would have been much better to keep it the damage it was and simply nerf the bounce damage.

So, the first dagger hits the initial target for full pre-nerf damage, and each consecutive target takes less damage, going from 75% to 50% to 25% (total damage on each of the next hits).

That way it sword/dagger thieves still have a somewhat viable burst damage, and it remains strong for the 4 init cost.

Ah…speaking of sword and dagger…can you fix flanking strike. It’s very buggy and does not keep your character on the opponent. I know it’s possible to fix this because look at enemies in the game like pirates and one of the bosses in honor of the waves dungeon…they land their flanking strikes perfect almost every time lol.

Oh, and also make blinds more useful in dungeons and usable vs more enemies. I started out as a guardian, and when I started my thief and started to do dungeons I was surprised blinds were utterly useless against some mobs/bosses/champs.

Whereas on my guard I can have a bajillion different ways to block, as well as a few blinds. You’d think the thief would be the master of making their opponent miss them -_-

Columba.9730:

Caelib.2497:

This is why glass cannon thief builds are OP — I was on my Hunter who has a complete set of exotics with +Vitality and +Toughness in additional to jewelry as well Build spec with +300 vitality … I literally died instantaneous (see attached screenshot).

Glass cannon or not, a build is excessively OP when it can dish out 22,000 dmg in less than 1 second.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2j0nnm9.jpg

I assume you mean ranger. Yes, with full bunker build on my ranger. (27K vitality, 3k armor) I still drop in 2 seconds. I never see the attacker either. My poor pet doesn’t attack either because no enemy is visible.

Lol i can accept that damage if i can see the enemy but if you dont see the enemy maybe this is not acceptable., lol this thing is good if thief is not over using the stealth but they are.,

Vast majority of the complaints, are basically on the wvw domain, as such I will only focus on that (as well as where my experience comes from), in pve, I believe it does take quite a bit of effort, but it’s very much playable in pve, I’m fairly inexperienced in spvp, so my comments do no apply to that.

Toughness
Toughness needs to scale better, having toughness doesn’t seem to mitigate much of the damage from burst builds

Culling
Culling will always be an issue, I don’t think many understand that it’s not exactly that easy to optimize and better culling than massive lag fests. However if toughness scales better, BS thieves won’t be an issue (or unfair) to non-gc builds, so culling really won’t matter here for BS thieves, but still gives an advantage to p/d thieves (refer to stealth mechanic for a possible solution).

Stealth mechanic
Because of that I don’t believe channeled abilities should not lose focus on stealth (status quo), and a a form of diminishing returns to stealth (I would suggest a stackable debuff that lasts 4 secs (maybe even 5 secs) that reduces stealth by 0.5 secs for each stack).

If a thief then uses stealth approximately every 3 secs, the thief would lose the ability to stealth effectively after 6-8 times, with each application of stealth giving less and less stealth duration (to avoid the debuff, they would need to stay visible longer after each application of stealth and of course 0.5 secs is just a rough estimation of effectiveness and balance which can be tweaked appropriately, however I would strongly be against a longer debuff diminishing returns timer as playability in PVE would suffer drastically on certain abilties)

Please note this is an entirely new debuff that can work with the existing revealed debuff that prevents stealth.

Damage
With some of the changes above (please note, I understand toughness scaling may be a huge proposition, but a slight increase in its effectiveness in my limited knowledge may not be game-breaking), I don’t believe thief damage (or multiple ability spike damage) needs to be nerfed as it will only be as effective on other GCs (it’s also one of the reasons why thieves target other thieves frequently, and no, I don’t think other GCs deserve better survivability against another GC).

The spike damage will be wholly reduced on those that have a tougher build, and negligible for those who opt to go for a GC build (the scaling may be universal so existing toughness on GC builds will also benefit slightly).

Final Comments
Please note, I’m mostly in wvw, and my comments come from my experience in that part of play. I play both a thief and a ranger in wvw and while recently I’ve been seeing a lot more folks starting to effectively learn how to counter bs thieves, I still do honestly believe even an unprepared player should atleast have a couple of seconds (extra seconds outside the initial burst) if they at the least built for toughness to make a decision or reaction time.

