Guild Wars 2

I am coming here as a ranger. I do not have any hate towards thief so don’t read this post negatively.

I’ve read that thief has an easy time going full berserker and still have a lot of survivability with the stealth skills. Some people say that thief has a playstyle where not having skill is rewarded and so on…

The reason to why I am making this thread is because I have thought about making a thief.

What do you give up on, if nothing, to gain good survivability when creating a glass cannon build?

You simply can’t.

The people who think that stealth = unlimited survivability simply need to learn the mechanic and how to counter it, event if that just implies spamming your auto (which is actually extremely effective).

They’re just kitten that they lost against a noob who easily could’ve been beaten with or without stealth. Personally, I’m at the point where I almost always consider stealth, as a matter of fact, a weakness.

solrik.6028:

I’ve read that thief has an easy time going full berserker and still have a lot of survivability with the stealth skills.

You heard wrong. But thief is amazing at crushing bads dreams that theyre good and making them QQ on forums.

Actually, a Thief is way more forgiving when running full berserker compared to most other professions (probably just Mesmer is on the same level).

Obviously, running berserker won’t be that easy, but it is for sure easier then running berserker on, let’s say, a ranger.

This is because his defensive mechanics are solely based on evasion and damage avoiding more than damage mitigation, which makes stacking toughness and vitality not as much effective as on other professions.
Having 15 points into acrobatics with S/D or shortbow as weapon set, makes you a dodge bunny.
Also, you can play in-n-out style by just popping in, dealing as much damage as you can before the enemy realize you came (and to wait the revealed buff to end), then vanish in stealth to disengage and repositioning.
You can also combine both of those styles making yourself very hard to hit, so the few hits you’ll take doesn’t require that much HP or toughness to be tollerated.

Also, pick carefully the posts in the thief forum. Most people here have an extremely aggressive behavior and are extremely biased toward their profession.

sorrow.2364:

Also, pick carefully the posts in the thief forum. Most people here have an extremely aggressive behavior and are extremely biased toward their profession.

You forgot to mention that most of them arent even thieves and are just here to QQ and cry for nerfs.

wish.1027:

sorrow.2364:

Also, pick carefully the posts in the thief forum. Most people here have an extremely aggressive behavior and are extremely biased toward their profession.

You forgot to mention that most of them arent even thieves and are just here to QQ and cry for nerfs.

this

Annnnnnnndddd two thieves have set off the alarm lol..nothing to see here move along

wish.1027:

solrik.6028:

I’ve read that thief has an easy time going full berserker and still have a lot of survivability with the stealth skills.

You heard wrong. But thief is amazing at crushing bads dreams that theyre good and making them QQ on forums.

Jade Quarry Guardian. Jade Quarry Thief
Strike Force [SF] Spam Force [SF]
w/ an alt thief and warrior I just play thief cuz is great

Fixed for you

Definitly thief are mainly used to roam on WvW due how easy you can get kills and because you need to be kittened to get killed, (some people manage to get killed anyway)

You won’t see many thieves on Spvp because you need some degree of skill (not talking about hot join, talking about tournaments) and because in this mod you need to hold points, runners are useless

Anyway i’d recomend to roll and play a thief, so you’ll be more familiar with their abilities and weakness, (if you are aiming to be a good player you need to roll all classes)

It can only benefit you. If you find yourself performing better with a thief, good, but if you don’t, you will still learn the mechanics and use that to your advantage. Most people who have rerolled as thieves turn back to their first classes and stop complaining, simply because they come to realize the techniques to counter the thief.

Thief can’t really go zerker and be fine (in wvw). Stealth still gets you hit by AoE and random swings, and considering that you need to get close for that backstab, you are still very vulnerable to attacks.
You might be able to quickly drop some unaware GC or upleveled opponent, but you cant expect to survive much after that.

Other classes can do well with Zerker gear due to their buffs and blocks/invuls.
Guardians, Eles and even rangers (power signet build is great) can make some great roaming power builds.

But if you want to be an effective roamer you need to learn how to mix gear to get a better mix of stats. No matter what class you play.

