Guild Wars 2

Atticus.7194:

Wow, condescending much?

Well first off your comment about my supposed confusion between a character and the person playing it has no real bearing on my comments and from what I can tell serves to allow you to attempt to belittle me and nothing more so please stop. Just because I use the common vernacular “You might be doing something” or “your ability” instead of saying “your character is able to do something” or “your characters ability” doesn’t invalidate my comments (and frankly it’s really petty).

Also my mention about eviscerate was to hopefully provide some perspective that thieves really aren’t being singled out amongst all other professions by calling for reappraisal of a skill that seems a bit overpowered in conjunction with several other factors like thieves extreme mobility/survivability.

And finally while I’m really not going to get dragged into a semantics debate with you I think most would agree that however or why ever thieves are able to run a full glass cannon build in WvW and remain viable is frankly a bit much. Through out this thread many many players have pointed some of the amazing things thieves (not the players playing them but the profession itself which is not to say in anyway I am referring to the person playing the profession and not the profession itself and it’s inherent abilities which are limited to the profession and not the player (happy?)) are able to do right now and all together it’s just a bit much, so all I’m mentioning is that some of this just needs balancing, your character shouldn’t be considered dead on sight if a thief sees you and you’re running anything but a fairly “tanky” build.

EDIT: Also once more, really… tone down the condescension please you’re laying it on really thick and it’s not appreciated. If I’m wrong well that’s fine that’s certainly a possibility however at no point do I (or anyone else) ever need you looking down your nose at anyone else trying to make them feel like kitten in a constructive conversation.

Just mirroring. I really don’t care, but generally respond to people with the same attitude they have.

More importantly, it isn’t just thief that can and do get away with going glass cannon in wvw. Every class does, or can. It doesn’t suit every class well, but it is an option in many situations that is of some degree of functionality.

A warrior for example, even full glass cannon, has like what… the equivalent of roughly 700 more vitality than a glass cannon thief. And equivalent of roughly 200 more toughness… too. So compared to a glass cannon thief, a glass cannon warrior is just a cannon.

Thief has base hp of 10,805. Look at this number, mull it over for a minute. What does the thief need to get to compensate for having so few HP? Avoidance? Higher damage… burst? What? He certainly doesn’t have more armor… less in fact, which compounds the small HP further. So, to compete, he needs to do some things very differently, he needs to deal more damage, because he can take less…. or he needs to avoid damage… or a little of both.

Anet went with the little of both strategy, and imo it works rather well. They mostly rolled them into the same mechanic, stealth. The thief can become untargetable, and do a bit of burst if positioned properly. Requires a bit of skillful play to make optimal use of, and can be countered by skillful play.

Maybe I am biased, because I have played a thief. That’s entirely possible, but I don’t think it is the case. I don’t even like playing the burst specs. If I play it, I use S/D for control, or P/D for attrition style play.

But either on my thief, or any other character… I have zero problems handling burst backstab thieves. They move in very, very predictable ways, and have very specific requirements to pull off their burst. And it is really… really easy to counter. People can call a well timed dodge luck all they want, until they are blue in the face… but when you do it just about every time, it isn’t luck… and if I can do it, anyone can. I’m good at theory crafting and number crunching, I’ve made some pretty interesting builds, that I’m good at. But actual game play? Mediocre at best.

My honest recommendation… if you have a problem fighting this spec… try it out yourself. Make a thief, go to the mists, play some sPvP matches. Spend some time learning it inside and out. Watch what other people are doing to counter you, and learn from it.

Silk.2813:

The fact that this is being defended is sad.

The fact that this is being attacked is sad.

bwillb.2165:

Silk.2813:

The fact that this is being defended is sad.

The fact that this is being attacked is sad.

Instant +1 for you

edit: not just for some counter evidence but also posting your stats at the side as well
this screenshot contains more info that any other screenshot in the this thread.

FrozenLuv.6017:

bwillb.2165:

Silk.2813:

The fact that this is being defended is sad.

The fact that this is being attacked is sad.

Instant +1 for you

edit: not just for some counter evidence but also posting your stats at the side as well
this screenshot contains more info that any other screenshot in the this thread.

Yup. completely base stats, no defense, no traits, no skills used. And that’s how hard it hit me. The necro pet was hitting me harder than backstab.