At this point, I’ve caught unprepared players and finished them in a matter of seconds before they were clue-ed in, and I do sincerely believe, that is not fair and satisfying for both sides.

why is chilled only half as effective on thieves?

it slows them like anyone else but with no weapon cooldowns the 66% cooldown increase is useless.

chilled should decrease initiative gain by that 66% instead for thieves

Lol.,. I dont care if thief have the highest damage! I dont care if thief have faster mobility! What is wrong here is over using of stealth source by C&D., anything over is Bad! Since there is no such thing here that you can use to see the hiding things why dont put a limit for stealth? And the thief just say hey L2P! You can kill me by your AOE, lol how many AOE you can use in your both hand? And some of the AOE have sign on the ground, is that thing is useless? Just throw your skill and w8 if you are lucky or not? Nice the best yow! And dodge all you can,. But even you dodge you gonna see the thief is like 1 centemetre far from you because of fast movement? Nice very nice., but i dont care if there fighting ability is like this., but the over using of stealth that the thing that make this game not balance.,

Dredlord.8076:

why is chilled only half as effective on thieves?

it slows them like anyone else but with no weapon cooldowns the 66% cooldown increase is useless.

chilled should decrease initiative gain by that 66% instead for thieves

Because slowing a thief is twice more effective at getting them killed than other classes? :p

stof.9341:

Dredlord.8076:

why is chilled only half as effective on thieves?

it slows them like anyone else but with no weapon cooldowns the 66% cooldown increase is useless.

chilled should decrease initiative gain by that 66% instead for thieves

Because slowing a thief is twice more effective at getting them killed than other classes? :p

yeah with twice as many teleport options as any other class this is doubley true, you must have thought about this at length…. /sarcasm

lemme guess your build doesn’t have any condition removal either right?

Sword damage need to be looked at.. Its slow and worse than dagger in long output..

Sword / Dagger.. Skill #3 is practicly useless.. never lands most of the time
Sword / D-P .. Skill#1 need a bigger damage output, or add poison to cripling strike and remove weakness and fumble
Swords #1 Tactical strike is at 782 ( way to low, you can throw two #4 dancing daggers and I dont have to even go into stealth )damage.. make it atleast like daggers front damage, around 900

Sword in general need to be buffed… its way to slow and most of the skills got to lil damage output, or dont work properly.. it also provides no condition damage so it kinda needs to be higher damage instead

On Blind and Thief Support

I’m going to get on board the “Stop screwing over blind” train. As I’ve remarked before, blind is essentially “Offensive Aegis”

The argument could be made that because blind is effective at the target side, then each blind effectively constitutes a group-wide block for N number of players. Thus, it’s an effectively stronger mitigating condition than Aegis is a mitigating boon, which would explain why its use is limited in boss encounters in PvE.

Except that virtually all supportive uses of Aegis are party-wide, or potentially party-wide.

Another argument could be that a combination of Aegis + Blind could trivialize such encounters, so something has to give. That’s all well and good, but not when you hose one method of mitigation in favor of the other. Necromancers and Theives both tend to be second class citizens in a lot of content specifically due to the limiting factors placed on blind, and to a lesser degree poison and weakness.

In addition, all condition-based builds are hampered by artificial stacking limitations that are over-restrictive even in a 5-person instance.

So, how could we keep the utility of Aegis while giving Blind some of its power in champion and boss fights, and more importantly how do we do it without allowing a full-power blind, when combined with aegis, to trivialize content?

The answer is actually quite simple. Track misses due to blind, and make those misses remove aegis. Functionally, this would leave aegis intact, as it would still only be consumed on any hit that the player failed to mitigate through evasion and movement. It also prevents a stack of Blind+Aegis from essentially giving the player two “free soaks” while still allowing blind to effect an offensive soak and aegis to effect a defensive soak. Blind is going to clear every time the target attacks anyway, and Aegis is going to clear any time the effected player is “hit” anyway.

jan.9745:

Lol.,. I dont care if thief have the highest damage! I dont care if thief have faster mobility! What is wrong here is over using of stealth source by C&D., anything over is Bad! Since there is no such thing here that you can use to see the hiding things why dont put a limit for stealth? And the thief just say hey L2P! You can kill me by your AOE, lol how many AOE you can use in your both hand? And some of the AOE have sign on the ground, is that thing is useless? Just throw your skill and w8 if you are lucky or not? Nice the best yow! And dodge all you can,. But even you dodge you gonna see the thief is like 1 centemetre far from you because of fast movement? Nice very nice., but i dont care if there fighting ability is like this., but the over using of stealth that the thing that make this game not balance.,

The thing of it is, telling a thief to play without stealth is like telling a guardian or elementallist to play without boons. And eliminating some key skills in their bar for that matter.

