Guild Wars 2

Real tired of that stupid backstab Thief build that everybody and their mother is running now and I just want to play the game and have fun without getting instagibbed at the drop of a hat, and if it means I have to go out of my way to play a different class that I don’t like, so be it.

yey another person who plays a glass cannon build of something prob a ele or necro complaining they get 3 hit or some crazy thing by a thief.

lets run through the list:

1) prob wvw and he has full exotic gear to your meh gear and under leveled
2) your running with around 2k toughness and low health
3) your not paying attention and he just keeps attacking you from behind
4) da list can go on on on from here

dat bunny.5074:

yey another person who plays a glass cannon build of something prob a ele or necro complaining they get 3 hit or some crazy thing by a thief.

lets run through the list:

1) prob wvw and he has full exotic gear to your meh gear and under leveled
2) your running with around 2k toughness and low health
3) your not paying attention and he just keeps attacking you from behind
4) da list can go on on on from here

Yes, let’s run through the list:

1) Instantly hostile
2) Pulling assumptions about me out of thin air
3) Patronizing someone even after doing the above
4) da list can go on on on from here

To set you straight, it’s in sPvP, with over 2600 toughness and average health, to which I am left with only several thousand after their burst combo(even better, they finally ‘unstealth’ about 3/4th way through their heartseeker should they chose to use the initiative). It’s just not fun to blow utilities to survive the instantaneous assault, and then they just run away to do it again in 45 secodns. It’s not fun to be in a fight and suddenly on the ground. It’s just not fun.

dat bunny.5074:

yey another person who plays a glass cannon build of something prob a ele or necro complaining they get 3 hit or some crazy thing by a thief.

lets run through the list:

1) prob wvw and he has full exotic gear to your meh gear and under leveled
2) your running with around 2k toughness and low health
3) your not paying attention and he just keeps attacking you from behind
4) da list can go on on on from here

Yay another Thief who can’t admit the fact that Backstab is OP. Let’s go through the list shall we?

1) you probably play a thief
2) you refuse to believe that backstab is OP
3) based off no.2, it means you’re in denial
4) you are a 12 year old just by judging from the lingo you use and your literacy levels

Considering you have to completely trait and equip your thief to specifically be good at backstab, and then having your entire character completely countered by someone simply standing with their back against the wall. I think it’s fine.
Just find a wall. This is especially easy in spvp.

The only class that doesn’t trouble me is ranger. Everything else, if well played, can be a pain in the a**.
I think I just didn’t face a good ranger.

Ixa.6523:

Considering you have to completely trait and equip your thief to specifically be good at backstab, and then having your entire character completely countered by someone simply standing with their back against the wall. I think it’s fine.
Just find a wall. This is especially easy in spvp.

Really? Just find a wall? The Thief instant shadowsteps to you before you even realise he’s there. Then by the time you realise, half your health is nearly gone already. The thief then proceeds to spam Heartseeker + Quickness while you wait for the culling effect to go away.

Nearly all Backstab Thieves won’t charge at you. They wait on the sidelines for the opening when their opponent is busy with someone else.

heartseeker spam?havent seen anyone doing that its just useless and doesnt get anywhere.do you guyz actually play the game or base your posts on forum tears?

grind.3681:

heartseeker spam?havent seen anyone doing that its just useless and doesnt get anywhere.do you guyz actually play the game or base your posts on forum tears?

I wonder if you play the game. Heartseeker + Quickness is instant. You can’t miss with it.

Yeti.5267:

Nearly all Backstab Thieves won’t charge at you. They wait on the sidelines for the opening when their opponent is busy with someone else.

That’s why they call it Backstab and that’s why the class is called thief. If you remove element of surprise let’s call it Blade Master . As for Heartseeker, standing duck is a dead duck. So simple!

EDIT:Also there is a thing called Initiative which is drained out from Heartseeker. Does anyone ever use evade??

heartseeker spam is useless if u lost from a guy doing that ,you are doing something really wrong..why dont you go troll your class section instead of failing here?

@Posibabis No class should be able to have that much burst. Answering your edit, when the thief is still invisible due to the culling issue AND has quickness, I very much doubt anyone would react fast enough to get away with a good amount of health. By the time you get away, the duel is over. You’ve lost so much health compared to the the untouched Thief.