By default, Thieves are self-rightous hypocrites and jerks, but for once, OP, you can go burn in hell too, the whole ‘Thief is broken’ thing is really annoying, especially since the 7 last months.

You want short answers: Yes stealth is overpowered. No, the rest of the Thief’s toolset isn’t, and infact is so weak or poorly designed that stealth barely compensates it. Yes it’s a bad design from Anet. No noone knows how long it’s going to last.

What do you give up on, if nothing, to gain good survivability when creating a glass cannon build?[/quote]

Glass canon does not have much survivability but here’s a idea how you could get something similar:You could go power vitality and crit dmg with your gear,buy some runes with power and crit then set traits like
0
30 II III XII
30 IV VI XI
10 VI
0
because of the shadow 30 in shadow arts and your gear you will have survivability and also decent damage with backstab.

solrik.6028:

What do you give up on, if nothing, to gain good survivability when creating a glass cannon build?

Survivability; glass cannon thieves are great until you get hit – then they’re made out of tissue paper. This is such a stupidly overused claim that there’s hardly a point in arguing it anymore.

Thieves take no skill to play? Let’s see those people play a Thief for awhile and then come back saying the same thing. No class takes skill if you play it like a kitten.

You want to stay alive as a Glass Cannon – learn your dodge and evade skills very well because that’s where most of your survivability is coming from. Sure you can stealth, but that still doesn’t help when someone who doesn’t panic thinks smart and actually hits you.

You don’t get the best of both worlds, no matter what people want to convince themselves of. If you really want to play a thief, good luck and have fun, but expect ta die alot until you get used to it.

MrForz.1953:

OP, you can go burn in hell too, the whole ‘Thief is broken’ thing is really annoying, especially since the 7 last months.

I haven’t claimed that thief is broken, nor have I said anything negative towards thief so you either have problems and need a psychologist or have misunderstood my thread.

It was created because I wanted to gain knowledge about how glass cannon thief works.

Sure you can stealth, but that still doesn’t help when someone who doesn’t panic thinks smart and actually hits you.

Nonsense. If the thief doesn’t panic, nobody can hit him while he is in stealth. I don’t know how stupid one has to be to get hit by aoe or by random blind melee swings.

It was created because I wanted to gain knowledge about how glass cannon thief works.

Thief doesn’t need to run glass cannon to pack a lot’s of punch. We can run valkyrie type gear while still having a decent crit chance, not to mention 100% crit chance with our main burst skill, backstab.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Nonsense. If the thief doesn’t panic, nobody can hit him while he is in stealth. I don’t know how stupid one has to be to get hit by aoe or by random blind melee swings.

As much as you’d apparently love to believe so, Thieves aren’t immortal, even in stealth.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Nonsense. If the thief doesn’t panic, nobody can hit him while he is in stealth. I don’t know how stupid one has to be to get hit by aoe or by random blind melee swings.

As much as you’d apparently love to believe so, Thieves aren’t immortal, even in stealth.

Trash thieves with crap specs sure aren’t. But a decent thief doesn’t die unless if he decides to keep fighting against impossible odds. I’m not even good and I still hardly ever die as a thief.

If you want to run away every time you take a booboo, sure – but if yer dedicated to sticking to a fight until you know you can’t win it’s a different story. (And I’d rather die against long odds than run away like a punk; only time I’m going to ditch a fight is when I realize right away that I picked one I couldn’t win.)

I haven’t claimed that thief is broken, nor have I said anything negative towards thief so you either have problems and need a psychologist or have misunderstood my thread.
It was created because I wanted to gain knowledge about how glass cannon thief works.

As your title certainly suggests.

Jack of Tears.9458:

If you want to run away every time you take a booboo, sure – but if yer dedicated to sticking to a fight until you know you can’t win it’s a different story. (And I’d rather die against long odds than run away like a punk; only time I’m going to ditch a fight is when I realize right away that I picked one I couldn’t win.)

