Guild Wars 2

This will just be a list of stuff I’ve been thinking while playing spvp.

-Every build deals massive damage, be it with dagger, sword, shortbow (haven’t seen much pistol thieves). Even autoattacks alone are powerful enough to kill someone.
-They don’t need to spec defensively, stealth has got enough defense and you can pretty much run away from every fight with ease.
-They have the most annoying downed state. Want to stomp a thief? With no matter how many people you are, they can always pull of a teleport, AND a stealth, letting it take waay longer than needed to kill someone. And if you say, just start dpsing, well it takes longer to kill a downed thief with attacks than it takes to kill me (an elementalist) in my normal state.
-They can pretty much decide which battle they want to fight. It’s mostly useless to chase down a thief when he decided he doesn’t want to fight anymore.
-He can escape very large groups with ease.
-All elite skills are good, too good. In dagger storm they wreck groups, thieves guild wrecks single targets and lets them 1vsmany. Basilisc venom can be annoying, but it’s good as an elite. (I wouldn’t necessarily want them to nerf these, but buffing other classes’s elites should be better, at the moment only the 2 overpowered classes have the best elites, as well as the best downed state and many other things (coincidence?))
-Killing another class in les than 2 seconds is over the top. The element of surprise is too big to do something most of the time. Unless you’re paranoid and start walking with your back against walls all the time.

Now how do I suppose thieves would respond:

-Play better
-Use your team better
-Dodge
-Use stunbreakers
-A thief is quickly killed
-You’re a whiner, thieves are fine (please don’t let anet nerf my thief which fulfils my lack of power over lesser beings in real life)

I will already respond in this post:

-I am in the process of getting better, and I see improvement vs other classes, only vs thieves it remains hard.
-If it takes a whole team to kill 1 thief, than that says enough about the state of thieves.
-I only have 2 dodges, a thief can keep resetting the fight, keep spamming abilities more than I can dodge.
-I have 2 stunbreakers on my bar, but they have a large cooldown, and guess what, they can still control you after the stunbreaker because yet again, they can reset the fight, spam abilities. Also, don’t be selfish and think that every class needs to have stunbreakers especially for thieves, there are some good players who do well with other classes.
-The only time a thief loses a fight is because he doesn’t know what he’s doing or his utilities are on cooldown and he isn’t wielding daggers or shortbow.
-Thieves are not fine at the moment and it isn’t hard to realize it.

I don’t want arenanet to nerf the thief to complete uselessness. Just tone down some mechanisms. If they want purely dps spec, then fine, but escape and defense has to scale with it as well. Want a controlling build, only with toned down damage.

Lastly, a thief was my main character, but I had it so immensely easy in pvp I made the elementalist my main. Talk about difference. It’s more fun though but it’s like playing with a constant damage and defense handicap.

Thanks for reading, I did not mean to offend anyone and if I did, I’m sorry. Also this post was made to vent a bit of frustrations I keep having every match.

I’m not a thief, but my god the tears are never ending. Thieves are not OP, L2P.

Resetting the fight might be an effective strategy in SPvP where holding points means nothing to the participants but it is pretty useless in TPvP.

Seether.7285:

I’m not a thief, but my god the tears are never ending. Thieves are not OP, L2P.

Resetting the fight might be an effective strategy in SPvP where holding points means nothing to the participants but it is pretty useless in TPvP.

-I am in the process of getting better, and I see improvement vs other classes, only vs thieves it remains hard.

Thanks for reading, I did not mean to offend anyone and if I did, I’m sorry. Also this post was made to vent a bit of frustrations I keep having every match

Also: why is it that only tpvp has any importance? “Thieves are op, but hey, they are a bit less op in tournaments, so all is fine.” No, not everyone plays tournaments all the time..

Reminds me of world of warcraft arena. Everything must be balanced around arena, every other aspect of the game must be neglected, even if it ruins the game experience of other players. (not saying this is the case here, but people act like it.)

Well a main reason that only TPvP is important is the fact that the maps were designed for 5 players not 8, so TPvP is the only place where the game is even being played the way it was designed to be played.

You might ask, why aren’t hot join servers 5v5? The official ArenaNet party line is that it is so new players do not get harassed for causing their team to lose and to mitigate the impact of people entering and leaving the game. I think a side reason is that it will increase custom server rentals because 8v8 is so bad people would be willing to spend money to avoid it.