Silk.2813:

The screen shot was taken today my friend, you can claim it doesn’t happen all you want.
The fact that you say it is rigged shows the level of delusion we are dealing with.

You’re playing a necro here right? Or is this even your character? We need more information, really… did he have 25 stack of bloodlust and 25 stack of might and did you have a big ol stack of vulnerability from that ranger you were also fighting? O_o Because that adds up to you being pretty screwed, whether it was in 1 hit or several.

He may have also used the sig (probably did) and was there a spirit or banners or any other group buffs going on his side? O_o Again, there are ways for a whole host of things to add up together… but this isn’t a typical backstab, I’m sure we can all agree on that. The C&D and Mug damage are entirely too high as well, whatever situation led to this… it wasn’t typical.

I think it’s really important that the rendering problem gets fixed before the thief profession gets nerfed. Because if you downgrade the profession now, it might come out completely useless in pve first, where it is already too weak, and then later in pvp as well once the rendering problem is fixed.

I also really would not touch any repeatable skills such as backstab, but focus on lowering damage on mug for example, since nerfing skills with a long cooldown has a much more controllable effect.

If you downgrade short CD skills like backstab and CnD and Heartseeker significantly now, I’m afraid the profession will have several broken builds and become mostly useless. Going from overpowered to underpowered on one of the most-played professions will just cost the game more players.

It is the question if thieves will really still be so strong at all, once rendering is fixed. Maybe they don’t need any downgrades at all after that, so yeah I suggest to first fix rendering before possibly wrecking one of the most popular professions.

Thieves aren’t popular just because they’re so powerful, they’re also a lot of fun to play. I’m afraid if they get downgraded now, they will be useless when rendering gets fixed. I also don’t think things such as stealth-finishes should be removed, they give the game flavour. I don’t play a thief anymore now, but I would be sad if the option for me to play one gets removed in the future by overnerfing, just like my option to play ranger and elementalist was removed the same way.

bwillb.2165:

Rfreak.6591:

because it takes 0.25 to summon 3 clones, survive a moa morph and cast the shatters (which are evoidable by simply strafing into them) and do the flurry which sticks you in place right?

Who said it takes 0.25seconds? He gets one clone up, then gets hit with the insanely OP Moa (which is another mesmer skill, by the way). The moa ends at 0:24, he starts attacking again at 0:26, the playback slows down drastically to show what’s going on, and the target is downed at 0:30. Total time needed (not counting the time he was Moa’d since that would screw up anyone) to cause the burst that kerishan quoted: about 2-3 seconds.

Rfreak.6591:

do you actually want to compare a whole, avoidable, killable, hard to pull, setup to a simple auto-positioning-skill clik?

Oh, do mesmers have a skill that automatically positions them? The first part of your comparison was obviously describing the thief with a specific perfectly timed combo to perform, not the faceroll mesmer, but I don’t know what the second part could be…

and

bwillb.2165:

Rfreak.6591:

@bwillb

Did we ever mention backstab?

We are refering to thieves damage/effort in general, which are already enough to prove what we are discussing

This whole thread was about the looming backstab nerf…
What thief skill can come anywhere near that mesmer burst other than backstab?

Fortunately someone who still uses his brain to analize a reply/vid and doesn’t see only what he wants to see. I admire you.

Btw I agree with Kerishan, ofc.

Edit: Just noticed that.

ilJumperMT.4871:

I play shatter mesmer in tpvp.

Bursting in shatter mesmer is constant and has only 10 second cooldown. Using sigil of energy and dodge rolling to create clones you can spam more mind wrecks.

The video you posted does not even do the maximun damage. You can chain Mirror Images and Decoy to use Cry of Frustration during channel of Blurred Frenzy, after Mindwreck hits.

So… Just stop defending other classes (mesmer in this case) and pointing like crying kids ONLY to thieves.

Really? Just search on youtube “backstab thief” and you’ll see an huge amount of 20k+ bursts in sPvP/tPvP.
Here’s one I’ve randomly found using that query and looking for most recent videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvH9IA97bzw

You have watched this video? In this video a glass cannon thief doesn’t hit more than 6K/7K and you wrote is simple to find a thief that hit hard for 20k?
It is impossible for a thief land a backstab for 20K NOW. Only on bunnies.

Zsymon.8457:

I agree with some posters, I don’t think thief damage needs to be decreased that much, because you’ll make it impossible for thieves to pve that way due to their low survivability in pve.