Okay I have a few points to make after playing my Thief somewhat (Mostly PvE with some WvW) and reading what other people are mentioning.

Mobility vs Stealth for survivability.

Thieves had good mobility, higher than some classes? Yeah. Higher than all other classes? In bursts yes, over time though not that much (Unless you spend all your initiative not on attacking but on teleporting via IA)

Their mobility comes from:
25% movement speed signet (Same as Elementalist, Ranger and Necromancer with Warrior having a Trait for extra speed and possibility for 100% uptime of Swiftness and Engineers having a trait allowing 100% uptime of Swiftness)

1 Shadowstep on a 50 second cooldown that goes to a ground targeted location as a utility, 2 Shadowsteps to target enemy on 30 second cooldowns that use utility slots and if using Sword they have another Shadowstep to target enemy that costs 3 initiative (Also becomes unusable for a while unless you port back to starting location again) also Steal provides a to target Shadow

1 Utility that allows for rolling away (Evasion and snare removal)

1 Heal that allows for rolling away

1 Ability on Shortbow that allows for an evasive step back (4 initiative cost) and one that allows teleportation (6 initiative cost)

So unless thieves have 5 Utility slots they only have access to up to 3 of the mobility moves that don’t impact their damage (The ones that use initative or don’t provide damaging abilities that are random in what they do and when they should be used) or 4 if you use Sword (Since most of Sword/X damage is from auto-attack)

This is while other classes either have similar or something else instead on weapon skills (Which since they work on cooldowns don’t impact other skills as much if at all)

Whilst stealth is used often (From what I’ve seen, the majority (Technically all Thieves I have seen in WvW and in videos of WvW and sPvP) run with Shadow Refuge as a defensive skill) to not only set up damage (A lot of damage comes from stealth abilities) but to also survive either through disorientation of an enemy or an ability to escape (If doing something like Shadow Refuge > Infiltrator Arrow spam to get away)

Now onto issues I’ve noticed:

P/P being in dire need of an overhaul:

1. auto-attack and stealth ability suggest a Condition build which is contradictory to other skills in the set and due to recast/inability to stealth with the set causes them to be very lackluster
2. is not very effective as the damage is not that great and the duration of the Vulnerability is poor
3. is very initiative hungry as it needs to be spammed to deal damage with the set due to #1 not synergizing with it and the damage not being high enough to warrant not being constantly spammed. Due to this need of spending all initiative on it, other abilities cannot be afforded.
4. is okay, but the fact that #3 uses all available initiative it cannot be used much
5. is problematic due it favouring close range (While the set is or at least should be used as ranged damage) and the lack of any kind of stealthing capabilities from leap/blast finishers and also the limitations of blind on many things in PvE make this skill poor as P/P than kitten P or D/P (Or x/P swapping to D/D or S/D)

Stealing is a core mechanic that provides (In PvE) random skills, which often are not very useful (Such as Stealth when it’s very easy for a lot of sets to stealth up, or Conditions that are only really useful for Condition builds) it also is a one-way trip to a target thus being counter-productive to ranged weapon sets… I often look at my Steal skill being off cooldown but think “What’s the point in me using this?” since unless it’s Traited (Either for Damage or Boons/Initiative) it isn’t very useful the majority of the time.