Part of the reason thieves seem so OP in hotjoin is because it is so much more chaotic with the increased number of players and lack of focus fire that thieves are able to deal their damage more efficiently and escape more efficiently than they can in a TPvP environment. There is a lot more CC flying around setting them up for kills as well.

ill address each point individually as unbiased as i can.

1-if we spec for damage we do damage, in this game your “damage” isnt entirely controlled by your weapon spec, so listing them is rather pointless. yous tack power and crit your gonna hit and crit hard. i imagine thieves might crit a bit harder since 30 points into critical strikes give +30% crit damage. not too mention thieves are supposed to be a high damage class. you can argue too much i dont care, im just saying they are supposed to be high damage.

2-uhm maybe you feel they dont but as a thief i def feel i need some defensive abilities. lets see…shadows rejuvination, longer stealths, shadow refuge, smoke screen, shadow step (its return is defensive) and even daggerstorm has a defensive quality (projectile immunity and stability). thats largely what i run with. as for running away, if they would get rid of our ability to chain stealths then you wouldnt see thieves slip away via stealth.

3-we do have one of the most annoying downed states, whether it gets nerfed or not i dont really care

4-we can? how do you figure? this isnt death match pvp or world pvp, this is S/Tpvp with objectives (tho they need to polisht hat a bit too). sure ill run away if its me vs a ton of people and i know i have no chance, but thieves arent the only ones that can do that. as for being able to get away while fighting, ive seen other classes do this as well, tho thieves may have it easier with shortbow infiltrator arrow i dunno. i can only use it twice if im at max initiative and have to wait a while before i can use it again. and i have no runspeed increases or swiftness effects of my own. to each there own i guess, i didnt spec to run away

5-thieves guild is cheese, but imo basilisk is UP ESPECIALLY since they nerfed it without compensation, and daggerstorm is fine, it can be dealt with fine. granted standing there ignoring it is gonna hurt tho!

6-what your talking about is a glass cannon backstab spec and im sure anet will address it, tho ive said it before, just nerfing backstab will create more problems then it will fix, better to nerf some of the damage stacking that causes such high damage. that way you can encourage more balanced thief builds rather then everyone always being glass cannon stuff.

7-everyone can spam abilities more then you can dodge, how is that a excuse?

8-how do we reset the fight? run away come back later? i for one cant reset a fight that simply, my stelath only lasts 4 seconds, not 12. perhaps something i dont know about?

9-my stunbreaker has a long Cd too, you have to choose when to use it, and rely on team/dodges/other defenses/other skills to avoid it. i remember using my stunbreaker vs a warriors bullcharge, only to have a thief try to HS spam me, i dodge…see he keeps pressing it so i lay down black powder so now hes whiffing. what class do you play? perhaps we can analyze abilities and come up with a setup that is more resilient?

-how do daggers make it so we never lose a fight? it has autoattack, heartseeker, deathblossom, dancing dagger, and CnD and backstab….nothing in there can be used to escape that well. shortbow yes, tho only certain specs can use it more then twice if at full initiative. nerf shortbow? /shrug, its our only good alternative weapon set sadly lol, but i probably wouldnt care either. ill probably do dagger/pistol+pistol/dagger and still be a menace.

things anet are not gonna do

1-give thief cooldowns on there weapon sets
2-get rid of initiative
3-unless they change there stance they will still be centered around damage adn mobility.

but i can tell from the body of your post your complaininga bout at least 3 specs, one spec doesnt do all that.

Burrid.4739:

Seether.7285:

I’m not a thief, but my god the tears are never ending. Thieves are not OP, L2P.

Resetting the fight might be an effective strategy in SPvP where holding points means nothing to the participants but it is pretty useless in TPvP.

-I am in the process of getting better, and I see improvement vs other classes, only vs thieves it remains hard.

Thanks for reading, I did not mean to offend anyone and if I did, I’m sorry. Also this post was made to vent a bit of frustrations I keep having every match

Also: why is it that only tpvp has any importance? “Thieves are op, but hey, they are a bit less op in tournaments, so all is fine.” No, not everyone plays tournaments all the time..

