Guild Wars 2

I believe, the problem with the thief isn’t its damage, it’s not its immobilizing affects or their ability to move quickly throughout a fight with their shadow steps and such, but it’s their stealth.
Stealth in my opinion would have been fine if it was a powerful but rare ability. However, that’s not the case with the thief. Right now, other than the horrible players (that are common for any thought-to-be-op classes in any game), during most of my fights against a good thief I can only see them like 25% of the times. All the time I have to do guess work, throw around aoes and just hope that it might hit the almost-perma invisible thief which is tremendously helped by the stupid culling which increases their effective stealth duration. They just stealth, hit you once or twice and before you can even target them, they’re back into stealth.
There has been many times that a thief coming out of stealth was able to do a backstab and two heartseekers before I could even see them on the screen (I just try to figure it out from the waving dagger effects to know who or where they are hitting).

The problem of the thief is that the heals are FAR too powerful in this game and the glass canons far too fragile.

Would have been better if ANet went all the way to remove the trinity by removing the healers instead of making every class a healer and balanced through that. Bunkers would all be far less dangerous if they only got their toughness to mark them as bunkers and couldn’t plain outheal the damage of most classes. Thieves wouldn’t need the ability to burst down someone in 0.5s to be viable.

Just my 2 cents. Make alternative builds more interesting. Thief was the profession I started with and had planned to make my main. My idea was that he was a utility profession, lots of fun tools at his disposal, helping out people, CC etc. Sadly I eventually discovered that the way the thief turned out was another insane burst stealth class.

It’s thief, not assassin. It’s personal opinion, but I’ve always detested design choice for classes that were based around extremely high burst and stealth, even since my Daoc days. Stealth should be situational, not a near constant ability.

Break away from the stealth/huge damage road and give thieves more fun and viable playstyles.

Stop this issue. This is the proof of why thief need something to fixed or change! And only thief can do this thing, so please watch the entire video. thanks… Hope arena net fixed this, and sometimes when you reviving allied you stock to them need to fix that. Sometimes even you press V a lot of times you still reviving your allies. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWywAXmVP4

And this is why you should stop farming to your legendary, this is why if you see thief go log out, this is why boring to fight thief. Thief can scape a lot of times and anytime they wants., they can reset the fight while other class can’t. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X9L3pkjbtvw and only thief can do this.

Cogadh.1845:

Just my 2 cents. Make alternative builds more interesting. Thief was the profession I started with and had planned to make my main. My idea was that he was a utility profession, lots of fun tools at his disposal, helping out people, CC etc. Sadly I eventually discovered that the way the thief turned out was another insane burst stealth class.

It’s thief, not assassin. It’s personal opinion, but I’ve always detested design choice for classes that were based around extremely high burst and stealth, even since my Daoc days. Stealth should be situational, not a near constant ability.

Break away from the stealth/huge damage road and give thieves more fun and viable playstyles.

This.

The constant stealth mechanic is broken. Stealth should be situational so as to get you into good positioning to engage or perhaps disengage. It should not be a method by which you engage in combat with someone. If you are in combat, stealth should not be a viable option.

It doesn’t even make sense if you think about it… how can you stealth when you’re two feet away from me? That’s not stealth, that’s a cloak of invisibility. If the core concepts of a thief and stealth are actually examined logically, the current implementation of these mechanics are not legitimate. I.e. It’s a thief, not an assassin; stealth is not invisibility. Look at how thieves are played in PvE vs how thieves are played in PvP/WvW. Given there are some inherent differences between the two game modes, you can see a vastly different style of play. I’d argue the PvE thief is more representative of how the class was intended to be played, while the PvP/WvW thief is some kittenization of that.

Walabone.6713:

…It doesn’t even make sense if you think about it… how can you stealth when you’re two feet away from me? That’s not stealth, that’s a cloak of invisibility. If the core concepts of a thief and stealth are actually examined logically, the current implementation of these mechanics are not legitimate. I.e. It’s a thief, not an assassin; stealth is not invisibility. Look at how thieves are played in PvE vs how thieves are played in PvP/WvW. Given there are some inherent differences between the two game modes, you can see a vastly different style of play. I’d argue the PvE thief is more representative of how the class was intended to be played, while the PvP/WvW thief is some kittenization of that.

Because thieves utilize magic in order to stealth themself. The magic they use is the same which mesmer use, which is called denial http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone
That enables the thief to stealth/go invisible and shadowstep. At least as far as I know.

Furthermore the gameplay in PvE and PvP doesnt differ that much. With a stealthbuild you also try to go into stealth as often as possible to maximize your damage. Thieves only real damage comes from stealth and without it they mainly can only do autoattacks.
Only problem is now the game which resets the mobs and bosses pretty fast when you stealth which can make it pretty annoying as thief to fight something.

Walabone.6713:

It doesn’t even make sense if you think about it… how can you stealth when you’re two feet away from me? That’s not stealth, that’s a cloak of invisibility. If the core concepts of a thief and stealth are actually examined logically, the current implementation of these mechanics are not legitimate.

Attempting to think logically about a fantasy video game made of make-believe characters, places and magic? Fascinating, captain.

I don’t understand why is there so much QQ about the thief’s burst. He’s supposed to burst squishy targets, that’s his job. How’s nerfing backstab going to balance it? It’ll just take his objective away. He can’t burst down tanky targets, that’s balanced, his objective is to kill squishy targets as fast as possible. I just think thief needs some bug fixes because it has many :\ Shadowstep, scorpion wire, etc.