That pretty much means “run away when you’re almost dead”.
Not every profession can do this.

sorrow.2364:

That pretty much means “run away when you’re almost dead”.
Not every profession can do this.

And they shouldn’t be able to, they got their strengths and weaknesses, we got ours. If it’s just a matter of feeling cool, if the Thief has to run away because ya beat her down to almost nothing, you still won.

Jack of Tears.9458:

sorrow.2364:

That pretty much means “run away when you’re almost dead”.
Not every profession can do this.

And they shouldn’t be able to, they got their strengths and weaknesses, we got ours. If it’s just a matter of feeling cool, if the Thief has to run away because ya beat her down to almost nothing, you still won.

’Cept rangers are a stealth-less version of thief

give us one or two in-combat vanishes with long cooldowns like every other game and be done with it. infinite incombat stealth via Cloak and Dagger and Blackpower/HS is stupid and everyone knows it. more importantly, it will force devs to improve our survivability outside of stealth so we can be viable in sPVP/large wvw fights, and not get owned by cleave/aoe/etc.

the only people who will be kitten ed will be the guys who just use stealth to troll people.

Engels.8537:

wish.1027:

solrik.6028:

I’ve read that thief has an easy time going full berserker and still have a lot of survivability with the stealth skills.

You heard wrong. But thief is amazing at crushing bads dreams that theyre good and making them QQ on forums.

Jade Quarry Guardian. Jade Quarry Thief
Strike Force [SF] Spam Force [SF]
w/ an alt thief and warrior I just play thief cuz is great

Fixed for you

Except my Thief is on Gate of Madness, and I play it less often than my Guardian, since its just my alt. And ya, Thief is great. I can solo roam and kill tons of people quickly. I do the same thing on my guardian though, it just takes longer to move from point A to B and takes a lot longer to kill 2-3 people at the same time. But I can still easily ditch fights I cant win, its called “Snowleopard form” and its freakin amazing and open to everyone, just roll a Norn.

wish.1027:

Engels.8537:

wish.1027:

solrik.6028:

I’ve read that thief has an easy time going full berserker and still have a lot of survivability with the stealth skills.

You heard wrong. But thief is amazing at crushing bads dreams that theyre good and making them QQ on forums.

Jade Quarry Guardian. Jade Quarry Thief
Strike Force [SF] Spam Force [SF]
w/ an alt thief and warrior I just play thief cuz is great

Fixed for you

Except my Thief is on Gate of Madness, and I play it less often than my Guardian, since its just my alt. And ya, Thief is great. I can solo roam and kill tons of people quickly. I do the same thing on my guardian though, it just takes longer to move from point A to B and takes a lot longer to kill 2-3 people at the same time. But I can still easily ditch fights I cant win, its called “Snowleopard form” and its freakin amazing and open to everyone, just roll a Norn.

Would your guardian happen to be dark skinned with white beard using hammer / gs?

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Would your guardian happen to be dark skinned with white beard using hammer / gs?

Ahh ok i got you missed up with another good guard in your guild.

Jack of Tears.9458:

And they shouldn’t be able to, they got their strengths and weaknesses, we got ours. If it’s just a matter of feeling cool, if the Thief has to run away because ya beat her down to almost nothing, you still won.

Win is subjective. In fact, if the thief manage to run away:
1. He isn’t locked to respawn time to be useful again to his team. He would probably run to another node in tPvP/sPvP or he can just wait to re-engage with more manpower.
2. He doesn’t give you badges and he doesn’t have to pay the repair costs in WvWvW.

I can’t really see how this can be considered a win. Psychological win, maybe?
To my point of view, Thief won.

sorrow.2364:

Jack of Tears.9458:

And they shouldn’t be able to, they got their strength and weaknesses, we got ours. If it’s just a matter of feeling cool, if the Thief has to run away because ya beat her down to almost nothing, you still won.

Win is subjective. In fact, if the thief manage to run away:
1. He isn’t locked to respawn time to be useful again to his team. He would probably run to another node in tPvP/sPvP or he can just wait to re-engage with more manpower.
2. He doesn’t give you badges and he doesn’t have to pay the repair costs in WvWvW.