Reminds me of world of warcraft arena. Everything must be balanced around arena, every other aspect of the game must be neglected, even if it ruins the game experience of other players. (not saying this is the case here, but people act like it.)

ill shed some light for you.

anet said their main focus for balance will be tourneys, somewhat for spvp, and little to none for wvwvw.

fact is there is a lot of problems with spvp right now (8v8, no incentive to play objectively, underwater imbalances, etc)

just by the act of making objectives important again nerfs the thief in terms of how effective the class is at winning.

i’ll answer by each point:

-Thief is a dps guy. It was made to deal massive damage. And if you see well, all classes can do massive damage.
-the defensive system of the thief has two ways: thoughness improves STEALTH. Vitality improves dodge. So if the thief dissapears for a long time without using shadow refuge, he’s specced on defense. And it’s their only way to stay alive, that’s their thing.
-ALL classes i think has something to negate 1 finisher AT LEAST. Thief has 2 (if you go right after killing him, stealth will be on cd by the time he wants to use it). Also, the mesmer can go with the same crap as the thief and imo, even more annoying.
-If it has shadow arts (stealth traits), this may be right. But its part of the magic of the thief.
-Same point as above. Remember he’s not a heavy armor guy, he can go down with ease.
-go dagger storm into a group, sure. I’ve been mutilated for that many maaany times. If your groups don’t do that, its you and your fellas are kind of dumb, no offense. Basilisk has cast time, so that cuts many possibilities of its use.
-Heard about warrior? Also, its not about being paranoic, if you se a thief coming your way and dissapear from a sec to another, be ready to turn your camera 180° to counter backstab. I believe there’s a button for that. If the fight of a backstab thief lasts more than 5 secs, he’s in deep trouble, cause of the glass cannon build.

Hope that makes all the points.

Seether.7285:

I’m not a thief, but my god the tears are never ending. Thieves are not OP, L2P.

Resetting the fight might be an effective strategy in SPvP where holding points means nothing to the participants but it is pretty useless in TPvP.

1. You willfully ignore his other points.

2. Resetting the fight although losing, sure… is still better than dying. Any other class in the same situation has to eat a respawn timer + travel time. The thief gets another shot (generally with a weaker enemy due to skills being on cooldown). Is it ideal for the thief? No. Is it better than the dying alternative? Without a doubt.

3. tPvP isn’t the only thing that matters. You’ll see nerfs and buffs because of performance in PvE and sPvP, no doubt. The vast majority of people play sPvP and as such, if it isn’t at least close to balanced, people will drift away stranding the minority in tPvP. Like it or not, you need sPvP to be balanced and so does Arenanet if they want to actualize the e-sport dream.

4. If I had my druthers, I would like to see sPvP moved to 5s as well. That will stop a lot of the issues, but even in that case the game will have to be balanced reasonably well to account for the pug zerg and general lack of coordination. This is, same as the point above, because casual pvp’ers are the cashcows for the game, and they need to be kept at least marginally happy. Imagine if a WoW dungeon was only able to be completed by a guild: the game would not have the success it did all this time because the casual player would have left.

true i think some of the issues in spvp format itself lend itself too well to a thiefs strengths, hence them being less prevalent in tpvp (not just the bunkers)

id love it to go down to 5v5, and have objectives be important enough that zerging is a frowned upon tactic for glory.

im sure some balancing will be done for sake of spvp, just not hte majority of it.

Sirevanac.3178:

…

Your points are untrue.

1. Yes, every class can do massive damage. What matters is damage in a period of time. Thieves excel at this (rightfully). The problem is they give up nothing to excel at this. They are as squishy as similarly spec’d eles and rangers for example but with the added defense of stealth.
2. The complaint isn’t that thieves use stealth as defense. The complaint is that contrary to the rest of the game, thieves get defense and damage. A glass paper spec’d thief in many cases will survive when my tank spec’d necro won’t. My necro gave up damage. The thief did not.
3. Some downed skills are stronger than others. This has all but been confirmed by Anet. Thieves and mesmers being the most problematic of the bunch. Moreover, ele’s notoriously have terrible downed states. When you run over to finish off that ele and it feels like he is letting you do it… he’s not. He just has no options. You will, I say this with certainty, see thieves and mesmers taking nerfs and/or other classes getting buffs to downed states.
4. He does go down with ease… if you stand there and take hits… which no thief in the game does. In a number game, they are squishy. In the way the game actually plays, they are pretty hard to kill.

