Guild Wars 2

I can only feel pity for them, not because of the recent changes to the class mechanics, but rather the concept at which they were first created. At first I used to hate them, then I started playing the class to learn it and realized that while OP, they are a victim of their own strenghts.

A class created to be evasive, hard to pin down, but that offered some good counter mechanics and trade offs that could be fun for the opponent to beat. They are actually suffering from a subset of skills (which sadly attracts very unskilled set of players for the stupidly low skill ceiling) and make them take the easy and unfun way out by abusing two mechanics that are pulling the thief down; Stealth and Backstab.

I have seen well played thieves that dont rely on neither of these mechanics to be effective or annoying. They use teleports, poison, calculated skills, skillful use of teleports, tactical stealths. This thieves are fun to play agaisnt, they have skills which are difficult and slightly frustrating to fight agaisnt, but beating them feel rewarding because you have to outplay them, they have to make decisions, you are constantly playing whack-a-mole but you can kind of expect where it will pop, with the twist that the mole can fight back.

The problem arises when the thief has D/D and can burst you for 8-10k hp without absolutely no counter. Aegis wont block the damage nor reveal them, blocks wont work either. Basically backstab is a guaranteed 10k burst that if you are an ele (12k hp) or a guardian (12k hp too) you will most likely die to it if you arent at full health, or the HS following the BS will kill you for sure. There is absolutely no counterplay to that, not even dodges can save you because you cant dodge what you cant see.

Thats what needs to go away, no class should have a 10k nuke without any counterplay. The other issue is permastealth and how “newbs” rely too much on it to survive. Every now and then you see these “new players with low skill” threads popping up everytime their “sacred” completely balanced and full of fun counterplay mechanics is touched. We had them first when revealed was applied. Was the class uesless? no. Then when the duratio was increase? were thieves useless? No, once again. Now the rangers pet apply them. Will it be useless? I bet no, because unlike most of the population, not everyone plays ranger, in fact I dont play ranger, and if I were to play ranger I wouldnt go for beastmaster.

Point is, for most people the problem of lowly skilled thieves who rely too much on the annoying stealth mechanic and OP uncounterable backstab the QQ will never stop.

Once we rework backstab to have a maximun %hp cap and have a long internal CD, and stealth to be a skill of tactical use rather than just spam it for everything, then we will have a more balanced class. The class should be about timed dodges, timed teleports, timed blinds, timed skills, timed poisons, not spam 1222161228112, heck most people dont even get past the first set of 2s.

just dodge the CnD… its not that hard… there is tons of counterplay. Also, backstab doesnt hit even the glassiest class for 10k. a warrior or guardian its about 4-5k

Demonts.4593:

just dodge the CnD… its not that hard… there is tons of counterplay. Also, backstab doesnt hit even the glassiest class for 10k. a warrior or guardian its about 4-5k

hmm, somehow I get the reassuring feeling you didnt bother to read, yep, you didnt. This isnt about how to play against said specc.

Also, if 4k is the maximun amount you can get on a guardian you might want to reconsider your specc, I have consistently hit hit guardians for over 6-7k and when they go full squishy 8k. Cloth I usually hit 8-9k depending on their stats and the amount of health they have.

Its because in wvw they abuse ascended and food to stack stats as well bloodlust from regular mobs. So a thief with 25 stacks of str from stealth + bloodlust + kitten signet + foods can produce a 10k crit. Its sad tbh that people go out in wvw and waste so much time and effort just to do this a couple of times because the downtime between trolls is huge. I cant comprehend how pleasing it can be so people invest so much time and gold to do this.

Its also very sad because anyone who doesnt play thief for himself gets the wrong idea bout the class. Same as running pve dungeons with thieves that dont have so much expirience in the class. Since stealth has very little use in dungeons the skill cap for thief is considerably higher than in wvw.

Opinions differ. Those “true thieves” you are talking about are about to be nerfed, because they’re hated more than perma stealth thieves now.

I said 4-5k in spvp. Not the zer-fest u call WvW. A bunker guard in spvp will not be hit for more than 4-5k

Here is the screen shot, this is with PVT amulets rest zerker,

also if u see a thief stealth on u… just RUN AWAY on dodge. they only have stealth for about 3 seconds and probably cant catch u

Demonts.4593:

also if u see a thief stealth on u… just RUN AWAY on dodge. they only have stealth for about 3 seconds and probably cant catch u

O_o What are you talking about? I never have any issues catching up to anyone, i got plenty of gap closers, movement speed on stealth and also dont do the obvious stealth in front of them thing (thats low skills, once again…lol).

