Guild Wars 2

So lately ive seen alot of people going thief in wvw and spvp, it wouldnt bother me if we could acctually fight them.

Ive never played thief before so i dont know their skills at all but how long does the invisibility skill/s last and why can they attack while invisible and not lose the boon?

Seriously the only thing i can do is lay down aoe and hope his keyboard breaks down while he coross one, if that doesnt work i get a bunch of hits coming out of nowhere and bang im downed.

I know im gonna be choked here by all those who take advantage of this class, but be hones this deserve a look into it.

There is 159 thread about how newbs get stomped by thieves, move to one of those. As to answer your question thief stealth lasts 3 seconds ( 4 if traited), they can use one attack while stealthed, then they get revealed debuff and cannon get stealthed for 3-4 seconds. In WWW it takes longer to render thief who has just left stealth, becouse of current culling issues, which are being worked on, but you can allways target him with tab when hes out of stealth but still not rendered and 2 shot him if hes a glass cannon build, which probablly he is.

Then it has to be a bug or glitch, if he lose stealth after one attack how come i dont see some thiefs until im downed?
The problem here isnt who is the noob that you so nicely suggest, how do you fight someone if you cant see or target?

Culling is the is the issue basically after he comes out of stealth he still has not been rendered meaning you cant see him, if your not level 80 and not in full exos your gonna get beaten just like every other class will do to you but if your 80 with full exo dont be a glass cannon ie 30/30/0/0/20 with full zerker gear as your last aslong as a virgin(not very long =]) Thieves are not a problem in Spvp as everyone is the same level with same gear, easy way to counter your average D/D gc use P/V/T imo best gear there is use hard CC on thief and learn to dodge his CnD if you do all this right your have a dead thief if he uses Shadow refuge to hide just aoe it and laugh evilly as you kill him its what i like to do =)

I have full exotic, what you mean he has not been rendered, does that take over 6, 7 seconds?

no it takes around 1-2 secs if hardly ever takes 3 secs at the end of the day the problem lies with culling not the thief if you cant cope with it stick with the Zerg

Stealth lasts 3 or 4 seconds with a trait. The attack you want to avoid is backstab, which is an attack thieves can only do while in stealth with their dagger and deals double damage if they hit you from behind.

My advice is simply create some distance while a thief is in stealth so they waste their time in stealth chasing you. Once you become more comfortable with the mechanic and how predictable your average GC thief is stealth wont make much difference. Skills like Fear Me and Updraft can be used when you think the thief is close to you then follow it up with some AOE damage.

If a thief uses basilisk venom, an elite skill that turn you to stone for 1 second or possibly 2 with a trait, then use an ability like mist form, endure pain, shadow step etc to either create some distance and avoid an burst damage or make yourself invulnerable to it.

Perhaps the damage could be adjusted but the core mechanics can be countered and are not OP imo. More people need to try and counter something before they automatically assume it’s overpowered.

AryasRevenge.3175:

Then it has to be a bug or glitch, if he lose stealth after one attack how come i dont see some thiefs until im downed?
The problem here isnt who is the noob that you so nicely suggest, how do you fight someone if you cant see or target?

You should really read some more before creating “zomg i got killed, stomped and i didnt see that evil thief while he was dancing on my dead body” thread. There is an issue in www that some ppl simply arent rendered to your screen and that what happens when thief leaves stealth. But as I said you still can target him by pressing tab. And while doing that u shouldnt sit like a duck, but move. Actually u should allways move.

Basically: Thief stealth lasts 3-4 seconds.
Then add a load more time because the game has a rendering bug, meaning they don’t appear until sometime after their stealth ends.
Then add a load more still, because they can chain stealth abilities and defence without sacrificing DPS.

Thief is OP as kitten, and good thieves don’t die to anything short of a massive blob of people.

If it’s a 1v1 fight, they’ll either kill you or just reset the fight until they can kill you, or just run away and there’s kitten all you can do about it. If it’s a group battle, pray your friends focus the same target because a good thief is literally impossible to kill without 1-hitting them or a large, coordinated gang.

Devs how many more posts do you need to see? Nerf this op class before you loose more people!