Wolfe.3097:

true i think some of the issues in spvp format itself lend itself too well to a thiefs strengths, hence them being less prevalent in tpvp (not just the bunkers)

id love it to go down to 5v5, and have objectives be important enough that zerging is a frowned upon tactic for glory.

im sure some balancing will be done for sake of spvp, just not hte majority of it.

Heh, sorry for being so prolific in this threat, but work is being slow, slow, slow.

This I agree with. Balance should not revolve around sPvP and should be balanced at the top tier. That said, there needs to be enough balance in general pvp so as to keep ‘we the people’ entertained.

Glass cannon backstab dies in a second. If you cant kill him when he failed his combo, i’m sorry to tell you, but you suck =/. Thief doesnt have that much abilities to go stealth, even less if its glass cannon.

If the thief goes invi, i keep spamming autoattack to the air, I guess the direction he went and keep attacking. That puts him in fact, in great disadvantage.

Also, if its in shadow refuge, he cant leave it in some time. Aoe that.

i can concede that if you compare a glass cannon (i mean, speced and selected no utility/defensive moves whatsoever) elementalist with a glass cannon thief the thief has one thing over the elementalist…and thats stealth.

but before we start hammering it with nerfs we need to fix its bugs.

id also not mind if you miss with a stealthed attack or if it was mitigated by a ability that you still pop out of stealth. rewards players for being defensive imo.

tho i wont ever agree to thieves bieng hit knocking them out of stealth, or thieves being hit creating a big obvious sign where they are in stealth.

If you can negate steath the thief has absolutely any defense at all unless he specs vit also.

I repeat, if you go glass cannon, you can go invi aside from the combo 1 more time, for around 2/3 seconds. And if you see him going invi, you attack the air. That kills him also. Or running if you see him attacking again to avoid another backstab.

Wolfe I swear if you keep up these reasonable post you’re going to make me actually start to like you

It is funny that thieves generally believe they are supposed to be the masters of damage…

Unfortunately, I do not see that “as advertised” on the site. The text for the thieves is:

Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.

Oddly enough, the “masters of damage” should generally be rewarded more towards the Elementalist (who consequently are reknown for their lack of damage).

Elementalists are multi-faceted spellcasters that channel elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding. What they lack in physical toughness, they make up in versatility and the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack.

Glass cannon backstab dies in a second? Dont make me lol so hard plz. I play a a build like that and i assure you i do not even close to die in “a second”. I dont know what thiefs you were facing on. I can also just “lol” about the ppl who say that after the initial burst the thief is naked. Did you ever play a thief? Sorry but those tons of thief topics are amazing. So much whining and in the end almost none of you have an Idea of what a thief is really capable of.
If you feel better thinking that a thief dies in a second, ok do so and dont be suprised facing a good thief making you crazy with movement and good timing of skills like shadowstep etc. I posted already a video about this, i had so much amazing moments which i didnt record and in the end i dont care, it would be cool for myself but you guys will always say blabla. And i smile and let you to continue your blabla because i have the experience unlike some other ppl here. Especially you talk about spvp also, you cannot be serious, dying in a second lol. Even i have 14k hp i live much longer than others with 20k + and a good amount of toughness. I even have the guts to ressurect team members in shadow refuge and take my time because most of you dont even know how to counter the thief while using shadow refuge.
http://imageshack.us/a/img822/3553/gw017x.jpg
Do you think games like this in SPVP are possible if you die alot? The opponents wasnt that bad. Sadly most of the players dont even know how to play their class. I rarely face good eles or good warriors, if they are good they give me a really hard time but it is still possible to beat them. Guardians are very good against thiefs, mesmers are good but even those classes are often played so bad so dont always cry about thiefs, talking about being “OP”, talking about non stop 15k crits or downing you with spamming “2”. And reading things like “glass cannon dies in a second” just makes me smile alot Unbelievable. Hope you meet me ( Akuría ) in PvP and than lets see how much you know about glass cannons.

Well, i talk in my experience. I play cond dmg thief, and i kill the glass cannon after they try to combo me.

My favorite response from thieves is “but they are easily killed if you dodge, use all your defensive skills!”.. which, obviously they cannot do.

The problem is that most thieves can use 2 buttons to kill other glass cannons, while having a silly system of stealth for escapes — the thing other glass cannons builds do not get.

If can get thieves after they go invi, you can algo kittening can. Learn to play, god.

