Guild Wars 2

Karolis.4261:

Vitu.3580:

A well played thief is nearly impossible to kill on my Guardian. Their ability to stealth multiple times for extended periods of time means either I can’t do damage to kill them and they end up bursting me down, or I end up getting lucky with AoEs and they just run away in stealth never to be seen again.

Just one scenario from today: I found a thief 1v1 and initiated the fight. He opened with stealth and as soon as he started doing damage I used Shelter just do soak up as much of his HS spam as I could. He then stealthed again and I started AoEing where I thought he was. Must have worked because I saw him for a split second and then he stealthed again and ran off.

I had taken little damage and had done some nice damage to him (though I couldn’t tell how much because I couldn’t ever see his health bar).

I decided to attempt a pursuit because I saw him running way off in the distance. He must have switched a utility or something because when I caught up to him again (he was actually waiting otherwise i never would have gotten close to catching him) he stealthed, then opened with a stun and proceeded to burst me down before I even realized what had happened.

Long story short, I think stealth is just way too overpowered in this game when used by a decent player and can be such a powerful survivability tool that a player can invest entirely in damage and still be very hard to kill.

Edit: Though there are some thieves that I can just ROFLstomp they tend to lack skill or don’t use stealth effectively. In roughly half of my encounters with Thieves where I end up winning, the Thief just stealths and runs away.

So what seems to be the problem ? You win 50 % of fights vs thiefs by making them run away. That means you left alive, and both saved your repair bills. Oh i know, You mad couse even if u won and made him run away, he dont need to repair his armor. Now I get it. Lol.

lolwut?

It has more to do with the fact that I don’t have the luxury of being able to escape if I choose to. I don’t have a mechanism that allows me to run away safely.

Also, it is much less rewarding to almost kill an enemy only to have them escape, especially if it happens frequently.

Lots of classes can escape the guardian sadly they really shine in Spvp where you are forced to go to cap points, wvw not as much i guess.

Vitu.3580:

Karolis.4261:

Vitu.3580:

A well played thief is nearly impossible to kill on my Guardian. Their ability to stealth multiple times for extended periods of time means either I can’t do damage to kill them and they end up bursting me down, or I end up getting lucky with AoEs and they just run away in stealth never to be seen again.

Just one scenario from today: I found a thief 1v1 and initiated the fight. He opened with stealth and as soon as he started doing damage I used Shelter just do soak up as much of his HS spam as I could. He then stealthed again and I started AoEing where I thought he was. Must have worked because I saw him for a split second and then he stealthed again and ran off.

I had taken little damage and had done some nice damage to him (though I couldn’t tell how much because I couldn’t ever see his health bar).

I decided to attempt a pursuit because I saw him running way off in the distance. He must have switched a utility or something because when I caught up to him again (he was actually waiting otherwise i never would have gotten close to catching him) he stealthed, then opened with a stun and proceeded to burst me down before I even realized what had happened.

Long story short, I think stealth is just way too overpowered in this game when used by a decent player and can be such a powerful survivability tool that a player can invest entirely in damage and still be very hard to kill.

Edit: Though there are some thieves that I can just ROFLstomp they tend to lack skill or don’t use stealth effectively. In roughly half of my encounters with Thieves where I end up winning, the Thief just stealths and runs away.

So what seems to be the problem ? You win 50 % of fights vs thiefs by making them run away. That means you left alive, and both saved your repair bills. Oh i know, You mad couse even if u won and made him run away, he dont need to repair his armor. Now I get it. Lol.

lolwut?

It has more to do with the fact that I don’t have the luxury of being able to escape if I choose to. I don’t have a mechanism that allows me to run away safely.

Also, it is much less rewarding to almost kill an enemy only to have them escape, especially if it happens frequently.

Thiefs are meant to be able to escape. And if u rly qq about it , well try catching ele. You might as well try to catch good warrior, but it aint gonna happen. Even ranger with gs has means to escape. What do you want to do with it then ? maybe start comparing it to other games and how their rogue class escape mechanics work ? OK lets try all forum thief haters beloved wow rogue. Vanish that leads to perma stealth and you will never ever see him again if he wont chose to open on you again.

Karolis.4261:

Vitu.3580:

Karolis.4261:

Vitu.3580:

A well played thief is nearly impossible to kill on my Guardian. Their ability to stealth multiple times for extended periods of time means either I can’t do damage to kill them and they end up bursting me down, or I end up getting lucky with AoEs and they just run away in stealth never to be seen again.

Just one scenario from today: I found a thief 1v1 and initiated the fight. He opened with stealth and as soon as he started doing damage I used Shelter just do soak up as much of his HS spam as I could. He then stealthed again and I started AoEing where I thought he was. Must have worked because I saw him for a split second and then he stealthed again and ran off.

I had taken little damage and had done some nice damage to him (though I couldn’t tell how much because I couldn’t ever see his health bar).

I decided to attempt a pursuit because I saw him running way off in the distance. He must have switched a utility or something because when I caught up to him again (he was actually waiting otherwise i never would have gotten close to catching him) he stealthed, then opened with a stun and proceeded to burst me down before I even realized what had happened.

Long story short, I think stealth is just way too overpowered in this game when used by a decent player and can be such a powerful survivability tool that a player can invest entirely in damage and still be very hard to kill.

Edit: Though there are some thieves that I can just ROFLstomp they tend to lack skill or don’t use stealth effectively. In roughly half of my encounters with Thieves where I end up winning, the Thief just stealths and runs away.

So what seems to be the problem ? You win 50 % of fights vs thiefs by making them run away. That means you left alive, and both saved your repair bills. Oh i know, You mad couse even if u won and made him run away, he dont need to repair his armor. Now I get it. Lol.

lolwut?

It has more to do with the fact that I don’t have the luxury of being able to escape if I choose to. I don’t have a mechanism that allows me to run away safely.

Also, it is much less rewarding to almost kill an enemy only to have them escape, especially if it happens frequently.