No devs let the whiners and cryers leave they damage games by wanting them “Balanced” around themselves let them leave so we may enjoy peace on the forums BEGONE Stuglyfe return to the MMO from which you came from

StugLyfe.2134:

Devs how many more posts do you need to see? Nerf this op class before you loose more people!

I would love to lock you up into a room until you’ve done the math, drawn graphs, and making spread sheets on the subjekt of strengths and weaknesses of a Thief, and then coming up with possible solutions and solid fixes for problems you may find.

Why?

Because you couldn’t do it, since you don’t have the slightest clue of balance.

And since you would be locked up, the GW2 community could be a better place.

AryasRevenge.3175:

Ive never played thief before so i dont know their skills

This is the major issue of this community.
You admit to know nothing of the Thief and yet say it’s overpowered.

I don’t want to be rude and tell you to L2P so I’ll just say, look around the forums, people posted the obvious weaknesses of this class and how to counter its strengths.
Thief is far from OP once you know what you’re doing.

You should have known, posting this in a thief forum that you’d have just about everyone disagreeing.
You can see a whole lot more post like yours on other professions forums, id recommend posting them there with people of similar professions.
(Not on thief forums where everyone is a thief and will always just reply L2P)
But I completely agree with you Thread Starter.
Soon they will either fix culling (which is a nerf in itself) or nerf to compensate (which I dont see them doing), or leave them alone and ill make one too :P

Honestly, if you actually play as a thief, you would see that they aren’t as strong as you make us out to be. yes we burst alot, and yes we stealth (3-4 for hide in shadows or a whomping 15 seconds in shadow refuge). We dont have a lot of health and you prolly dont see them because they keep chain stealthing on you for backstabs(cloak and dagger), which is where most pvp thieves’ power comes from. To be honest, at least in my experiences with myself and other people, us thieves can be pretty cowardly sometimes, if its one or two people then we’ll fight, but as soon as things dont go our way, we stealth, shadow step, infiltrators arrow out of there. Which is probably why they seem to always get away from you.

The fact remains that, even if the combo is on cooldown, you have access to a combo that:

1 – the target cannot see coming – at all – (this is to contrast with quickness + 100B)

2 – will reliably kill or put unto death’s door anything but a 100% pure bunker build in approximately 1 second (if caught unaware without boons up, it will also kill 100% pure bunker eles because of their low base hp)

This approaches the absolute ceiling of human reaction time, and is absurdly unfair, especially coupled with the many “get out of being squished free cards” thieves get.

Mesmers you can see coming, and can only do this because of a bug causing +100% mind wrack damage.

Warriors you can see coming, and once the one-trick is gone they can’t escape.

Thieves do have many weaknesses when not doing this, they have serious mechanic issues and weapon and weapon set viability issues due to ill-advised nerfs and design choices in specific sets, but THIS combo needs to go.

Either a hard-block needs to be put in place to prevent the mug-c&d-steal-backstab combo, or the damage of one or more of these needs to be toned down significantly.

NOBODY has a right to an IWIN button, even on a long cooldown, if you want instakills the FPS world is that way

plasmacutter.2709:

The fact remains that, even if the combo is on cooldown, you have access to a combo that:

1 – the target cannot see coming – at all – (this is to contrast with quickness + 100B)

2 – will reliably kill or put unto death’s door anything but a 100% pure bunker build in approximately 1 second (if caught unaware without boons up, it will also kill 100% pure bunker eles because of their low base hp)

This approaches the absolute ceiling of human reaction time, and is absurdly unfair, especially coupled with the many “get out of being squished free cards” thieves get.

Mesmers you can see coming, and can only do this because of a bug causing +100% mind wrack damage.

Warriors you can see coming, and once the one-trick is gone they can’t escape.

Thieves do have many weaknesses when not doing this, they have serious mechanic issues and weapon and weapon set viability issues due to ill-advised nerfs and design choices in specific sets, but THIS combo needs to go.

Either a hard-block needs to be put in place to prevent the mug-c&d-steal-backstab combo, or the damage of one or more of these needs to be toned down significantly.

NOBODY has a right to an IWIN button, even on a long cooldown, if you want instakills the FPS world is that way

This.
Let’s make pvp fun for everyone again, not just thieves.