Pro tip for people with extra trouble: Make a lvl 1 thief, put invi skills, see where you go when they are killing you. Apply the same criteria.

Sirevanac.3178:

If can get thieves after they go invi, you can algo kittening can. Learn to play, god.

Pro tip for people with extra trouble: Make a lvl 1 thief, put invi skills, see where you go when they are killing you. Apply the same criteria.

I’m sure every thief follows the same path with the same speed after they went invisible, even though they have 360° to run off to and abilities to cross wides distances.
I’ll categorize you as a Thief n° 1, the base ignorant thief. It’s not the class but the player ideology.

Sirevanac.3178:

Well, i talk in my experience. I play cond dmg thief, and i kill the glass cannon after they try to combo me.

Yes thats true. As ALWAYS it depends on how the people play their class. Good condition thiefs are really hard as a glas cannon, bad conditions thiefs are not – i just roll 2 times, maybe step away or remove the bleeds and his 3-5 death blossoms are gone . And if you get suprised by a glass cannon, there is no “after”.

You want to know for sure where it goes? Guess what, you cant! You guess it, and you go that way. That’s all you can do, that’s what i do. Sometimes i get him, sometimes i dont. Since a lot of thieves go “lolololol pistolwhip/backstab lololol” or just dont play well, you’ll get them. As in any other class, a player who plays pro will give you a bad time, being a thief or an elementalist. I have such a bad time with some elementalists…

Kijimea: that’s true. The first time can get you really off-balance. No argue at that.

the only thief that annoyed me the past week was a deathblossom constantly evading all my attacks kind of thief.. at first you think to yourself well thats not fair.. but there even flaws in those kind of thiefs.. altho a really good db spamming thief with seemingly unending evades is a really annoying thing

Well some of the armor skins for male theives are horrible.
The level 15 stuff my thief has would make a hobo look bad.

lets go down the line shall we

@Proeliator, ty, i try to be unbiased even tho i main a thief

@EnochDagar, we are not supposed to be masters of damage, merely just high damage, you can take your own interpretation of what high damage should be. and it wasnt in the class description, it was a anet post about thieves strengths, which was supposed to be damage and mobility. i did find it odd they didnt mention stealth unless they consider it part of mobility or something. I dont recall anywhere in this thread people wanting to nerf or keep elemental damage down, so bringing it up is pure case of being unhappy about elementalist damage it seems. fair enough, tho no real place in this thread i think.

@Kijima, if you have shadowstep your not using hte exact glass cannon build most people are talking about. saying i spec backstab nad have survivability isnt the same as speccing that exact build and saying it. that specific backstab thief has 2 dodges and stealth, maybe shortbow for infiltrator arrows, thats it for mobility/survivability. if you have something else that adds to it, congrats, but your not using that specific build. tho people not knowing how to counter a thief in shadow refuge…im not sure how thats the thiefs problem :P. but i dont think your a pure glass spec, specially if you have shadowstep! but ya, hard to find good players to face sometimes.

@Kelhus, yes, when you take it down to bare bones, a glass cannon thief has stealth and 2 dodges while other glass cannons typically only have 2 dodges. but before we go nerf nerf nerf, we need to fix the few bugs stealth has, which all favor the thief. then we can properly adjust.

@burrid, well a thief will do one of two things in stealth, attack you, or run away. if we attack you and have a dagger, we are going for your back. if we are running away its most likely switching to shortbow and using infiltrator arrow, after the first arrow we are put out of stealth so you see where we are going…problem…stelath is bugged, we dont become visible right away, thus making it seem more OP then it is.

@barti, agreed they are annoying, far more annoying then stealth imo, key is to hit them in between evades, small window, but its there, combined with there pitiful hp they do die in seconds if they are not evading.

Burrid.4739:

This will just be a list of stuff I’ve been thinking while playing spvp.

-Every build deals massive damage, be it with dagger, sword, shortbow (haven’t seen much pistol thieves). Even autoattacks alone are powerful enough to kill someone.

I stopped reading there. Obviously this guy has never made a thief that went deep into Tricks and Stealth (for sneaky trapping) to find that HS and any other skill was extremely weak

Webley.1295:

Burrid.4739:

This will just be a list of stuff I’ve been thinking while playing spvp.

-Every build deals massive damage, be it with dagger, sword, shortbow (haven’t seen much pistol thieves). Even autoattacks alone are powerful enough to kill someone.

