Guild Wars 2

darkrequiem.6258:

Thread for thief feedback, so here you are…

I finally got feed up with the constant suggestions of “learn 2 play” on thief forums, so I rolled a thief first. There are a number of issues people have with thieves that are generally based on wvw. Here are the issues I’ve found as well as ways that I would suggest to fix them.

1. Rendering – We have 3 seconds to see a thief. We’d like to see you please.
2. Stealth – Stealth in combat is a great idea, but there should be a method for an opponent to counter this in a way that removes you from stealth. I’m not talking direct damage and dots, but rather control effects such as daze, knockback and knockdowns. These are skills that disable a player but do not break stealth. For anyone with other classes than the thief, they’ll realise that these effects are constricted to specific weapons sets for each class and tend to have long cooldowns.
3. Burst Damage – We’ve all seen the screenshots of the 1 second burst ability of a thief. We’ve probably all looked at our combat log to see Steal – CnD – BS is all they needed to kill us. The major problem with this is Toughness failing to scale. 23k kill shots were1 glass cannon blowing up another glass cannon with the aid of the projectile bug (fixed). But when a lvl 80 exotic geared toughness build gets one-shot, people tend to get pretty antsy. Atm, our armour value is actually doing very little to protect us, while gearing towards pure damage is rewarding because of this fact.
4. Restrictive weapons sets – the reason that there are so many dagger/dagger thieves around is that it is insanely rewarding to equip this and then either spam heartseeker at your opponent or steal – CnD – BS. Fight over rather than having to think, time and react to your opponent. More thieves might try something different if there was something profitable in these other sets. Yes, you can make sword/dagger, dagger/pistol, etc. work, but why would some players even bother when they can hit 3 keys and win the fight.

1: 3 seconds is more than enough. It’s easy to dodge C&D and it eats away a thief’s initiative. If all they’re doing is spamming C&D, you shouldn’t be dying to them because the delay in the hits are incredible high to start with. If they’re P/D, predicting their C&D becomes all the more easier. Having said that, THEY ALREADY SAID A HUNDRED TIMES THEY’RE WORKING ON FIXING CULLING ISSUES. So stop with your WvW kittening. It’s not a stealth issue, it’s a culling issue. Even regular players show up invisible.

2: No! If they were doing this…stealth would need to be drastically made A LOT stronger…and all that would cause is make you and players like you come back to complain even more. Stealth does NOT make them invulnerable…and it’s not really that difficult to predict the movements of a common thief in stealth.

3: I haven’t seen this in my combat log in over 2.5~3 months. Perhaps I know how to counter it is why. Perhaps, that also means that it’s not unbeatable and in fact, ANYONE can do it if they learn to. So, my suggestion would be instead of sitting there pondering about what should be nerfed on another class, you should go learn your own class and figure out how you can COUNTER the specific issue you’re having. Believe me…glass cannon backstab thieves are BY FAR the EASIEST to kill (especially those that are carried by it and are clueless as to how to react once it fails). Do not hold your breath on any significant changes to armour. Bunker builds are already under heavy watch because they defy the combat mechanic ANet was aiming for. Armour is in fact fine. The difference in WvW damage is created from CRITICAL DAMAGE (2x in WvW as opposed to sPvP).

4: Other weapon sets needs some love…but that is NOT because the so called backstab thieves and HS spammers are “OP”. In fact, no one should be dying to a thief who can only spam HS. HS has been SEVERELY nerfed, and is actually a VERY poor skill to use on targets to try 100-0 them. The backstab build has also been nerfed and was made A LOT easier to counter. Thieves and Warriors aren’t the only classes that can kill in <3 seconds. Other classes can achieve these kills too IF they’re specced that way (just like thieves and warriors).

[quote=942885;Kurow.6973:]

Avigrus.2871:

Are you actually serious? Maybe you’re not seeing it because you’re on the other side playing the thief, but time and time again in open field combat they just vanish and do not re-appear.

You want to make stealth stronger? For the strongest class in the game already?

Well, any class can do that. Just do Alt+F4 or F12 => Char select.

Based on my observations of the data here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Steady-Damage/first#post938509

Pistol Whip: Pistol whip is easily the strongest skill we have when you take into account both damage per initiative used, overall damage and the fact that it can hit 3 enemies within sword range for full damage.
However it’s clearly outshined on single bosses by sword auto attack which is much safer, simply because it doesn’t root you.

Suggested solution: Remove the rooting in PvE.

Unload: The damage was much higher than I expected, but the time taken to put out that damage is pretty slow. At the end of the day, it’s outshined by sword auto attack in both damage and speed.

Suggested solution: I’ve been thinking on this for a while now and I think balancing this move for bleeds would be a bad choice. And when we consider it doesn’t have the 3 target hit capabilities of pistolwhip, it is significantly weaker than pistol whip. If we are to leave the damage alone then either it’s cost should be reduced or its fire rate needs to be increased.
I’d also say buffing the pistol bounce trait to 100% but making it so it only effects vital shot, sneak attack and unload would be completely fair considering that pistol whip hits 3 targets within range. At the moment that trait is next to worthless and needs serious revision.

Shadow Shot: It’s damage is way below other dual skills, mostly because it only hits once. The pistol shot doesn’t actually deal damage, it only blinds. I’m not sure if this is intentional, but it is the least desirable of all dual skills.