Helios.3598:

plasmacutter.2709:

The fact remains that, even if the combo is on cooldown, you have access to a combo that:

1 – the target cannot see coming – at all – (this is to contrast with quickness + 100B)

2 – will reliably kill or put unto death’s door anything but a 100% pure bunker build in approximately 1 second (if caught unaware without boons up, it will also kill 100% pure bunker eles because of their low base hp)

This approaches the absolute ceiling of human reaction time, and is absurdly unfair, especially coupled with the many “get out of being squished free cards” thieves get.

Mesmers you can see coming, and can only do this because of a bug causing +100% mind wrack damage.

Warriors you can see coming, and once the one-trick is gone they can’t escape.

Thieves do have many weaknesses when not doing this, they have serious mechanic issues and weapon and weapon set viability issues due to ill-advised nerfs and design choices in specific sets, but THIS combo needs to go.

Either a hard-block needs to be put in place to prevent the mug-c&d-steal-backstab combo, or the damage of one or more of these needs to be toned down significantly.

NOBODY has a right to an IWIN button, even on a long cooldown, if you want instakills the FPS world is that way

This.
Let’s make pvp fun for everyone again, not just thieves.

Since when is the goal killing your opponent, that is not the goal, this isn’t an FPS.

There is no Iwin buttons, not even moa morph, which isn’t even a thief skill.

Nope thiefs are not OP just watch this

But other then that everyone knows that right now in WvWvW thiefs are overpowerd as hell. There is no other class that can do the same as a thief with so many easy escape tricks.

me and a thief friend in a party yesterday come across a zerg of 20+ in WvW, I’m on my ranger, and lasted as long as I could, we managed a few kills together before I was eating dirt. while i lay there face down, I watched him go in and out of sneak, plucking off the enemy 1by 1, every time i thought the guy was dead, he’d hide them heal completely, and pop out for some more revenge. it was epic butt stomping, and scary to watch. he didn’t have to run when it got hot, and he always had enough DD to do the job. it made me feel as if I wasted every bit of time i ever spend trying to kill a thief 1v1. oh he did die eventually, but not until he, himself, made a mistake trying to finish someone instead of put down some more.
even he admits it’s silly beyond belief what they can do, but he’ll gladly play it like that until they fix it, because he can.
this happened in a few games I’ve played in the past, what we have to do, is ALL make thieves, and play them so well that everyone hates the thought of seeing one. then maybe someone up in the clouds will give a crap when we rename it Thief Wars.

if you are being attacked, you shouldn’t be able to hide, period. give them some other way to mitigate damage that doesn’t make the rest of us want to facebash our monitors.

Bad Players make the thief class powerful, even if everyone rolled thieves, good thieves would still beat them.

thief weakness = mass aoe as stated by anet’s design philisophy

mass aoe that CAN actually kill a thief ingame = nothing short of a fleet of b-52s carpet bombing an area with a suspected thief

still this is balanced by anet’s standards.

Thraize.9608:

thief weakness = mass aoe as stated by anet’s design philisophy

mass aoe that CAN actually kill a thief ingame = nothing short of a fleet of b-52s carpet bombing an area with a suspected thief

still this is balanced by anet’s standards.

Thief’s true weakness is a lack of damage mitigation. If they’re hit, they take the whole hit. Players who understand this, and the limitations and conditions of their other abilities, usually do well against thieves.

the question is with at least 4 ways to access stealth to avoid being hit. can you hit the thief at all? those 4 ways are untraited.

beating a thief atm is like playing chess with you blindfolded and your opponent isn’t. it is possible to win the match but you need to put great effort into it.

Thraize.9608:

the question is with at least 4 ways to access stealth to avoid being hit. can you hit the thief at all? those 4 ways are untraited.

Of course you can. Just try to think where they will be if they’re trying to flank you, or make yourself hard to hit till the stealth wears off.

so i have to be part psychic to guess where they gonna hit? ps. not all thieves use backstab.

Thraize.9608:

so i have to be part psychic to guess where they gonna hit? ps. not all thieves use backstab.

No, use common sense. If they’re melee they’re going to go for your back no matter the weapon (Dagger’s backstab is double damage in the back, Sword’s Tactical Strike Dazes from behind), if not their either direct damage ranged which is rather lackluster and you can dodge out of their channels, or their condition ranged and you can dodge and use condition removal. A tip on that last one, don’t blow your CDs too early.
It’s nothing supernatural, its just understanding your opponents abilities and motivations.