Thiefs are meant to be able to escape. And if u rly qq about it , well try catching ele. You might as well try to catch good warrior, but it aint gonna happen. Even ranger with gs has means to escape. What do you want to do with it then ? maybe start comparing it to other games and how their rogue class escape mechanics work ? OK lets try all forum thief haters beloved wow rogue. Vanish that leads to perma stealth and you will never ever see him again if he wont chose to open on you again.

Elementalists are difficult to catch as well, but at least you can see which way they ran off to making it a little easier to chase them down. Also because I can see them I still have a chance to use abilities like Judge’s Intervention and Ring of Warding to halt their escape. Can’t do that with a thief.

As far as the other classes you mentioned, compared to Thief, their ability to escape is miniscule.

A fix, I don’t know. I’d personally just have them remove stealth altogether, but I know that’s a little drastic. Perhaps they could put a cooldown period of like 5 seconds or something like that after they pop out of stealth preventing them from returning to stealth again.

I don’t know, I’m not a game developer, I just know I hate stealth.

Vitu.3580:

It has more to do with the fact that I don’t have the luxury of being able to escape if I choose to. I don’t have a mechanism that allows me to run away safely.

And thieves, like many squishies, don’t have the luxury of being able to face-tank when a situation calls for it. Thieves can attempt tp prevent repair bills by getting away, guardians by being though. Each class is different.

Also, it is much less rewarding to almost kill an enemy only to have them escape, especially if it happens frequently.

To each their own, but when you’re trying to downing pc’s in 1v1 you are not meeting the format’s objectives, while when you’re fighting for control over some supply point you win when the other guy runs.

Lol to all the players crying about thiefs they are so easy to deal with. Perma stealth? never have I seen that when fighting a thief(over 400hrs in wvw). I know talk is cheap will be posting vids shortly of pwning thiefs in 1v1 fights. Also if anyone else has got such vids post them so we can show the nubs its a learn to play issue

The one thing I have a problem with for the thief is i have a great wvw build a great pvp build and a 3rd build for pve, and any time I decide to switch from pve or pvp to wvw or any combinations i have to pay to rebuild. I have played all the other classes and almost never have to rebuild. I due think after previous patches and balancing the thief received many nerfs that were not needed. The thief use to be great in pvp with a number of builds now only one or two are any good and nowhere as effective as before. It is sort of disappointing that i made my thief commander before the balancing. IMO the thief should be able to go in and own 2-4 people quickly because of the amount of initiative that was needed before it would drain you completely and you would have to wait a while before attacking again now we do maybe a 3rd of the damage we use to but still need all the initiative. where other classes can attack nonstop for what seems like forever. The biggest issue people had before was invisible thieves but it wasn’t the skills making them invisible for long periods of time it was issues in the game but instead of fixing the issues in the game the thieves got nerfed.

tagnut.8621:

So lemme see then your advice is:

- don’t play bunker cos the thief can escape whenever he wants 9despite all thieves on here saying you have to stack defense)
- don’t play dps as the thief will kill you
- be able to dodge 7 or 8 times in a row
- stack multiple stun breakers

Anything else?

Oh yes – be a thief. cos thats the only way to consistantly kill or escape another thief.

Stop the bull. There’s noone left ingame who believes thieves aren’t severely overpowered.

Well that’s a very stupid interpretation of what I said. Go back and read it, you will find I never once said bring multiple stun breakers (although I normally run with 2).

Didn’t say “don’t play dps as the thief will kill you”, said don’t play GS unless you like to die a lot (that goes when playing against ANY other class).

Didn’t say " don’t play bunker cos the thief can escape whenever he wants 9despite all thieves on here saying you have to stack defense)", said don’t play bunker then complain when you can’t kill a very mobile class (again, this isn’t vs thief, any dps class should be able to get away from bunker builds. Bunker builds are meant to hold points, not chase after and kill people).

If you can dodge 7 or 8 times in a row, all the more power to ya, but if you read what I actually posted, I said to learn when to dodge as well as learn to dodge. I can’t count the number of players I play against that dodge every time they can, when they really didn’t need to dodge. Yes, the roll animation is cool, but if you waste your endurance on pointless dodges, don’t get upset when you find you can no longer dodge when you need to.

If you think playing a thief is the only way to kill a thief, then roll a thief. Better yet, roll a thief so you can learn how they play instead of coming to the forums and QQing about how unbeatable the class is (this really goes for any class, best way to beat them is to know how they play).

I’m sorry to burst your bubble about being a paragon in this game, but more then just you play it. To say something like “There’s noone left ingame who believes thieves aren’t severely overpowered.” is like me saying there’s no one left on the planet that likes sardines just because I polled my local pizzeria.

Thieves just need some more versatility. Dagger/Dagger is fun, but other classes can weapon swap, get fresh cooldowns, and rotate. Thieves have Initiative…and …subpar skills/weapons to switch to

/shrug

frans.8092:

Vitu.3580:

It has more to do with the fact that I don’t have the luxury of being able to escape if I choose to. I don’t have a mechanism that allows me to run away safely.

And thieves, like many squishies, don’t have the luxury of being able to face-tank when a situation calls for it. Thieves can attempt tp prevent repair bills by getting away, guardians by being though. Each class is different.

In order for me to “Face-tank” I have to sacrifice huge amounts of damage. I can’t run a Zerker build and even hope to run into a competent group of people with the hopes of surviving longer than 6-10 seconds. And if I go with a “Face-tanking” build I will accomplish absolutely nothing other than stalling the enemy from capping a point with little to no hope of downing anyone in any situation in WvW. In an even group fight people can just ignore me until I’m the last one there to kill because I will be doing absolutely nothing to help my team in a group fight.

Thieves on the other hand don’t really have to sacrifice much damage (if any at all) to achieve a build that grants them incredible survivability. Go perma-stealth with a Zerker build and in the worst of situations you can probably at least run away to fight another fight.

vincecontix.1264:

Lol to all the players crying about thiefs they are so easy to deal with. Perma stealth? never have I seen that when fighting a thief(over 400hrs in wvw). I know talk is cheap will be posting vids shortly of pwning thiefs in 1v1 fights. Also if anyone else has got such vids post them so we can show the nubs its a learn to play issue

It’s perma-stealth in the sense that over the duration of a single fight a Thief can remain stealthed for the majority of said fight. They can stay stealthed long enough to kill their opponent and then have stealth back up and ready for their next fight when they need it.