People QQ about everything the thief does, not only burst
If not QQ they just offend us…
example (all examples are sPvP, since there you can test builds for free)
I fought a D/D ele, pure luck -> I won then the ele said “hahah you are bad cuz thief>ele”
example another fight
I was using D/P, and used HS just to stealth combo with black powder they said
“hahahah you are bad you are just spammig 2”, I tought spamming was something like 2222222222 and not something like 5-2- positioning-1-autoattack-dodge-and again 5 etc, maybe I was wrong
example
I was testing a new build, you know, part of the game is creating a build you like, but, hey you’re bad!!! you are not using an over used build!
What If I would have used one of those build? “THIEF OP you’re bad You won only cuz THIEF OP”

I don’t care If thief is OP, if it’s an easy prof or what, I would like to know if there is something that a thief can do without been criticized

I like to play a thief because I love the concept of this profession and only for that reason. I don’t care to be the best, I just want to have fun, wich is quite difficult if people just offend everything you do just because you use a profession they hate

I’m testing pistol whip now, it actually seems to work pretty well! If they nerf backstab and heartseeker, which I kinda doubt because it’s doing its job. .
You’ll only see pistol whip and gay caltrops :\

I don’t think thief’s OP, you just have to learn how to dodge it. If you see a basilik venom on a thief and he’s comming for you, get ready do dodge or to stun break.

Assuming you’re fighting a thief of your same skill level.
Tell me. How many dodges can you do in a fight? No matter what, the thief is almost always at your face. But that’s not the problem really. It’s quite possible to kite a thief enough to tire him out. At the end, a fight against such a thief ends depending on which one of you have made the least mistakes and have reacted better to eachother’s tricks.
But when the said thief is in stealth 80% of the time during the fight, what are you going to dodge? Air? Or maybe use some of that sixth sense of yours to guess when he’s going to attack? When I see a thief abusing stealth, it’s no longer a matter of what I might do wrong or what I should do. You can’t see anything to react to. In this situation, all you see yourself doing is spamming as many aoes as you can hoping that it might miraculously hit the thief. But then there comes cooldowns. Even if you give the fight twice the effort than the thief, you still have to rely on luck! Even if you win, it’s not been because you were better, it was because you got lucky. Such a fight is not fair, is not right nor is it fun (maybe only to the thief fans). Even if you win, you don’t feel you had a good fight.
The problem is not the thief’s damage and teleports. It’s the fact that they can abuse stealth which is the clear reason why the thief’s effectiveness varies so much between pve and pvp.
Of course, even if you give a profession the “Win The Game” skill, there will be fans of that profession that still think: It’s not OP, you just need to learn how to counter it and that this is an “L2P” issue!

i will add my 2 cents.

i think theives are a great class and have great ideas, i think that the only thing that is the problem is that stealth is too defencive. i think stealth should be (somehow idk how) made to compliment the theif’s offensive capabilities. (something more than just 1 new skill in stealth)

as it is now the theif has some of the best offense and some of the best defence all in one because of the mechanics.

now i win my fair share of fights with theives, but the ones that give me huge trouble are those that can repeatedly unload a nice burst and then stealth in between. having this combination of great offense and great defence is what makes this class very difficult (and frustrating) to play against.

i think somehow fixing this would also make the theif more fun to play because it would make stealth more about finess and positioning rather than just the defencive button (from my theif playing experience atleast)

just my 2 cents but this is definately an interesting predicament anet is in here

if not for this my theif would be my main cause i always played the sneaky dps classes in other mmos

I hate to reference WoW but….

Alpha strike classes. You break stealth when you choose to. When you break it, you best make sure you picked your time, place and target well. If you did, you killed them with high alpha strike and burst. If you didnt, your either dead or burnt a long cd to escape.

GW2 Version is ;

Alpha strike with high initial burst. You messed it up? Who cares, instant reset and try again. Messed it up again? Ow well , have another free escape. There is no penalty to failure as a thief.

If Thieves kept their burst, kept their speed and ability to roam, but were punished for poor decisions. No one would moan.

People cite the lack of thieves in top level tpvp. That isnt because the class hasnt got imbalanced in certain areas that make it insanely strong. Its because through dedicated teamwork and communication , you can almost always know the position of the theif, even if you cant see them. That type of teamwork will never, ever be available in hotjoin pvp, or pug-tournaments. If the class isnt balanced in a majority of gameplay, it isnt balanced.

This is like the people who say the counter to d/d ele is to run more d/d ele…… which is inanely circular. Its not a solution, its fixing symptoms of a fault , without ever addressing the cause.

I also know that people hear nerf and expect to have their class turned into a spork, but Anet seems intent of small changes and tweaks to try and achieve a balance.

This then opens the question ; Why arent more thieves open to stealth or burst nerfs? It can be compensated by stronger play elsewhere, it would also mean you had a chance to display skill instead of facemash. Why arent more d/d ele’s open to nerfs to that single spec? If the nerf was spec specific, then it would allow buffs to be made to other areas of the class…

It seems to me people find an OP spec, and want to cling onto it with constant posts of ‘l2p’ all day on the forums. Surely there are Elementalists out there who would prefer the ability to choose other specs? No? Surely? If there is, why do none speak up? All i hear is Ele’s arent overpowered in this single spec…. erm….. go look at X-Class, it’s all their fault, not ours…

I think it’s simple: make stealth 10% visible. This would solve the imbalances of stealth on so many levels:

1) Stealth would stop being an end all uncounterable defense (as I don’t count AOEing and hoping the thief is there as a counter). The thief will still be easy to miss, especially in a big fight, but your counter is a sharp and attentive eye.

2) This would automatically solve culling. The character is already slightly visible, so there shouldn’t have to be a new render. And even if there is one, you still have a basis to go off of (the slightly visible transparency) rather than a broken mechanic to exploit.

3) Would require more advanced use of your skills. When you might be seen just walking up to a guy, you actually need teamwork, distractions, or luck to set up your attack.

Note that this ALSO would apply to Mesmer stealth (or any other instance that grants stealth). NPC AI for targeting stealthed characters should not be improved in any way as it doesn’t break NPC targeting enough as it is… if anything, stealth needs to be improved in PvE.

As long as they balance transparency levels to a point where it can be spotted, but not obvious, I would consider the broken OP mechanic fixed.

I also think the class function skills need more complexity (like every class that has less than 4). “Steal” should store the stolen item in slots f2 – f4, with a first in/first out if they over steal. Universal cooldown. This means that steal/mug is always available instead of replaced, and the thief has the ability to ‘prepare’ for fights, which I would think would add to the depth and tactics (you never know what tools a thief may come into battle with).