I’m not a huge fan of the fact that a majority of damage is based off Stealth skills (D/D Direct damage, P/P Condition builds), Auto-attacking (Most S/X builds, D/D direct damage builds in between CnD restealths) or spamming #3 skills (D/D AoE damage, D/D condition builds, P/P direct damage builds)
Which is a shame, since the Initiative mechanic does allow for different skills to be used on the fly depending on initiative remaining, or the status of the target(s) instead it’s just used for the fact that a single skill can be used endlessly (Or because an ability can be used endlessly the its usefulness is reduced)

It almost feels as if the ability to have a choice between 2-3 skills for each slot per weapon would be beneficial (1 for direct damage builds, one for condition builds, one for supportive builds (Some CC, some more Boons/debuffs, maybe more fields?)) though it would cause other classes to complain and would take a lot of work…

Just my 2c…

Dual.8953:

jan.9745:

Lol.,. I dont care if thief have the highest damage! I dont care if thief have faster mobility! What is wrong here is over using of stealth source by C&D., anything over is Bad! Since there is no such thing here that you can use to see the hiding things why dont put a limit for stealth? And the thief just say hey L2P! You can kill me by your AOE, lol how many AOE you can use in your both hand? And some of the AOE have sign on the ground, is that thing is useless? Just throw your skill and w8 if you are lucky or not? Nice the best yow! And dodge all you can,. But even you dodge you gonna see the thief is like 1 centemetre far from you because of fast movement? Nice very nice., but i dont care if there fighting ability is like this., but the over using of stealth that the thing that make this game not balance.,

The thing of it is, telling a thief to play without stealth is like telling a guardian or elementallist to play without boons. And eliminating some key skills in their bar for that matter.

Did i say to remove the stealth? What i say here is limit the stealth over using of stealth is not good., and they can limit the stealth if they make the C&D effective only if that skill stab on the back., not on the side or front it should be in the back., and besides thief is the famaous backstaber right., in that case they can limit the stealth.,

jan.9745:

Dual.8953:

jan.9745:

Lol.,. I dont care if thief have the highest damage! I dont care if thief have faster mobility! What is wrong here is over using of stealth source by C&D., anything over is Bad! Since there is no such thing here that you can use to see the hiding things why dont put a limit for stealth? And the thief just say hey L2P! You can kill me by your AOE, lol how many AOE you can use in your both hand? And some of the AOE have sign on the ground, is that thing is useless? Just throw your skill and w8 if you are lucky or not? Nice the best yow! And dodge all you can,. But even you dodge you gonna see the thief is like 1 centemetre far from you because of fast movement? Nice very nice., but i dont care if there fighting ability is like this., but the over using of stealth that the thing that make this game not balance.,

The thing of it is, telling a thief to play without stealth is like telling a guardian or elementallist to play without boons. And eliminating some key skills in their bar for that matter.

Did i say to remove the stealth? What i say here is limit the stealth over using of stealth is not good., and they can limit the stealth if they make the C&D effective only if that skill stab on the back., not on the side or front it should be in the back., and besides thief is the famaous backstaber right., in that case they can limit the stealth.,

Sounds like another kind of change that’ll hit the balanced builds worse then the glass cannons.

Quasar.1756:

Mobility itself is a useful gift, but alas, it fails to conditions. You can move faster, better and run all day, however, what good is it if you are mobile with a 50% movement reduction, how safe are you with all that mobility and someone knocks you off your feet, mobility is useless if you can’t move (condition), how dangerous are you with all that mobility and bleeds all on you.

Mobility affecting conditions/boons are a component of mobility. If you can’t control those conditions/boons, then you aren’t winning the mobility fight.

You can say stealth is uncounterable, but in reality stealth returns are heavily diminished against a skilled opponent, while mobility scales much better against all skill levels, particularly if you have the mechanical advantage.

Highest dps, best mobility and permastealth. Something needs to give.

Columba.9730:

Highest dps, best mobility and permastealth. Something needs to give.

Highest DPS? that would be warrior.

Highest Mobility, that would be warrior.

Permastealth? A liability to your server or team.

Daecollo.9578:

Columba.9730:

Highest dps, best mobility and permastealth. Something needs to give.

Highest DPS? that would be warrior.

Highest Mobility, that would be warrior.

Permastealth? A liability to your server or team.

Uh, no way… not even close to sort of kinda true.