As far as “pwning thieves,” sure I’ve done that before. A Thief that is not skilled or one that doesn’t utilize their many stealth abilities I usually don’t have any issues with, but a skilled thief I almost never kill. I may be able to force them to run, but I rarely kill them.

Vitu.3580:

In order for me to “Face-tank” I have to sacrifice huge amounts of damage. I can’t run a Zerker build and even hope to run into a competent group of people with the hopes of surviving longer than 6-10 seconds.

Neither can a thief, the key expression being competent group of people, which is not a group of people, not even a group of competent people.

Thieves on the other hand don’t really have to sacrifice much damage

A burst thief will go down in seconds, but they may down a player just as fast, and while a P/D may be an incredibly tough kitten, it takes them forever and day to down anyone. The damage numbers you complain about don’t show up in my combat logs, in part because of foods and in part because I do add in survivabilty, if I don’t the margin of error becomes very narrow.

Go perma-stealth with a Zerker build and in the worst of situations you can probably at least run away to fight another fight.

You can not switch from burst to perma stealth in combat, the latter requiring a lot of initiative and a build focussed on increased initiative regeneration and a suitable place to execute, neither of which coincide with a zerker style mug burst.

Vitu.3580:

It’s perma-stealth in the sense that over the duration of a single fight a Thief can remain stealthed for the majority of said fight. They can stay stealthed long enough to kill their opponent and then have stealth back up and ready for their next fight when they need it.

Does not exist, you have all the qq on the board mixed together in one mythical demon-thief. A thief can not stay in stealth and kill their opponent at the same time. Killing means doing damage and doing damage from stealth means they can’t go into stealth for the next 3 seconds.

2.1k armor necro with 28k+ hp
thats in like 2 seconds

A lil later another thief came different build or w/e he failed and vanished great right ?

2.1k armor is like, no armor at all and little to no points in toughness.

frans.8092:

Vitu.3580:

In order for me to “Face-tank” I have to sacrifice huge amounts of damage. I can’t run a Zerker build and even hope to run into a competent group of people with the hopes of surviving longer than 6-10 seconds.

Neither can a thief, the key expression being competent group of people, which is not a group of people, not even a group of competent people.

Thieves on the other hand don’t really have to sacrifice much damage

A burst thief will go down in seconds, but they may down a player just as fast, and while a P/D may be an incredibly tough kitten, it takes them forever and day to down anyone. The damage numbers you complain about don’t show up in my combat logs, in part because of foods and in part because I do add in survivabilty, if I don’t the margin of error becomes very narrow.

Go perma-stealth with a Zerker build and in the worst of situations you can probably at least run away to fight another fight.

You can not switch from burst to perma stealth in combat, the latter requiring a lot of initiative and a build focussed on increased initiative regeneration and a suitable place to execute, neither of which coincide with a zerker style mug burst.

Vitu.3580:

It’s perma-stealth in the sense that over the duration of a single fight a Thief can remain stealthed for the majority of said fight. They can stay stealthed long enough to kill their opponent and then have stealth back up and ready for their next fight when they need it.

Does not exist, you have all the qq on the board mixed together in one mythical demon-thief. A thief can not stay in stealth and kill their opponent at the same time. Killing means doing damage and doing damage from stealth means they can’t go into stealth for the next 3 seconds.

I’m speaking from experience dude. I’ve fought thieves that have incredible burst with the ability to stealth in between attacks to let Initiative recharge. It wasn’t like they just instantly killed me (though that has happened on more than one occasion, partly due to my inability to react in time to avoid damage). They attack, stealth, attack, stealth, attack, stealth, and either finish the fight, or run depending on how well they r doing.

Thieves that play patiently with their stealth are the hardest for me to fight and the majority of the time end with me dead on the ground, or standing alone wondering where the kitten the thief ran off too. They can do incredible damage with incredible survivability due to the fact that they are the only ones that get do do any reliable damage as their opponent has no idea where they are.

This play style also means that I have to play reactively to prevent or recover from their damage when they attack. If the three seconds that a thief is unstealthed is spent with them attacking, then those three seconds are spent by me blocking or dodging…..otherwise I die. So yes, you are right, they can’t stay perma-stealthed in the sense that they can stay stealthed while attacking, but for all intents and purposes they are stealthed whenever I have the opportunity to attack…..thus, I don’t ever have the opportunity to attack.

Edit: I’d also like to add that as a Guardian I feel I have the best tools of any other class to fight against a Thief. I can only imagine how bad it is for classes that can’t avoid or mitigate the insane burst from stealth, especially if I have such a hard time with it.

One class has to …… Anything means there is something wrong. When every class starts to raise toughness just to counter 1 class or build …. There is a ballancing issue. Anet said they want more build diversity in every class. Meaning every class must be able to fill these roles to some extent. This dosent mean your class is not unique …. Thieves will still have highest burst, Guardians will still be the best bunkers and so on. I have seen few thieves decide to go condition build instead. In time the traits that makes this build better will be buffed. So not every thief you meet in wvw will be a b/s hs build. Culling will be addressed. Rest will be a l2p issue…. But for some reason I can’t imagine a portal for ranger….

i know that it is not much armor but if i sacrifice all my dmg only to can survive few seconds longer how will i be able to kill anything ?

And why my “no armor” is not problem against any other class ?

Batlav.6318:

i know that it is not much armor but if i sacrifice all my dmg only to can survive few seconds longer how will i be able to kill anything ?

And why my “no armor” is not problem against any other class ?

Are you running a well build? When you know a thief is getting near throw down a fear mark, also dodgeroll back once when he gets in steal range. Your chill effects also really screw over a thief because it over halfs the range on heartseeker so aoe condition him while kitting away. When he uses his heal which stealths him go into the form which gives you a new healthbar i forget its name now.

