Guild Wars 2

I’ll keep it short. My name is Ably, I’ve played thief since the beta weekends, I have ~5.5k hours on thief, ~4k games played yada yada, and I feel like we are being pushed out of the meta. Most teams in the last streamed tournies have had a thief, usually 60206 d/p being the meta. With 60206, a thief hits like an actual wet noodle against anything but glass, but our job isn’t to 1v1, it’s to backcap and +1 so that’s okay. Power classes can still 3-4 hit us if we don’t time our dodges right, and anything but a decent mesmer/thief can be a hard fight. The more I’ve played this week, I’ve realized how poorly we match up against the meta. Engineers, power necros, med guards and even shoutbows can usually kill a thief pretty easily. But that’s fine, our job is to backcap and +1 fights. But if a team has any of those above classes looking after their home decently, I feel like we are almost obsolete. Maybe it’s me not playing well, maybe it’s my build, my playstyle- any of those really, but with the most recent changes to teleports (my steals say ‘target too close’ half the time I use it in melee range/ shadowstepping up to a ledge mid stomp but not being able to return b/c of ‘valid pathing’), I think that most other classes can +1 better than a thief. Anyways, I personally believe it is becoming harder and less worthwhile to play a thief in competitive PvP, and I want to hear what others think about it. Once again, just my opinion, I would love some feedback.

It sounds like you don’t like the limitations of Dagger thief.

Try S/D, it allows you to play more freely with your positioning.

1st things) I’ve played against you before and you seem to do pretty well. But when I did play against you you were really bursty but seemed to be somewhat lacking in some areas of defensive gameplay (of course that may have just been the situation I happened to catch you in but that may be your issue with thief in meta) There are tons if ways to survive on thief and with a little dueling practice it can become rather easy to 1v1 most classes as thief imo has the best outplaying ability of any class in the game.

But I do also have to say I agree it is becoming harder to play a thief. That said I disagree that it is becoming less worthwhile. If anything it is becoming more worthwhile to play thief competitively. The reason for my saying so is if thief is harder to play, fewer people will be able to pull it off so the ones that do will bring in a huge advantage for their team in the areas of quick ganking and map presence. The possible advantage will encourage people to communicate as a thief becomes stronger in the pvp settings when it’s bursts and weaknesses are communicated with team members. (i.e if a thief is getting focused then the team’s dd ele could go to where they are in stealth and heal them with some water attunement to get them back into the fight rather than the thief having to pull out completely like you would see in a soloq game)

And regarding ports, some of them just have been moved to different positions, some are new, and some are gone but overall they are still really strong. Though the weird steal “target too close” thing is a mystery to me.

Anyways that’s my thought process there. I hope I made myself clear

I’d like to give my perspective as someone who played actively up until ascended items were added and recently decided to return to the game.

One thing I’ve noticed is that mesmers have the opinion that their class is broken and weak. I personally, feel as you do that thief is in a similar situation. Many of the learning resources for thieves that are shared by this forum specifically state that thieves cannot 1v1 against almost all meta builds. The advice I believe, is that if it is not a mesmer or a thief, you run away and try to decap or +1. This is not my idea of a powerful, or well designed, or fun to play class.

It is therefore shocking to see that when one suggests that the thief is not a strong 1v1 class, members of other classes think the claim is wholly ridiculous.

The average player still seems to think that thieves are massively overpowered.

I think that thieves and mesmers have been over-nerfed to compensate for the fact that they destroy new/bad players more than any other class, cause a lot of frustration, and have potentially infinite health bars if their opponent is clueless enough.

It’s a serious problem because ANet can’t fix thieves (or mesmers) if the whole population perceives them as being way-too-strong. After witnessing the release of GW2, it doesn’t surprised me that after a few years, thieves and mesmers are both wearing the same kitten suit.

However, there is a limit to all of this – and I believe ANet is about a mile passed it. Thieves are so squishy that they die as collateral damage to bunker builds’ AoE while they duke it out.

I believe the heart of the problem right now lies in the balance between stats and builds more than in the individual capabilities of a class. All of these cele bunkers who thieves can barely tickle should be able to barely tickle a thief. There’s just a straight up imbalance right now and it’s really ruining everything that GW2 got right by removing dedicated healers (healers have a long standing tradition of being statistically superior to damage dealers and it makes the game revolve around them).

TLDR: It’s a problem of perception. Thieves are annoying so they can’t be allowed to win. Also the celestial amulet needs to be deleted.

Now I’d actually like to say something in response to your post:
Thieves can 1v1 ANY of the meta builds BUT they have to massively outplay the person using the other build which is definitely possible but can be very difficult to pull off.

Now let’s be honest the “average player” in gw2 either comes from pve and is taken by surprise at the amount of skill needed in pvp (due to the fact that the pvp player base is not very big as there isn’t much encouragement for people to come and play it unless they are really seeking a challenge) or they come from wvw where SA thieves dominate the roaming scene with either a mix of damage and defense via SA or a pure condi bunker that easily melts everything it goes up against. The reason this is an issue is because those kinds of builds don’t exist inside pvp outside of hotjoin but people refuse to look at that and thief gets nerfed across the board to compensate for their excessive strength in one game mode which then causes thief to be where it is in pvp now.