Highest burst? Thieves (warriors don’t even have the highest sustained damage anymore)

Highest Mobility? Thieves

Most “Oh kitten” buttons? Thieves

Best class ability? Thieves

Right on though, keep trying to play the martyr and convince everyone that this 39 page thread that exists on the thieves forum alone is completely unjustified and unfounded.

Atticus.7194:

Daecollo.9578:

Columba.9730:

Highest dps, best mobility and permastealth. Something needs to give.

Highest DPS? that would be warrior.

Highest Mobility, that would be warrior.

Permastealth? A liability to your server or team.

Uh, no way… not even close to sort of kinda true.

Highest burst? Thieves (warriors don’t even have the highest sustained damage anymore)

Highest Mobility? Thieves

Most “Oh kitten” buttons? Thieves

Best class ability? Thieves

Right on though, keep trying to play the martyr and convince everyone that this 39 page thread that exists on the thieves forum alone is completely unjustified and unfounded.

Its obvious you probably don’t play a thief or warrior, since you don’t know either.

Mobility:
Warrior.
Elementalist.
Thief.

In that order.

Daecollo.9578:

Atticus.7194:

Daecollo.9578:

Columba.9730:

Highest dps, best mobility and permastealth. Something needs to give.

Highest DPS? that would be warrior.

Highest Mobility, that would be warrior.

Permastealth? A liability to your server or team.

Uh, no way… not even close to sort of kinda true.

Highest burst? Thieves (warriors don’t even have the highest sustained damage anymore)

Highest Mobility? Thieves

Most “Oh kitten” buttons? Thieves

Best class ability? Thieves

Right on though, keep trying to play the martyr and convince everyone that this 39 page thread that exists on the thieves forum alone is completely unjustified and unfounded.

Its obvious you probably don’t play a thief or warrior, since you don’t know either.

Mobility:
Warrior.
Elementalist.
Thief.

In that order.

I would love to hear your attempt to justify those mobility rankings.

How on earth does a warrior have the best mobility? Which class gets 50% speed buff? Thief!

No class has hit me for over 10k except thieves, and they can do it regularly. Sorry but those are facts.

My warrior can typically travel faster than my thief. On my warrior, I can keep up swiftness much much longer than on my thief. Just because I use that sigil doesn’t mean I’m going to get away. Swiftness may not be much faster but it is faster and you can chase down a thief.

Only comment on the elementalist is having tried to chase them down while on my thief, I can agree that they are more mobile than thief.

Culling does not equal permastealth, that is a bug issue and not a feature of the class.

Culling muddies the water of the entire thief discussion. Stealth is op. at this point I have experienced this as a fact. The sad truth is that it makes fights no fun. You can’t even enjoy getting beat if you never even got to target your opponent. This is ruining structured for people and hurting WvW. Fixing culling will help WvW. Fixing stealth will fix SPvP. Until that time i will just enjoy the limited amount of PVE content then leave and play other games until the next patch.

Mesmer here.

I have no problems dealing with burst thieves. I’ve never had a chance to 1v1 a good p/d thief, but I did try the p/d build to learn how it works and what its strengths/weaknesses are. Gameplay-wise, it can be called either boring or overpowered. Sure, it takes skill to CnD and take multiple enemies at a time but in the end all you’re using are 1 and 5, while all the other professions require more intelligent combinations/usage of 1,2,3,4, and 5. Equal results for less effort was my gameplay experience.

Now, on to the real problem with thief gameplay. The problem is that stealth abilities provide two enormous advantages in any situation (1v1, 1vx, zvz, w/e): the ability to initiate and the ability to retreat. This means that they are always given the element of surprise (should they choose to utilize such a thing) and they’re always given a guaranteed means of escape. I doubt people realize how huge these two things are. So all the thieves I meet are basically put into 3 categories: 1. Too stupid/greedy and dies. 2. Runs away when he knows he can’t kill. and 3. Knows he can’t get the kill but sticks around and annoys the hell out of you with hit and run guerilla play. The skill level here is between 1 and 2/3, and that level isn’t very high at all. Good players aside, any decent thief is unkillable because he can, at any time, run away. So am I crying that I can’t kill thieves? No, I’m saying they don’t suffer like other professions (facing the consequences of poor decision making, or being surprised by good players who know how to flank, or facing an enemy thief that just utilized his own element of surprise).

