Guild Wars 2

So i consider thief most overpowered profession in WvW, so first thing i wanted to do is level thief myself and see what are the downsides, atm im only lvl 40 and everything still feels OP, survibility, mobility, utility only thing i lack in wvwvw is damage, but im pretty sure that @ lvl 80 thief doesnt lack dmg in wvwvw.
I have seen many stating that thief is fine and even needs buff. Every other class has downsides for their powerful aspects, for example D/D eles can survive 1v6 but they will have to pop all their CDs and most likely will be unable to kill anyone. Thief can just survive same 1v6 with press of one button, and can repeat it all the time which lets him kill people 1 by 1.
So what makes thief balanced?
Oh and i want to mention that i consider thief the most easy class to play (from those ive tried) too, be it PVP/WvW or PVE leveling, so while your here you might explain me what makes thief complicated too.
Since release of game only thief excuses i have heard have been, eles can RTL 1200 away so our mobility fine, warrs can 100blade so our dmg fine, mesmers can stealth too so stealth is fine, so i would really appreciate constructive explanation why this profession that seems overpowered in every aspect is actually fine and balanced.

But thief is the most useless class in WvW unless you solo roam and kill straying runners, that contributes literally nothing to victory of your server?

It’s impossible to kill people 1v6 because they rez each other too fast.

Thief is the best roaming class, as you have discovered yourself. This is offset a bit by what the guy above me said, that in large teamfights we aren’t that good. (You can still contribute a lot by spamming cluster bomb and poison fields, with dagger storm).

Roaming doesn’t ‘contribute nothing’, it provides a lot of information to your server. As a scout that can literally never be killed (simply run D/P and don’t attack anyone) and has strong 1v1, Thieves are the clear winner in this category.

But I guess you just want the answer to why thieves are allowed to be ridiculous. The answer is that Anet balances around sPvP, where Thieves are bad due to low crit damage and stealth stopping point capping.

(There are also a lot of bad thieves who can’t figure out why the class is so good)

stof.9341:

It’s impossible to kill people 1v6 because they rez each other too fast.

Shadowstep into a group of close standing enemies, blinding powder, haste, cluster bombs in powder field for stealth and damage to enemies – once it finishes activate dagger storm elite – if enemies are not dead yet, shadowstep away.

Tied for lowest health with medium armour, and nearly no defensive boons make thieves the squishiest class out there (when they get hit). Because of this, and a lack of supporting capabilities, thieves falter in larger group fights, and find themselves relegated to ganking solo wanderers.

Sure, you can run away very well, but how good is that at defending your territory?

WvW and balance? whut?

I’d say the fact that outside of stealing them we really don’t get many reliable defenses so we have the lowest effective health generally.

Though you really cannot expect any sort of balance in WvW, anet makes little attempt to keep that place balanced and when you have the huge variance of players it makes it hard to really tell if something is overpowered.

Sure you may have managed to take out a team of 6 as your thief, but maybe thats not down to being thief? maybe they were all PvE uplevels that only came to try jumping puzzles/see what the fuss is about? Whats to say the engineer around the corner wouldn’t have taken em as well?

You might go your entire WvW career and never meet someone who actually knows how stealth works and know how their build can counter it, which makes all the difference.

For the most part its like running a condition necro against people that aren’t just not slotting condition removers but have never heard of conditions at all.

Which actually happens more often than I like to admit when I take my necro in to WvW for stomping uplevels and such solo roaming.

stof.9341:

It’s impossible to kill people 1v6 because they rez each other too fast.

Yet thief has the most chance of actually finishing someone cause of stealth, some other classes could do it with stability but they would be dead in seconds.

And spammable poison field, blast finisher, aoe bleed brings so much to group fight, i thought my necromancer plague form is awesome in zerg v zerg but tbh now i think i help more with thief just standing in back and applying poison/weakness everywhere + again stealth helps to ress, finish other players and we all know how powerful Rally is in zerg fights.

Preacher.9018:

Shadowstep into a group of close standing enemies, blinding powder, haste, cluster bombs in powder field for stealth and damage to enemies – once it finishes activate dagger storm elite – if enemies are not dead yet, shadowstep away.

Nice theory but if you actually knew about the Thief class, you’d see that half of it wouldn’t work at all and the rest counts on the fact all the enemies are bads.

Leeto.1570:

stof.9341:

It’s impossible to kill people 1v6 because they rez each other too fast.

Yet thief has the most chance of actually finishing someone cause of stealth, some other classes could do it with stability but they would be dead in seconds.

Mist Form. And why are we considering enemies that are dumb enough not to have someone auto-attacking the downed player when a thief is stealthed nearby?

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Leeto.1570:

stof.9341:

It’s impossible to kill people 1v6 because they rez each other too fast.

Yet thief has the most chance of actually finishing someone cause of stealth, some other classes could do it with stability but they would be dead in seconds.

Mist Form. And why are we considering enemies that are dumb enough not to have someone auto-attacking the downed player when a thief is stealthed nearby?

Mist form got nerfed yesterday, you cant spam downed mate while trying to ress him, and cant you just use shadowstep to not get dmged when trying to stomp?