I can’t really see how this can be considered a win. Psychological win, maybe?
To my point of view, Thief won.

1. If a Thief runs in PvP then you have won because you forced him off the point and you cap it for your team. This isn’t up for debate, it’s fact.
2. If a Thief runs from you in WvW then it’s because you’ve beaten the crap out of them and they now realise that they won’t survive if they stay. From a fight perspective, you won, they can’t turn around and beat you all of a sudden. From a design perspective, Thief is the class that does it best, and they are designed to be able to do so. You don’t need to get badges or give them a repair bill to win, that’s just ridiculous.

sorrow.2364:

Jack of Tears.9458:

And they shouldn’t be able to, they got their strengths and weaknesses, we got ours. If it’s just a matter of feeling cool, if the Thief has to run away because ya beat her down to almost nothing, you still won.

Win is subjective. In fact, if the thief manage to run away:
1. He isn’t locked to respawn time to be useful again to his team. He would probably run to another node in tPvP/sPvP or he can just wait to re-engage with more manpower.
2. He doesn’t give you badges and he doesn’t have to pay the repair costs in WvWvW.

I can’t really see how this can be considered a win. Psychological win, maybe?
To my point of view, Thief won.

Actually the Jack of Tears/Incurafy is right, you do win.

Take for example, I was using my thief to snipe supply Yaks so they don’t go in SM (roughly 2 hours ago).

A single player ,that guards their yak, is decently geared (a.k.a. no greens/blues) and knows what their doing can get their yak to SM safely.

If the thief does in turn retreat, they get their supply to SM and are able to use it for siege/repairs.

That is a win to them, and a lose to me.

The win/lose thing can be rather situational. If he is or you are defending something and you run away, then yes you lost because he achieves his goal. But if you’re attacking a person and you run away you didn’t lose, it’s more of a stalemate (because no one died). In either case it’s less of a loss than dying because you’re not giving loot, repairing and having to run back, or in the case of pvp (where thieves are weak anyway) you’re not giving the enemy team points for your death.

Sure the thief didn’t win, but he’s still better off than dead and the player he fought against often receives no reward, so in his perspective he didn’t ‘win’.

You also have to remember that most people don’t run away for good. They just run out, lose aggro for hp to heal to reset the fight and try again in order to hold something up or harass players.

All of this doesn’t necessarily apply just to thieves btw, they just happen to be the best at doing it.

In the end though, you should probably be trying to do something, so them running is good; just not as good as them dying.

Navzar.2938:

The win/lose thing can be rather situational. If he is or you are defending something and you run away, then yes you lost because he achieves his goal. But if you’re attacking a person and you run away you didn’t lose, it’s more of a stalemate (because no one died). In either case it’s less of a loss than dying because you’re not giving loot, repairing and having to run back, or in the case of pvp (where thieves are weak anyway) you’re not giving the enemy team points for your death.

Sure the thief didn’t win, but he’s still better off than dead and the player he fought against often receives no reward, so in his perspective he didn’t ‘win’.

You also have to remember that most people don’t run away for good. They just run out, lose aggro for hp to heal to reset the fight and try again in order to hold something up or harass players.

All of this doesn’t necessarily apply just to thieves btw, they just happen to be the best at doing it.

In the end though, you should probably be trying to do something, so them running is good; just not as good as them dying.

You have a point there.

I guess I’m looking at it in a bigger picture. (Theoretically) if a yak does get in SM/Tower/Keep, the enemy has more supply. More supply = better defenses. Although, we would have to factor in randoms taking supply to repair a wall that is constantly being trebbed.

Also, when I know I can’t win, or have attempted an attack and lost, I won’t come back. I don’t mind giving them loot. It’s just I’m wayyyyy to lazy to run back from a Waypoint. In my mind, they won, I lost, I’ll stop hitting them.

LumAnth.5124:

You have a point there.

I guess I’m looking at it in a bigger picture. (Theoretically) if a yak does get in SM/Tower/Keep, the enemy has more supply. More supply = better defenses. Although, we would have to factor in randoms taking supply to repair a wall that is constantly being trebbed.