After loads of hours played on my thief, i would say that they are good in PvE, great in sPvP and OP in WvW. I just feel like cheating when Backstabbing someone. Of couse, this is because WvW has upscaled charakters and the upscaling doesn’t work that well it seems. Also, shortbow auto-attack with full zerker gear is crazy! Combine that with clusterbombs and poison res denial when defending a tower against a few upscaled enemies and you start laughing out loud. They drop like flies!

That said, we are squishie as hell. I guess the high risk high reward is true when it comes to the thief. It’s just that the risk is not that big against upscaled enemies and the reward is still the same!

Thraize.9608:

beating a thief atm is like playing chess with you blindfolded and your opponent isn’t. it is possible to win the match but you need to put great effort into it.

No, you just have to be smart about it. Your average GC thief is squishy and predictable, which makes them easy and fast kills in my experience. One of the greatest strengths of thieves against bad players is stealth since most people seem to have no idea how to deal with it nor make any attempt to do so.

I watch people fight thieves and they try hitting them until they stealth, after which they just stand around until they reappear. They complain about how OP backstab and stealth are yet they did nothing to try and counter them. I tell them what they did wrong and they just ignore it, preferring to believe the class is simply OP and used exclusively by noobs rather than the seeming inconceivable prospect they are just playing poorly.

AryasRevenge.3175:

So lately ive seen alot of people going thief in wvw and spvp, it wouldnt bother me if we could acctually fight them.

Ive never played thief before so i dont know their skills at all but how long does the invisibility skill/s last and why can they attack while invisible and not lose the boon?

Seriously the only thing i can do is lay down aoe and hope his keyboard breaks down while he coross one, if that doesnt work i get a bunch of hits coming out of nowhere and bang im downed.

I know im gonna be choked here by all those who take advantage of this class, but be hones this deserve a look into it.

Go ask the rangers, guardians and mesmers having no problems with thieves on their forums… plenty of them there. But it sounds like your biggest issue is a terrible PC because the culling issue alone doesn’t explain 6 seconds of invisibility whilst being hit. I take everyone’s word for it there is a culling issue and I can see it some YouTube vids… but I’ve never seen it myself in WvW because I solo rather than zerg. In PvP it’s a non issue.

AryasRevenge.3175:

So lately ive seen alot of people going thief in wvw and spvp, it wouldnt bother me if we could acctually fight them.

Ive never played thief before so i dont know their skills at all but how long does the invisibility skill/s last and why can they attack while invisible and not lose the boon?

Seriously the only thing i can do is lay down aoe and hope his keyboard breaks down while he coross one, if that doesnt work i get a bunch of hits coming out of nowhere and bang im downed.

I know im gonna be choked here by all those who take advantage of this class, but be hones this deserve a look into it.

You don’t know anything about the class , you have no right to complain about it , period.

AryasRevenge.3175:

So lately ive seen alot of people going thief in wvw and spvp, it wouldnt bother me if we could acctually fight them.

Ive never played thief before so i dont know their skills at all but how long does the invisibility skill/s last and why can they attack while invisible and not lose the boon?

Seriously the only thing i can do is lay down aoe and hope his keyboard breaks down while he coross one, if that doesnt work i get a bunch of hits coming out of nowhere and bang im downed.

I know im gonna be choked here by all those who take advantage of this class, but be hones this deserve a look into it.

1. Generally, the stealth skills last 3 seconds.

2. When a thief attack while in stealth, they break it and have to wait 3 seconds to restealth.

3. The main source of stealht of a thief will be Cloak and Dagger. For it to works, you have to be hit by it. It is avoidable. You also have 3 seconds to burst the thief the way you want after he came out of stealth.

Thieves are far from OP. They’re actually broken from the “Thief Players” perspective. When a Thief goes stealth they can still be targeted by “TARGETING ABILITIES”…. I’m not talking AOE’s, but Actual abilities that require you to “Click” or “Select” a “Target”…. Going invisible renders “NO TARGET”…. Yet Thieves still get attacked by them… Yeah…. they are far from OP.