The problem is that toughness just doesn’t reduce enough damage, toughness is too weak. If you reduce toughness diminishing returns and increase toughness protection, you can make better hybrid builds where every point of toughness matters. Less people would go full glass cannon because it’s not worth getting any toughness, more people would get say, 400 toughness or so without going full bunker, and then they wouldn’t get instagibbed anymore.

But right now getting toughness means almost nothing, a thief will still burn you down real fast just with auto attacks even.

My suggestion is, leave thief damage alone for now, nerfing their damage will just prevent them from being able to pve anymore, but significantly increase toughness efficiency. Then we can put in some knight armor pieces into our gear to prevent getting instagibbed. Full bunker builds will get stronger, but considering they don’t do much damage at all I don’t see any problem with that. I rather have a fight drag out over a long time against a bunker, than get instagibbed by a thief or melted downed by a mesmer.

This man knows what he’s talking about. I wholeheartedly agree and I hope the Devs take it into consideration.

Of course a change like this could cause a few snags in PvE.

Oh, you can do it now. Get a buddy to hop on a warrior, meet him in a sPvP match 1v1, have him let you kill him 5 times with a bloodlust sigil, have him go in with no armor on and no toughness whatsoever and then use frenzy while you do the backstab burst setup that uses sigils for max might stacks… you could probably get 20k easy.

You’re doing roughly triple the damage you’d get on a normal cloth glass cannon from him having on no armor while frenzied… so, yeah, any attack is going to do big numbers. But… while this proves absolutely nothing whatsoever, it is “possible” to hit a 20k backstab still… lol.

Come on how can anyone not think Thiefs (and Mesmers) need major balancing.

Warriors HB can actually be avoided and if you eat it you might die but when I do live past it I can still manage and drop the war or get away because you can SEE the kittening war. You never see the thief but for a second or two then he is gone and drops you a few seconds later if you are not already dead because steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

Thief is so godly powerful due to super steath in this game. I played stealth classes that actually had draw backs in DAoC, even WoW stun lock city rogue took a little skill.

I would say never has a class needed a nerf more then thief but Anet outdid themselves with the Mesmer.

Xom.9264:

You never see the thief but for a second or two

That’s a rendering issue, nothing to do with thieves

Xom.9264:

steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

This is misleading, thieves can only apply fear throw the Skull Fear steal skill, which can only be stolen from necros, therefore cannot be done on any other class

Please, do a little research before sprouting kitten

Disregard.6492:

Zsymon.8457:

I agree with some posters, I don’t think thief damage needs to be decreased that much, because you’ll make it impossible for thieves to pve that way due to their low survivability in pve.

The problem is that toughness just doesn’t reduce enough damage, toughness is too weak. If you reduce toughness diminishing returns and increase toughness protection, you can make better hybrid builds where every point of toughness matters. Less people would go full glass cannon because it’s not worth getting any toughness, more people would get say, 400 toughness or so without going full bunker, and then they wouldn’t get instagibbed anymore.

But right now getting toughness means almost nothing, a thief will still burn you down real fast just with auto attacks even.

My suggestion is, leave thief damage alone for now, nerfing their damage will just prevent them from being able to pve anymore, but significantly increase toughness efficiency. Then we can put in some knight armor pieces into our gear to prevent getting instagibbed. Full bunker builds will get stronger, but considering they don’t do much damage at all I don’t see any problem with that. I rather have a fight drag out over a long time against a bunker, than get instagibbed by a thief or melted downed by a mesmer.

This man knows what he’s talking about. I wholeheartedly agree and I hope the Devs take it into consideration.

Of course a change like this could cause a few snags in PvE.

Except there really isn’t diminishing returns on toughness… so the whole premise is faulty. But diminishing return would suggest that getting only some toughness was the smart plan, while he suggests that DR is what is preventing people from getting just some toughness… It is self contradictory. The whole post is confused and lacking a clear direction, other than roughly “I think toughness should do more”.

That is a perfectly valid opinion, but it isn’t being supported by any logical argument here.

Xom: You’re confusing the bug of rendering issues with balance issues. They are separate things. Working as intended, the thief is fine. With the rendering issue, it is not.