Why do you keep treating me like I was fighting a thief? I have been exposing everything from a thief point of view, which is what I have been playing lately, and i have to agree with many true thief players that the class attracts too many unskilled players which abuse of OP mechanics which in turn nerf the mechanics that make the thieves fun to play agaisnt and as into crap

Fortus.6175:

The problem arises when the thief has D/D and can burst you for 8-10k hp without absolutely no counter. Aegis wont block the damage nor reveal them, blocks wont work either. Basically backstab is a guaranteed 10k burst that if you are an ele (12k hp) or a guardian (12k hp too)

I am going to say a couple of things here. I am going to try to keep this short and very civil.

DD has been the hardest hit build for thieves over the last ten months. DD burst thieves have seen some of the hardest (but in many cases appropriate) nerfs so far in the game maybe save engineer. Many of those players migrated the D/P as the meta shifted that way and to S/D as it was popularized and buffed. DD is actually one of the lesser played thief specs now a days. And they guys who still get those numbers are truly glass. They aren’t critting mugs anymore and the classes around them have literally been buffed in many cases. The people you see playing glass DD now a days are actually some of the better players. Many of them have stuck with builds that are already outdated and out played by the common builds you will see now a days.

You are complaining about a bygone build that doesn’t have endless evades that will not rip your boons, that does not have unstoppable stealth. It is the easiest build to counter play among all thief builds. It is not S/D where you have your dodge, S/P with blinds and an evade state, it is no P/D which can build tanky and kite forever, it is not D/P with blind and stealth that can barely be stopped. It is pure utilitarian DPS with 2 skills that are almost useless. Losing to this build is the equivalent of getting out played by the most kitten thief build there is now.

I not telling you this with anger but after watching the last 10 months even advocating for nerfs to thief burst myself with my first main being a thief I find these complaints ridiculous and short sighted. I am not going to call you a noob or tell you learn to play but looking at the big picture I am actually surprised DD hasn’t been buffed yet.

Thanks for reading.

I just have to agree with TheGuy, I’m playing D/D now since over 12 months. In the beginning it was OP, no questions. With reveal it got harder, but people werew still whining, so our dmg was decreased. I’m playing in a WvW guild, so I’m playing thief in zergs, means I am not zerker (tbh it is too weak in my view).
And yes 90% of the time, I don’t have problems with killing people. But remember I’m playing thief since 12 months, so I know when to hit, when to dodge and when to stealth.
But if I meet another good player, it gets really hard. A warrior can block you many times, can stun you, and so on. They don’t need a counter to stealth, because they won’t even let you stealth with CnD and if you stealth with another skill. They just get a block for those 3s. So what are you going to do know? D/D relies on stealth.

I’m only playing D/D because my mindset is, that a thief has to play with 2 daggers and because i’m used to it.
And about the gc thieves, they are good for trolling and roaming (and gvgs, which don’t really exist)
We will see, if the next patch will make stealth useless, thieves maybe need to drop D/D. But I don’t think so, this ranger skill seems rather senseless

OMG
PLEASE NERF THIEVES MOAR KTHNX BYE

Even though I main a thief, I’ve lost all hopes for being buffed, or being left unnerfed every patch…. I kind of want to see how far they will break the class and and make it completely worthless before the nerfs and requests for nerfs stop…. (probably if they take the class out of the game, or make every attack an auto attack!)

I don’t see the upcoming changes as nerfs. I see them as buffs. If you relied less on stealth, you’d understand.

Another noob is whining.

Quit making up numbers and L2P. You posted the same crap a few months ago but with “guaranteed 6-8k backstabz!!!11” and now you’ve increased that made up range to 8-10k. Will it be 10-12k next time?

ya those numberes were all made up lol. or its just flat out best case scenario for thieves. Not everything crits and more importantly most backstabs hit for about 6k not 10k lol. mesmers, eles and warriors can burst for the same or more. Every other class can do the same damage with condis too. So dont complain. Its just that thieves are useless any other way so we dont have the luxury of not being a glass cannon.

I think OP has only played GC, because a better balanced thief who doesn’t go GC will have much more interesting battles than “1222161228112”. And every class has a counter to backstab I would say them but the fun is only in finding out for yourself. The problem isn’t in us true thieves, its the new thieves that are only the class since they got three hit by one and decided to try one out for themselves and make everyone else rage. I personally like prolonged fights since it feels rewarding killing a very tough opponent who actually stood a fair chance.