Also, it isn’t that thief can’t 1v1 people for a point it’s just that because of the design of conquest they aren’t contributing to their team by fighting a bunker on a point the other team owns so in a tactical manner it’s best for them to leave and go win a fight quicker somewhere else to give their team the upper hand.

Ario.8964:

Now I’d actually like to say something in response to your post:
Thieves can 1v1 ANY of the meta builds BUT they have to massively outplay the person using the other build which is definitely possible but can be very difficult to pull off.
(trimmed)

It’s interesting that this is your response because I actually trimmed an entire section about this from my post because the original post was so long. Here’s what it said:

The claim that thieves can 1v1 other classes as long as they significantly outplay them is a meaningless, and nearly tautological, statement that applies to all classes. You could nerf thieves (or any class) forever and you would always have a skill gap threshold where an extremely good player could appear to be god-like.

Skill-based balance does not work, has never worked, and will never work. I.e., making one class “balanced” in the sense that they are mathematically underpowered but versatile enough that transcendent amounts of skill allow them to still win. Moreover, it is a myth. You are simply witnessing the difference of good player vs. bad player on a class that happens to be worse.

However, this is a two way street that Thieves and Mesmers are doomed to drive on by design. While it’s not fair (and imbalanced) to have one class require inordinate gaps in skill to win, it’s also unfair for the class to require inordinate gaps in skill to lose.
Because of the play-style of thief and mesmer, without knowledge of what causes the class to stealth, teleport, make clones, burst hard and fast, etc. and what that means when you are fighting one, inexperienced players are doomed to lose a very frustrating battle with thieves and mesmers.

Shockwave.1230:

It sounds like you don’t like the limitations of Dagger thief.

Try S/D, it allows you to play more freely with your positioning.

I’ve tried it in the past, but I never really clicked with it. I got pretty good with 20066 but I found it pretty repetitive, and lacking the burst that D/P brought. I know they fill different roles, but I have too much of an obsession with big numbers. I did notice that S/D seemed a lot more forgiving- as in I had an easier time fighting most classes.

Truth to be told is.

If the thief movement get nerfed or other class get the same maneuverability as us, we will get removed from the meta like happened to guardians.

That are classes that already do a better job at +1 fights. We only keep our role because we decap far faster.

Try 6/6/2… You don’t need the daZe if your’re aa for 3k…

All of those classes are slow. You break off of mid to go to far, burn shadow step for the decap, use the return to get back to the main fight faster; you get a good 20 seconds of +1 plus the decap from the use of SS. Shadow Refuge halfway between far and mid to make them sit on far for the full duration of the stealth while you rotate back to mid. None of those classes have the mobility to keep far capped and contribute much of anything to the mid fight if you’re aggressively harassing far.

Thief is quite good at +1ing all of the classes you listed – warriors and necros don’t have the blocks or evades to keep you from training them down with some support, and shortbow poison fields and general AoE is quite good against guardians and engineers. All are vulnerable to panic strike (on D/P) or Infiltrator’s Strike (on S/D) for a quick finish.

The only +1ing, berserker class that dumpsters you is a meditation guardian, and you should be able to run circles around it the entire match; it’s even more stark post teleport changes, as blink mobility has never been better. Nothing out-rotates a thief; it’s not even close.

@morbid
In regards to what you said, I may not have elaborated enough. My point was to show that thief (and Mesmer) are the two classes with the best outplay ability due to their class design. The versatility they are given ends up getting them nerfed (because good players can utilize it to extremes which is a stupid thing to balance around) and I may have misworded but I didn’t mean to say anywhere that the game should be balanced around a player’s skill, the goal with that statement was to show that thief is a part of the meta because despite the really high skill floor in pvp due to nerfs, thief will always continue to be a part of the meta because of the versatility and potential of the class which will (when played well) give a team an EXTREME advantage in certain aspects of the game.

So I agree we shouldn’t balance around a few peoples’ skill but that’s already been done (hence the thief nerfs) and there’s really nothing we can do about it so while it’s stupid and mathematically won’t work to actually balance the game it’s something we will have to deal with. Yet that doesn’t mean it won’t be part of the meta which was what I meant to say in my earlier post.

morbidillusion.2759:

The average player still seems to think that thieves are massively overpowered.

Average player can’t figure out stealth so yeah. Most of the playerbase doesn’t even bother to get better at fighting what kills them most. The other day I met enemy ranger (in wvw) who reacted to me killing him by telling me how OP thieves are. When I asked what key he has for weapon stow, he didn’t even know it exists. No wonder he died to reflect. 8k AP guy with gold rank in wvw, ranger main.

The only thing that keeps thieves in pvp is SB 5.

Right. If the average skill is going downhill, then we should all follow and accommodate for that.

Can’t wait until people start complaining about how they have too many skills to use and pick from.

That Infiltrator’s Arrow is worth worshipping huh? I can already see thieves avoiding combat in SH and filling the roles of supply bot just like decapper in conquest, TDM is different but don’t worry nerfs will come.