FrozenLuv.6017:

Xom.9264:

You never see the thief but for a second or two

That’s a rendering issue, nothing to do with thieves

Xom.9264:

steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

This is misleading, thieves can only apply fear throw the Skull Fear steal skill, which can only be stolen from necros, therefore cannot be done on any other class

Please, do a little research before sprouting kitten

Well it can technically be used against other classes, but does definitely require a necro to steal from. And necros aren’t exactly common… 4 out of 5 steals will be whirlwind.

bwillb.2165:

FrozenLuv.6017:

Xom.9264:

You never see the thief but for a second or two

That’s a rendering issue, nothing to do with thieves

Xom.9264:

steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

This is misleading, thieves can only apply fear throw the Skull Fear steal skill, which can only be stolen from necros, therefore cannot be done on any other class

Please, do a little research before sprouting kitten

Well it can technically be used against other classes, but does definitely require a necro to steal from. And necros aren’t exactly common… 4 out of 5 steals will be whirlwind.

Yea, but that would require you to pop the fear, then the bs combo which is very inefficient since… hmmm does make the positioning easier though, since they would have their back towards you, hmmm, interesting….

In spvp noone dies from backstab thief. Even hasted pistol whip is easier to land on normal people than backstab.
In wvw glass cannon thief dies the moment he steals to target because of aoe.

Perhaps some of the people are not playing this game

Webley.1295:

[cut]
-You gain 3 initive (usually) refilling the ini lost when casting C&D which then allows another 10% damage for having above 6 ini when traited
[cut]

This is not true. The C&D’s initiative cost is spent in the moment the skill hits, not when you start the animation.
So the +3 initiative will be wasted.

Kerishan.8460:

Really? Just search on youtube “backstab thief” and you’ll see an huge amount of 20k+ bursts in sPvP/tPvP.
Here’s one I’ve randomly found using that query and looking for most recent videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvH9IA97bzw

You have watched this video? In this video a glass cannon thief doesn’t hit more than 6K/7K and you wrote is simple to find a thief that hit hard for 20k?
It is impossible for a thief land a backstab for 20K NOW. Only on bunnies.

Did I say 20k backstab? I said 20k bursts, which is the combo of CnD+Mug+Backstab.

FrozenLuv.6017:

Xom.9264:

steal +3 seconds of fear GG.

This is misleading, thieves can only apply fear throw the Skull Fear steal skill, which can only be stolen from necros, therefore cannot be done on any other class

Please, do a little research before sprouting kitten

So, according to your reasoning, if I play a Necro I better run away or don’t play sPvP/tPvP at all if I see a thief coming in order to save all my team’s kitten
3 seconds are more, more than enough to burst down a Necro for a Thief.
But the saddest thing is that originally Fear was presented as a Necromancer’s exclusive. Ah, the irony.

20k burst? Sorry Warrior can do more then 20k damage in 1 skill let alone burst.

Also Mesmer does more then 20k burst with shatter build

As a Thief I honestly think they NEED to nerf some things. Not damage (If they can increase it it would be better). They need to nerf stealth. I don’t know why a thief can stealth an infinate times during a battle (especially against a whole group) and have the ability to long stealth away without much worry.

I honestly think they need to take a note from DAoC ( I wont write it out in case the forum moderator doesn’t want it shown here). Their infiltrator could stealth as long as he wanted initially, but at a reduction of speed (which would make sense, a person in stealth should not be able to run full speed, that doesn’t make sense). A stealthed thief should have the ability to sneak around groups for as long as he/she needed at this reduced speed, and be able to perform a back stab to nearly 1 shot light armor wearers. It’s strategy, you send in the assassins to take out the healers and casters (people who avoid head on combat). Once you’re out of stealth you should not be able to go full on stealth again in the middle of combat. You can have skills that put on temporary stealth for 1-3 seconds, but it should have a cool down as well. I honestly think a thief should be able to cause more disruption as well, laying spikes and poison traps of some sort and also have the ability to go into enemy keeps, because honestly, that’s what thieves do. They break into places.

Long story short, a thief should be able to stealth as much as he wants, but not during combat. A thief should be able to do massive amounts of damage with a successful crit back stab, but at the risk of losing stealth for a period of time, becoming completely exposed. And a thief should be able to sneak into keeps and cause disruptions and sabotage if need be.

Thieves should be an in and out class that disrupts more than it fights, and not have the ability to go haywire against 3-4 people at once with little risk to themselves.