While in that form where you have the green bar if you use the skill life transfer it hits the thief in stealth even though you wont have him targeted.

Hopfully that makes your battles against them a little easier.

Batlav.6318:

i know that it is not much armor but if i sacrifice all my dmg only to can survive few seconds longer how will i be able to kill anything ?

And why my “no armor” is not problem against any other class ?

You expected a single build to be perfect against every single opponents?

Your “no armor” is a problem against backstab thieves because they pray on such builds. They are the strongest counter to the pure glass cannon builds.

the problem is they are invis before the attack and sometimes i cannot click a button before im down

Stof what u suggest ? to tell the thief to wait so i can swap armor/traits etc ?
On my ranger i swaped armor traits for more armor/hp and guess what i still get killed only by thieves while i beat others…

i said it before the dmg is not the main problem but that the thief can fail at killing the target and go away every time they want.
I understand that i was surprsised fine my armor is not the best so i got killed.
but why i cannot kill a thief unless he is afk ?

Batlav.6318:

the problem is they are invis before the attack and sometimes i cannot click a button before im down

Stof what u suggest ? to tell the thief to wait so i can swap armor/traits etc ?
On my ranger i swaped armor traits for more armor/hp and guess what i still get killed only by thieves while i beat others…

i said it before the dmg is not the main problem but that the thief can fail at killing the target and go away every time they want.
I understand that i was surprsised fine my armor is not the best so i got killed.
but why i cannot kill a thief unless he is afk ?

You dont click skills with your mouse do you?

nope maybe i had to say press a button ?
anyway what amount of armor i need so i don’t get hit by 8-9k dmg 3-4-5k ?

So, I’ve read a lot of this thread. I don’t PVP much atm, but I have played every class in PVE. The one thing I agree with 100% is that the theif downed abilities need a buff. My mesmer in particular hardly ever dies. My theif always dies. Even if facing a single mob at 10% health when downed. None of the skills are particularly useful.

stof.9341:

Batlav.6318:

i know that it is not much armor but if i sacrifice all my dmg only to can survive few seconds longer how will i be able to kill anything ?

And why my “no armor” is not problem against any other class ?

You expected a single build to be perfect against every single opponents?

Your “no armor” is a problem against backstab thieves because they pray on such builds. They are the strongest counter to the pure glass cannon builds.

On a necro with 2.8k armor backstab hits for about 7-8k. On a guardian with 3.1k armor backstab hits for 6+k (but in this case the guardian has much lower hp than the necro so its almost the same thing). Just how much toughness do you expect people to stack just to counter a build that takes 0 skill to play?

Vitu.3580:

I’m speaking from experience dude. I’ve fought thieves that have incredible burst with the ability to stealth in between attacks to let Initiative recharge.

dude?

That is not what is generally referred to as perma-stealth, confusing use of the term. Anyway, while their initiative regenerates, your cooldowns cool down.

… They attack, stealth, attack, stealth, attack, stealth, and either finish the fight, or run depending on how well they r doing.

If they run, you win. Killing and punishing are not Wvw objectives. It’s not open-world PvP where the only goal is to duel and/or PK random pc’s.

Thieves that play patiently with their stealth are the hardest for me to fight …

Some players are just plain good.

So yes, you are right, they can’t stay perma-stealthed in the sense that they can stay stealthed while attacking, but for all intents and purposes they are stealthed whenever I have the opportunity to attack…..thus, I don’t ever have the opportunity to attack.

Isn’t this more a matter of still learning how to deal with them? Sounds like you’re actively finding out how to do so and you will likely succeed, even if they bring style that is hard to counter for you. We all have our weaknesses.

frans.8092:

Vitu.3580:

I’m speaking from experience dude. I’ve fought thieves that have incredible burst with the ability to stealth in between attacks to let Initiative recharge.

dude?

That is not what is generally referred to as perma-stealth, confusing use of the term. Anyway, while their initiative regenerates, your cooldowns cool down.

… They attack, stealth, attack, stealth, attack, stealth, and either finish the fight, or run depending on how well they r doing.

If they run, you win. Killing and punishing are not Wvw objectives. It’s not open-world PvP where the only goal is to duel and/or PK random pc’s.

Thieves that play patiently with their stealth are the hardest for me to fight …

Some players are just plain good.

So yes, you are right, they can’t stay perma-stealthed in the sense that they can stay stealthed while attacking, but for all intents and purposes they are stealthed whenever I have the opportunity to attack…..thus, I don’t ever have the opportunity to attack.

Isn’t this more a matter of still learning how to deal with them? Sounds like you’re actively finding out how to do so and you will likely succeed, even if they bring style that is hard to counter for you. We all have our weaknesses.

When a Thief can remain invisible for roughly 80-90% of a fight, it’s pretty much as close to perma-stealth as one can get. Though, in an attempt to concede to your point I’ll start calling it “Near-Perma stealth.” The point is it greatly reduces the chance of an opponent being able to retaliate and successfully defend themselves more so than any other mechanic in this game and it has virtually no counter other than just building as tank as you can to survive as long as you can, which is hardly a viable way to build your character for WvW.

Also, the majority of my Virtues and Utilities are on no less than a 30 second CD, and I must burn most of my CDs to avoid the initial burst of a Near-Perma stealth Thief. In that amount of time a Thief’s Initiative can recharge 2? 3 times? Hardly a valid argument to make that while a Thief is recharging his Initiative my CDs are recharging as well.

Finally, though I will admit I hate when Thieves (or really any class) are able to escape mostly because I just like to spike an enemy, to return them to a WP, and show my skills are greater than theirs, I could also argue that by allowing an enemy to escape I am essentially allowing them to reinforce or harass a position they would otherwise not be able to if they were dead. So, there is also a practical reason to want a fix to stealth other than just personal reasons.

Vitu.3580:

When a Thief can remain invisible for roughly 80-90% of a fight, it’s pretty much as close to perma-stealth as one can get.