@Grind How is Heartseeker spam useless? When the Thief backstabs for more than half the opponent’s health, Heartseeker becomes so powerful especially with high crit builds.

If you remove burst, Thief is pretty much done for if he got CC’ed. I would gladly trade such spikes with a parry skill and a more reliable knockdown.

It’s really hard to say. I play 5 different classes in sPVP, and each one is hurt by different other classes. In general, the mesmer is always the most annoying since I have trouble keeping track of which one is the real one. Bad mental confusion and all that. But so far…

For my engineer: Rangers. Superior ranged damage, superior distance, annoying pet, and conditions. While rangers are only “meh” against my other builds, for engineers a good ranger always spells a very difficult fight.

For my thief: Guardians and Warrior. The big problem with those two classes are that as I try to fight them with a dagger, they’ll stand in melee and fight right back. With superior sustained damage and survivability, the advantage is theirs.

For my mesmer: Thieves. The thieves can usaully keep track of who I am and put down some nasty ambushes and burst damage. With a comparable bag of tricks it isn’t always a straight up fight with them, and many times I’ll be taken down before I can gain momentum.

For my guardian: Mesmers and Necromancers. Other classes I don’t really have an “issue”, but as I am chasing down mesmers and teleporting to them and all that, I always find myself heading right for a clone instead of the real once, since Leap of Faith decided to send me backwards or something. Similar stuff happens with necromancer minions.

For my Necro: Engineers and Warriors. Their control effects knock and disable my poor necromancer all over the place, who’s build happens to be somewhat vulnerable to that. None of my other classes get hit by stuns, immobilize, fear, and knockback as much as my necromancer.

The one profession that I never have problems with are elementalists. Seriously, no matter what profession I play or what build I use they just don’t have an upper hand.

probably a mesmer, but its down to my spec, I know its weakness are mesmers but it works so well against everyone else It doesn’t give me too much reason to care.

as for back stab glass cannon thieves. shortbow, aoe on your feet as they go into stealth, wait and then see the backstab thief on the ground when he comes out of stealth again. you can also use signet of shadow for an instant blind that you can use whilst cc’d. there is a visual and audio cue to backstab or it might be mug but when you see it and hear it just dodge and it normally negates all damage.

My, my…. it is still cool to complain about thieves, let us not forget that while using the using the burst they themselves have used most likely their elite (BV and a utility) so expect to use a utility to survive the burst… and if he used quickness just dodge( one dodge would probably cover 4 heartseekers with quickness, it is about 2 without quickness, but for haste should just be removed from the game), a thief without his initiative is a joke.

A Mesmer and Warrior with certain builds can smash you and your teammates down to less then half health also, whats more OP? Bursting down 1 player, or 3 players? And let us not forget that both Warriors and Mesmer’s have more health then Thieves.

If the thief comes from behind, your chances of winning are a lot lower, but if your dying from a thief whose coming charging head on against you, you are obviously doing something wrong.

The Backstab build is not OP, over-wise Anet would have nerfed backstab and not Assasin Signet and we would be seeing 5 backstab thieves all around in tPvP.

A well played Engineer who won’t let you kite him out of his traveling shiitshow.

Zombiepatrol.9815:

dat bunny.5074:

yey another person who plays a glass cannon build of something prob a ele or necro complaining they get 3 hit or some crazy thing by a thief.

lets run through the list:

1) prob wvw and he has full exotic gear to your meh gear and under leveled
2) your running with around 2k toughness and low health
3) your not paying attention and he just keeps attacking you from behind
4) da list can go on on on from here

Yes, let’s run through the list:

1) Instantly hostile
2) Pulling assumptions about me out of thin air
3) Patronizing someone even after doing the above
4) da list can go on on on from here

To set you straight, it’s in sPvP, with over 2600 toughness and average health, to which I am left with only several thousand after their burst combo(even better, they finally ‘unstealth’ about 3/4th way through their heartseeker should they chose to use the initiative). It’s just not fun to blow utilities to survive the instantaneous assault, and then they just run away to do it again in 45 secodns. It’s not fun to be in a fight and suddenly on the ground. It’s just not fun.

Yeah, the golden thing about thieves that defend this class is that they don’t even realize their arguments actually derive down to thieves being OP, but with logic being perhaps the most elusive human characteristic – ever, no one really notices. Just the other say someone was telling people to “just dodge” backstabs. Which is logically equivalent to soldiers they don’t have to be afraid of snipers because they can just duck under a bullet.