Suggested solution: Make the pistol shot deal damage.

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is optionally ranged.

Suggested solution: Increase evasion to be reliable for the whole animation or add more bleeds to the attack to balance out the higher cost and yet half the damage..

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

what gameplay? thief have no gameplay compare to the other classes.
It hits like a truk, has 4 ways to be invisible IN FIGHT and it is too easy to play.
I just do a BG with something like 6 thiefs it was a totally stupid game. Some fights i take more than 25 heart strike.
A no brain class like this should not be on live! Why did you do a beta seriously? Thief are ruining the game because it has so many advantages compare to its burst.

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

If you death blossom to get 9-12 stacks of bleed on something, you’ve run out of initiative, even when you trait for extra initiative. The extra initiative gained on crit from traiting isn’t going to make it up either and that trait ability is in a different line than the one that just giveg extra initiative.

It is nice solo but crap in a group with other condition builds. If you are the only condition build in a group…unlikely in a W3 zerg…it can come in handy and is nice.

Isn’t too bad of a move in W3 when you’re back stab didn’t work and you need to mix it up a little but it isn’t a move that my thief would consider a go to move for damage, especially when my gear doesn’t have any condition enhancement on it. I’ve used it instead to make the other player think for that split second to determine if the bleed is actually doing enough damage to warrant it’s removal, and also to flip to their other side for a second back stab try while they are trying to locate me in the mass of other players. If I fail that second backstab, I’m out of oomph and have to run.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

If you death blossom to get 9-12 stacks of bleed on something, you’ve run out of initiative, even when you trait for extra initiative. The extra initiative gained on crit from traiting isn’t going to make it up either and that trait ability is in a different line than the one that just giveg extra initiative.

It is nice solo but crap in a group with other condition builds. If you are the only condition build in a group…unlikely in a W3 zerg…it can come in handy and is nice.

Isn’t too bad of a move in W3 when you’re back stab didn’t work and you need to mix it up a little but it isn’t a move that my thief would consider a go to move for damage, especially when my gear doesn’t have any condition enhancement on it. I’ve used it instead to make the other player think for that split second to determine if the bleed is actually doing enough damage to warrant it’s removal, and also to flip to their other side for a second back stab try while they are trying to locate me in the mass of other players. If I fail that second backstab, I’m out of oomph and have to run.

There are a lot of ways to regain initiative, especially in the Trickery tree which you’re taking if you’re doing condition damage anyway. I mean, you can keep arguing about it, but lots of thieves are doing this with a condition build these days.

Silverthorn.8576:

what gameplay? thief have no gameplay compare to the other classes.
It hits like a truk, has 4 ways to be invisible IN FIGHT and it is too easy to play.
I just do a BG with something like 6 thiefs it was a totally stupid game. Some fights i take more than 25 heart strike.
A no brain class like this should not be on live! Why did you do a beta seriously? Thief are ruining the game because it has so many advantages compare to its burst.

LOL
You survived 24 heartseeker, please nerf it, it deals too much damage !
Seriously a L2P is needed here. If you can’t kill a noob who do 24 times the same thing in a row, you should wonder who is the liar or the noob here.
There is a more no brain class out there, it’s called Warrior. You should test it maybe you will find a way to do 25 times hundred blades in a fight.

My main is a thief. I am WvW as a guardian and mesmer. I have not died to a ‘1 shot backstab’ thief in quite a long time. This is because I know how to deal with it.

First and biggest problem is the rendering issue, this needs to be fixed before any changes are made to a class. This issue is terrible, I’ve found myself in the middle of an enemy zerg, they just appeared around me, they were not thieves…

Second problem is that people complaining don’t know how to counter the thief or have come across a thief who has all of their cooldowns available and were not prepared for it. Roll a thief, learn it and know it and then you will see that it’s not so terribly OP against an experienced and skillful opponent. I’m not saying this is easy to counter but there is a way.

Blood~

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

Firstly cluster bomb is just as effective as death blossom in close range, you can launch and detonate very fast, almost fast as you can death blossom. While moving I should add.

They also removed cluster bombs detonate cost a few patches back.

So long as you are draining your ini as soon it becomes available, clusterbomb is still out damaging death blossom.

Secondly death blossoms evasion is terrible… It has huge openings at the start and the end of the move. Making its evasion useless as a trigger evade and mostly only useful for pot luck evasion. It certainly doesn’t make you invincible.

Alice.8694:

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

Firstly cluster bomb is just as effective as death blossom in close range, you can launch and detonate very fast, almost fast as you can death blossom. While moving I should add.

Yes, but then it’s not ranged, which was one of the “advantages.” If you use it from range it does one stack of bleed slowly. Even if it is better for initiative spent over time, I haven’t seen any “melee shortbow” thief builds running around. Although that would be funny.

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Dispari.3980:

Alice.8694:

Death Blossom: This skill is obviously weaker than others but the problem with this skill is only noticeable if you compare it with our other method of stacking 3 bleeds; Cluster Bomb. Cluster Bomb is cheaper to use, deals more damage, doesn’t root you in a fairly obvious set animation and lastly it is ranged.