For other classes some pretty good players can deal with it, if you cannot then simply get away from them. This culling issue frustrates people however and I can understand that as it cannot be seen – it is broken and a bug there’s no point defending it however by saying be a better player. I play a thief who doesn’t use this stealth playstyle but I am very slippery using shadow step abilities and I am very hard to catch. To do this my reactions have to be very quick or I die and that’s why I like the class. Thieves also in GW2 are a great group class oddly which I like (if played that way). In the permastealt issue case the thief seems op, its just broken if they play it then woohoo for them. You can’t blame them for not playing their preferred playstyle at the same time. If you encounter one and can’t deal with it them get away from them and use cc etc.

Hopes.4512:

Thieves are far from OP. They’re actually broken from the “Thief Players” perspective. When a Thief goes stealth they can still be targeted by “TARGETING ABILITIES”…. I’m not talking AOE’s, but Actual abilities that require you to “Click” or “Select” a “Target”…. Going invisible renders “NO TARGET”…. Yet Thieves still get attacked by them… Yeah…. they are far from OP.

This isn’t true, as I mentioned in the other thread. No matter how hard you try, you cannot get target required abilities to hit stealthed targets.

Red Falcon.8257:

AryasRevenge.3175:

Ive never played thief before so i dont know their skills

This is the major issue of this community.
You admit to know nothing of the Thief and yet say it’s overpowered.

I don’t want to be rude and tell you to L2P so I’ll just say, look around the forums, people posted the obvious weaknesses of this class and how to counter its strengths.
Thief is far from OP once you know what you’re doing.

But you don’t need to have played a class to know it’s overpowered.

Certain aspects of the Thief class, mainly Stealth, Burst and Shadowsteps are overpowered when combined, especially in a WvW environment with culling.

But in total, Thieves aren’t any more OP than any of your other OP builds like Bunker Guardians, D/D Elementalists or Mesmers. It just happens to be that the OPness of the Thief is more more apparent to your average player.

I just leveled my Thief to 80 the other. I was stacked on tokens + extra FOTM rings so I was fully geared out the same day.

I’ve been playing D/D and SB in PvP. Played around with the backstab build in WvW for a while. Here’s my thoughts.

• Backstab can crit for big numbers, but if your target is running around constantly you can’t get behind them. You have slows, but they’re expensive on your resources and Shadowstep + backstab only works if your target stands still.

• I have so many tools to get away. I used the roll-dodge heal, Shadowstep, and Shortbow (when running away) with run speed signet and I can escape whenever I want. It’s kind of silly.

To all thieves who say thieves aren’t overpowered and basically say learn to play to others…:

Ok.

So what you all are saying, since now the majority of GW2 players in wvw and pvp have major trouble dealing with the thief, you guys are pointing out THEY should get there facts straight and find solutions to the problem which they haven’t done enough yet?

That’s a very weird way of thinking.

How about turning it around shall we?

You thieves aren’t OP anymore somehow, but say Elementalists are. But all the elementalists are saying: ‘No we’re not OP, all you lads and ladies need to learn to play the game right and find a way to counter it. There really is a way to counter it. Majority of GW2 players: You really need to try harder and then you will find a way to counter it.’ So….. What would you think about that?

Isn’t the fact alone that tons of ppl are complaining about thieves being OP proof enough that there’s at least a too big of a difference between how the thieves are in there current state and how the major part of GW2 players can’t deal with them?

Nooooo noooooooooooo it’s the major part of the players that can’t counter them who are all ignorant or dumb or haven’t done enough research or whatever… Sure sure…
Even if that is true, this game is supposed to be doable and enjoyable by the vast majority of GW2-players, not the minority who DOES find a way to counter the current state of thieves in pvp and wvw.

Bast Bow.2958:

How about turning it around shall we?

You thieves aren’t OP anymore somehow, but say Elementalists are. But all the elementalists are saying: ‘No we’re not OP, all you lads and ladies need to learn to play the game right and find a way to counter it. There really is a way to counter it. Majority of GW2 players: You really need to try harder and then you will find a way to counter it.’ So….. What would you think about that?

Cool example because this is exactly how elementalist mist form works near structure doors in WvW. It, like stealth, is incredibly powerful if nobody tries to counter it. These are not mechanically powerful abilities as much as they are abilities that derive their power from behavior. It isn’t on the person using the skill to have weaker skills, it is on the person fighting the skill to know how it functions and how to react to it.