How thieves are fighting in WvW right now is actually disappointing and cheap to me, and I honestly am disliking my own class for this.

In WvW a thief hit me for 19k damage while stealthed which hit killed my mesmer. My mesmer is also a glass cannon build, but my biggest damage output is 4k. I Am lv 80 full exotics.

Warriors never did that to me, nor rangers, elementalists or necros. Just thieves.

Could you explain me in which way is the excuse “cannon glass build” a good argument for that situation?

Mesmers can easily deal 20k burst by shattering 4 clones.
Warriors can easily 22k burst from 1200 range with rifle, then bull+HB you for another 20k.

Yet everyone is onto Thieves.

yet you see the 3 clones ( wish mesmer really had 4 clones) coming your way , you see warrior coming your way with bull , but you never see a thief coming your way with a 20k hit cause they are stealthed.
oh and btw a mesmer shatter build can’t deal 20k damage burst.

Sabin.4590:

yet you see the 3 clones ( wish mesmer really had 4 clones) coming your way , you see warrior coming your way with bull , but you never see a thief coming your way with a 20k hit cause they are stealthed.
oh and btw a mesmer shatter build can’t deal 20k damage burst.

You made me laugh buddy

Thief is hardly stealthed when coming to perform this combo, because he would receive “revealed” debuff right after the Steal+C&D, and you know what that means? NO BACKSTAB, no big burst, no kill, only fatal mistake and inevitable death to the Thief. I hope that makes this issue quite clear, thanks

But the saddest thing is that originally Fear was presented as a Necromancer’s exclusive. Ah, the irony.

And stealth was presented as a Thief exclusive before they announced mesmers. We all get to share a little bit.

Sabin.4590:

In WvW a thief hit me for 19k damage while stealthed which hit killed my mesmer. My mesmer is also a glass cannon build, but my biggest damage output is 4k. I Am lv 80 full exotics.

Warriors never did that to me, nor rangers, elementalists or necros. Just thieves.

Could you explain me in which way is the excuse “cannon glass build” a good argument for that situation?

in sPvP a thief hit me for a little over 1k with backstab. That’s One Thousand Damage. While I was naked. Without any traits spent or anything. And there was a video yesterday of a mesmer doing like 20k burst. Now what?

I don’t know how people can compare the thieves running up to you invisible throwing out enough damage in seconds to kill most non bunker builds and then running off invisible (with the added possibility of the rendering issue keeping him invisible all the time) to a Mesmer who has to cast all of his clones and then send them running towards you to shatter in one of the most telegraphed attacks in the game all the while hoping that you don’t kill them with a single aoe or cleave.

then can someone explain to me how i was 1 hit killed by a thief without seeing him coming? hacker?

Levetty.1279:

I don’t know how people can compare the thieves running up to you invisible throwing out enough damage in seconds to kill most non bunker builds and then running off invisible (with the added possibility of the rendering issue keeping him invisible all the time) to a Mesmer who has to cast all of his clones and then send them running towards you to shatter in one of the most telegraphed attacks in the game all the while hoping that you don’t kill them with a single aoe or cleave.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mass_Invisibility
This invalidates all “but thieves can stealth!” arguments.

Sabin.4590:

then can someone explain to me how i was 1 hit killed by a thief without seeing him coming? hacker?

not hacker, bug.

Funny seeing all these newbie thieves saying that warriors are as OP as they are. Warriors can’t instantly teleport to their target and they aren’t invisible. You see them coming which makes a world of difference when you pvp.

Is this a concept you are too god kitten stupid to understand or something?

The thief in GW2 is the single most overpowered class in any MMO ever. I can make a thief, enter PvP at level one and I will completely destroy 90% of my opponents without knowing anything about the class except for a few combos that I picked up from youtube. And of course, I’ve done exactly that. The class is so OP that you’d have to be a complete moron not to see how broken it is.

A big problem with thieves in MMOs has always been the thief community in general. People who play them are complete kitten for some reason and devs don’t want to upset them too much. That’s why we’ve seen these people in previous MMOs defending thieves oneshotting other classes while permastealthed with things like “Well we aren’t so good in PvE” or “Well we don’t have any AEs”. At least in GW2 it is so god kitten obvious how broken the class is that since thieves in this game have no weaknesses what so ever that all they can resort to is “L2P” or “What about the warrior?” when they are killing people faster than any human being, apart from fictitious comic book heros, can react to. While invisible!

bwillb.2165:

But the saddest thing is that originally Fear was presented as a Necromancer’s exclusive. Ah, the irony.