Wow, TheGuy and Surferboy really said all there is that needs to be said. I stuck with D/D because I think D/P makes you look like a ****, and nowadays, it’s really hard to take down a good player unless you surprise them first. Most people will not let you hit them with CnD, and you only get to miss twice before you have 0 initiative. You want to gap close with heartseeker? Sure…but that leaves you with just 1 CnD, and if you miss, you’re more or less screwed. On top of that, it’s much harder to stealth away since you have to hit something with CnD, unlike D/P.

“This thieves are fun to play agaisnt”
Hi, I’m one of them, I use a D/D evading build, and my build is broken as kitten, you know why this thieves are fun to play against? Because we are thieves and we still are difficult to catch, but we does no damage compaired to others normall and condition builds.

“Beating them feel rewarding” NO! It’s just because those thief like to play as other classes to not be OP.
Just let this class need skill to be played, I’m sick to see some noobhief fight outnumber ed on 1vs3/4 just making a combo and backstab. Because yeah, they think are pro doing combos. My grandma too know those…

PS: Thief in D/D and GC, Can 20k lights, 18k medium and 16k heavy…………
That’s kitten how noobs can win playing thief, I play Thief since day one, I’ve just explained this OP build to one of my guildmates (350 Achievement points),
and we fought in sPvP yeah, he powned me many times, because of OPNESS.
Unskilled players play backstab.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: And D/D Backstab build does not need more skill than D/P.

Excalibur.9748:

Opinions differ. Those “true thieves” you are talking about…

There are no “true thieves”. I’m merely a sylvari between jobs at the moment. Thief is such a harsh word. I’m just good at lost-n-found. The finding bit, really.

TheGuy.3568:

I am going to say a couple of things here. I am going to try to keep this short and very civil.

DD has been the hardest hit build for thieves over the last ten months. DD burst thieves have seen some of the hardest (but in many cases appropriate) nerfs so far in the game maybe save engineer. Many of those players migrated the D/P as the meta shifted that way and to S/D as it was popularized and buffed. DD is actually one of the lesser played thief specs now a days. And they guys who still get those numbers are truly glass. They aren’t critting mugs anymore and the classes around them have literally been buffed in many cases. The people you see playing glass DD now a days are actually some of the better players. Many of them have stuck with builds that are already outdated and out played by the common builds you will see now a days.

You are complaining about a bygone build that doesn’t have endless evades that will not rip your boons, that does not have unstoppable stealth. It is the easiest build to counter play among all thief builds. It is not S/D where you have your dodge, S/P with blinds and an evade state, it is no P/D which can build tanky and kite forever, it is not D/P with blind and stealth that can barely be stopped. It is pure utilitarian DPS with 2 skills that are almost useless. Losing to this build is the equivalent of getting out played by the most kitten thief build there is now.

I not telling you this with anger but after watching the last 10 months even advocating for nerfs to thief burst myself with my first main being a thief I find these complaints ridiculous and short sighted. I am not going to call you a noob or tell you learn to play but looking at the big picture I am actually surprised DD hasn’t been buffed yet.

Thanks for reading.

I believe you may have actually made an argument for the prosecution here =)

Backstab burst is too high, yet is the only reason that weapon set is viable. D/D is a disjointed set from either side of the isle (condi or power builds). The reason it still gets played is because backstab is so easy to use with the potential for incredible burst.

If the weapon set actually had some usable utility it would not need the off the charts burst.

I am not talking about dueling here btw – where I agree this set can be really easy to see coming and take appropriate measures to protect yourself. This is more like you are engaged in a battle and then bammo deadsteak.

Fortus.6175:

I can only feel pity for them, not because of the recent changes to the class mechanics, but rather the concept at which they were first created. At first I used to hate them, then I started playing the class to learn it and realized that while OP, they are a victim of their own strenghts.

A class created to be evasive, hard to pin down, but that offered some good counter mechanics and trade offs that could be fun for the opponent to beat. They are actually suffering from a subset of skills (which sadly attracts very unskilled set of players for the stupidly low skill ceiling) and make them take the easy and unfun way out by abusing two mechanics that are pulling the thief down; Stealth and Backstab.