I stopped reading there. Obviously this guy has never made a thief that went deep into Tricks and Stealth (for sneaky trapping) to find that HS and any other skill was extremely weak

You won’t indeed be seeing backstab crits like 14k with a tricks and stealth build (it was my favorite build when I played my thief btw). BUT, and this is important, you still deal a lot of damage while not being specced into it. (5k crit backstabs, over 1k autoattack). So the defense build deals as much damage as some glass ‘cannon’ builds of other classes, and that’s another thing which I don’t accept.

I’ll try to answer to other people’s comments as well tomorrow, but some posts have more priority.

@Burrid, its been a while since i did my shadow/acro/trick build i enjoyed, the damage seemed very subpar, not compared to athief, but low in general.

but we also have to realize taht 1/3 your spec is stats, then traits, then skills.

you can trait and lay out skills defensively, but if your stats arent, you can still hit hard (relatively at least)

not too mention i think you get like 30-35% crit chance just from stats on gear right? bah i have to go ingame and re-check. basically ya you can get a 5k crit, but your chance of it critting is much lower.

as for autoattack damage, it really depends on teh weapon/class…i know warriors can get 8k from there gs auto rotation, highest ive seen from my dagger mainhand is 4.5-6k (with self buffs, i assume same for warrior)

but again, unless anet decides otherwise, they said they wanted theives for damage/mobility.

but not having exact numbers that target numbers that anet has, i cannot accurately argue for or against the balance of our skills damage outside of a glass cannon spec.

@Wolfe, you are indeed correct, much depends on the gear as well.
Can’t argue with you on your other statements too as I have to agree.

Burrid.4739:

Webley.1295:

Burrid.4739:

This will just be a list of stuff I’ve been thinking while playing spvp.

-Every build deals massive damage, be it with dagger, sword, shortbow (haven’t seen much pistol thieves). Even autoattacks alone are powerful enough to kill someone.

I stopped reading there. Obviously this guy has never made a thief that went deep into Tricks and Stealth (for sneaky trapping) to find that HS and any other skill was extremely weak

You won’t indeed be seeing backstab crits like 14k with a tricks and stealth build (it was my favorite build when I played my thief btw). BUT, and this is important, you still deal a lot of damage while not being specced into it. (5k crit backstabs, over 1k autoattack). So the defense build deals as much damage as some glass ‘cannon’ builds of other classes, and that’s another thing which I don’t accept.

I’ll try to answer to other people’s comments as well tomorrow, but some posts have more priority.

Our defensive builds are weaker than other classes defensive builds, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

They have to run away in the face of a stiff breeze.

Evade build is not OP, and the damage is not good at all. Look it up it is only a strong build, and is good for backdooring.

Ashanor.5319:

Our defensive builds are weaker than other classes defensive builds, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

Stealth skills are among the best defensive skills in the game, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

Varyag.3751:

Ashanor.5319:

Our defensive builds are weaker than other classes defensive builds, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

Stealth skills are among the best defensive skills in the game, doesn’t matter whether you accept it or not.

straight up false

first tis bugged

second it avoids no damage, just targetting

dodge>all

Wolfe.3097

first tis bugged

There are several bugs regarding stealth. That bug where the client doesn’t render unstealthed characters as quick as they reappear is one that gives Thieves another advantage.

Wolfe.3097

second it avoids no damage, just targetting

The ability to go into Stealth allows you to choose when and where the fight happens, it also gives you the choice of when to disengage from the fight.

Well as a thief I can tell you that if cought off guard I can die in 2 seconds but when I’m down and ppl hit me instead of stomping it takes 6-8seconds to kill me.
I guess it’s just how downstate works for every one not just thieves.
As for the rest of your whinny post… I dident even read it.

Have you EVER played a thief? Clearly not so go play one then come back

Me: -A thief is quickly killed
You: -The only time a thief loses a fight is because he doesn’t know what he’s doing or his utilities are on cooldown and he isn’t wielding daggers or shortbow.
Me: -Play better
-Use your team better
-Dodge.