The other problem is Dagger Storm. I see too many thieves that just run in front of a zerg, pop DS, lul for awhile and sip some tea, then vanish in stealth (again, no consequences of running into a swarm of enemy zerglings). Comes with free HP reset too. Survivability + DPS + mobility? Needs a giant nerf to put it on equal grounds with the elite skills of other professions.

Personally, I would remake all the currently unused skills into something that’s viable, and have stealth for thief as something that they can only use with timing, with more thought, and with more consequences. But I don’t balance games, I just point out the problems.

Sonork.2916:

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

quoting this because it makes so much sense. Stealth+massive burst. What is the counter play? how does this feel for the other player. Basically this thread at 1800 replies makes it pretty evident that thieves were not designed well.

Basically you need to be rewarded for knocking a thief out of stealth and not just let him stealth again every few seconds.

currently thieves are only threatened in massive battles where they quickly fall to AoE.

What about those times you get a thief down really low in health only to watch him stealth again then reappear half the map away? Most your abilities can’t even target the thief and he will escape easily.

I’m curious to see how they will fix this class following the counter play rules.

Ok thief is my main. Ill start off by saying i love bow toons so im only a sb theif. I going to quit playing it and make a ranger. Reason being if your not the glass cannon backstab build life is tough. Ive tried lots of versons of a sb build and seem in wvw keep defence is about all there good at. My main gripe is other theives. Ive tried con builds toughness builds burst builds ect to try to counter them and nothing works…using a sb im dead before i can counter. Now i think traps could provide what im looking for as a counter. Ive tried siting on traps when i new a theif was in the area but i belive the radius needs to be hugely incresed to be efective. Seem id still get bsed and dead before the trap did any good. Mug needs to be moved higher up in the trait line.

Thobek.1730:

Sonork.2916:

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

quoting this because it makes so much sense. Stealth+massive burst. What is the counter play? how does this feel for the other player. Basically this thread at 1800 replies makes it pretty evident that thieves were not designed well.

Basically you need to be rewarded for knocking a thief out of stealth and not just let him stealth again every few seconds.

currently thieves are only threatened in massive battles where they quickly fall to AoE.

What about those times you get a thief down really low in health only to watch him stealth again then reappear half the map away? Most your abilities can’t even target the thief and he will escape easily.

I’m curious to see how they will fix this class following the counter play rules.

Easy counter for the massive burst. Just avoid it. Dodge it, use your stun breaker and get out of it. Why stand in the burst when you know it is coming? Why should all thieves get punished for what a few thieves do. And this thread is for GAMEPLAY not all posts on this thread is how OP they are, it is suppose to be an intelluctual talk about….gameplay.

As for thieves gettin gout of battle…watch for cloak and dagger. That is your problem, is you are not looking for things during battles, cloak and dagger is the reason why thieves can stealth so many times. It has a 3/4 second cast time (I think) so you have plenty of reaction to try and dodge it, or move away from it. Why complain about your own mistakes, you are letting the thief stealth.

Thieves are not only threatened by massive battles. Like I said in another thread, throw a snare. Immobilize them, cripple them, chill them. Control them. Then, when they go into stealth keep on attacking, don’t just sit there thinking they are invulnerable, because they are not.

If you get a thief down, you know they are going to stealth… So why do you not snare them! You know it is coming. It is obvious.

There is nothing to fix except a players mind set on fighting thieves. Yes I play a thief. Yes I have faced thieves. And yes I tear almost every one apart, because I know how to fight them. They used cloak and dagger or disappeared? Guess what, they are not gone. I easily run up a bit, and cloak and dagger to follow suit.

Binary Rain.4869:

Thobek.1730:

Sonork.2916:

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

quoting this because it makes so much sense. Stealth+massive burst. What is the counter play? how does this feel for the other player. Basically this thread at 1800 replies makes it pretty evident that thieves were not designed well.

Basically you need to be rewarded for knocking a thief out of stealth and not just let him stealth again every few seconds.

currently thieves are only threatened in massive battles where they quickly fall to AoE.