I have seen well played thieves that dont rely on neither of these mechanics to be effective or annoying. They use teleports, poison, calculated skills, skillful use of teleports, tactical stealths. This thieves are fun to play agaisnt, they have skills which are difficult and slightly frustrating to fight agaisnt, but beating them feel rewarding because you have to outplay them, they have to make decisions, you are constantly playing whack-a-mole but you can kind of expect where it will pop, with the twist that the mole can fight back.

The problem arises when the thief has D/D and can burst you for 8-10k hp without absolutely no counter. Aegis wont block the damage nor reveal them, blocks wont work either. Basically backstab is a guaranteed 10k burst that if you are an ele (12k hp) or a guardian (12k hp too) you will most likely die to it if you arent at full health, or the HS following the BS will kill you for sure. There is absolutely no counterplay to that, not even dodges can save you because you cant dodge what you cant see.

Thats what needs to go away, no class should have a 10k nuke without any counterplay. The other issue is permastealth and how “newbs” rely too much on it to survive. Every now and then you see these “new players with low skill” threads popping up everytime their “sacred” completely balanced and full of fun counterplay mechanics is touched. We had them first when revealed was applied. Was the class uesless? no. Then when the duratio was increase? were thieves useless? No, once again. Now the rangers pet apply them. Will it be useless? I bet no, because unlike most of the population, not everyone plays ranger, in fact I dont play ranger, and if I were to play ranger I wouldnt go for beastmaster.

Point is, for most people the problem of lowly skilled thieves who rely too much on the annoying stealth mechanic and OP uncounterable backstab the QQ will never stop.

Once we rework backstab to have a maximun %hp cap and have a long internal CD, and stealth to be a skill of tactical use rather than just spam it for everything, then we will have a more balanced class. The class should be about timed dodges, timed teleports, timed blinds, timed skills, timed poisons, not spam 1222161228112, heck most people dont even get past the first set of 2s.

The title of this post irritates me… there’s no such thing as a “true” thief, there’s some good thieves, not so good thieves and the rest of us falling in the middle somewhere…

God forbid someone would exploit a class mechanic to win… not sure how long the OP has been gaming, but that’s just a fact in these games since the beginning… and it’s not just thieves, other classes exploit their mechanics, as well.

OP should get over himself.. don’t be a hater, sounds like he would enjoy a ‘nerf’ of stealth, so he should be happy… no need to kick anyone when they’re down, unless of course he’s a sadist.

Just saying..

Wow. I thought this thread was from a year ago. People still complain about thieves? I feel sorry for those people. At this point the thief class is the second weakest overall.

The stealth reveal is a complete non event IMHO. I don’t need perma stealth to win.

Thief OP… there are at least 2-3 classes in WvW that are now far more dangerous in a solo fight than a thief. It used to be we ruled roamer fights, did OK in skirmish and were mostly useless in zergs. Now roaming is best done with condi bunker engis and speed warriors. Same can be said for skirmish.

Just look a duels, thieves rarely excel in them. Most skill groups in WvW don’t want any thieves in their mix because of their overly squishy nature.

Even perma stealth isn’t OP because to get it the thief essentially hits like a wet noodle. Annoying sure, but OP nope.

Straegen.2938:

Thief OP… there are at least 2-3 classes in WvW that are now far more dangerous in a solo fight than a thief. It used to be we ruled roamer fights, did OK in skirmish and were mostly useless in zergs. Now roaming is best done with condi bunker engis and speed warriors. Same can be said for skirmish.

Just look a duels, thieves rarely excel in them. Most skill groups in WvW don’t want any thieves in their mix because of their overly squishy nature.

Even perma stealth isn’t OP because to get it the thief essentially hits like a wet noodle. Annoying sure, but OP nope.

You haven’t met Triggerless or Kronos Xnm then, they kitten on all the warriors/engis (even engis running perplexity) that come to duels and they’re thieves. Jus sayin, may be a l2p issue.

Straegen.2938:

and were mostly useless in zergs.

Spammable blast finishers, mass blinds or leeching fields = mostly useless?

Most skill groups in WvW don’t want any thieves in their mix because of their overly squishy nature.

They are not significantly squishier than rangers or engis (since armor becomes much more useful in ZvZs), and I’d say they’re actually better at survivability if you go for a evasion build.
Of course if you insist on a gimmicky zerkers nuke build, you won’t do good in a zerg fight.