Wolfe.3097:

lets go down the line shall we

@Proeliator, ty, i try to be unbiased even tho i main a thief

@EnochDagar, we are not supposed to be masters of damage, merely just high damage, you can take your own interpretation of what high damage should be. and it wasnt in the class description, it was a anet post about thieves strengths, which was supposed to be damage and mobility. i did find it odd they didnt mention stealth unless they consider it part of mobility or something. I dont recall anywhere in this thread people wanting to nerf or keep elemental damage down, so bringing it up is pure case of being unhappy about elementalist damage it seems. fair enough, tho no real place in this thread i think.

@Kijima, if you have shadowstep your not using hte exact glass cannon build most people are talking about. saying i spec backstab nad have survivability isnt the same as speccing that exact build and saying it. that specific backstab thief has 2 dodges and stealth, maybe shortbow for infiltrator arrows, thats it for mobility/survivability. if you have something else that adds to it, congrats, but your not using that specific build. tho people not knowing how to counter a thief in shadow refuge…im not sure how thats the thiefs problem :P. but i dont think your a pure glass spec, specially if you have shadowstep! but ya, hard to find good players to face sometimes.

@Kelhus, yes, when you take it down to bare bones, a glass cannon thief has stealth and 2 dodges while other glass cannons typically only have 2 dodges. but before we go nerf nerf nerf, we need to fix the few bugs stealth has, which all favor the thief. then we can properly adjust.

@burrid, well a thief will do one of two things in stealth, attack you, or run away. if we attack you and have a dagger, we are going for your back. if we are running away its most likely switching to shortbow and using infiltrator arrow, after the first arrow we are put out of stealth so you see where we are going…problem…stelath is bugged, we dont become visible right away, thus making it seem more OP then it is.

@barti, agreed they are annoying, far more annoying then stealth imo, key is to hit them in between evades, small window, but its there, combined with there pitiful hp they do die in seconds if they are not evading.

@Wolfe

I think there are different glass cannon speccs. About which one are you talking about? My build looks like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPXcS6E/5Ex2DfuTi6VgsaPo5NbJA;TsAg0Cno4ywlgLLXOukctgYQxECA

I know some ppl even use haste but i dont see why i should use that. I have a good balance with a lot of burst, constant high damage and good utility to get out of combat or just to turn the fight into my advantage. Of course if i get ganked or i face also good players i can die quite fast, depending on the cooldowns but overall this specc allows me to fight 1vsx without dying in a second as someone mentioned here before. You can take a look here, i made a video testing things out and at the second half you see that shadowstep is a really good skill to get advantage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgbSUix6Y38

The survivablity is great and i had some very epic moments, just didnt record them. In the end it is not the class, it’s the player. And thats what most ppl dont get. A bad thief wont kill you as long as you are not bad too. Seriously, which thief is killing someone by spamming 2… and ppl who think that a thief wont do damage after the first burst just make me smile.

PS: What the .. the censorship here is hilarious.

We moved this thread into the fitting subforum

For crying out loud, the only thing that is OP about the Thief class — and I mean only in the most literal sense possible — is the utility Assasin’s Signet. Once that is nerfed to 100% or something, everything will be fine when it comes to damage.

Haste (our Quickness ability) is tied to an issue with all classes, so that one doesn’t count, exactly.

Thieves aren’t overpowered, if you can dodge a thief’s attacks (highly unlikely), mitigate their damage or stun them, they’re pretty much kittened. Well if they survive that then it probably means their damage to you wasn’t that high to being with.

brickforlife.1364:

Thieves aren’t overpowered, if you can dodge a thief’s attacks (highly unlikely), mitigate their damage or stun them, they’re pretty much kittened. Well if they survive that then it probably means their damage to you wasn’t that high to being with.

how you dodge something you dont see?

rly stop with L2P comments its getting old

Thiefs are broken class, even with power, thougnes, vit set thiefs hit like truck becouse of 100% crit chance in stealth (most op skill ever dont need precision gear)

and yes thiefs can be in stealth all the time

whats funny about that 100% chance to crit while in stealth skill..is its down our critical strikes line that gives us crit% lol.

Personally I think the mechanic is broken. Moves should have cooldowns, not be able to be spammed for lolzy damage for as long as you have initiative. I’m a full bunker build guardian and even I got 8k backstabbed and heartseekered for 3.5k a pop in a ridiculously short amount of time. Full exotics and greatsword and they flattened me.

Might be a L2P issue, but it’s not really fair when the other class is so easy to play.