Visionary.5681:

I hate to reference WoW but….

Alpha strike classes. You break stealth when you choose to. When you break it, you best make sure you picked your time, place and target well. If you did, you killed them with high alpha strike and burst. If you didnt, your either dead or burnt a long cd to escape.

GW2 Version is ;

Alpha strike with high initial burst. You messed it up? Who cares, instant reset and try again. Messed it up again? Ow well , have another free escape. There is no penalty to failure as a thief.

If Thieves kept their burst, kept their speed and ability to roam, but were punished for poor decisions. No one would moan.

People cite the lack of thieves in top level tpvp. That isnt because the class hasnt got imbalanced in certain areas that make it insanely strong. Its because through dedicated teamwork and communication , you can almost always know the position of the theif, even if you cant see them. That type of teamwork will never, ever be available in hotjoin pvp, or pug-tournaments. If the class isnt balanced in a majority of gameplay, it isnt balanced.

This is like the people who say the counter to d/d ele is to run more d/d ele…… which is inanely circular. Its not a solution, its fixing symptoms of a fault , without ever addressing the cause.

I also know that people hear nerf and expect to have their class turned into a spork, but Anet seems intent of small changes and tweaks to try and achieve a balance.

This then opens the question ; Why arent more thieves open to stealth or burst nerfs? It can be compensated by stronger play elsewhere, it would also mean you had a chance to display skill instead of facemash. Why arent more d/d ele’s open to nerfs to that single spec? If the nerf was spec specific, then it would allow buffs to be made to other areas of the class…

It seems to me people find an OP spec, and want to cling onto it with constant posts of ‘l2p’ all day on the forums. Surely there are Elementalists out there who would prefer the ability to choose other specs? No? Surely? If there is, why do none speak up? All i hear is Ele’s arent overpowered in this single spec…. erm….. go look at X-Class, it’s all their fault, not ours…

I’m willing to hear possible nerfs out but, as an S/D thief (which is a burstless set) I rely on CnD for frequent access to Stealth, which gives me Dazes which allows me the uptime, which I need to overcome my lack luster damage. P/D thieves are even more stealth reliant then S/D because all their attacks, save for thier stealth skill are weak.
I’m traited for blind on stealth, condition removal in stealth, and granting stealthed allies Regen so it’s pretty obvious, most of my survival is from stealth. The blind on stealth is probably my greatest asset in dungeons. Stealth keeps me from being ripped to shreads in Orre. So it’s easy to see why I’m rather defensive of stealth.

Get rid of stealth and imo, thief becomes a weaker version of a warrior, rather then its own class.

I don’t see how can thieves abuse stealth, could you please explain? If it’s CnD, it’s easy as kitten to dodge.

Depends how you define ‘abuse’. If you mean employing combos that take advantage of culling issues for 100% invisi, that is exploiting. All CnD > Steal > Backstab combos employ this exploit as the 3 second stealth cooldown is not enough to counter culling. If you mean ‘abuse’ by the fact it is a mechanic with no counter other than spray and pray? Yeah…

As for CnD… hmmm… you’re telling me you have the reaction speed to dodge an action that you can’t see happening in less than a tenth of a second? Start in stealth, trigger CnD animation > steal to teleport yourself to target and do mug damage followed by immediate CnD damage (as your cast time is over when you hit the target) automatically restealthing to land your invisible backstab. Godlike reflexes might save you from a backstab – but you’ve got nothing you can do against that CnD setup unless you have pregonizance or extreme luck on a random dodge roll.

But with frequent access to stealth and zero way for people to see you in that stealth, you can always leave or enter a fight with no penalty except if you’re dumb enough to walk into their attack (aka you were predictable) or sheer dumb luck on their part in guessing where you are.

So tell me, how is 100% stealth fair? I have it on both my Mesmer and Thief (ranger/engineer have minor access to it) – it’s fun – but I consider it broken. It can’t be too obvious or it would be useless, but it HAS to have a counter.

How can you spray and pray as a thief, kitten?

It’s hard to dodge the CnD>steal>backstab combo, but I’m talking about people saying we can spam stealth when we can’t. Costs a lot of initiative and we’ve to land the CnD on you, and don’t tell me you can’t dodge a CnD when you see me running towards you ready to use it.

How the hell do we’ve 100% stealth? we’re visible for 3sec, if you’re not skilled enough to CC us, don’t say it’s OP. We’ve few stealths, you may be over reacting over 3 stealths that have 30sec to 45sec cd. (the CnD has no cd ye, but it’s easy to dodge)

Visionary.5681:

GW2 Version is ;

Alpha strike with high initial burst. You messed it up? Who cares, instant reset and try again. Messed it up again? Ow well , have another free escape. There is no penalty to failure as a thief.

This is absolutely not true. Thieves have no infinite resource of initiative enough to spam Cloak and Dagger or Black Powder and Heartseeker. A Thief cannot down someone with no initiative. Thus by just spamming Cloak and Dagger or Black Powder and Heart Seeker, alot of that initative is wasted and hurts the Thief more than his opponent because he will not be able to deal enough damage with no intiative left.

Here is information that might help you the next time you join spvp or wvw:

Weapon skills:
Dagger Main-Hand
- Heartseeker (activation time: ¾s, initiative cost: 3)

Dagger Off-Hand
- Cloak and Dagger (activation time: ½s, initiative cost: 6)

Pistol Off-Hand
- Black Powder (activation time: ½s, initiative cost: 6)

Healing Skill
- Hide in Shadows (activation time: 1s, cooldown: 30)

Utility
- Shadow Refuge (activation time: ¼s, cooldown: 60)

Stealth
When Stealth is broken by the player, the user gains a Revealed effect which prevents him/her from re-entering Stealth for three seconds, regardless of the skill used. The Revealed effect is not applied if the stealth period ends without being broken.

Death Henk.7143:

Visionary.5681:

GW2 Version is ;

Alpha strike with high initial burst. You messed it up? Who cares, instant reset and try again. Messed it up again? Ow well , have another free escape. There is no penalty to failure as a thief.