@Bast Bow: You realize you’re saying the game should be dumbed down at the expense of players who enjoy thief, in the interest of players can’t recognize a mind game when they see it (stealth is a mind game tactic) and probably don’t have a solid grasp of the mechnics of the game beyond thinking they have to rely on thier slot skills to solve all obstacles the game presents.
Oh and to add to the elementalist arguement, I wouldn’t care if they were perceived by the masses as OP’d. I’d be analysing them looking for for ways to deal with them. The same goes for every class.

Yes i play a thief and i enjoy the thief but people who havent played one dont know how to counter one. Its very simple to be able to kill a thief. All classes are capable of it, every one knows that thief are a stealth mobile class. If you can find a way the counter that you win. Hmm i wonder how???? Cripple, freeze, stun, immobilize, knockdown, knock-back. If you manage to even land one of these condition you most likely won because it forces us thiefs to use our invisibily skill. Which we use for opener. Every class has multiple skills which allows them to be able to put these type of conditions on a thief.

Conclusion depending on what class your playing get some skill that can apply ether cripple, stuns, knockdown, and more then open with some cc and there you have a dead thief while you walk over there dead corpse laughing. ????

Bast Bow.2958:

So what you all are saying, since now the majority of GW2 players in wvw and pvp have major trouble dealing with the thief, you guys are pointing out THEY should get there facts straight and find solutions to the problem which they haven’t done enough yet?

Nooooo noooooooooooo it’s the major part of the players that can’t counter them who are all ignorant or dumb or haven’t done enough research or whatever… Sure sure…
Even if that is true, this game is supposed to be doable and enjoyable by the vast majority of GW2-players, not the minority who DOES find a way to counter the current state of thieves in pvp and wvw.

Should the game be balanced around the majority of players or the more skilled players though? If you nerf the class so it’s balanced for the players who not counter it then the class becomes very weak against players who can.

When game came out, 100b frenzy warriors were considered very strong and OP, with complaints on the forums calling for nerfs. Arena Net did nothing to reduce the damage of 100b because it was easily countered by more skilled players. The majority of the community became more aware of how to deal with it and now the build is now considered quite weak because you can counter it so easily.

Those GC backstab thieves do encounter other thieves and also find people who know how to counter them. Most of the people saying L2P aren’t just saying it because they don’t want their class nerfed; they have experience either fighting other thieves or being countered by other people to know that the class isn’t as OP as the forums would have you believe.

Is the damage of backstab too high? Possibly, but if you’re playing well you shouldn’t get hit by it anyway other than being caught off guard with your counter skills on CD. If you can’t see the thief due to culling then that’s an issue with how the client functions rather than the profession. I would rather they fix that than balance the profession just for WvW and leave it weaker in all other areas.

The problem (or lack of problem) with thieves is not that they’re overpowered (they’re not), it’s that they currently have multiple builds that are highly effective. Many other professions can’t boast that (cough cough engi, necromancer, ranger) and as a result thieves look incredible when compared to the professions that are in desperate need of love.

The solution, simply, is not to nerf thieves, but to buff the classes that are currently suffering.

Honestly, you need to learn how to counter a thief. Not to debuff thief. Good players know how to counter thieves. I play a thief and when im up against a good player that knows how to counter, I have a hard time bringing him down and it usaully ends with him winning. DONT debuff thief LEARN to counter. Good day.

plasmacutter.2709:

The fact remains that, even if the combo is on cooldown, you have access to a combo that:

1 – the target cannot see coming – at all – (this is to contrast with quickness + 100B)

2 – will reliably kill or put unto death’s door anything but a 100% pure bunker build in approximately 1 second (if caught unaware without boons up, it will also kill 100% pure bunker eles because of their low base hp)

This approaches the absolute ceiling of human reaction time, and is absurdly unfair, especially coupled with the many “get out of being squished free cards” thieves get.

Mesmers you can see coming, and can only do this because of a bug causing +100% mind wrack damage.

Warriors you can see coming, and once the one-trick is gone they can’t escape.

Thieves do have many weaknesses when not doing this, they have serious mechanic issues and weapon and weapon set viability issues due to ill-advised nerfs and design choices in specific sets, but THIS combo needs to go.

Either a hard-block needs to be put in place to prevent the mug-c&d-steal-backstab combo, or the damage of one or more of these needs to be toned down significantly.