80-90% in stealth, so 10-20% out of stealth. Let’s see, hitting forces them out of stealth for 3 seconds, so to get to your 80-90% in stealth they’d have to be stealthed for 15-30 seconds. Even if this is possible, they wouldn’t be doing anything useful, except waiting for your cooldowns to cool down.

… The point is it greatly reduces the chance of an opponent being able to retaliate and successfully defend themselves more so than any other mechanic in this game and it has virtually no counter other than just building as tank as you can to survive as long as you can, which is hardly a viable way to build your character for WvW.

You are telling me you have difficulty defending against a thief who hits you with 15-30 second intervals?

Retaliation is not an objective, btw. And if you choose to build with survivability as lowest priority you can expect to get downed, often, burst thieves confront you with the consequences of that choice.

…I could also argue that by allowing an enemy to escape I am essentially allowing them to reinforce or harass a position they would otherwise not be able to if they were dead. So, there is also a practical reason to want a fix to stealth other than just personal reasons.

What position can they reinforce by running away? What objective have they met? Do they even return? Death is a very temporary condition.

Wvw has too many variables… But when I am there with my lvl 70 thief I take down pugs just fine…. May it be warriors, guard or necro. But this is old news last months flavour wkittenter mesmer and this month’s flavour is d/d ele. Just play all 8 professions like I do.

To the devs/op:

Culling fix will reduce a lot of the kitten.

The only imbalance thieves will have otherwise that needs to be to toned down is d/d gc burst. A venom loaded cnd steal mug and haste heartseeker is done-zo for all but 1 or 2 bunker builds.

All other thieves are vulnerable to stuns, roots, etc, but that gc opener is only vulnerable after one person is taking a dirt nap without the opportunity to react.

frans.8092:

Vitu.3580:

When a Thief can remain invisible for roughly 80-90% of a fight, it’s pretty much as close to perma-stealth as one can get.

80-90% in stealth, so 10-20% out of stealth. Let’s see, hitting forces them out of stealth for 3 seconds, so to get to your 80-90% in stealth they’d have to be stealthed for 15-30 seconds. Even if this is possible, they wouldn’t be doing anything useful, except waiting for your cooldowns to cool down.

… The point is it greatly reduces the chance of an opponent being able to retaliate and successfully defend themselves more so than any other mechanic in this game and it has virtually no counter other than just building as tank as you can to survive as long as you can, which is hardly a viable way to build your character for WvW.

You are telling me you have difficulty defending against a thief who hits you with 15-30 second intervals?

Retaliation is not an objective, btw. And if you choose to build with survivability as lowest priority you can expect to get downed, often, burst thieves confront you with the consequences of that choice.

…I could also argue that by allowing an enemy to escape I am essentially allowing them to reinforce or harass a position they would otherwise not be able to if they were dead. So, there is also a practical reason to want a fix to stealth other than just personal reasons.

What position can they reinforce by running away? What objective have they met? Do they even return? Death is a very temporary condition.

By staying stealthed for the majority of a fight a Thief is able to recharge their initiative while preventing any reliable damage being applied to them. I don’t see what you don’t understand about that. Their Initiative recharges much faster then most CDs and, in order to survive the initial burst of a Thief I have to blow many of my CDs, leaving me completely open for the next round of damage coming just a few seconds later.

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t build with some survivability. I’m saying to counter a Thief’s burst you practically have to build for maximum survival, which for every class requires the sacrifice of huge amounts of damage. Off course Thieves are an exception because of the way stealth works in this game.

When you kill someone they have to return a WP after a short waiting period of laying on the ground. This increases the time they would have to take to get to most other points on the map. I mean, it only makes sense that in WvW, if you see an enemy you want to kill them. I’ve seen entire zergs chase down one person just because he/she was spotted, and I’m almost positive that, if you do WvW, when an enemy tries to run you try to chase them down and kill them.

It’s pretty apparent to me that we are not going to agree on this subject. I assume you play a Thief, so I can understand why you wouldn’t want a fix to stealth. I, and many others, find the class to be the strongest PvP class with a low level of skill required to master. I feel a fix to stealth will bring the class more in line with the others without taking them too far in the wrong direction, if done properly of course.

It seems we will have to agree to disagree.

Vitu.3580:

By staying stealthed for the majority of a fight a Thief is able to recharge their initiative while preventing any reliable damage being applied to them. I don’t see what you don’t understand about that.

You are on slippery slope there.
It takes about 20 seconds to recover full initiative, they can not hurt you while they are in stealth – or they will be revealed – and, check this, going (and staying) into stealth uses initiative and, unless heavliy traited for it, it uses more initiative then they regain in the time they are stealthed.

Their Initiative recharges much faster then most CDs and, in order to survive the initial burst of a Thief I have to blow many of my CDs, leaving me completely open for the next round of damage coming just a few seconds later.

We’ve already established that initiative doesn’t recover faster then cooldowns.
The mug burst is on a 40 second cooldown, more then enough time for even your utilities to come of cooldown. The C&D + backstab isn’t immediately life-threatening and depends on C&D to land, or you to prevent it from landing, while backstab is a lot harder to land when the target is moving around swinging their weapon.

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t build with some survivability. I’m saying to counter a Thief’s burst you practically have to build for maximum survival, which for every class requires the sacrifice of huge amounts of damage. Off course Thieves are an exception because of the way stealth works in this game.

Thieves are a lot squishier then guardians even more at risk when build as glass cannon, stealth doesn’t protect from damage itself, only from ineffective players. You don’t need to maximize static survivability, but some attention to it along with situational awareness goes a long way.

When you kill someone they have to return a WP after a short waiting period of laying on the ground. This increases the time they would have to take to get to most other points on the map.

I never noticed a waiting time, one can map travel as soon as one is defeated. Map travel is also a lot faster then running. Seriously.

I mean, it only makes sense that in WvW, if you see an enemy you want to kill them.