Death Blossom makes you invincible, and it’s easy to just immediately do 9-12 stacks of bleed on something. Also the bleed from Death Blossom lasts 150% longer. Also Death Blossom does 3 stacks of bleed and Cluster Bomb does 1 (it says 3 because if you detonate it early each one can bleed, but a regular shot will only do 1 stack). Also you can’t spam Cluster Bomb because of the extra detonate mechanic, which will likely make you miss if you actually use it. And even if you do, it costs an extra 1 initiative.

Firstly cluster bomb is just as effective as death blossom in close range, you can launch and detonate very fast, almost fast as you can death blossom. While moving I should add.

Yes, but then it’s not ranged, which was one of the “advantages.” If you use it from range it does one stack of bleed slowly. Even if it is better for initiative spent over time, I haven’t seen any “melee shortbow” thief builds running around. Although that would be funny.

My apologies I thought the “Optionally” was obvious to everyone.

Flanking Strike is a pretty cool skill and I love the feel it adds to S/D, but in practice it fails to hit a moving target too often. Probably mostly due to the sidestep tracking. I understand that casting time is a big part of the skill balance and if the animation was sped up if would render the dodging part useless. I still hope that this could be looked into and updated (soon!), maybe with a shadowstep on the second part of the strike or a change to the horizontal movement of the dodge.

Avigrus.2871:

Kurow.6973:

2: No! If they were doing this…stealth would need to be drastically made A LOT stronger…and all that would cause is make you and players like you come back to complain even more. Stealth does NOT make them invulnerable…and it’s not really that difficult to predict the movements of a common thief in stealth.

Are you actually serious? Maybe you’re not seeing it because you’re on the other side playing the thief, but time and time again in open field combat they just vanish and do not re-appear.

You want to make stealth stronger? For the strongest class in the game already?

I play my ele, probably 10x more than my thief. I play my war, probably 3x more than my thief. I play my thief when I am in the mood for some sillyness and PvE JPs, sometimes dungeons, and gathering (because gathers nodes are not account bound). What’s your excuse now?

Thief is not even close to being the “strongest class”.

Kurow.6973:

1: 3 seconds is more than enough. It’s easy to dodge C&D and it eats away a thief’s initiative. If all they’re doing is spamming C&D, you shouldn’t be dying to them because the delay in the hits are incredible high to start with. If they’re P/D, predicting their C&D becomes all the more easier. Having said that, THEY ALREADY SAID A HUNDRED TIMES THEY’RE WORKING ON FIXING CULLING ISSUES. So stop with your WvW kittening. It’s not a stealth issue, it’s a culling issue. Even regular players show up invisible.

2: No! If they were doing this…stealth would need to be drastically made A LOT stronger…and all that would cause is make you and players like you come back to complain even more. Stealth does NOT make them invulnerable…and it’s not really that difficult to predict the movements of a common thief in stealth.

3: I haven’t seen this in my combat log in over 2.5~3 months. Perhaps I know how to counter it is why. Perhaps, that also means that it’s not unbeatable and in fact, ANYONE can do it if they learn to. So, my suggestion would be instead of sitting there pondering about what should be nerfed on another class, you should go learn your own class and figure out how you can COUNTER the specific issue you’re having. Believe me…glass cannon backstab thieves are BY FAR the EASIEST to kill (especially those that are carried by it and are clueless as to how to react once it fails). Do not hold your breath on any significant changes to armour. Bunker builds are already under heavy watch because they defy the combat mechanic ANet was aiming for. Armour is in fact fine. The difference in WvW damage is created from CRITICAL DAMAGE (2x in WvW as opposed to sPvP).

4: Other weapon sets needs some love…but that is NOT because the so called backstab thieves and HS spammers are “OP”. In fact, no one should be dying to a thief who can only spam HS. HS has been SEVERELY nerfed, and is actually a VERY poor skill to use on targets to try 100-0 them. The backstab build has also been nerfed and was made A LOT easier to counter. Thieves and Warriors aren’t the only classes that can kill in <3 seconds. Other classes can achieve these kills too IF they’re specced that way (just like thieves and warriors).

1. To clarify, I meant that with rendering occasionally you only see the thief for 2 or even 1 second despite the debuff being 3 seconds. And yes, I’m aware ArenaNet is attempting to fix this.
2. Do you really think adding a way to remove a thief from stealth will break your class? In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of players are already using these methods against thieves. You may be in stealth but you can still dodge these attacks.
3. My point was about toughness. Glass cannon thieves don’t have toughness, but they don’t have a problem eating the hp of someone who spec’s it.
4. WvW is classified by ArenaNet as PvE. Thief damage was nerfed in PvP. Hopefully the February update of WvW is realising that we don’t want to fight the overgrown grub.

darkrequiem.6258:

1. To clarify, I meant that with rendering occasionally you only see the thief for 2 or even 1 second despite the debuff being 3 seconds. And yes, I’m aware ArenaNet is attempting to fix this.
2. Do you really think adding a way to remove a thief from stealth will break your class? In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of players are already using these methods against thieves. You may be in stealth but you can still dodge these attacks.
3. My point was about toughness. Glass cannon thieves don’t have toughness, but they don’t have a problem eating the hp of someone who spec’s it.
4. WvW is classified by ArenaNet as PvE. Thief damage was nerfed in PvP. Hopefully the February update of WvW is realising that we don’t want to fight the overgrown grub.

1: So, why are you still complaining about it and making it sound like it’s stealth that’s at fault? Not like your crying is going to get it fixed any faster, princess.