Ryan.8367:

Fortus.6175:

I can only feel pity for them, not because of the recent changes to the class mechanics, but rather the concept at which they were first created. At first I used to hate them, then I started playing the class to learn it and realized that while OP, they are a victim of their own strenghts.

A class created to be evasive, hard to pin down, but that offered some good counter mechanics and trade offs that could be fun for the opponent to beat. They are actually suffering from a subset of skills (which sadly attracts very unskilled set of players for the stupidly low skill ceiling) and make them take the easy and unfun way out by abusing two mechanics that are pulling the thief down; Stealth and Backstab.

I have seen well played thieves that dont rely on neither of these mechanics to be effective or annoying. They use teleports, poison, calculated skills, skillful use of teleports, tactical stealths. This thieves are fun to play agaisnt, they have skills which are difficult and slightly frustrating to fight agaisnt, but beating them feel rewarding because you have to outplay them, they have to make decisions, you are constantly playing whack-a-mole but you can kind of expect where it will pop, with the twist that the mole can fight back.

The problem arises when the thief has D/D and can burst you for 8-10k hp without absolutely no counter. Aegis wont block the damage nor reveal them, blocks wont work either. Basically backstab is a guaranteed 10k burst that if you are an ele (12k hp) or a guardian (12k hp too) you will most likely die to it if you arent at full health, or the HS following the BS will kill you for sure. There is absolutely no counterplay to that, not even dodges can save you because you cant dodge what you cant see.

Thats what needs to go away, no class should have a 10k nuke without any counterplay. The other issue is permastealth and how “newbs” rely too much on it to survive. Every now and then you see these “new players with low skill” threads popping up everytime their “sacred” completely balanced and full of fun counterplay mechanics is touched. We had them first when revealed was applied. Was the class uesless? no. Then when the duratio was increase? were thieves useless? No, once again. Now the rangers pet apply them. Will it be useless? I bet no, because unlike most of the population, not everyone plays ranger, in fact I dont play ranger, and if I were to play ranger I wouldnt go for beastmaster.

Point is, for most people the problem of lowly skilled thieves who rely too much on the annoying stealth mechanic and OP uncounterable backstab the QQ will never stop.

Once we rework backstab to have a maximun %hp cap and have a long internal CD, and stealth to be a skill of tactical use rather than just spam it for everything, then we will have a more balanced class. The class should be about timed dodges, timed teleports, timed blinds, timed skills, timed poisons, not spam 1222161228112, heck most people dont even get past the first set of 2s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laxyoaHOP1c

Wait…I think he’s agreeing with you lol.

On another note I fought a mesmer last night I wish I could have popped a reveal on. You guys worry too much though to be honest. Sick em will end up being a skill play so noobs won’t get to spam it. It could be devastating if timed perfectly or useless if misused. It looks like anet wants to make the relation between the pet and the player more active than call-send-utility buttons.

Also, only one subset ranger builds really has a chance in a typical fight versus a thief. That’s regen/bunker/condi’s as well all know. I was running power the other day and a cloaked thief got his dream: to sneak up on a 2300 armor ranger and just blow him up in 2 hits will full bloodlust, applied fortitude, and guard leech.

I do not think ranger spirit build is even THAT low skill floor. Really, it’s not close. Condi bunkers are insane and so is thief burst to be able to keep up. It’s rock paper scissors. You’re all not cool with that, are you?

All the good dueling specs these days run around with 20k+ HP, gobs of toughness, and eat you with conditions. Glassy thieves clear camps, kill scrubs, or apply the coup de grace when your team has an advantage.

If you really want to duel people with a thief you probably want to play a condi tank like every other good dueling spec does. It’s not like you’re going to burst down a dire Necro or Engineer.

I wasn’t dueling, I was capping camps testing a power ranger build. I have many sets of armor and like to test in wvw for fun. I hope that gives you perspective on where I’m coming from. Also, I like how you got in the dig “scrubs” on me. Apparently, you’re a scrub if you test and experiment. Also, you missed the point I was trying to make about the viability of builds in a general sense and the rock-paper-scissors aspects of gw2.

PS I don’t think I’m suffering at all.

Green grass, blue skies, running, screaming, sometimes there’s even fire. Lots of fun actually.