And stealth was presented as a Thief exclusive before they announced mesmers. We all get to share a little bit.

True. But at least, the mechanic that should have been an exclusive of your profession doesn’t play as an hard counter against you.
Necromancers have all 1s fears, the only 2s fear is the downed skill. Thieves, stealing from Necromancers, have 3s fear.

At least thieves’ stealth is the best around.

bwillb.2165:

Sabin.4590:

In WvW a thief hit me for 19k damage while stealthed which hit killed my mesmer. My mesmer is also a glass cannon build, but my biggest damage output is 4k. I Am lv 80 full exotics.

Warriors never did that to me, nor rangers, elementalists or necros. Just thieves.

Could you explain me in which way is the excuse “cannon glass build” a good argument for that situation?

in sPvP a thief hit me for a little over 1k with backstab. That’s One Thousand Damage. While I was naked. Without any traits spent or anything. And there was a video yesterday of a mesmer doing like 20k burst. Now what?

It is true, a thief can hit for 1k of backstab. With no traits, no gear and almost no weapon. Sad thing is that no thief runs with those things.

By the way, there is something wrong in that video or some sort of bug abusing. A mesmer can mantain up to 3 illusions, no more.

Rfreak.6591:

Guys please just stop posting I’d even suggest to close the topic because no matter what the post, people won’t read’em and thieves fanboys simply won’t agree with anything we have to say. It’s clear they ARE trolling I mean c’mon how COULD you compare thieves’ burst to mesmer’s? I say they never played’em, either any build besides that one.

Check previous posts, you WILL be ignored no matter what, thus posting makes no difference.

Also check closely thieves fan answers *cough*bwillb*cough*, when I say “bugs come first” they say: “YES I agree with you, so let us keep the insta-kill build and we are happy while they fix bugs for the next months” (please notice how many bugs thieves got besides the so called rendering bug, which isn’t bound to happen on every1 as it may be caused by simple latency issues OR graphic cards, so not exactly every1, now compare all those “bugs” to what engineer has)

Such an obvious trolling…

No, they aren’t trolling. They just are that stupid. No matter what game they basically act like playing this class entitle them to be OP. For years in DAoC the assassin community there claimed they should be able to kill all classes with ease in PvP just for the fact of being “assassins”. The replies would go “We are called assassins which means we should assassinate people”. I’m really not joking. They are this stupid in every MMO. GW2 is not different. It’s always the same kind of morons who play thief classes.

Of course they aren’t going to listen to anyone. No rational person would try to reason with these people anyway. But devs have the right to know what’s up if they accidently stumble upon this cesspool of a forum. The more people speak up the faster the class will be fixed. Eventually it will be fixed.

It is true, a thief can hit for 1k of backstab. With no traits, no gear and almost no weapon. Sad thing is that no thief runs with those things.

I, the target, was naked. The thief that killed me was not. I don’t know what kind of traits he was running, but he was definitely fully geared (probably in the default gear when you first enter pvp). It was a fringe case, to be sure, but so are the massive numbers people have been showing.

Rfreak.6591:

Also check closely thieves fan answers *cough*bwillb*cough*, when I say “bugs come first” they say: “YES I agree with you, so let us keep the insta-kill build and we are happy while they fix bugs for the next months”

You said bugs have to come before buffs to our weak specs. I agreed, and said bugs should also come before nerfs to our strong specs. How the kitten is that trolling? Oh sorry, I forgot, you’re part of the covenant of 15 people who want thieves to be completely useless. You want to nerf our one or two good specs into the ground and put off buffing our bad specs permanently. Get the kitten out off here. not even going to bother with the rest of your post because it’s all trash.

bwillb.2165:

It is true, a thief can hit for 1k of backstab. With no traits, no gear and almost no weapon. Sad thing is that no thief runs with those things.

I, the target, was naked. The thief that killed me was not. I don’t know what kind of traits he was running, but he was definitely fully geared (probably in the default gear when you first enter pvp). It was a fringe case, to be sure, but so are the massive numbers people have been showing.

Let’s talk about average case then.
8k backstab, still, is too high.
Talking about average about a skill which, when traited, has 100% chance to crit, is not so useful.