2: I heard thieves are the only class that can dodge, and the rest of the classes are unable to do so when a thief goes stealth around them…confirm/deny? As per your original suggestion, it would break the current stealth. If I have to draw you a picture as to why, then you’re hopeless.

3: What does toughness do? Oh…that’s right…it adds ARMOUR. Go back and read what I said regarding this. Again, if I have to draw you a picture to explain it even better, then you’re hopeless.

4: Oh, is that so? I never realized this. Never knew all thief nerfs were for sPvP only. Thanks for pointing it out.

everyone who cries “OP THIEF” needs to roll a thief and realize that they are not. Thieves do EXTREMELY WELL against people who don’t know what they’re doing (that’s about 85%+ of this community.. I’m not being mean it’s just by playing this game for the past few months in spvp and WvW, there are more terrible players than skilled ones.) So OF COURSE there’s going to be lots of people crying OP, yet the funny thing is that thieves actually need several buffs in different departments. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t main thief.

Killersquall.5730:

squeezebag.4618:

everyone who cries “OP THIEF” needs to roll a thief and realize that they are not. Thieves do EXTREMELY WELL against people who don’t know what they’re doing (that’s about 85%+ of this community.. I’m not being mean it’s just by playing this game for the past few months in spvp and WvW, there are more terrible players than skilled ones.) So OF COURSE there’s going to be lots of people crying OP, yet the funny thing is that thieves actually need several buffs in different departments. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t main thief.

Certainly need some buffs, the stealth should be longer and damage should be increased so I have a higher chance to one shot someone down.

Not really.

Thieves need buffed in P/X, S/X.

I would like to see LoS skills like ‘steal’ function properly up walls and such. There are skills that pull enemies down walls, and this is possibly /the/ one skill that should allow you to hop up a wall.

The alternative is ranged combat, usually with shortbow, which requires you to stand at the foot of the wall and be pelted to death while you throw out poison fields..

LoreChief.8391:

I would like to see LoS skills like ‘steal’ function properly up walls and such. There are skills that pull enemies down walls, and this is possibly /the/ one skill that should allow you to hop up a wall.

The alternative is ranged combat, usually with shortbow, which requires you to stand at the foot of the wall and be pelted to death while you throw out poison fields..

If steal, or any form of teleport let you shadowstep up walls…it would utterly break WvW sieges.

Kurow.6973:

If steal, or any form of teleport let you shadowstep up walls…it would utterly break WvW sieges.

Put it as a grandmaster trait in trickery or something. The only thieves that can do this would be the ones who invested to get a useful steal in the first place. I’m tired of being relegated to poison fields when it comes to sieging stuff. I play thief for the melee aspect, and it’s tedious to only be allowed to whack away at a door or shoot at the wall.

If the enemy is actively defending their walls, one or two thieves won’t make a world of difference. If they aren’t defending their walls, or are minimally manned – it’s going to go down anyways. Most professions have the ability to output massive amounts of damage on the wall as it is, and Thieves don’t.

My issue is mainly this……….

3. Burst Damage – We’ve all seen the screenshots of the 1 second burst ability of a thief. We’ve probably all looked at our combat log to see Steal – CnD – BS is all they needed to kill us. The major problem with this is Toughness failing to scale. 23k kill shots were1 glass cannon blowing up another glass cannon with the aid of the projectile bug (fixed). But when a lvl 80 exotic geared toughness build gets one-shot, people tend to get pretty antsy. Atm, our armour value is actually doing very little to protect us, while gearing towards pure damage is rewarding because of this fact.

I’m running a 26k health lvl 80 warrior with dolyak signet, carrying almost 2.9k in armor, specced into toughness….. and I’m getting burned down in <2 sec by thieves. That….. is some serious BS. Worse yet, is I only have ONE retaliation tool available to me, and I MIGHT HAVE TO take it just to keep them off of me.

I like thieves. I have one. But their burst potential is too much.

As to this comment:

squeezebag.4618:
everyone who cries “OP THIEF” needs to roll a thief and realize that they are not. Thieves do EXTREMELY WELL against people who don’t know what they’re doing (that’s about 85%+ of this community.. I’m not being mean it’s just by playing this game for the past few months in spvp and WvW, there are more terrible players than skilled ones.) So OF COURSE there’s going to be lots of people crying OP, yet the funny thing is that thieves actually need several buffs in different departments. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t main thief.

You’re full of it. I’m regularly able to pretty much smash kitten near anything else. Thief…. again…. when I’m dropped 23k+ in the first hit….. I really can’t do much of crap.

Well this post is fairly long, seems everyone is putting their two cents in. I might as well too I guess. I would like to reply to some other posts but honestly there are so many here with good or bad ideas that I would probably break the character cap before I even finished so….. Ill bypass that little bit.

One thing that gets me about the thief is how constricted I feel. We have very good single target ability which makes us ideal for scouting and harassment, which in turn generally gets us a lot of dirty looks and griping. However the one field I feel thieves have something to be desired in is our grouping abilities. We have every combo finisher in the game which is/can be nice. But I honestly don’t feel we really bring much to the table for a group. We are really a lone wolf class. We can be in a group we don’t hurt it any. But really when was the last time I heard someone screaming for a thief?