What about those times you get a thief down really low in health only to watch him stealth again then reappear half the map away? Most your abilities can’t even target the thief and he will escape easily.

I’m curious to see how they will fix this class following the counter play rules.

Easy counter for the massive burst. Just avoid it. Dodge it, use your stun breaker and get out of it. Why stand in the burst when you know it is coming? Why should all thieves get punished for what a few thieves do. And this thread is for GAMEPLAY not all posts on this thread is how OP they are, it is suppose to be an intelluctual talk about….gameplay.

As for thieves gettin gout of battle…watch for cloak and dagger. That is your problem, is you are not looking for things during battles, cloak and dagger is the reason why thieves can stealth so many times. It has a 3/4 second cast time (I think) so you have plenty of reaction to try and dodge it, or move away from it. Why complain about your own mistakes, you are letting the thief stealth.

Thieves are not only threatened by massive battles. Like I said in another thread, throw a snare. Immobilize them, cripple them, chill them. Control them. Then, when they go into stealth keep on attacking, don’t just sit there thinking they are invulnerable, because they are not.

If you get a thief down, you know they are going to stealth… So why do you not snare them! You know it is coming. It is obvious.

There is nothing to fix except a players mind set on fighting thieves. Yes I play a thief. Yes I have faced thieves. And yes I tear almost every one apart, because I know how to fight them. They used cloak and dagger or disappeared? Guess what, they are not gone. I easily run up a bit, and cloak and dagger to follow suit.

This just in, to counter a thief you need to use a thief. Now I know why people joke about thief wars 2.

I think you’re missing the whole point of what he just said. When fighting a thief as another class you need some benefit for taking away his benefits for his class, all you really did was show if you don’t play thief you need to play thief or just follow zergs 24/7 which is another problem entirely.

Hard to dodge what you cannot see. Hard to look for CND when everything is invisible.

My pals and I just fought “one” theif in JP today with a few more random allies. A mesmer, a GD, 2 Warrios, 1 Ranger … took like 5 mins to take that muhfker down… because he vanishes every fking 5 seconds… and came back with full HP every single time.

Stealth> Reappear from stealth>Dual pistols> Immobilize > Dual dagger > about to be hit… dodge dodge> stealth again.

He repeated that tactic like 20 times…

And for some reason when he’s down, he went into stealth with the 2 skill, I understand that, that he vanished again…. umm 3rd skill? I understand that…. then he stealth again….. wtf? That’s not the first time I encountered the most annoying down state with theif.

tell me there’s nothing wrong with this class.

@Cloud

I am not just talking for WvW. But it is hard to consider things in WvW, because most thieves will have max gear, and be at level 80. And I was only using me as a thief as an example, since I mainly play thief. And you want to take our benefit away? That doesn’t make sense, if you can just take a benefit away, why even give the benefit? Not like we as players can force a necro out of shroud form, unless we do enough damage. We can not take heavy armor off of a warrior or guardian. We can not make clones already up disappear. Why should thieves not have stealth?

@Columba

How is everything invisible if they are attacking through the invisible? And why do you let them cloak and dagger spam you when you know it is either coming every 3 or 4 seconds?

@DavyMcB

Sounds like you were running low level toons, and have no idea how to fight a thief. And why did you let him do the same tactic 20 times in a row? You didn’t try to stop him or something? This certainly sounds like a player issue. And this is like the 20th time i have seen someone say ‘And when he got out of stealth he was at full hp’ … Kind of sick of seeing this, because i KNOW it is an exageration because of frustration. Unless you all only hit him for 25% of his health, yes he might regen to full again maybe.

Lol: the case is open to the court: they accused the thief for harassment of ranger and mesmer, stolen the dignity of guardian and warrior, invading the privacy of engineer and necro and for touching the private part of elementalist:, the defense said that this is all there fault, they are all idiot and brainless and stupid. . The police said that they are still Investigating its hard because they dont have things to track this crime, even the witness submit there evidence they still need a hard proof to continue this investigation.

mark.3160:

Was trying to defend a supply camp tonight in WvW. 1 thief took down 2 guys. I knew i couldnt res them so i tried to lure him out of stealth by pretending to res a downed guy. As soon as i stood next to him the thief attacked me. Thanks to culling, he already took 50% of my health, i quickly dodged, thief heartseeked after me, i dodged again, thief heartseeked after me, im out of stamina, thief kills me with yet another, autohoming, gapclosing heartseeker. He stealths to insure a stomp and im dead.
After this i had two choices. 1. play my own thief or 2. log out. I logged out, because i don’t enjoy playing a class that only takes 2 buttons to put down any other class in the game that isn’t a full bunker build. So my feedback on the thief and it’s gameplay? Fix it fast because it’s no fun fighting something that presses the same button 5 times in a row for a guaranteed win…..