No, that doesn’t make sense in Wvw. Meeting objectives make sense, the PK mentality is from MMO’s with open-world PvP where it is common to hunt (lower level) characters.

I’ve seen entire zergs chase down one person just because he/she was spotted, and I’m almost positive that, if you do WvW, when an enemy tries to run you try to chase them down and kill them.

Zergs are mindless flocks.

It’s pretty apparent to me that we are not going to agree on this subject. I assume you play a Thief, so I can understand why you wouldn’t want a fix to stealth. I, and many others, find the class to be the strongest PvP class with a low level of skill required to master.

There are players who have no problems countering thieves and every one of them cancels the opinion of hundreds of people complaining that because they can’t counter them thieves must be OP.

I just want to point out how hilariously ignorant the people saying Thieves are fine sound. They’re probably the ones that spam the near perma-stealth bull and take cheap shots on people, then run like scared children at the slightest hint of any real danger.

Fact of the matter is, stealth needs to be nerfed so that they actually have to COMMIT to a fight, instead of having an easy escape tool that they can spam whenever. Just increase the time period that they can’t stealth to a more reasonable frame. I mean, one of my friends plays a Thief, and even he agrees that they’re a broken class simply because they have a spammable Get Out of Jail Free card. It should not take five people just to make sure one Thief doesn’t get away.

In before kitten Thieves try to deride everything I just said.

Alright Frans, I’ll bite again, but this is the last.

This whole time I’ve been having this discussion with you I’ve been speaking solely from experience fighting Thieves. I have never actually played a Thief higher than lvl 5 or in any sPvP. So, I decided I would actually go ahead and roll one for sPvP just to see whether or not I’ve just been hallucinating about my WvW encounters with Thieves.

The result: Everything you’ve mentioned regarding stealth up until now I can completely disregard.

frans.8092:

It takes about 20 seconds to recover full initiative, they can not hurt you while they are in stealth – or they will be revealed – and, check this, going (and staying) into stealth uses initiative and, unless heavliy traited for it, it uses more initiative then they regain in the time they are stealthed.

1.) Thieves can have access to no less than 4 stealths that can all be used at the same time. Three give stealth for 3s each, and one gives stealth for up to 9 secs, coming out to 18 secs of total stealth.

2.) These stealths require 0 initiative except for the the number 5 offhand dagger ability which does cost an expensive 6 initiative.

3.) Spending no more than 20 trait points in the Shadow Arts tree is capable of granting:
——— Increased Initiative regeneration while stealthed (Patience)
——— An instant 2 Initiative when using an ability that grants stealth (Infusion of Shadow). This trait is especially powerful with Shadow Refuge because it grants 2 Initiative every time (3 times total) that Shadow Refuge procs it’s AoE stealth. So you gain at least 9 Initiative in 3 seconds.
——— An increase in stealth duration by 1 second (Meld with Shadows). This trait is also very powerful when used in conjunction with Shadow Refuge, as it grants an extra 1s to stealth for every AoE stealth proc (3 procs total). That means Shadow refuge goes from a 9 second stealth to a 12 second stealth. This brings the total amount of stealth time across all stealth abilities up to 24 total seconds of stealth.

That leaves another 50 points to spend wherever you desire. I personally went 10 more points in the Shadow Arts tree for the health regen while stealthed (Shadow’s Rejuvenation).

It is entirely possible for a Thief to spend the majority of a fight stealthed while still being able to recharge their initiative at a quick enough rate to deal insane burst between each stealth.

From my experience in sPvP, each of the smaller duration stealths granted enough time to regen ~75% (~9) of my initiative, while Shadow Refuge easily granted enough time to regenerate 100% (12) of my initiative while stealthed in no more than 4 seconds.

It is clear to me now that you are oblivious to some powerful mechanics of your class, or you are just simply in denial and stating false facts to fool those with no experience playing the class.

I would like to thank you, however, for giving me a reason to try out the Thief. Now when someone asks me why the class is OP, I can give a solid answer other than, “I struggle against them in PvP.”

the current setup would be ok if thiefs had Light armor and somewhat less damage as it is not even having 3500 Armor will allow you to last 4 seconds against a slightly skilled thief (this class barely requires skill as far as i ve played) my most common kills are at 0.4 of a second with dagger 3-6 seconds spamming 3 with dual pistols doing 5k sometimes more per burst.

Vitu.3580:

(removed for post body length limitations)

I see, a couple of hours were enough for you to determine all that. I actually play a thief, I don’t just make one to activate a handful of utilities. Perhaps a prolonged stay in sPvP with your thief will show more of the value of staying in stealth 80% of the time.

1) Our stealth utilities

• Hide in Shadows is our primary healing skill and while the stealth it grants is usually very much appreciated at the moment we need it to heal, it would be silly to use this skill in any half-serious combat situation just to get into stealth and without needing the heal. Pointing at this skill as a means to accumulate stealth, or consider it for such a purpose, is to be considered the result of practical ignorance more then it is useful.
• Blinding Powder is meant to get us or nearby allies into stealth, it’s more of an ‘oh-kitten’ skill then a way to build up stealth duration but it can be used for it, I know I’ve used it to cleanse conditions or stay in stealth a bit longer when in need of an extra bit of healing, or in a situation where C&D was not available.
• Shadow Refuge is our major group support skill, and yes, it provides a really nice long period of stealth. It’s also very visible and a bit of a risk to use against experienced players.
• Shadow Trap (you missed this one I think) is rather unwieldy to use for your intentions, it might work, once triggered you could leave it on it’s second use until needed or the timer runs out, but, yeah, meh.
• Black Powder + Heart Seeker forms the heart of build usually referred to as Perma Stealth. It accomplishes just that and occupies a weapon set with D/P which isn’t so great in PvP and Wvw.
• Last Tefuge is considered a liability more then an aid by many experienced thieves.

2) Cloak & Dagger high initiative use, it breaks stealth when used from stealth so to perform as stealth-extender it has to be timed to land just after stealth end. Ai will still react at the moment of non-stealth though.