This is absolutely not true. Thieves have no infinite resource of initiative enough to spam Cloak and Dagger or Black Powder and Heartseeker. A Thief cannot down someone with no initiative. Thus by just spamming Cloak and Dagger or Black Powder and Heart Seeker, alot of that initative is wasted and hurts the Thief more than his opponent because he will not be able to deal enough damage with no intiative left.

Here is information that might help you the next time you join spvp or wvw:

Weapon skills:
Dagger Main-Hand
- Heartseeker (activation time: ¾s, initiative cost: 3)

Dagger Off-Hand
- Cloak and Dagger (activation time: ½s, initiative cost: 6)

Pistol Off-Hand
- Black Powder (activation time: ½s, initiative cost: 6)

Healing Skill
- Hide in Shadows (activation time: 1s, cooldown: 30)

Utility
- Shadow Refuge (activation time: ¼s, cooldown: 60)

Stealth
When Stealth is broken by the player, the user gains a Revealed effect which prevents him/her from re-entering Stealth for three seconds, regardless of the skill used. The Revealed effect is not applied if the stealth period ends without being broken.

I dunno why people create fake “facts” so Anet nerfs thief, many times they’re just over reacting on 3 stealths, we can’t go back to stealth for 3sec. If you can’t do anything, that’s not because thieve’s OP. You can’t spam stealth, that’s impossible. That’s just QQ, not facts.

I think a potentially VERY simple fix to stealth mechanics as they are currently implemented is to show damage numbers on an invisible player. So when I’m flailing around and manage to actually hit something, I’ll know! This would also include DOTs, so, like in other MMOs, DOTs are a counter to stealth since they would help you find their position.

That’s pointless. I don’t remember any MMO that has such mechanic, how’s stealth going to work if there’s numbers appearing above my head? That’s not stealth anymore, instead of my body you see numbers.
You can see when you hit a stealthed enemy when a trap triggers, when you do a normal attack and you see that the next attack animation is different because you hit someone.
You’re just asking for a mechanic to make your gameplay easier, that’s not how things work.

rylark.3418:

I dunno why people create fake “facts” so Anet nerfs thief, many times they’re just over reacting on 3 stealths, we can’t go back to stealth for 3sec. If you can’t do anything, that’s not because thieve’s OP. You can’t spam stealth, that’s impossible. That’s just QQ, not facts.

Your facts are half complete. Cloak and Dagger is in practice a 4 initiative skill in a stealth build (cause of the 2 you get back from trait). Stealth lasts 4 seconds with trait. You recover that initiative in less than 6 seconds (that’s without Patience). The thieves themselves don’t notice it, but the victim can’t see the thief immediately after they break stealth due to culling. So one actually only has roughly 2 seconds window to react to that not 3. This time is enough for the next cloak and dagger. But we haven’t considered the utilities and the healing skill yet have we? Not to mention that the thief really doesn’t require too much time to kill someone.
When a thief attacks from stealth, if their damage was dealt in a 2-3 seconds window, players would have been able to react, but then, a correctly built thief can drain half your health within less than 2 seconds after breaking stealth (which is usually started by an immobilize, chill or petrify). You might want to make us believe that this part requires too much skill, but I consider myself horrible at thief and even I can pull that out with a sub-optimal build.
Besides, I didn’t say the thief can go into stealth 100% of the times though, but the thief can effectively keep that up to 80% while actually dealing more than enough damage. That pretty much passes as spamming to me. Now even 50% uptime on something like this is overpowered and gimmicky in my book for the reasons I’ve already stated in my previous posts.
A thief abusing stealth requires much less skill, attention and luck to kill someone than the person trying to defend against it.

Burjis.3087:

Your facts are half complete. …

Perhaps you have your fact half complete? The thief that focusses on stealth and survival is not the thief that drains half of your life bubble in 2 seconds.

Burjis.3087:

stealth requires much less skill, attention and luck to kill someone than the person trying to defend against it.

This is true. A thief on day 1 of hitting 80 can decimate a lot of people (mainly up leveled, or those not used to fighting them, or those without stun breaks, or those who are glassy).

It’s easy to be good as a thief, and it will take more skill for his opponent to beat him because being in stealth is very forgiving.

When I first started running with a guild, the chat was full of people decrying the thief as OP. Now those same people are insulting the thief for being “cheesy” but also demean them for being very easy to kill.

What that means to me is
1) they are kind of jerks, i hate seeing chat that people playing thief suck. We are all playing the same game, some of us rolled a thief. that does not make us bad people.
2) they are scarred by their early experiences
3) they learned how to counter thieves

Also, play paid tourneys in sPvP… notice all the thieves on the newb groups.. then notice the smaller amount in the great groups.

It is not an insult to say that it will take a learning curve to figure it out (when you suggest this to people, they usually say "DONT TELL ME TO L2P RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE). And for some classes, if you want to beat a thief, you’re going to have to slot for different utility skills/weapon sets than you’d like. It’s called countering. You can’t be better than everyone.

A GC d/d thief is going to get laughed off the battleground by a bunker Guardian or Ele, for example. Is that thief justified to come onto the forums and yell that those classes are OP? I think not. I think, instead, if they want to beat those classes they need to counter them. For example, run a S/D dazelock thief and have a 3 minute fight :p

frans.8092:

Burjis.3087:

Your facts are half complete. …

Perhaps you have your fact half complete? The thief that focusses on stealth and survival is not the thief that drains half of your life bubble in 2 seconds.

It surprises me that a thief player can give such a thoughtless response about their own profession (I am assuming you’re even a thief player). You only need 20 points in shadow arts for all the traits I talked about in my post. Unless you only run on 20 trait points, you can do that.
But nice try lol

Woaden.9425:

Also, play paid tourneys in sPvP… notice all the thieves on the newb groups.. then notice the smaller amount in the great groups.