The thing about this game, is that if you think a class is OP all you have to do is create one and go see what it’s like. I got bored of winning in sPvP with my thief.

Theif damage is the highest in the game bar none and they are arguably harder to kill than any class in the game. Sure, they can’t stand on the point but I don’t think that thieves having less than 100% of every aspect of PvP 100% in their favor makes the argument that they are overpowered moot.

You could honestly give almost every class as much stealth as the thief and they wouldn’t be as strong as the theif. Literally just add it right on, don’t take anything away just add it to the abilities those classes already have. It’s insane, and it so sad because almost everything in this game is so intelligently made but someone at ANet has a hard-on for ninjas and thieves got to be insanely overpowered for this long. Thief has straight up ruined this game and that is no exaggeration.

morbidillusion.2759:

Zombiepatrol.9815:

dat bunny.5074:

yey another person who plays a glass cannon build of something prob a ele or necro complaining they get 3 hit or some crazy thing by a thief.

lets run through the list:

1) prob wvw and he has full exotic gear to your meh gear and under leveled
2) your running with around 2k toughness and low health
3) your not paying attention and he just keeps attacking you from behind
4) da list can go on on on from here

Yes, let’s run through the list:

1) Instantly hostile
2) Pulling assumptions about me out of thin air
3) Patronizing someone even after doing the above
4) da list can go on on on from here

To set you straight, it’s in sPvP, with over 2600 toughness and average health, to which I am left with only several thousand after their burst combo(even better, they finally ‘unstealth’ about 3/4th way through their heartseeker should they chose to use the initiative). It’s just not fun to blow utilities to survive the instantaneous assault, and then they just run away to do it again in 45 secodns. It’s not fun to be in a fight and suddenly on the ground. It’s just not fun.

Yeah, the golden thing about thieves that defend this class is that they don’t even realize their arguments actually derive down to thieves being OP, but with logic being perhaps the most elusive human characteristic – ever, no one really notices. Just the other say someone was telling people to “just dodge” backstabs. Which is logically equivalent to soldiers they don’t have to be afraid of snipers because they can just duck under a bullet.

The thing about this game, is that if you think a class is OP all you have to do is create one and go see what it’s like. I got bored of winning in sPvP with my thief.

Theif damage is the highest in the game bar none and they are arguably harder to kill than any class in the game. Sure, they can’t stand on the point but I don’t think that thieves having less than 100% of every aspect of PvP 100% in their favor makes the argument that they are overpowered moot.

You could honestly give almost every class as much stealth as the thief and they wouldn’t be as strong as the theif. Literally just add it right on, don’t take anything away just add it to the abilities those classes already have. It’s insane, and it so sad because almost everything in this game is so intelligently made but someone at ANet has a hard-on for ninjas and thieves got to be insanely overpowered for this long. Thief has straight up ruined this game and that is no exaggeration.

These complaints are so great. No one wants to take the time to learn their class let alone their enemies. I play a Thief but not the type you guys like to complain about. I play a condition thief that I dare say I’ve never lost to one of the QQthieves 1 on 1. The best case is they get to their boarder keep or run away as I get distracted by someone else.

Why should it be a problem to have to blow utilities to counter a burst thief who likely blew 3 cool-downs minimum before attacking you? On most classes it takes just 1 cool-down to counter thief burst assuming you are built right. 1 for their 3, sounds like a good deal to me.

Try panning your camera and paying attention, people act like thieves have toggle stealth and just jump them completely unaware. As soon as one joins the frey they are first priority (as any burst build would be) and lucky for everyone they go down faster than ducksquirt.

If you die because all your utilities are on cool-down or you were at 50% health then you got 2on1’d or worse and caught in a bad position. What’s to complain about?

Some guy came here (Silver-something) playing an engie looking for help fighting thieves. He read the posts, rolled one himself, learned the class then went back and rebuilt his eng to destroy thieves. He found it was an overall better build and he is having more fun. He even posted apologizing for the original QQ. Try that? He is a case study for the every day QQ accept he decided to take it upon himself to educate himself in the game.