I feel that our shortbow while decent for aoe is slow and clunky most of the time. It has its uses but its nothing special. And one thing that really surprised me is the sheer lack of synergy this weapon has with our class. We have almost no traits or abilities that improve the shortbow in anyway. Infact if the shortbow was not our only real source of AoE I wonder if anyone would use it at all.

Another thing I find shocking is how few weapons we can actually use. I know a lot of people have been asking for a Rifle/Longbow skill setup and I myself would love to see one of these. (preferable with a bit of AoE so we are not confined to shortbow as one of our weapons) There are also the options of maybe allowing us to use swords in our offhand and maybe even being able to use axes or 1h maces.

There are several utility skills I think could use some love too. While I think all venom skills a bit weak considering their cool down I can see spider and devourer venom being somewhat useful. However skale and ice drake venoms are pretty much worthless. Trip wire, needle trap and shadow trap I almost never see used. I think they are very good skills but for the most part don’t really fit the thief playing style very well. I also think infiltrator’s signet could use a bit of love as well. It is a decent stun breaker/shadow step but we already have other skills/abilities for that.

I think i speak for most classes in that our underwater combat seems…. well weak. It takes me 10x longer to kill someone underwater than it ever would on land. And for me as a thief the playing style is such a drastic change. We have poor stealth ability under water and trying to melee anyone in water PvP is a joke.

My last request is more or less for all medium armor wearers in that we would like some better looking non trench-coat style chest pieces.

MichaelArchangel.7251:

My issue is mainly this……….

3. Burst Damage – We’ve all seen the screenshots of the 1 second burst ability of a thief. We’ve probably all looked at our combat log to see Steal – CnD – BS is all they needed to kill us. The major problem with this is Toughness failing to scale. 23k kill shots were1 glass cannon blowing up another glass cannon with the aid of the projectile bug (fixed). But when a lvl 80 exotic geared toughness build gets one-shot, people tend to get pretty antsy. Atm, our armour value is actually doing very little to protect us, while gearing towards pure damage is rewarding because of this fact.

I’m running a 26k health lvl 80 warrior with dolyak signet, carrying almost 2.9k in armor, specced into toughness….. and I’m getting burned down in <2 sec by thieves. That….. is some serious BS. Worse yet, is I only have ONE retaliation tool available to me, and I MIGHT HAVE TO take it just to keep them off of me.

I like thieves. I have one. But their burst potential is too much.

As to this comment:

squeezebag.4618:
everyone who cries “OP THIEF” needs to roll a thief and realize that they are not. Thieves do EXTREMELY WELL against people who don’t know what they’re doing (that’s about 85%+ of this community.. I’m not being mean it’s just by playing this game for the past few months in spvp and WvW, there are more terrible players than skilled ones.) So OF COURSE there’s going to be lots of people crying OP, yet the funny thing is that thieves actually need several buffs in different departments. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t main thief.

You’re full of it. I’m regularly able to pretty much smash kitten near anything else. Thief…. again…. when I’m dropped 23k+ in the first hit….. I really can’t do much of crap.

“You’re full of it.”

Kurow.6973:

MichaelArchangel.7251:

I’m running a 26k health lvl 80 warrior with dolyak signet, carrying almost 2.9k in armor, specced into toughness….. and I’m getting burned down

“You’re full of it.”

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Anything with over 5k health remaining instalosing to bs thief = free kill for just about any build out there as well.

Pistol Whip definitely need a fix, the root aspect of this skill disturbing the gameplay.

Alice.8694:

Pistol Whip: Pistol whip is easily the strongest skill we have when you take into account both damage per initiative used, overall damage and the fact that it can hit 3 enemies within sword range for full damage.
However it’s clearly outshined on single bosses by sword auto attack which is much safer, simply because it doesn’t root you.

It is outshined in most situations by sword auto attack, since auto does more DPS, is initiative free, and applies conditions. PW, on the other hand, gets stun, evasion, and hit volume (more hits, less overall damage) in return for these downsides.

Tulisin.6945:

Alice.8694:

Pistol Whip: Pistol whip is easily the strongest skill we have when you take into account both damage per initiative used, overall damage and the fact that it can hit 3 enemies within sword range for full damage.
However it’s clearly outshined on single bosses by sword auto attack which is much safer, simply because it doesn’t root you.

It is outshined in most situations by sword auto attack, since auto does more DPS, is initiative free, and applies conditions. PW, on the other hand, gets stun, evasion, and hit volume (more hits, less overall damage) in return for these downsides.

I cannot speculate on its dps as I have no data to back up the specific dps differences of sword auto attack and pistol whip.

And I’d like to add, for the most part dps is a meaningless concept in guild wars 2, due to the nature of the combat.

However in terms of overall damage, pistol whip does slightly more. However I do not believe the slightly higher damage, unreliable evasion, stun and hit volume make up for the rooting and high initiative costs.

Alice.8694:

Tulisin.6945:

Alice.8694:

Pistol Whip: Pistol whip is easily the strongest skill we have when you take into account both damage per initiative used, overall damage and the fact that it can hit 3 enemies within sword range for full damage.
However it’s clearly outshined on single bosses by sword auto attack which is much safer, simply because it doesn’t root you.

It is outshined in most situations by sword auto attack, since auto does more DPS, is initiative free, and applies conditions. PW, on the other hand, gets stun, evasion, and hit volume (more hits, less overall damage) in return for these downsides.