Dunno man, thieves are still quite top notch and even pros admit they could use some more nerfs, I, for once, thank all the nerfs coming to stealth, maybe we can cleanse the class from noobs

Just to add oil to the fire, 10k crits? Are you bunkers? :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

But seriously speaking, burst thieves haven’t really been a problem for ages. They still exist in WvW, but if you know what they’re doing you shouldn’t get hit by the burst unless really caught off guard. In sPvP both burst and stealth thives are an extremely rare breed at this point.

yski.7642:

Just to add oil to the fire, 10k crits? Are you bunkers? :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

But seriously speaking, burst thieves haven’t really been a problem for ages. They still exist in WvW, but if you know what they’re doing you shouldn’t get hit by the burst unless really caught off guard. In sPvP both burst and stealth thives are an extremely rare breed at this point.

my goodness……now THAT IS op……14-q6k hp, eles/guards dont have more than 12k base, at that point HS is not a necessity since BS is already overkill…

It absolutely baffles me how people still haven’t figured out how to beat thieves. Their solution is to come here. I consider myself an above average thief, and occasionally just get roflstomped when someone actually knows what they are doing. I even run the “op” 0/20/30/20/0 build and it is sooo counter able by well timed interrupts. I’m sure the people that beat me love this game from the satisfaction they have of figuring out a thief and breaking them down.

Edit: this spec only hits for about 4-5k back
stabs.

true thieves aren’t suffering….they don’t need perma stealth to win.

Sanduskel.1850:

true thieves aren’t suffering….they don’t need perma stealth to win.

You speak my mind.

Thank You!

Burnfall – your rants about thieves aren’t productive. Not all thieves seek an easy way out. Please refrain. thank you.

Sanduskel.1850:

Burnfall – your rants about thieves aren’t productive. Not all thieves seek an easy way out. Please refrain. thank you.

I stand by Truth

I’m confirming the Truth

Let the Truth speak the Truth

Burnfall.9573:

Let the Truth speak the Truth

Let the truth be truthy in its truthiness of truthful truth.

what is truth? how can you know what you think you know?

YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!

Sorry couldn’t resist.

Burnfall.9573:

Sanduskel.1850:

Burnfall – your rants about thieves aren’t productive. Not all thieves seek an easy way out. Please refrain. thank you.

I stand by Truth

I’m confirming the Truth

Let the Truth speak the Truth

The truth is that a lot of people come onto the forums to complain. Anyone who has any skills whatsoever is able to defeat most thieves these days.

The Thief is not the 1 hit KO OP Uber beast it once was. People need to move on. The thief has weaknesses and is below par on tasks that many other classes shine in. So what if a thief can hit and run on stragglers behind the Zerg… Dont be the straggler. What will you do when any other race kills you faster then you would like? cry Nerf then? Understand the thief and know its weaknesses. If you stand still and let theifs hit you in the back you got what was coming. The thief is supposed to be quick and precise and take objectives like camps and single targets… The thief is the least favorite in most PVE content let it be a top choice at what it does. The Thief can be beat through other means then forum bashing. Put your bats down….

Fortus.6175:

I can only feel pity for them, not because of the recent changes to the class mechanics, but rather the concept at which they were first created. At first I used to hate them, then I started playing the class to learn it and realized that while OP, they are a victim of their own strenghts.

A class created to be evasive, hard to pin down, but that offered some good counter mechanics and trade offs that could be fun for the opponent to beat. They are actually suffering from a subset of skills (which sadly attracts very unskilled set of players for the stupidly low skill ceiling) and make them take the easy and unfun way out by abusing two mechanics that are pulling the thief down; Stealth and Backstab.

I have seen well played thieves that dont rely on neither of these mechanics to be effective or annoying. They use teleports, poison, calculated skills, skillful use of teleports, tactical stealths. This thieves are fun to play agaisnt, they have skills which are difficult and slightly frustrating to fight agaisnt, but beating them feel rewarding because you have to outplay them, they have to make decisions, you are constantly playing whack-a-mole but you can kind of expect where it will pop, with the twist that the mole can fight back.

The problem arises when the thief has D/D and can burst you for 8-10k hp without absolutely no counter. Aegis wont block the damage nor reveal them, blocks wont work either. Basically backstab is a guaranteed 10k burst that if you are an ele (12k hp) or a guardian (12k hp too) you will most likely die to it if you arent at full health, or the HS following the BS will kill you for sure. There is absolutely no counterplay to that, not even dodges can save you because you cant dodge what you cant see.