More crap from noobs who want to run around solo but get mad when a build made to take out single people rapidly takes them out. Wah wah. You know what gives me the most trouble as a thief? Good players who stay with team mates. Dropping someone fast doesn’t mean anything when their team mate revives them before I can stomp and now I have no potential burst setup for almost a minute.

As a roamer my job is to patrol the map and pick off people running around alone, provide backup in skirmishes, help capture points, repair treb etc. If you’re alone on the map you must be a roamer so use mobility! Get to your team. If you’re holding a point you should be a bunker so you have no fear of my burst. But chances are you’re just stupid, respawned and ran around alone instead of waiting for someone to run with, and you got killed by a thief. Thus thieves are OP and the world is against you because you want to suck without consequence. Sorry. If it wasn’t for downed state thieves would be op. I could kill two people no problem. But thankfully most players aren’t smart. They don’t go for revivals with the same urgency as they do stomps. If I use my elite, my steal, my signet (three 45 sec cool downs) plus almost all of my initiative to drop someone and his partner revives him immediately I’m screwed.

Arena Net knows what they’re doing. They don’t want to encourage pandamonium with people running around doing nothing. They want team work. Stay with someone and make revivals priority. Common sense people.

Here is the guy’s post I referenced:

“MrSilver.5269:
I hate to admit it, but I was here QQing for the better part of the last week or so. I then decided to roll a thief just to play around with the mechanics to better understand the class.
I only got to level 31ish so although I’m no expert, I now understand the class much better now, and went back to the drawing board to change my entire engineer spec. I was hesitant to do so because I was concerned as an engineer I would hit like a wet noodle. Yes, my damage did take a slight hit, but not as much as I thought due to a mechanic of one of the engineer’s utility skills that evens the playing field considerably. The funny thing is that the solution was sitting right in front of me, and I just didn’t see it.
In any event, the long of the short of it is that by figuring out how to counter the thief, I stumbled upon a MUCH more durable version of the engineer that I am REALLY enjoying playing.
So, I’m here to formally apologize for my QQ.
SORRY!!!!!”

Awesome reply. Someone finally “learned to play” and is much happier because of it. That most pathetic thing about this thread is that the op wants to know how to beat thieves in 1v1. THE GAME DOESN’T EVEN HAVE DUELING. THERE IS NO OPTION FOR 1v1!!! Why do people play MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER GAMES so they can complain about how they can’t beat everyone by themselves? The joy of multiplayer of that you never have to fight 1v1. If you’re alone guarding a point and you see a thief call out in chat for backup. No one talks in this game. There’s no solid team communication. It’s not hard to call out incs and mark targets to focus fire. People are so concerned that their class is underpowered and everyone else’s is overpowered that they forget to utilize the most important aspect of combat: the rest of their team!

Thank you to every one of the 2 people that replied to the topic title question.

A good counter to backstab Thief is actually Thief. So long as you get the first hit in.

However I moved away from the bursty Thief and instead enjoy condition damage along with venoms. Condition damage eats weak opponents and the venoms allow for immobilizations so they can’t strike back while I kill them. Most backstab Thieves I’ve killed, (a lot) have veeeeeery little improvisation abilities beyond the backstab. Killing them is easy as far as I’m concerned. Only two classes have ever given me trouble and out right destroyed me. That was an extremely good bunker Elementalist who could take on 4 people at once, and a condition Necromancer, who transferred all my bleeds and conditions onto me, haha. I was so surprised, by the time I realized it happened I was on the ground.

Play any class with an instant “Block the next X attacks” ability (ie. guardian/elementalist), possibly invulnerability skills too.

Play any class with some good hard CC, thief has no stability, or good way out of immobilize.

Did I mention thief has no stability? (ring of warding makes a joke out of bad thieves)

Yeah. Do what the guy above referenced. Roll a thief and level it up to the elite skill. Get used to what the skills do and how the thief works. Then go back to your old character which you enjoyed playing and use that knowledge to escape and punish the backstab builds you hate so much.

As a thief, I can honestly tell you that the burst build doesn’t work on someone who knows what to do about it. At worst, the thief escapes and is borderline useless for the minute. At best, you manage to trap them and pound them flat in a hurry.

Seriously, just learn the class. That’s your best armor against it.

Zombiepatrol.9815:

Thank you to every one of the 2 people that replied to the topic title question.

Guardians and tanky built warriors most commonly and the occasional engineer or necro that specs/builds to counter burst.