Also, when I know I can’t win, or have attempted an attack and lost, I won’t come back. I don’t mind giving them loot. It’s just I’m wayyyyy to lazy to run back from a Waypoint. In my mind, they won, I lost, I’ll stop hitting them.

A thief who escaped isn’t a dead Thief.

In WvWvW, he’s still in the area. He doesn’t lose 5-10 mins of its time to come back again to annoy your Dolyaks.

He’s still there, roaming in your territory. You saved one yak, sure, but now he’s probably going to kill the next one, probably heading to your keep instead of the SM.

Same applies to PvP. You manage to repell your enemy but he’s still there around the corner. You did not gained any point for your team. You did not definitely repelled the attack. You did not forced your enemy to stay down for 15s to wait the respawn counter.

You didn’t win. You just had the grace to be left alone, which is way different from a win.

It is more or less like, during a chess match, your opponent leaves the match when he’s with only the king and a rook alive, saying “Sorry, I’ve got to go. We’ll do this match again later”, then he scrambles all the pieces on the chessboard.

If you guys really can’t catch a stealthed thief in WvW, after all these months…

… I usually try to avoid saying this, but really, L2P.

Arganthium.5638:

If you guys really can’t catch a stealthed thief in WvW, after all these months…

… I usually try to avoid saying this, but really, L2P.

Actually, the situation is quite different.
The one who needs to learn to play is the Thief who gets hit by random swings and AoE, not the one who can’t hit an invisible entity.
Just half a brain is needed to avoid the damage dealt by some people throwing their skills randomly, not even skills.

It is actually harder to get permastealth combofinishing into smoke field than avoiding the attacks.

sorrow.2364:

Arganthium.5638:

If you guys really can’t catch a stealthed thief in WvW, after all these months…

… I usually try to avoid saying this, but really, L2P.

Actually, the situation is quite different.
The one who needs to learn to play is the Thief who gets hit by random swings and AoE, not the one who can’t hit an invisible entity.
Just half a brain is needed to avoid the damage dealt by some people throwing their skills randomly, not even skills.

It is actually harder to get permastealth combofinishing into smoke field than avoiding the attacks.

/thread

the thing about thieves in general is it’s hard to build an effective tank. Damage without traiting and gear is just not impressive at all. The only way to really do this is a condition build, and most people agree that they’re gimmicky and not as good on thief as on other classes.

So building for survivability with gear doesn’t really work, but the thief’s strength is stealth. the first second or two of stealth, the thief is still vulnerable, but if they keep moving and dont get ccd they’re safe. Thieves also have good burst damage. The combination sets up the berserker thief playstyle. The goal is to use stealth for survivability and to aim for spending as little time out of stealth as possible. To do this, and still win fights, you need to down people quickly, which requires a high damage build. So you try to down people, stealth, wait down someone again…etc. And thats why berserker thieves are actually quite survivable.

The downside of course is that tanky thieves aren’t really an option, as everything seems to be balanced with berserker thieves in mind.

bobross.5034:

the thing about thieves in general is it’s hard to build an effective tank. Damage without traiting and gear is just not impressive at all. The only way to really do this is a condition build, and most people agree that they’re gimmicky and not as good on thief as on other classes.

So building for survivability with gear doesn’t really work, but the thief’s strength is stealth. the first second or two of stealth, the thief is still vulnerable, but if they keep moving and dont get ccd they’re safe. Thieves also have good burst damage. The combination sets up the berserker thief playstyle. The goal is to use stealth for survivability and to aim for spending as little time out of stealth as possible. To do this, and still win fights, you need to down people quickly, which requires a high damage build. So you try to down people, stealth, wait down someone again…etc. And thats why berserker thieves are actually quite survivable.

The downside of course is that tanky thieves aren’t really an option, as everything seems to be balanced with berserker thieves in mind.

everything is balanced against zerker thieves ???

tell that to my guild ppl that get 1 hitted from stealth… yep.. good balance.