Leeto.1570:

Mist form got nerfed yesterday, you cant spam downed mate while trying to ress him, and cant you just use shadowstep to not get dmged when trying to stomp?

I thought you just couldn’t use utilities/heal when mistformed now. Sorry if I’m mistaken, I haven’t WvW’d since the patch.

And yeah, you could use shadowstep, good point, though I worry about the thief’s state after finishing the stomp. You almost never down your enemies while you have full initiative, and you’ve used at least 6 (or a second utility) to stealth.

Let’s be realistic. Every game has difficulty settings, the easiest settings usually provide more safepoints, less skills required, have regenerating health etc. In this game the easy mode is the Thief profession. As a Thief you need to use very little skills and it’s very hard to be defeated, because you can setup your battle and retreat at any time thanks to near unlimited stealth and initiative points. Alltogether you play with several advantages vs. other players. Views from Pve, Spvp or Tpvp may vary – but in WvW it is very much so.

That said, i’m glad there is a easy mode! (Because bad players need a home too!)
But even then the bads will argue, that it’s all fair and game and even post videos how they “pwn n00bs” – same as bads of every game post videos how they beat games while exploiting weaknesses of game mechanics.

The result is, your victories are short lived since nobody cares and nobody respects you. If nobody respects a Thief as opponent, then what’s the point in playing one?

As WvW player i respect challenging opponents of all classes. I play for hard fought battles, as it rewards me with enjoyment, no matter if i win or lose. Battles against Thieves are shrugged off however. It’s the well known troll profession that doesn’t add much to WvW, runs around single or in pairs for easy kills. Everyone knows this and we don’t even care by now.

TLDR: Pity the easy mode thieves instead of getting all fussed over something that’s there for a reason. At least Anet thinks so, right?

You can still stomp in Mist Form and Elixir S.

Dasorine.1964:

WvW and balance? whut?

I’d say the fact that outside of stealing them we really don’t get many reliable defenses so we have the lowest effective health generally.

Though you really cannot expect any sort of balance in WvW, anet makes little attempt to keep that place balanced and when you have the huge variance of players it makes it hard to really tell if something is overpowered.

Sure you may have managed to take out a team of 6 as your thief, but maybe thats not down to being thief? maybe they were all PvE uplevels that only came to try jumping puzzles/see what the fuss is about? Whats to say the engineer around the corner wouldn’t have taken em as well?

You might go your entire WvW career and never meet someone who actually knows how stealth works and know how their build can counter it, which makes all the difference.

For the most part its like running a condition necro against people that aren’t just not slotting condition removers but have never heard of conditions at all.

Which actually happens more often than I like to admit when I take my necro in to WvW for stomping uplevels and such solo roaming.

Could you explain me stealth? maybe im just understanding it wrong and thats why revealed debuff seems like nothing to me. You can stealth whenever you want and you get revealed debuff if you attack some1 while in stealth, so basicly you never get revealed if you dont try to get more dmg via your stealth attacks, right?

And im pretty sure surviving/killing 1v6 is all up to beeing thief, you really wouldnt be able to survive 4+ people on necro or warr even if they would just press #1.
It would be fine that thief can survive against 5 clueless people if all classes could do that but almost no other class can do it.

No point in having an argument with those who just wants to hear what they wanna hear. So without further ado, thieves are OP, end of conversation.

danlarusso.2790:

Let’s be realistic…

If i would want to hear my own opinion aka Thief = GW2 infantile mode, then i wouldnt even create this topic, i want to hear something new, i want thief to tell me about their problems they encounter in this game, i want to hear why they think that everyone who says thief is OP is wrong, i want to hear why they think that thiefs should be unique snowflakes on gw2 that can pull off things that no other class can.

Leeto.1570:

If i would want to hear my own opinion aka Thief = GW2 infantile mode, then i wouldnt even create this topic, i want to hear something new, i want thief to tell me about their problems they encounter in this game, i want to hear why they think that everyone who says thief is OP is wrong, i want to hear why they think that thiefs should be unique snowflakes on gw2 that can pull off things that no other class can.

Because at the end of the day, that warrior who can’t survive 1v6s can pick off enemies practically in one shot from the safety of their zerg at 1500 range. Or he can build defensively, and support his allies with healing shouts or banner buffs.

That necro can cause huge AoE damage spikes that others can only dream of.

That engie has more CC than you can imagine.

Those eles and guardians can give their allies boons and healing like no other.

They may not be the best at ganking enemies, or taking advantage of player ineptitude, but when push comes to shove, I’d take any of those classes above when defending, or attacking anything but a camp over a thief.

Yes, it is possible for a thief to not trigger the revealed debuff – this is usually done by waiting until the last second, then using Cloak and Dagger to stealth again.

However, this doesn’t do very much damage, and you won’t have any effect except to annoy people.