I cannot speculate on its dps as I have no data to back up the specific dps differences of sword auto attack and pistol whip.

And I’d like to add, for the most part dps is a meaningless concept in guild wars 2, due to the nature of the combat.

However in terms of overall damage, pistol whip does slightly more. However I do not believe the slightly higher damage, unreliable evasion, stun and hit volume make up for the rooting and high initiative costs.

DPS is never a meaningless concept if you’re adjusting for combat factors. You can still calculate DPS with dodge downtime, for instance. More DPS is more DPS, and more DPS is always better, given no downside to it.

“Overall damage” is, however, a meaningless concept when not specifically over a length of time. How much damage you get for pressing a button doesn’t matter unless you take into account the amount of time that damage takes to happen. Tooth Stab (stolen skill), for instance, can do >10,000 “overall damage” in one hit, but nobody considers it particularly powerful because it just gives one bleed stack for an incredible amount of time. The fact is that PW’s timeframe is longer than auto attack chain’s, which makes “overall damage” pretty meaningless next to the fact that auto attack does more damage over a given timeframe. Over 1 second, 5, seconds, 60 seconds, and everything in-between, a thief spamming auto attack will have done more total damage to their target(s) than a thief spamming pistol whip. That is what it means to have more DPS.

So the question is whether stun, evasion, and hit volume make up for the init/root and loss of damage/conditions, and the answer is entirely situational. Traits make the question even more complicated. Burning initiative can actually be a good thing if you’re running Assassin’s Reward, for instance.

I’ve been seeing Jon Peters around the forums giving info on some heavily commented concerns of various types that are slated for changes/fixes on Dec. 14th.

That’s awesome, and I applaud him… but for the love of god, can we get some word on the lameness that is Flanking Strike?

@Kurow funny you haven’t seen Steal-CnD-BS combo in 2.5 – 3 months because game has only been out 3 months. Stop defending a broken class. Armor / Toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact. I have experimented with builds on my ele ranging from 2k armor to 3k armor. Steal still does around 4k dmg, CnD around 4k and backstab ranges between 4k-11k. You are spending so much time trying to defend the class and refusing to see how broken it actually is. No one should be able to go invisible and then unexpectedly unleash 20k+ dmg in 3 buttons and be able to shadowstep away and go invisible and run far enough away to never worry about being caught.

Even regen thieves have a 4k dmg steal, which makes bunker ele’s dmg useless. You can unload all you want onto a regen thief he will just stealth and regen full while just using steal / cluster bomb / trick shot until you are dead.

Otaur.9268:

@Kurow funny you haven’t seen Steal-CnD-BS combo in 2.5 – 3 months because game has only been out 3 months. Stop defending a broken class. Armor / Toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact. I have experimented with builds on my ele ranging from 2k armor to 3k armor. Steal still does around 4k dmg, CnD around 4k and backstab ranges between 4k-11k. You are spending so much time trying to defend the class and refusing to see how broken it actually is. No one should be able to go invisible and then unexpectedly unleash 20k+ dmg in 3 buttons and be able to shadowstep away and go invisible and run far enough away to never worry about being caught.

Even regen thieves have a 4k dmg steal, which makes bunker ele’s dmg useless. You can unload all you want onto a regen thief he will just stealth and regen full while just using steal / cluster bomb / trick shot until you are dead.

Quoted for great justice. “Armor/toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact.” Seriously. Seriously dude? This word does not mean what you think it means.

Silverthorn.8576:

what gameplay? thief have no gameplay compare to the other classes.
It hits like a truk, has 4 ways to be invisible IN FIGHT and it is too easy to play.
I just do a BG with something like 6 thiefs it was a totally stupid game. Some fights i take more than 25 heart strike.
A no brain class like this should not be on live! Why did you do a beta seriously? Thief are ruining the game because it has so many advantages compare to its burst.

Absolutly agree and if AN dont do with this thief somthing I just stop playing in GW2 this is stupid I like playing in pvp/wvw etc… and I cant. Facking Stealth WTF !!!

I dont play thief Im not noob I playing ranger. But I just make thief and I jump to wvw thief 4lvl I kill 40% foe
14lvl 70% meeting ppl down hmmm
20lvl 90% foe downed and Im down only from thief.
Enjoy

Mankrik.3678:

Otaur.9268:

@Kurow funny you haven’t seen Steal-CnD-BS combo in 2.5 – 3 months because game has only been out 3 months. Stop defending a broken class. Armor / Toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact. I have experimented with builds on my ele ranging from 2k armor to 3k armor. Steal still does around 4k dmg, CnD around 4k and backstab ranges between 4k-11k. You are spending so much time trying to defend the class and refusing to see how broken it actually is. No one should be able to go invisible and then unexpectedly unleash 20k+ dmg in 3 buttons and be able to shadowstep away and go invisible and run far enough away to never worry about being caught.

Even regen thieves have a 4k dmg steal, which makes bunker ele’s dmg useless. You can unload all you want onto a regen thief he will just stealth and regen full while just using steal / cluster bomb / trick shot until you are dead.

Quoted for great justice. “Armor/toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact.” Seriously. Seriously dude? This word does not mean what you think it means.

You obviously do not understand. It says, armor/toughness does nothing to( lessen the severity of) the damage. Please at the very least learn to read before posting.