Talking about average about a skill which, when traited, has 100% chance to crit, is not so useful.

100% chance to crit isn’t going to turn something that can hit as low as 1600 damage into 18k damage. Sorry, but even thieves can’t stack crit damage that high. Average hit, on a crit, is about 8-9k, well within the range that most other classes can enjoy causing. Necro is really the only class that can’t reliably burst in that range.
Besides this, I thought the consensus among thief-haters was that all of these terrible evil backstab thieves took Executioner? You can’t have Executioner AND Hidden Killer.

Dear community, dear ArenaNet,

this is a day that comes in every mmo. Skilled people meet unskilled people. The thing is: you can hardly measure skill without comparing objective data.

So all this reading here is very subjective stuff.
Truth is, the are builds that focus on damage and lack survivability. Hand this glass build to a more skilled hunter and the less skilled becomes easy prey.

My hope is:
Before you nerf anything dear devs: Analyse and try to view these issues from multiple angles. Simulate different builds. Simulate counterbuilds.
Because if you don’t, this discussion will never slow down. It will just go on and on. Because every morning a paper and a scissor will face each other and the paperbuild will complain that he breathed the earth so quickly that day… so unfair…

I don’t say I can make an objective statement on this issue. I don’t know how good a player I am. But I do know that my fun high damage build only works nice against a certain range of players (meant skill and build) and works bad on some to many others.

cheers

Because every morning a paper and a scissor will face each other and the paperbuild will complain that he breathed the earth so quickly that day… so unfair…

That about covers it. It quickly became a meme in MMO circles: “Nerf paper. Scissors is fine. -Signed, Rock.”. Of course in this case it’s mostly warriors and mesmers calling for thief nerfs, in which case it’s closer to rock asking for a nerf to scissors. Those two, and also guardians and some specs of engineer, can completely steamroll thieves.

@ Ravnodaus.5130:

Thief has base hp of 10,805. Look at this number, mull it over for a minute. What does the thief need to get to compensate for having so few HP? Avoidance? Higher damage… burst? What? He certainly doesn’t have more armor… less in fact, which compounds the small HP further. So, to compete, he needs to do some things very differently, he needs to deal more damage, because he can take less…. or he needs to avoid damage… or a little of both.

you should add we don’t have any sort of block either.

But backstab doesn’t hit for 4 or 5k before all of those bonuses. WIthout runes or traits or amulet, with exotic daggers, it does about 975 to 1025 against light armor. About 2k if you include the amulet stats.

its the buffs that should be nerfed ?

Jinks.2057:

You are seriously complaining about thieves in sPvP and tPvP.

Stop.

No one that plays higher tiers have any problems in dealing w/ glass cannon thieves. The people that are having problems are people running around WvW…..Anet doesn’t balance on WvW, but yet you horrible players keep complaining.

Stop.

So, your post really helps the topic, is full of great reasoning and proofs in support of what you say that I can’t disagree.

Please, next time you want to defend your broken class, at least try to make a real argument and not only stupid statements coming from your dubious competitive PvP experience.

DanH.5879:

its the buffs that should be nerfed ?

With +160% damage from all of the bonuses he listed, thats about 5200 average damage. AFTER every bonus. 5200. What would make it do 10k? A warrior or engiener with fenzy.

bwillb.2165:

But backstab doesn’t hit for 4 or 5k before all of those bonuses. WIthout runes or traits or amulet, with exotic daggers, it does about 975 to 1025 against light armor. About 2k if you include the amulet stats.

You are not considering the power bonus damage, the weapon base damage and the Might stacking damage.
Backstab can easily hits clean at 4-5k damage.
If it is like you said, you shouldn’t see any backstab which hits more than 5k damage about and you know that it is unreal.
The only fact that there are screenshots of backstab hitting for 14k+ damage in sPvP, also if you remove the 35% damage bonus due to the nerf, the damage should be around 10-12k, which means that backstab hits way more than 2k base damage.

sorrow.2364:

bwillb.2165:

But backstab doesn’t hit for 4 or 5k before all of those bonuses. WIthout runes or traits or amulet, with exotic daggers, it does about 975 to 1025 against light armor. About 2k if you include the amulet stats.