Why Thief players think Thieves aren’t OP – a quick summary:
1) Thieves have few stun breakers. This means stuns are especially effective
2) Thieves have low base health with no defensive boons like Elementalists and Guardians (who also have the same base hp)
3) Thieves don’t have sustain – I don’t actually think this is a good reason, because our heals are on short CDs and heal a lot, and you can trait to heal in stealth.
4) Thieves aren’t good in WvW zergs – you’ll hear this a lot, but I don’t think it’s a good reason either, because while we may not have the utility of a glamour mesmer (which has been nerfed), cluster bomb does a crap ton of damage which means we can still contribute. It can also be curved over the edge of a keep wall so you don’t have to get in harms way to destroy a flame ram or catapult.
5) After bursting someone down, a Thief is vulnerable. Again this is a bad reason – the most common WvW build right now is D/P, which lets the Thief keep stealthing every few seconds, while maintaining high damage (but not as high as the standard burst build, of course). If the Thief is running a burst build then this is sort of true if they didn’t take any escape skills like Shadowstep (gee maybe taking some ability to get out quick is a good idea).

While these reasons are true, I still think the Thief’s easy access to stealth is ridiculous and makes them the clear pick for anyone who wants to WvW (except commanders, because running headfirst into a zerg as a Thief is a bad idea).

Edit: And as long as Arenanet decides to balance around sPvP, Thieves will always be #1 choice for WvW because the format just encourages hit and run classes who can disengage freely.

Ok thanks guys for input, i got all the info i wanted.

This is a trick question. Thief is not balanced in WvW.
I used to roam as a mesmer but thief is just… another game. :P

Btw, even if your thief is only lvl 40, if you get the best possible green gear with right runes and trinkets, you can still do fairly well as a p/d thief. At least I could win some 2v1’s when my thief was below 80 and in greens xD.

Leeto.1570:

Dasorine.1964:

WvW and balance? whut?

I’d say the fact that outside of stealing them we really don’t get many reliable defenses so we have the lowest effective health generally.

Though you really cannot expect any sort of balance in WvW, anet makes little attempt to keep that place balanced and when you have the huge variance of players it makes it hard to really tell if something is overpowered.

Sure you may have managed to take out a team of 6 as your thief, but maybe thats not down to being thief? maybe they were all PvE uplevels that only came to try jumping puzzles/see what the fuss is about? Whats to say the engineer around the corner wouldn’t have taken em as well?

You might go your entire WvW career and never meet someone who actually knows how stealth works and know how their build can counter it, which makes all the difference.

For the most part its like running a condition necro against people that aren’t just not slotting condition removers but have never heard of conditions at all.

Which actually happens more often than I like to admit when I take my necro in to WvW for stomping uplevels and such solo roaming.

Could you explain me stealth? maybe im just understanding it wrong and thats why revealed debuff seems like nothing to me. You can stealth whenever you want and you get revealed debuff if you attack some1 while in stealth, so basicly you never get revealed if you dont try to get more dmg via your stealth attacks, right?

And im pretty sure surviving/killing 1v6 is all up to beeing thief, you really wouldnt be able to survive 4+ people on necro or warr even if they would just press #1.
It would be fine that thief can survive against 5 clueless people if all classes could do that but almost no other class can do it.

Mainly the fact that generally the thieves largest damage comes from the stealthed attacks means if your not utilizing them to have a high uptime on stealth your essentially doing around half of any one elses auto-attack chain every 3 seconds which is not a dangerous amount of damage.

Then you have stealth not giving any protection by itself, it can be traited to give the thieves good regular condition removal if used in specific ways and the regen and heal over time can help a bit but would really be the equivilent of say a guardian or a warriors passive healing but only while stealth, all the while your still susceptible to the full damage others can pull of if they manage to get it to where you are (bar one or two skills that absolutely must have a target and don’t just turn into melee attacks)

If for example your chilled and crippled upon hitting a stealth, even if traited for condition removal those two conditions without using any other condition removal will basically keep you in place for the 3-4 seconds you’ll be stealthed, allowing anyone who noticed where you are when you stealthed to beat on you unless you burn your other skills to make your first defensive skill work (think of it like having to pop a stability utility to make protection boon work).

Yes we can get a lot of access to it but we give up other stuff for that (the aforementioned boons for example among others)

Of course this doesn’t make a lick of difference against low tier opponents as they tend to simply can’t handle you going invisible at all, which is why thief is seemingly so godlike in hotjoin sPvP and uplevel/pub stomping in WvW

That advantage rapidly decreases as you go against more experienced players which is why thieves aren’t much of a presence in organized team fights and higher tier play.

Again it mostly comes down to WvW not intended to be balanced and the effectiveness of being able to flee and confuse new players compared to being able to take their hits instead.

Of course you’ll always get the regular thief haters going on and on about how all of this is rubbish and thieves are OP because they killed them and such but thats how the current mechanics sort of work out and generally how they work out in every other game (though other MMORPGs’s give less access to stealth for actual defenses outside of stealth or just nerf the stealth archetype to the lowest of the low levels)

“Feedback” such as this and the winging that was guaranteed to follow it all belong in the following thread created by Anet in an attempt to keep our forums free of QQ-spam:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback-Merged/first

Please post your concerns in there instead and leave us to discussing our class, its strategies, and giving advice to players willing to learn just how easy it is to counter us with any profession.

Thanks.