Bloodgruve.6038:

My main is a thief. I am WvW as a guardian and mesmer. I have not died to a ‘1 shot backstab’ thief in quite a long time. This is because I know how to deal with it.

First and biggest problem is the rendering issue, this needs to be fixed before any changes are made to a class. This issue is terrible, I’ve found myself in the middle of an enemy zerg, they just appeared around me, they were not thieves…

Second problem is that people complaining don’t know how to counter the thief or have come across a thief who has all of their cooldowns available and were not prepared for it. Roll a thief, learn it and know it and then you will see that it’s not so terribly OP against an experienced and skillful opponent. I’m not saying this is easy to counter but there is a way.

Blood~

The 1st two lines really sum up your argument. Play an OP class to counter an OP class..gotcha! Pick one of the holy trinity.

Say what you want..this thread would not be so long if ALOT of the paying customers were not dissatisfied with the thief class being overpowered with broken mechanics.

To sum up the imbalance and broken mechanics:
1.Damage is still too high. See my recent thread on 75% health wiped in under a second on my warrior.
2.Amount of re-stealthing with certain builds like the pistol condition build is out of control.
3.Ability to move across land faster than anything in the game. We never bother chasing a thief in wvw.
4.Ability to revive or finish downed players in stealth. Any action performed in stealth should break it..period. Stealth gives you the -almost always- unopposed element of surprise.
5.Ability to get out of any fight. If you commit to a fight you should pay the price like the rest of us.

But yes..thanks for your unpredictable arguments:
1.L2P. I’m sure the person hacking the orbs was thinking the same thing.
2.Play a thief or a holy trinity class..coz it’s all about skill, yo!
3.Play another game.

I’m sure Anet is sensible enough to realize when there is significant imbalance in-game and move to address it before they lose a player base that does not thrive on taking advantage of these imbalances.

Every company makes mistakes..but not every company leaves those to fester..and fester..till they start losing the majority of their customers.

1. Warriors do more damage, and have almost double the dps of thieves, its why they are wanted in dungeons and thieves are mostly avoided due to the fact they are useless for DPS due to initiative being a burst mechanic, anyone who does not have much toughness/vitality will get wiped by any class with berserker’s gear.

2. Mesmers also have stealth, and the steal your talking about, the man has to be in melee most of the time to do this, but most people (aka you.) are not intelligent enough to swing when you don’t see him, he has to be in kissing range to stealth like that, but most people just kitten and let people perform such tactics.

3. Warriors have higher mobility then thieves do, they can have 33% movement speed forever compared to ours, and you have greatsword alone mobility moves that make you faster then thieves, your CDs are less as well.

4. Mesmers can do this as well, Elementalists/Rangers can revive people with stability/protection.

5. Mesmers/Warriors/Elementalists also have this ability.

XII.9401:

Bloodgruve.6038:

My main is a thief. I am WvW as a guardian and mesmer. I have not died to a ‘1 shot backstab’ thief in quite a long time. This is because I know how to deal with it.

First and biggest problem is the rendering issue, this needs to be fixed before any changes are made to a class. This issue is terrible, I’ve found myself in the middle of an enemy zerg, they just appeared around me, they were not thieves…

Second problem is that people complaining don’t know how to counter the thief or have come across a thief who has all of their cooldowns available and were not prepared for it. Roll a thief, learn it and know it and then you will see that it’s not so terribly OP against an experienced and skillful opponent. I’m not saying this is easy to counter but there is a way.

Blood~

The 1st two lines really sum up your argument. Play an OP class to counter an OP class..gotcha! Pick one of the holy trinity.

Say what you want..this thread would not be so long if ALOT of the paying customers were not dissatisfied with the thief class being overpowered with broken mechanics.

To sum up the imbalance and broken mechanics:
1.Damage is still too high. See my recent thread on 75% health wiped in under a second on my warrior.
2.Amount of re-stealthing with certain builds like the pistol condition build is out of control.
3.Ability to move across land faster than anything in the game. We never bother chasing a thief in wvw.
4.Ability to revive or finish downed players in stealth. Any action performed in stealth should break it..period. Stealth gives you the -almost always- unopposed element of surprise.
5.Ability to get out of any fight. If you commit to a fight you should pay the price like the rest of us.

But yes..thanks for your unpredictable arguments:
1.L2P. I’m sure the person hacking the orbs was thinking the same thing.
2.Play a thief or a holy trinity class..coz it’s all about skill, yo!
3.Play another game.

I’m sure Anet is sensible enough to realize when there is significant imbalance in-game and move to address it before they lose a player base that does not thrive on taking advantage of these imbalances.

Every company makes mistakes..but not every company leaves those to fester..and fester..till they start losing the majority of their customers.

AN know this “problem” but thief is marketing char to get players from WOW, Diablo3 etc… You know “noob on the board”.
For me I just leave GW2 if 2013 Y comming and thief will not absolutly change.

I have a good idea what we will be getting next: Auto-attack damage reduced by 50%. Think of it. It makes sense given the arbitrary sledgehammer approach to this class, and it would stop making other damage skills look bad in comparison.

Best thing Anet could to do for us thieves. Stop listening to scrubs who don’t know how to counter a thief, or other people that go class cannon and get blown up by us.

XII.9401:

Bloodgruve.6038:

My main is a thief. I am WvW as a guardian and mesmer. I have not died to a ‘1 shot backstab’ thief in quite a long time. This is because I know how to deal with it.