You actually died to someone pressing the same attack over/over?
What class are you?

Think it is a glas canon flaming about the high damage of another glas cannon.

I agree that stealth is to strong in WvW with the culling problem.

Haven’t played WvW in a while so i have no experience with the stealth + culling problem.

Back then i remember the culling was a problem in big zergs but not in smaller groups.

But if culling affects thieves that get out of stealth then its not ok.

Increasing the duration of the revealed debuff would help to balance it.

Please watch this video from 5:14 -7:35 look how hard to kill thief and how long to kill thief., that is 2 vs 1 and the last sec it become 3 vs 1 from 5:14 -7:35, and remember it is x1 fast forward., imagine that how long you gonna kill the thief, while a thief can kill you in 2,3-4 sec? How bad is that? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EprbnVM8FWc ., and how many times the ranger down?

Binary Rain.4869:

Easy counter for the massive burst. Just avoid it. Dodge it, use your stun breaker and get out of it. Why stand in the burst when you know it is coming?

Newsflash: You don’t know it’s coming.

Binary Rain.4869:

Why should all thieves get punished for what a few thieves do.

See above.

As with mesmers, the gameplay of the thief is seemingly intended to take the opponent unawares and thus unable to use counter-powers to react to them. The intention of the thief seems to fundamentally be about playing single-sided combat.

mark.3160:

……. i don’t enjoy playing a class that only takes 2 buttons to put down any other class in the game that isn’t a full bunker build. So my feedback on the thief and it’s gameplay? Fix it fast because it’s no fun fighting something that presses the same button 5 times in a row for a guaranteed win…..

This is pretty much what I think of the current state of thieves. The only way to really survive (not even taking killing in account here) a thief’s burst is being fully focused on survivability. If you are not a guardian or warrior the fight is literally over within 5 seconds. With either you dead, or you succesfully repelling the jump and him resetting in stealth walking away.

If other professions cooldowns would match the thief’s stealth cooldowns I would have no problem with this. However the cooldowns of most classes for survivability are longer than restealthing. This makes it very easy for a thief to simply put the target on cooldowns and killing him the second time by resetting the fight. Again the killing part is not with alot of effort and I think this bothers alot of people. Also at some point or to the least to say, some professions might feel obliged to take certain utilities specifically to survive a thief and thats just wrong in my opinion when there are 8 professions in total. Moreover it destroys the whole concept of changeable utility skills.

Death Henk.7143:

mark.3160:

……. i don’t enjoy playing a class that only takes 2 buttons to put down any other class in the game that isn’t a full bunker build. So my feedback on the thief and it’s gameplay? Fix it fast because it’s no fun fighting something that presses the same button 5 times in a row for a guaranteed win…..

This is pretty much what I think of the current state of thieves. The only way to really survive (not even taking killing in account here) a thief’s burst is being fully focused on survivability. If you are not a guardian or warrior the fight is literally over within 5 seconds. With either you dead, or you succesfully repelling the jump and him resetting in stealth walking away.

If other professions cooldowns would match the thief’s stealth cooldowns I would have no problem with this. However the cooldowns of most classes for survivability are longer than restealthing. This makes it very easy for a thief to simply put the target on cooldowns and killing him the second time by resetting the fight. Again the killing part is not with alot of effort and I think this bothers alot of people. Also at some point or to the least to say, some professions might feel obliged to take certain utilities specifically to survive a thief and thats just wrong in my opinion when there are 8 professions in total. Moreover it destroys the whole concept of changeable utility skills.

No, you could just get toughness or vitality gear, you don’t need to fully bunker.