NOBODY has a right to an IWIN button, even on a long cooldown, if you want instakills the FPS world is that way

It’s an L2P issue. nothing more. A good warrior will destroy a thief. And know..the warrior is not a 1 trick pony. the warrior can shield block until the time he chooses to destroy the thief. If the thief trys to combo burst, warrior endure pain’s turns immobilize and 1 shot’s the thief. I’m glad you can see the warrior and mesmer damage…thank god… because they can do it, even while being seen, and do it quite effectively.

Take away the thiefs ability to be unseen when delivering damage…and you’re left with a mini pet. laughable, maybe cute, but certainly not deadly nor important to care about in any way.

in tpvp… the thief is secondary to many classes. this, in and of itself, is the most formidable proof the class is not over-powered.

unfortunately… alot of ppl… need to L2P.

The biggest issue with Thieves that makes them OP is the same issue with Elementalists.

Too much evasion and mobility when compared to other classes. Both classes get to pick their fights and can easily escape from a bad situation. The solution for Elementalists is to double the cooldown on Ride the Lightning. The solution for Thieves is to take away some of their evasion on attacks and not allow stealth for longer than 5 seconds without breaking for 3 seconds before applying it again. Being able to combine 3 stealths for 18 seconds is too much.

I shouldnt be saying this because i love the thief class but here you go.
Yes i play a thief and i enjoy the thief but people who havent played one dont know how to counter one. Its very simple to be able to kill a thief. All classes are capable of it, every one knows that thief are a stealth mobile class. If you can find a way the counter that you win. Hmm i wonder how?? Cripple, freeze, stun, immobilize, knockdown, knock-back. If you manage to even land one of these condition you most likely won because it forces us thiefs to use our invisibily skill. Which we use for opener. Every class has multiple skills which allows them to be able to put these type of conditions on a thief.
Conclusion depending on what class your playing get some skill that can apply ether cripple, stuns, knockdown, and more then open with some cc and there you have a dead thief while you walk over there dead corpse laughing. ??

I’ll try and sum this up as easily as I can….

Thieves, when traited to deal insane damage, are not traited to take ANY damage. I, on my lvl 80 thief, have been easily destroyed in seconds by virtually every class. They are not overpowered. Once you learn to catch one, it’s game over for that thief. Guardian greatsword skill 2 will take a GC thief down pretty nicely and many of the other classes’ skills will as well. Just saying, the thieves that you believe are so overpowered are not. The player behind the keyboard and mouse just knows how to play one. They get in, slash some stuff out, and if they are good, get their rear end out of there and stealth. Though like I said, if you catch one, it’s really no longer a fight.

Having recently finished levelling one to see for myself, yes they are OP, at least when it comes to WvW, for the following reasons:

1 – In open world type PvP a fairly fundamental concept in MMORPGs is risk vs reward, the balance of this is totally off on my thief compared to the other classes I have played to 80 (Necro, Engineer & Mes).

If I muck up or misjudge the situation or am simply outplayed, I can escape combat the vast majority of the time, there is far too little risk on the thief class.

2 – It is largely faceroll to play, stealth is the next easiest defence to use after passive defences.

Also far too much is done automatically for me on my thief, it is as if the game plays it for me – I have skills to teleport me / leap to the target, skills to teleport me away from the target, I have all-in-one faceroll skills like a spammable gap closer / finsher / combo finisher or an evade / AOE bleed / combo finsher, etc.

Skills are spammable, so if I miss my dagger 4 skill to cripple someone as I chase them down, I simply try again, unlike other classes where you don’t get a second chance.

3 – As a glass cannon my thief is less glass than other classes glass cannon (mesmer is second of the ones I’ve played properly), the cries of “oh but my thief is fragile” are pathetic, stealth + mobility gives the best survivability in WvW and scales against multiple opponents far better than any level of toughness / armour / HP. For those who think thief glass cannon builds are fragile, I suggest you try something like a static discharge engineer, you will find 4277 more HP does not compare to stealth + better mobility when it comes to survivability.

Frankly I am borderline ashamed when I play my thief in WvW, at least when I played my burglar in LOTRO (it also was OP in PvP at times), but at least it was considered an advanced class and took a bit of thought / skill to play, the opposite to my thief in GW2.