Yes, that is very true. And guess what? It’s because tournaments are focused on keeping points and stealth doesn’t work for that.
Everywhere stealth is useful, the thief shows as overpowered. Everywhere stealth is useless, the thief sucks in that mode. That’s why I say stealth is the thief’s problem. If the thief for example had more evades and party support and less stealths, it would have been good enough for tournaments as well.

Burjis.3087:

rylark.3418:

I dunno why people create fake “facts” so Anet nerfs thief, many times they’re just over reacting on 3 stealths, we can’t go back to stealth for 3sec. If you can’t do anything, that’s not because thieve’s OP. You can’t spam stealth, that’s impossible. That’s just QQ, not facts.

Your facts are half complete. Cloak and Dagger is in practice a 4 initiative skill in a stealth build (cause of the 2 you get back from trait). Stealth lasts 4 seconds with trait. You recover that initiative in less than 6 seconds (that’s without Patience). The thieves themselves don’t notice it, but the victim can’t see the thief immediately after they break stealth due to culling. So one actually only has roughly 2 seconds window to react to that not 3. This time is enough for the next cloak and dagger. But we haven’t considered the utilities and the healing skill yet have we? Not to mention that the thief really doesn’t require too much time to kill someone.
When a thief attacks from stealth, if their damage was dealt in a 2-3 seconds window, players would have been able to react, but then, a correctly built thief can drain half your health within less than 2 seconds after breaking stealth (which is usually started by an immobilize, chill or petrify). You might want to make us believe that this part requires too much skill, but I consider myself horrible at thief and even I can pull that out with a sub-optimal build.
Besides, I didn’t say the thief can go into stealth 100% of the times though, but the thief can effectively keep that up to 80% while actually dealing more than enough damage. That pretty much passes as spamming to me. Now even 50% uptime on something like this is overpowered and gimmicky in my book for the reasons I’ve already stated in my previous posts.
A thief abusing stealth requires much less skill, attention and luck to kill someone than the person trying to defend against it.

1st: Yes you’re right, with a “stealth build” thief can use CnD much more and be in stealth longer. But it’s not the kind of thief that’ll burst you down quickly, not even close.
2nd: If you can’t dodge a CnD I’ve bad news for you. I’ve seen thieves using that build and it’s easy to dodge it, the only hard part is when they pre-cast CnD and then use steal. Because after that, they’ll keep spamming CnD, you just have to dodge and stun,immobilize, chill, cripple, etc. and he won’t do kitten.
3rd: My facts are right, I was talking about a burst thief, not the stealth one.

Burjis.3087:

Everywhere stealth is useful, the thief shows as overpowered. Everywhere stealth is useless, the thief sucks in that mode. That’s why I say stealth is the thief’s problem. If the thief for example had more evades and party support and less stealths, it would have been good enough for tournaments as well.

I wont disagree with you that stealth is something the devs need to pay attention to. I was not in the beta, but I recall someone saying that at one time the thief didn’t even have the reveal de-buff. No mechanic should be ignored, though none should be the sole focus. They added marque abilities to each class, and rounding their edges too much reduces the uniqueness of that class.

I also agree with folks who have a problem with culling and the thief only really being revealed for 2s. I think that 1s makes all the difference. I have played this game on two different computers (I made a computer for a friend of mine by using my old parts, and at his house, with that computer and a low end dsl connection I have more trouble fighting the theif and do notice a culling issue.

FYI (mainly to Anet) the placeholder model culling fix has improved gameplay/culling on his PC, I’ve experienced it firsthand! Meanwhile, my PC with 40Mbps, i7, 32gigs ram, ssd, 6900series OCd— The culling patch has made distance culling far worse for me (I get more surprise pwned by inviso aoe).

As it stands, when I play my Thief I have no issue (on my PC) Basalisk/CnD/Steal/Mug/Blind/Daze comboing an enemy stealthspammer into oblivion, nor do I have an issue with GC on my Guardian. That 3s debuff is enough for me to tabtarget (though I’m forced to mouse-target when not in 1v1, which i sometimes miss) and just obliterate them.

So I guess my main thing is, i think stealth is balanced right (with the exception that they need to turn off being able to stealth off structures, and MAYBE tweak the combo that gives you ini on stealth, CnD should come with opportunity cost).

I think stealth is a core mechanic that should not be changed/reduced in efficiency from it’s current state.

I will disagree with your assessment about sPvP. The thief still excels, look at Lowell. Stealth is still forgiving, but less so. Now all players know to watch for their auto-attack animation to move to step2 so they know they landed a hit. Now it’s to blind/stun/knock/root the thief without delay.

Now it’s the case that only GOOD thief’s excel, so the amount of them run is reduced. This is because all of the GOOD players of other classes have learned to counter. Now Eles and Rangers and Guardians are the OP in top play, but their counter will be found eventually, this is the cycle in all esports.

I am leery with any argument that says to reduce stealth’s effectiveness or our access to stealth. I am against any argument that stealth openers (backstab, tactical strike, sneak attack) should be reduced in effectiveness.

I am supportive of any argument that says stealth should come with opportunity costs.

Burjis.3087:

Yes, that is very true. And guess what? It’s because tournaments are focused on keeping points and stealth doesn’t work for that.
Everywhere stealth is useful, the thief shows as overpowered. Everywhere stealth is useless, the thief sucks in that mode. That’s why I say stealth is the thief’s problem. If the thief for example had more evades and party support and less stealths, it would have been good enough for tournaments as well.

Guess What? ALL pvp in this game is focused on keeping points, both spvp tpvp and WvWvW are all about capturing and holding points. So all this QQ is about a mechanic that is terrible for the SOLE focus all pvp goals in the game.

This thread is so long. I can not properly refere to earlier points brought up. So I just say replace the thief stealth invisibility with degree of transparance similar to the mesner’s phantasmal. The degree of transparance should be trade off from speed, quickness, and burst. For example higher the speed, quickness, and burst rating a thief has lower the transparance and higher the visibility. IE thieves should not be 100% invisible. If they are 100% invisible then they should have trade-off of minium speed, quickness, and burst. Of cause the trade off point could be a fixed constant on a sliding scale or a moving point along the sliding scale depending on what the thief’s action is at the time.