3) Shadow Arts

• Patience has a major drawback, it regenerates 1 initiative every third second in stealth, but not when entering. This forces the thief to stay in stealth at least 3 seconds to gain one initiative, which isn’t very productive.
• Infusion of Shadow is a strong trait and a necessity for those that use C&D to go into stealth.

The two combined with Shadow Refuge will regenerate a default pool of initiative, Shadow Refuge is on a 60 second cooldown though. But it looks great in the Heart of the Mists.

Combined the two will refund 3 initiative in a 3 second stealth, or about 1/4, adding the natural regeneration (~2 init) that is less then half, not 3/4. Looks like a lie on your part.

frans.8092:

Combined the two will refund 3 initiative in a 3 second stealth, or about 1/4, adding the natural regeneration (~2 init) that is less then half, not 3/4. Looks like a lie on your part.

Ah, you are correct on that issue. I wasn’t paying attention, but when I entered stealth I usually had 2-3 Initiative already, so by the time I reappeared i had about 7-8 Initiative. Almost 75% of my total Initiative, still enough to get 2-3 Heartseekers in before I go stealth again

None-the-less, Initiative recharges much faster than you were willing to admit, and it actually doesn’t cost Initiative to use and maintain stealth in any scenario as you claimed it did, with the exception of the offhand dagger ability.

The “Perma-Stealth” Thief exists and is overpowered, no matter how many false claims you are willing to make.

Vitu.3580:

None-the-less, Initiative recharges much faster than you were willing to admit, and it actually doesn’t cost Initiative to use and maintain stealth in any scenario as you claimed it did, with the exception of the offhand dagger ability.

Yes it does, stealth from utilities is on cooldown, Shadow Refuge on 60 seconds, Blinding Powder and Hide in Shadows on 30 seconds. They can not be used to maintain stealth.

Maintained stealth is from weapons skills that eat initiative, cloak and dagger costs 6 ini, which can not be regenerated in the time the stealth lasts – 4 seconds regenerates 2.4, 2+1 from traits all together less then 6. And this hasn’t inflicted any more damage then that from cloak and dagger. Breaking stealth to land a backstab will put the thief on revealed for three seconds.

Black powder + Heart Seeker can be used to maintain stealth but this uses up any initiative that can be regenerated. And it still hasn’t done damage.

So, where does it leave us, retreat into stealth after a Mug burst? Hardly enough stealth to stack from utilities to bridge the cooldown on mug, and if you manage to fill the cooldown to a second burst with utility + C&D, there’ll be no utility stealth before the first and after the second burst.

The “Perma-Stealth” Thief exists and is overpowered, no matter how many false claims you are willing to make.

Maintaining stealth isn’t overpowering, no matter what you claim.

Ok vitu hop on your thief let’s do show duels in spvp and some me how OP it is I be playing my mez

PolishSausage.1279:

I just want to point out how hilariously ignorant the people saying Thieves are fine sound. They’re probably the ones that spam the near perma-stealth bull and take cheap shots on people, then run like scared children at the slightest hint of any real danger.

Fact of the matter is, stealth needs to be nerfed so that they actually have to COMMIT to a fight, instead of having an easy escape tool that they can spam whenever. Just increase the time period that they can’t stealth to a more reasonable frame. I mean, one of my friends plays a Thief, and even he agrees that they’re a broken class simply because they have a spammable Get Out of Jail Free card. It should not take five people just to make sure one Thief doesn’t get away.

In before kitten Thieves try to deride everything I just said.

What weapon set does your friend play? Obviously not S/D or P/D, both of with require stealth to maximize their main features. (Control on S/D and Condition on P/D)
The only thief builds that don’t need heavy use of stealth are the burst builds.

Vitu.3580:

frans.8092:

Combined the two will refund 3 initiative in a 3 second stealth, or about 1/4, adding the natural regeneration (~2 init) that is less then half, not 3/4. Looks like a lie on your part.

Ah, you are correct on that issue. I wasn’t paying attention, but when I entered stealth I usually had 2-3 Initiative already, so by the time I reappeared i had about 7-8 Initiative. Almost 75% of my total Initiative, still enough to get 2-3 Heartseekers in before I go stealth again

So from out of stealth, you plan to blow 3 heart seekers and stealth again via utility cooldown? I’m not sure you know quite how a thief works, sir… If your goal is to maintain stealth while doing negligible damage, mission accomplished.

I really wish everyone complaining would actually try thief before turning on the waterworks. Yeah, you can maintain stealth with very low downtime. At the cost of being very unproductive…

Nerfing stealth promotes more burst builds, plain and simple.

Vitu.3580:

frans.8092:

Combined the two will refund 3 initiative in a 3 second stealth, or about 1/4, adding the natural regeneration (~2 init) that is less then half, not 3/4. Looks like a lie on your part.

Ah, you are correct on that issue. I wasn’t paying attention, but when I entered stealth I usually had 2-3 Initiative already, so by the time I reappeared i had about 7-8 Initiative. Almost 75% of my total Initiative, still enough to get 2-3 Heartseekers in before I go stealth again

None-the-less, Initiative recharges much faster than you were willing to admit, and it actually doesn’t cost Initiative to use and maintain stealth in any scenario as you claimed it did, with the exception of the offhand dagger ability.

The “Perma-Stealth” Thief exists and is overpowered, no matter how many false claims you are willing to make.

I was asked to “please provide more feedback in your postings” so here it is.

Thanks, this just made my day.

Any “Perma-Stealth” thief is doing 0, that’s Zero, damage. If any class that does 0 damage is overpowered, I don’t want to see a class that is tearing people up. All of the examples you gave were about a thief using any and all of his traits/utilities to stay in stealth as long as possible. This means they are sacrificing heavily on the damage side of things. A “Perma-Stealth” thief is also not adding anything to any objective in PvP. It’s the opposition that makes these players seem viable. If 2+ players hang around to try and kill this 1 player, then he’s helped his team. If you ignore the thief, or move on and keep an eye on the location (a supply camp for example) then their side is down 1 player. As for those posts about 1 thief held up 20+ people, as has been stated many times (which is why I didn’t feel like I needed to bring it up again) this is not a balance issue on the thief’s side. The group of 20+ players made a conscious decision to try and kill this 1 player, who honestly out played them.