You are not considering the power bonus damage, the weapon base damage and the Might stacking damage.
Backstab can easily hits clean at 4-5k damage.
If it is like you said, you shouldn’t see any backstab which hits more than 5k damage about and you know that it is unreal.

The 2k number includes the power stats that come from the amulet. Runes and might stacks are included in your 160% bonuses calculation, no? If not factor them in. factor the added % bonus damage on top of that 2k.

bwillb.2165:

sorrow.2364:

bwillb.2165:

But backstab doesn’t hit for 4 or 5k before all of those bonuses. WIthout runes or traits or amulet, with exotic daggers, it does about 975 to 1025 against light armor. About 2k if you include the amulet stats.

You are not considering the power bonus damage, the weapon base damage and the Might stacking damage.
Backstab can easily hits clean at 4-5k damage.
If it is like you said, you shouldn’t see any backstab which hits more than 5k damage about and you know that it is unreal.

The 2k number includes the power stats that come from the amulet. Runes and might stacks are included in your 160% bonuses calculation, no?

No, they aren’t
160% is only from damage stacking bonuses, which boost the base damage which is determined by Power, weapon damage and might stacks.
It is just math, you can’t argue against math, you are losing your time.

sorrow.2364:

bwillb.2165:

sorrow.2364:

bwillb.2165:

But backstab doesn’t hit for 4 or 5k before all of those bonuses. WIthout runes or traits or amulet, with exotic daggers, it does about 975 to 1025 against light armor. About 2k if you include the amulet stats.

You are not considering the power bonus damage, the weapon base damage and the Might stacking damage.
Backstab can easily hits clean at 4-5k damage.
If it is like you said, you shouldn’t see any backstab which hits more than 5k damage about and you know that it is unreal.

The 2k number includes the power stats that come from the amulet. Runes and might stacks are included in your 160% bonuses calculation, no?

No, they aren’t
160% is only from damage stacking bonuses.
It is just math, you can’t argue against math, you are losing your time.

I’m not arguing against math. I’ve seen plenty of math that proved it wasn’t as strong as people claim in the majority of situations. What I had a discrepancy with was your starting value. I’m happy to discuss the situation using math. get me a new number for total damage bonus % that includes your choice of runes and a realistic sustainable stack of might, and we can go from there.

by the way while you’re getting the numbers I did some testing with a full glass cannon build with every possible self-sustainable bonus. about 8k damage on light targets. A bit more than the 5k using your original math, but a far cry from the 13k you quoted. So it’ll be interesting to see how that stacks up with the math.

Oh and including mug and CnD, that was about 12k total burst, with two weapon skills, two utility skills, and a F1 class specialty, against a stationary target. 6 initiative and three cooldowns to wait out. I’d include a 4th cooldown for a devourer or basilisk venom against a real target. Not too bad… Not even enough to kill myself if I were facing my shadow, though

As you want dude.

You realize that all the traits I listed can be used together.
Plus the Runes of Fury which gives you a 10% boost on critical damage.
Base damage bonus on Crit is +50%, the other 50% is given by Critical Strikes (30%) and Berserker Amulet (+20%).

So the total of +160% damage boost on the base damage isn’t unreal.

You have seen many screenshots of people getting critted for 14k damage from backstab. Screenshots can’t be considered false, that’s obvious. But let’s think evil and consider that those screenshots are taken before the Assassin’s Signet nerf.
This means that before the nerf the total damage boost possible was +195% (160% + 35% of the damage boost removed) and, assuming that those thieves were running on this damage boost.

So, 14k damage is went out from this formula:

14k = x + x*1.92

Where “x” is our base damage.

Doing some algebraic transformation, we’ll end up that the base damage is:

x = 14k / (1+1.95) = 14k/2.95 = 4745 damage around

This proves that the base damage of backstab is AT LEAST almost 5k damage.
All this assuming, obviously, that the thief was running with the highest damage boost possible, was on full initiative and that the screenshot was taken pre-nerf. If one of those conditions aren’t true, the base damage is even higher.

That doesn’t prove anything. That’s not a good source of information. Those 14k secreenshots did not include context. You don’t know what 3rd party buffs or debuffs either side had, you don’t know if there was a frenzy involved, etc. a quick 10 stack of vulnerability from a ranger and a warrior in frenzy could likely get it up to 20k damage, but that doesn’t mean that to find the base damage we take 20k damage minus the bonuses we can personally add.