@Wolfe – the point is that AS ADVERTISED (which is what my post said if you read it instead of skimmed) the thief is NOT the master of damage. It is the perception of the general population (who may or may not know that a dev somewhere along the lines said anything relevant to the matter). The fact that I brought in the elementalist was to show an example of advertising damage. Also, if you read ABOVE my post (instead of skimming which I’m sure you did), you will see several people mention that thieves were meant to be masters of damage. This is what I was replying to.

kthxbye

@enochdagor, unbunch those panties and have a real debate other then accusations. i replied to your post. and in any mmo class definitions are more for flavor that accurate assessment of there strengths and weaknesses. i wish they were, but every mmo ive played the calss definition didnt accurately reflect ingame.

ill also take what anet says over there out of date class definitions

and i know some people mentioned that, thats why i came and and said..no, we are not meant to be “masters”. just high damage, and to take what you want from that.

your putting too much stock into what you consider advertismement.

as for how difficult at hief is compared to other classes. most classes ive had a very easy time playing, elementalist has a fine line between good and bad, and engineer i was overwhelmed for about 5 minutes figuring out the kits and such.

but when i got down to it, i have yet to play a class that feels difficult in this game.

the only difference between a thief and a other class is when i play thief and iw ant to do damage, i go for one button, when i play something else and i want to do damage, i press a pre-determined sequence of buttons.

despite what people would like you to belive, pressing x repeatedly isnt any harder or easier then pressing yzx.

Very well, and based off of your other posts I think you and I both agree that in general… the thieves ability to off someone as fast as they do needs ot be addressed… and we can both agree that a blanket nerf (such as backstab needs reduction or all thief abilities need reduced) is unacceptable.

However, I do disagree that pressing x repeatedly is easier than pressing yzx (cuz how do you know yzx will work in this situation?). Does it do all the things that pressing x does? no? does it take more time between x pressing then pressing yzx? no? That to me does indicate a problem.

However, contrary to what hte OP stated, there are things that are not really overpowered about the thief. I down and kill plenty of em. In fact, you could say I’ve grown a hatred of anyone with a thief’s signet in their buff window. They get targeted and dropped first, just cuz I can. And yes, my perspective isn’t tPvP. Frankly, I don’t care about tPvP and if game balance was all about tPvP, I wouldn’t play this game. Keep that in mind when you counter-point that balance in tPvP is the important factor.

With all of that said, there is a very apparent issue when the easiest class to “master” is also the hardest hitting class. And I think that is what most players consider unbalanced. Why play anything else when you can win just as easily (or easier) with a 1 button class? But the OP did mention a huge issue… the thief does not have to sacrifice damage potential to gain a defensive edge. This gives the thief advantage.

And finally to relate back to “as advertised” which I know you don’t put much stock in… and frankly no one should. But the thief does fit the agile defensive style… the stealth mechanics and such. But because that style is so different than everything else in the game, should they also have the highest damage potential?

Panties officially unbunched. But don’t tell my wife I wore em.

OP states that thieves kill based on what class we’re targetting. Clearly a newbie.
Not every elementalist (Or other dps-y seeming class) rolls glass cannon. Good players know they need to stack a lot of defensive stats. I have 20k hp on my thief while still outputting hilarious damage because I know that my instantaneous dps went down, but my effective dps went up.
You do more damage when you’re alive. Try stacking some vit.
Maybe put a stunbreaker on your hotbar. Mezzies can TP, eles can mistform/obby armor, warrs can endure pain, and although I’m not sure about other class specific counter mechanisms, I DO know that all classes can dodge. Please try stunbreaking and dodging that backstab thief next time. It’s far from an instantaneous process.

Burrid.4739:

Also: why is it that only tpvp has any importance? “Thieves are op, but hey, they are a bit less op in tournaments, so all is fine.” No, not everyone plays tournaments all the time..

Reminds me of world of warcraft arena. Everything must be balanced around arena, every other aspect of the game must be neglected, even if it ruins the game experience of other players. (not saying this is the case here, but people act like it.)

Well, if you balance around the whiners that can’t figure out how to counter a thief in sPvP and even worse in WvW, you’re going to ruin the game experience for people who play tPvP and PvE. The fact of the matter is that tPvP is the most controlled environment. You have specific team sizes that rarely fluctuate, and everyone has the same gear available. And with the rankings, you can somewhat ensure people are fighting against people of similar skill level.