Thats what needs to go away, no class should have a 10k nuke without any counterplay. The other issue is permastealth and how “newbs” rely too much on it to survive. Every now and then you see these “new players with low skill” threads popping up everytime their “sacred” completely balanced and full of fun counterplay mechanics is touched. We had them first when revealed was applied. Was the class uesless? no. Then when the duratio was increase? were thieves useless? No, once again. Now the rangers pet apply them. Will it be useless? I bet no, because unlike most of the population, not everyone plays ranger, in fact I dont play ranger, and if I were to play ranger I wouldnt go for beastmaster.

Point is, for most people the problem of lowly skilled thieves who rely too much on the annoying stealth mechanic and OP uncounterable backstab the QQ will never stop.

Once we rework backstab to have a maximun %hp cap and have a long internal CD, and stealth to be a skill of tactical use rather than just spam it for everything, then we will have a more balanced class. The class should be about timed dodges, timed teleports, timed blinds, timed skills, timed poisons, not spam 1222161228112, heck most people dont even get past the first set of 2s.

I would counter with what am i supposed to do against the massive amount of condition spam and aoe spam in WvW at the moment. I can evade the fight but if i can’t bring so use to larger group play then in upper tiers i am in many ways bringing my team down by playing a thief.

Fortus.6175:

yski.7642:

Just to add oil to the fire, 10k crits? Are you bunkers? :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9d4Og8KbEM

But seriously speaking, burst thieves haven’t really been a problem for ages. They still exist in WvW, but if you know what they’re doing you shouldn’t get hit by the burst unless really caught off guard. In sPvP both burst and stealth thives are an extremely rare breed at this point.

my goodness……now THAT IS op……14-q6k hp, eles/guards dont have more than 12k base, at that point HS is not a necessity since BS is already overkill…

Well it those Backstabs are overkill, but it’s only good for one hit. If anyone saw him coming, they should know to dodge when he pops his signets. Stun→Dead. He has no escape tools.

Kaizer.7135:

Well it those Backstabs are overkill, but it’s only good for one hit. If anyone saw him coming, they should know to dodge when he pops his signets. Stun->Dead. He has no escape tools.

^This.

One dodge, and I’ve just blown all my cooldowns and half my initiative. I also have the grand total of 12k hp, a weak (for this kind of build, anyway) healing skill and my only source of stealth is C&D.

Try playing a few hot joins with a 4 signet build. Bonus points for recording the whole thing, speeding it up and adding some goofy music on the background. The resulting video would be something beautiful..

Here’s the build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKOHcy5E/5Ex2je6Te6VAsaPoZLhJA-TsAg0CnI4SxljLDXSuscNoYBxsAA

ArenaNet will not reduce the current amount of stealth options the Thief has, simply because they are afraid that the Thief will become the most underplayed professions, again. Most players who plays the Thief, plays it because of the way stealth and backstab currently works, as this playstyle resembles how an Assassin plays. If you where to remove that “feeling”, by reducing the amount of stealth options, you would lose a lot of Thief players. But I still think it needs to be done. The Thief should play like a Thief, not like an Assassin.

With current meta, i think most thiefs are suffering indeed. We have a few OP classes, which either have to much condition damage (necro) or too much healing (Warriors, Spirit Rangers and Engineers). In both scenarios, a prolonged fight is bad for a thief because A: you get 5 different conditions and 2000 ticks per second or B: the enemy outheals you.

I play a lot of sPvP and WvW, and main a necro, so i feel how much less powerful i am when trying to play a thief (which i play a lot as well). Thiefs with conditions are a joke, because you dont have many conditions, making your bleed quite easy to cleanse. Aside from guardians, its the hardest class to go condition damage. When i am playing a necro, i actually want to find a thief that gives me 8~15 bleed stacks so i can just transfer it back at him with one of my 2 transfers. Warrios can now be immune to conditions for 8 seconds, so thats a hard counter as well. Theres of course the broken perplexity runes, but its way to broken to even talk about, its probably gonna get nerfed soon and thank god it doesnt exist in sPvP. Even then, thiefs arent that awesome with it, a warrior with perplexity can get to 25 confusion stacks easily.

The only viable prolonged fight build is S/D, because it allows you to evade most damage and conditions, meaning you can be in the fight longer while doing damage, which is a little more than what the enemy can heal. Aside from it, every other thief should go glass cannon and try to insta burst, because if you dont odds are you will lose the fight. Don’t believe me? Go to sPvP and put anything besides Berseker or a S/D and see how many you can kill / survive. Not many.