Fort Aspenwood W3 Thief

Deadly – 25, mug combined training
Crit – 30, pistol mastery combo crit executioner
Shadow – 10 shadow for condition remove
Trickery – 5 for some emergency initiative since I can’t have the extra and regen from sigil
abilities: heal – one that heals you on attack, shadow refuge, precision sigil, haste, dagger storm

In order to compete in medium roaming groups its come down to a very very limited amount of things you can use. Bow to buff your group with blast combo. So most fights like this: run or if you give up haste port over to back of group. dagger storm while finding a squishy, steal and then unload until they on you or to many dots, shadow refuge. Hopefully you downed someone, pop haste and speed stake em, swap to bow and pray you have enough initiative to 5 bow out. Unless lucky and you got your stake in before using shadow refuge.

So most of the neat abilities have to be left out as no room to have them up. Dual dagger is mostly sucide as you kill one and then hide or your toast. Plus now peeps are realizing that the house ikon mean AOE right there!

Avariz.8241:

This thread is so long. I can not properly refere to earlier points brought up. So I just say replace the thief stealth invisibility with degree of transparance similar to the mesner’s phantasmal. The degree of transparance should be trade off from speed, quickness, and burst. For example higher the speed, quickness, and burst rating a thief has lower the transparance and higher the visibility. IE thieves should not be 100% invisible. If they are 100% invisible then they should have trade-off of minium speed, quickness, and burst. Of cause the trade off point could be a fixed constant on a sliding scale or a moving point along the sliding scale depending on what the thief’s action is at the time.

Transparency instead of stealth has been hashed over so many times and it always ends in the same conclusion. That conclusion is that it won’t work. Since you haven’t taken the time to read the multiple posts on it I won’t bother to enlighten you with every little deatail, and instead let you do the research yourself. The reason it won’t work is simple, stealth is our main defensive ability, you take away stealth to any degree, you might as well just squash the profession in it’s entirety.

Shemsu.8721:

Guess What? ALL pvp in this game is focused on keeping points, both spvp tpvp and WvWvW are all about capturing and holding points. So all this QQ is about a mechanic that is terrible for the SOLE focus all pvp goals in the game.

You can’t be any more wrong.
WvW is about capturing and holding “points”? lol? Are you trolling? You compare capturing keeps and areas of interest to capturing points in tournaments?
Also, sPvP is not about capturing points much but about massing up glory for yourself, at least with the current pointing system.
The only pvp in the game that is focused purely on keeping and holding capture points is tournament.
You don’t realize how stupid you sounded when you said that.\

Avariz.8241:

This thread is so long. I can not properly refere to earlier points brought up. So I just say replace the thief stealth invisibility with degree of transparance similar to the mesner’s phantasmal. The degree of transparance should be trade off from speed, quickness, and burst. For example higher the speed, quickness, and burst rating a thief has lower the transparance and higher the visibility. IE thieves should not be 100% invisible. If they are 100% invisible then they should have trade-off of minium speed, quickness, and burst. Of cause the trade off point could be a fixed constant on a sliding scale or a moving point along the sliding scale depending on what the thief’s action is at the time.

I disagree. Stealth is fine as a mechanic as it is (except for the culling issue which has to be fixed). But it should cost more. The down time between cloaks should be longer. It should remain a viable option for the thief but they should not be able to use it as often as now.

Burjis.3087:

frans.8092:

Burjis.3087:

Your facts are half complete. …

Perhaps you have your fact half complete? The thief that focusses on stealth and survival is not the thief that drains half of your life bubble in 2 seconds.

It surprises me that a thief player can give such a thoughtless response about their own profession (I am assuming you’re even a thief player). You only need 20 points in shadow arts for all the traits I talked about in my post. Unless you only run on 20 trait points, you can do that.
But nice try lol

A burst thief would probably run something like 10 Deadly Arts, 30 Critical Strikes and 20 Trickery, at least, which leaves 10 points for Shadow Arts, at the most. While they don’t have to take Bountifull Theft, it looks rather tempting when building on steal.

Revealed limits stealth to about 50% at most, assuming the thief extends their stealth to 3-4 seconds every time they use it, I don’t see them getting an 80% when they’re actually doing some damage. And always staying in stealth for 3 seconds before striking makes the thief very predictable….

thieves are op. period.

If you guyz saying that thief are balance and you can counter the thief easily. Make a video and be sure its not death match and be sure the thief you gonna fight is good. Lvl 80 thief not low lvl thief. And not on Spvp. Make it on w vs w. Prove it. We post a lot of video on how O.P. are thief are. So post a video too.

My problem with the Thief class is that P/D thieves use #1 and #5 and are devastating. What other class can use only 2/5 of their weapon skills and be that effective?

D/D Thieves are quite similar in that they use #1 #2 -or- #3 depending on power/cond build, and #5 and are very effective.

D/P are similar to D/D.

The biggest issue is the soft reset that Thieves are allowed to do due to 30 points in Shadow Arts. Thieves can remove conditions, regen initiative more quickly, and heal while stealth … on top of being stealthed, of course. This, coupled with a multitude of ways to stealth, allows thieves to constantly soft reset a fight for their self while their opponent is whittled down. If you combine this with the innate evasion built into various Thief attacks, you have an enemy who is stealthing or evading for a large majority of the fight.

Mesmers use to be able to put 30 points in Inspiration to get “remove conditions on shatter” and “heal on shatter”, but those two traits were made 30 pts instead of 20 and 30. I presume this was done because it was seen as “too strong” … yet the thief has an even better synergy with their stealth.

Lastly, culling is ridiculously good for Thieves.

Sebrent.3625:

My problem with the Thief class is that P/D thieves use #1 and #5 and are devastating. What other class can use only 2/5 of their weapon skills and be that effective?

The biggest issue is the soft reset that Thieves are allowed to do due to 30 points in Shadow Arts. Thieves can remove conditions, regen initiative more quickly, and heal while stealth … on top of being stealthed, of course. This, coupled with a multitude of ways to stealth, allows thieves to constantly soft reset a fight for their self while their opponent is whittled down. If you combine this with the innate evasion built into various Thief attacks, you have an enemy who is stealthing or evading for a large majority of the fight.