Karolis.4261:

Vitu.3580:

A well played thief is nearly impossible to kill on my Guardian. Their ability to stealth multiple times for extended periods of time means either I can’t do damage to kill them and they end up bursting me down, or I end up getting lucky with AoEs and they just run away in stealth never to be seen again.

Just one scenario from today: I found a thief 1v1 and initiated the fight. He opened with stealth and as soon as he started doing damage I used Shelter just do soak up as much of his HS spam as I could. He then stealthed again and I started AoEing where I thought he was. Must have worked because I saw him for a split second and then he stealthed again and ran off.

I had taken little damage and had done some nice damage to him (though I couldn’t tell how much because I couldn’t ever see his health bar).

I decided to attempt a pursuit because I saw him running way off in the distance. He must have switched a utility or something because when I caught up to him again (he was actually waiting otherwise i never would have gotten close to catching him) he stealthed, then opened with a stun and proceeded to burst me down before I even realized what had happened.

Long story short, I think stealth is just way too overpowered in this game when used by a decent player and can be such a powerful survivability tool that a player can invest entirely in damage and still be very hard to kill.

Edit: Though there are some thieves that I can just ROFLstomp they tend to lack skill or don’t use stealth effectively. In roughly half of my encounters with Thieves where I end up winning, the Thief just stealths and runs away.

So what seems to be the problem ? You win 50 % of fights vs thiefs by making them run away. That means you left alive, and both saved your repair bills. Oh i know, You mad couse even if u won and made him run away, he dont need to repair his armor. Now I get it. Lol.

Now hear the thiefs plight.

“I went to contest a point today. There was a guardian standing there. I did all my usual opening moves… he just stood there and took it. Still had 1/2 his health. I immediately got bounced away… he spun around his candlestick and proceeded to heal to full. I tried to do more dmg but his spirit weapons almost killed me. It looked like he wasn’t even playing…but he really didn’t have too… the dmg he could absorb from bubbles and the damage he could dish just from retaliation and AI spirit weapons caused me to stealth and run away. I wish I could help my team and capture that point…but a no-talent afk guardian is standing there and he can literally kill me by popping retal and letting me kill myself. It must be hard to be so overpowered that ppl literally kill themselves when attacking you. It must be really difficult to jsut stand on a point and laugh because no one person will move you from it. Oh and thank god the only pvp matchups in this game are conquest based…because as a bunker guardian… I dominate that.”

signed – a beaten, yet overpowered, thief

- clearly this is a generalization of guardians..but I hope it gives perspective of the same generalizations made about thieves. Finally, there is one way to absolutely prove that thieves are not OP. That is to look at structured PVP paid matchups.

If a class was overpowered you would expect to see at least one per team..most likely more. Heck, if they were extremely overpowered..you might see the whole team be a thief.

In reality, you see maybe one per team. Maybe none. WEIRD. what do you see then? Two guardians? Two Eles? Two Rangers?

How do those classes have two in a five man team..if the thief is so overpowered? How is this possible?

SPOILER – because the thief is not OP

I play hot join mostly and an occasional tournament. So i do not know nor care about high lvl spvp.
I just think the entire abilty stealth is to strong. I think the game is decently balanced overal and if i die by someone 1v1 it’s simply because they are better. One exception to that is thieves and stealth, they just seem to have endless stealth, they come out of stealth with an incredible amount of damage, and seconds later they are gone again for 10 seconds. I kinda like PvP in this game but one single class just makes me mad and close the game. I realy believe this game would be alot better of without stealth. But that surely wont happen, so they need to take a good look at stealth imo, but probably wil never happen, also a reason why casuals leave.

At first i thought mesmer and clones were OP, but imo that is a learn the class issue while thief can just be done nothing about.
I would love 1v1 tournaments but atm i feel like one or two classes would own them all.

Except the PvP isn’t pure dueling. It’s control points. And thief isn’t that good in that mode. It’s a nice deathmatch bodycount class for sure which is what most hot joins degenerate to.

You do not nerf a class based on a degenerated situation, you balance it on the baseline situation which is sPvP and tPvP.

Mikey.1456:

No nurfs are need with the thief. Thieves are being played like intended.

LOL, in that case, nearly every other profession in the game needs a massive buff, then.

Give everyone a heat seeking nuclear missile that does 50k damage, that auto-fires at any stealthed target in 1200 units range, once a minute, sounds about right.

Can we get some input from Devs as to what direction you are going with this?

Thieves need “Sword % Damage/Critical” Traits, we need love for other weapons besides D/D.

the game and the classes is in many ways fine, stick to your! design and dont listen to loud pvp’ers as blizzard did. – just because pve’ers dont voice themselves as much, doesnt mean they’re not there. PvP-catering would make me leave the game and not look back.

as for the thief class, then I’d like an option for relying more on avoidance/speed and condition damage (poison/bleed) in one way or another – but im not fussed, overall pretty happy with the game.

All of the people who are complaining about stealth, please do go and play a thief. You will see that despite being stealth, you still can be hit by AOE attacks or any #1 melee slot skill attack in your direction actually. Chain stealth is good for running away but isn’t the elementalist mist skill the same? Even worse, you can cc people who are stealthed but elementalist are invulnerable to everything.

I main a thief. That one time that I did bring my hunter to WvW and met a stealth thief in a group clash. I used longbow aoe (#5 skill) the moment he stealthed and he backed off. The point is that, while you cannot see them, it does not mean that he is not there. If you have a fairly good idea the location, just throw your aoe, traps, stuns, ccs or even melee attack.

my suggestions, dont balance a class solely based on cry babies in pvp. Also I would like to see a second stealth where its toggled, for scouting purposes and you can not attack from this particular version of stealth. Considering thats the point of a thief/ rogue/ assassin based class, or profession as they are called here.