First and biggest problem is the rendering issue, this needs to be fixed before any changes are made to a class. This issue is terrible, I’ve found myself in the middle of an enemy zerg, they just appeared around me, they were not thieves…

Second problem is that people complaining don’t know how to counter the thief or have come across a thief who has all of their cooldowns available and were not prepared for it. Roll a thief, learn it and know it and then you will see that it’s not so terribly OP against an experienced and skillful opponent. I’m not saying this is easy to counter but there is a way.

Blood~

The 1st two lines really sum up your argument. Play an OP class to counter an OP class..gotcha! Pick one of the holy trinity.

Say what you want..this thread would not be so long if ALOT of the paying customers were not dissatisfied with the thief class being overpowered with broken mechanics.

To sum up the imbalance and broken mechanics:
1.Damage is still too high. See my recent thread on 75% health wiped in under a second on my warrior.
2.Amount of re-stealthing with certain builds like the pistol condition build is out of control.
3.Ability to move across land faster than anything in the game. We never bother chasing a thief in wvw.
4.Ability to revive or finish downed players in stealth. Any action performed in stealth should break it..period. Stealth gives you the -almost always- unopposed element of surprise.
5.Ability to get out of any fight. If you commit to a fight you should pay the price like the rest of us.

But yes..thanks for your unpredictable arguments:
1.L2P. I’m sure the person hacking the orbs was thinking the same thing.
2.Play a thief or a holy trinity class..coz it’s all about skill, yo!
3.Play another game.

I’m sure Anet is sensible enough to realize when there is significant imbalance in-game and move to address it before they lose a player base that does not thrive on taking advantage of these imbalances.

Every company makes mistakes..but not every company leaves those to fester..and fester..till they start losing the majority of their customers.

Oh, your that warrior that went glass cannon and got blown up by a glass cannon thief. Stealth and high mobility is our survival tools. I don’t ever want to hear warriors who can get higher burst then us complain. And you have more vit and toughness over us. Stop complaining.

Spiders Spiders Spiders.8043:

I have a good idea what we will be getting next: Auto-attack damage reduced by 50%. Think of it. It makes sense given the arbitrary sledgehammer approach to this class, and it would stop making other damage skills look bad in comparison.

Oh man, could you imagine? That’d just put thieves into NEEDING to play as stealther backstab builds in order to kill. My wonderful S/D build would be actually nerfed into uselessness.

Otaur.9268:

You obviously do not understand. It says, armor/toughness does nothing to( lessen the severity of) the damage. Please at the very least learn to read before posting.

" Armor / Toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact. " -literally copy/pasted from your comment.

You obviously can’t very plainly see what was written. If you meant something else, you should have typed it. You can’t insult someone for “not reading my intended message” because they read the message you actually posted.

Aervius.2016:

Otaur.9268:

You obviously do not understand. It says, armor/toughness does nothing to( lessen the severity of) the damage. Please at the very least learn to read before posting.

" Armor / Toughness does nothing to mitigate the damage and I know this for a fact. " -literally copy/pasted from your comment.

You obviously can’t very plainly see what was written. If you meant something else, you should have typed it. You can’t insult someone for “not reading my intended message” because they read the message you actually posted.

You actually believe armor and toughness help u versus a steal-cnd-bs combo? Please go make an ele, do not use protection, and test it yourself. I know protection works because without it I got hit for over 10k damage by backstab. Then with protection on by same thief backstab did 8001 damage, a damage reduction of 33% (protection). Now if armor/toughness scaled better, wouldn’t that damage change depending on armor? I have run 1800 armor to 3000 armor. The backstab combo does roughly the same damage. Therefore armor and toughness is not scaling well or at all versus high burst, making it pointless. At least on elementalist. Why do you think ele’s basically ignore earth for arcane and water.

This thread should probably be locked now. Nothing but personal attacks.

Healing slot skill “Withdraw” + Utility slot skill “Roll for Initiative”
currently: 1) makes backflip evade and THEN 2) removes cripple/immobilize/chilled
proposal: 1) remove those conditions and then 2) backflip evade

So I play thief as my main. Have an elementalist and ranger alt.
I play in WvW a lot and never in SPvP- to give you some idea I have 5600 kills in WvW and over 1300 badges of honour.
I play in instances a lot too, so have an opinion on PvE also.

Please note: I say the above not as a statement of my greatness, but only to illustrate my gameplay and experience of this game.

In WvW:
Firstly, let me say that the nerfs have been noticed. I do not feel as stong as I once did.

Secondly in WvW the thief is not OP. I say this because, one on one, any class can beat me….so long as they are well played. Warriors, Glads and Mesmers in particular regularly take me down when they are well played. I also regularly kill them too – these are good fights.

There is an issue with RENDERING in WvW as we all know. This can give me an advantage when operating in the middle of an enemy zerg. This is an issue with the game engine and not the thief however.

If I was looking for changes to the class then I think that the whole steal line needs reworking.

I still find that our condition dmg builds seriously lack when compared to more direct damage and this could be looked at.

Overall, please Anet, do not listen to the lowest common denominator. I have seen too many great games fall because of the vocal minority. As my grandmother used to say: the empty barrel makes the most noise.

Sparky.6897:

There is an issue with RENDERING in WvW as we all know.

Please stop saying that, culling and rendering are not the same thing.