Not true, thieves can’t be devastating with 1 and 5. 5th skill uses 6 initiative, and you only have to press dodge to get out of the blinding field, I don’t see how’s that devastating to you.
If a thief uses 30points in Shadow Arts, he’ll lose a lot of burst. Even though he can maintain fights longer, you can burst him easily without him hurting you as a burst thief would. Usually stealth focus thieves use CnD to get in stealth and heal a bit up, dodging CnD isn’t any hard at all.

But yea I agree with you, culling is an issue that has to be fixed quickly.

Lofat.2406:

Avariz.8241:

This thread is so long. I can not properly refere to earlier points brought up. So I just say replace the thief stealth invisibility with degree of transparance similar to the mesner’s phantasmal. The degree of transparance should be trade off from speed, quickness, and burst. For example higher the speed, quickness, and burst rating a thief has lower the transparance and higher the visibility. IE thieves should not be 100% invisible. If they are 100% invisible then they should have trade-off of minium speed, quickness, and burst. Of cause the trade off point could be a fixed constant on a sliding scale or a moving point along the sliding scale depending on what the thief’s action is at the time.

Transparency instead of stealth has been hashed over so many times and it always ends in the same conclusion. That conclusion is that it won’t work. Since you haven’t taken the time to read the multiple posts on it I won’t bother to enlighten you with every little deatail, and instead let you do the research yourself. The reason it won’t work is simple, stealth is our main defensive ability, you take away stealth to any degree, you might as well just squash the profession in it’s entirety.

Thankyou for letting me know that this has already been debated. However, I like to point out that I have written that when a thief is 100% invisible then they should trade that off with having minimal speed, quickness, and burst. This has the implication that if a thief do have highest of speed, quickness, and burst then they should have very high transparency. This transparancy should be much greater than a mesner’s phantasmal. In fact it should be some what closer to near invisibility.

rylark.3418:

Sebrent.3625:

My problem with the Thief class is that P/D thieves use #1 and #5 and are devastating. What other class can use only 2/5 of their weapon skills and be that effective?

The biggest issue is the soft reset that Thieves are allowed to do due to 30 points in Shadow Arts. Thieves can remove conditions, regen initiative more quickly, and heal while stealth … on top of being stealthed, of course. This, coupled with a multitude of ways to stealth, allows thieves to constantly soft reset a fight for their self while their opponent is whittled down. If you combine this with the innate evasion built into various Thief attacks, you have an enemy who is stealthing or evading for a large majority of the fight.

Not true, thieves can’t be devastating with 1 and 5. 5th skill uses 6 initiative, and you only have to press dodge to get out of the blinding field, I don’t see how’s that devastating to you.
If a thief uses 30points in Shadow Arts, he’ll lose a lot of burst. Even though he can maintain fights longer, you can burst him easily without him hurting you as a burst thief would. Usually stealth focus thieves use CnD to get in stealth and heal a bit up, dodging CnD isn’t any hard at all.

But yea I agree with you, culling is an issue that has to be fixed quickly.

P/D is Pistol w/ Offhand Dagger so #5 is Cloak and Dagger which gives stealth. They then use the pistol stealth attack (Sneak Attack) which has decent direct damage, applies 5 bleeds, and uses 0 initiative . All initiative is devoted to Cloak and Dagger and regenerated faster while stealthed so its “high” initiative cost isn’t that big of an issue.

They can dance in and out of stealth healing, removing conditions, and regenerating initiative faster each time they are stealthed and applying upwards of 5 bleeds each time they come out of stealth. You don’t need burst. You can wear someone down. Since Thief also has great mobility, it’s difficult to escape the fight for many classes so you’re stuck fighting “nightcrawler” as he bleeds you to death or whittles you down with constant backstabs.

With the abundance of random NPCs, etc. in WvW, cloak and dagger is quite easy for them to use as well.

Honestly, I think people should look at the multitude of videos thieves are putting out there of them “Zerg Surfing” and ask yourselves if that should be possible for any class in the game to do solo. Yes, in some the zergs are horrible, but in others you see people try to chain CCs but they are evaded and the thief stealths before more can be tried and they have at least 1 stunbreaker and plenty of condition removal and can keep re-stealthing to allow them to wait for any cooldowns they need.

Sebrent.3625:

…D/D Thieves are quite similar in that they use #1 #2 -or- #3 depending on power/cond build, and #5 and are very effective.

You forget the number 4 to cripple and catch fleeing opponents. Thats … all 5?

Sebrent.3625:

P/D is Pistol w/ Offhand Dagger so #5 is Cloak and Dagger which gives stealth. They then use the pistol stealth attack (Sneak Attack) which has decent direct damage, applies 5 bleeds, and uses 0 initiative

It’s direct damage is quite poor, to use effective you should really focus on the bleeds (+duration, +condition damage), which rules out power based weapons (just about everything else)

… Yes, in some the zergs are horrible, but in others you see people try to chain CCs but they are evaded and the thief stealths …

Blind and CC is the way to go, if a zerg fails to catch a thief it’s really their fault. There’s only a limited amount of endurance and stun breaking. It’s more the zerg’s hive-mind that let’s them escape.

Burjis.3087:

…

Avariz.8241:

This thread is so long. I can not properly refere to earlier points brought up. So I just say replace the thief stealth invisibility with degree of transparance similar to the mesner’s phantasmal. The degree of transparance should be trade off from speed, quickness, and burst. For example higher the speed, quickness, and burst rating a thief has lower the transparance and higher the visibility. IE thieves should not be 100% invisible. If they are 100% invisible then they should have trade-off of minium speed, quickness, and burst. Of cause the trade off point could be a fixed constant on a sliding scale or a moving point along the sliding scale depending on what the thief’s action is at the time.

I disagree. Stealth is fine as a mechanic as it is (except for the culling issue which has to be fixed). But it should cost more. The down time between cloaks should be longer. It should remain a viable option for the thief but they should not be able to use it as often as now.

Thief can keep 100% invisibility and when they do they should have low speed, low quickness, and low burst. It is when they have highest of speed, quickness, and highest of burst that their invisibility should be reduced to say… 90%.

Just to clarafiy I have no concern what so ever about thief in a culling issue situation. The reason is that the culling issue should only arises in a zerge situation. The same thing for FPS and other latency issues. All such issues only arise in zerge/s situation. As you yourself have pointed out thief do have uneven difficulties in zerge battle and siege. Because the culling issue arises in a zerge situation, it should not have arisen in a 1v1 or 1v(any number below 11). However, for some strange peculiar unknown reason, the thief stealth 100% invisibility culling issue only seem to arise in 1v1 and 1v(any number below 11) for the many numerous people who have issue with the thief stealth culling issue.

frans.8092:

Sebrent.3625:

…D/D Thieves are quite similar in that they use #1 #2 -or- #3 depending on power/cond build, and #5 and are very effective.

You forget the number 4 to cripple and catch fleeing opponents. Thats … all 5?

Sebrent.3625:

P/D is Pistol w/ Offhand Dagger so #5 is Cloak and Dagger which gives stealth. They then use the pistol stealth attack (Sneak Attack) which has decent direct damage, applies 5 bleeds, and uses 0 initiative

It’s direct damage is quite poor, to use effective you should really focus on the bleeds (+duration, +condition damage), which rules out power based weapons (just about everything else)

… Yes, in some the zergs are horrible, but in others you see people try to chain CCs but they are evaded and the thief stealths …

Blind and CC is the way to go, if a zerg fails to catch a thief it’s really their fault. There’s only a limited amount of endurance and stun breaking. It’s more the zerg’s hive-mind that let’s them escape.

What are you talking about with what type of damage sneak attack is? Whether it’s condition damage or power, it still hurts. There are plenty of videos of P/D thieves trolling about nigh invincible. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend they don’t exist, but don’t make pointless arguments to defend it if so.

Also, how does being in a group help anyone catch up to an escaping thief? Between stealth utilities, blinds, swiftness on dodge, SB 5 / Dagger 2, a thief can run from 50 players as well as 1. If you get caught by the zerg, you probably die, but you still have to get caught.

Mister Mustard.7203:

frans.8092:

Sebrent.3625:

…D/D Thieves are quite similar in that they use #1 #2 -or- #3 depending on power/cond build, and #5 and are very effective.

You forget the number 4 to cripple and catch fleeing opponents. Thats … all 5?

Sebrent.3625:

P/D is Pistol w/ Offhand Dagger so #5 is Cloak and Dagger which gives stealth. They then use the pistol stealth attack (Sneak Attack) which has decent direct damage, applies 5 bleeds, and uses 0 initiative

It’s direct damage is quite poor, to use effective you should really focus on the bleeds (+duration, +condition damage), which rules out power based weapons (just about everything else)

… Yes, in some the zergs are horrible, but in others you see people try to chain CCs but they are evaded and the thief stealths …

Blind and CC is the way to go, if a zerg fails to catch a thief it’s really their fault. There’s only a limited amount of endurance and stun breaking. It’s more the zerg’s hive-mind that let’s them escape.

What are you talking about with what type of damage sneak attack is? Whether it’s condition damage or power, it still hurts. There are plenty of videos of P/D thieves trolling about nigh invincible. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend they don’t exist, but don’t make pointless arguments to defend it if so.

Also, how does being in a group help anyone catch up to an escaping thief? Between stealth utilities, blinds, swiftness on dodge, SB 5 / Dagger 2, a thief can run from 50 players as well as 1. If you get caught by the zerg, you probably die, but you still have to get caught.

No point in complaining about P/D thieves. Sure they’re hard to catch, but good condition removal practically nullifies their effectiveness to the point that you can almost ignore them.

Dual.8953:

No point in complaining about P/D thieves. Sure they’re hard to catch, but good condition removal practically nullifies their effectiveness to the point that you can almost ignore them.

At this point, I’m not so much complaining about P/D thieves, I’m complaining that your argument to defend them is incredibly weak.

By your logic, any class that uses condition damage can just basically be ignored.

Most condition removals are on 20 second, or longer, cooldowns.

You cannot completely negate condition damage just as you cannot completely negate direct damage.

Sneak attack does decent direct damage coupled with good condition damage. It is also quite cheap in cost to perform, particularly since stealthy is giving increased initiative regen.

The issue is that a P/D thief (and other stealthy thief builds) simply bounces between two states:

• Stealth where they can’t be seen, regenerate health, remove conditions, and regenerate initiative quicker.
• Attacking from stealth where they do great damage with backstab or sneak attack

This is what I don’t understand about the Thief:

• ArenaNet says the Thief is not problem at a higher skill level such as in paids, but is a problem for low to medium skilled players.
• No one plays a Thief in high level paids, because it offers no valuable role.
• Everyone plays a Thief in casual sPvP and WvW, because of stealth.

So isn’t the obvious solution to remove some of the stealth, to make the casual and WvW players happy, and then give the Thief some more protection and support in return, to make it more valuable in paids?

Less stealth + more protection and support = a lot of happy players!

The perma stealth troll build is not fun to fight. That’s the biggest thing right there. I can face any other class and have a fun fight except the perma stealth, healing, untouchable Thief. Some are exceptionally hard to fight, such as a D/D ele, but none ruin the enjoyment of a fight more than a troll Thief. Troll builds = bad. Thief should be fun to play and fun to fight against. ArenaNet missed the mark.

Kasama.8941:

Less stealth + more protection and support = a lot of happy players!

Cool. And what about adjusting our abilities? Because, outside of heart seeker (highly situational) and pistol whip, NONE of our abilities are designed for damage. The whole thief dynamic is to acquire stealth and apply damage, everything else is a means to that end.

You’re suggesting a rework that requires all thieves to run GC builds to front load as much damage as we can, because otherwise we are wholly ineffective.

I feel like no one really understands the plight of the auto attack dependent thief outside of stealth.