Guild Wars 2

I’ve mained a thief since I bought the game about 5 months ago, my highest level alt is the asuran thief I’m working on just cause my human one feels boring now.

I’ve tried the other classes, just never really clicked with them.

So I hear all this rant about thief and stealth and blah blah blah, and I hate people who write posts like this but I just hope someone, might just get something out of it.

So lets take pve.

Thief in dungeons, I do alright personally. I’m by no means the vip on an equal playfield unless I know the dungeon better. I offer blinds, blast finishers and I have a couple reflect skills which all come in handy in the dungeons. I also play the medic role pretty good.

Obviously though, this can’t be where thiefs are op, I mean common, you can’t say were the best here.

Next, structured pvp.

So, we can’t capture points while stealthed, PVP is based off capturing points. So the thief, can kind of take out stragglers, but any good team will travel in atleast a pair or maybe 3 in a group. Thiefs are alright here but the metagame has seen that tank builds such as elementalist and rangers are really strong in this department. Thiefs are really more just annoying, they offer nothing another class could do better. Its all about taking points right?

WvW,

So I’m pretty squishy, I gotta stay in the back usually in zerg vs zerg fights, which leaves me with the bow or p/p. I know i got a pretty good blast finisher but I mean, its not game changing. I can take down stragglers too but I mean, don’t take long for a 5 man team to chase a straggler down either. Nothing special to the thief or the stealth. WvW is all about capturing keeps, castles, towers, and camps. Thieves have nothing special about doing that, maybe soloing camps, any class can do that though, they have leashes on them.

So this leaves me with roaming wvw thieves. Yah, I’m pretty solid here, “BUT IT DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BENEFICIAL TO MY SERVER AND IT DOES NOTHING TO MY OPPONENT BUT MAKE HIM RESPAWN”.

Thieves have one area that they shine in, roaming and outnumbering players not built to deal with it or inexperience, thats it, purely being annoying. Most players that I’ve tried to kill in roaming know to just keep running. I have a few gap closers that cost initiative, so just do a little counting in your head, when he shadow shot or heartseekrs a few times, stop and kill him, he’s stuck.

Good thing is, if he kills you, nothing happens, he gains maybe a badge of honor, you res back to wp and go back to helping your server in a small group or zerg and do what the game actually needs you to do.

Everybody and their dog has a thief that they’ve watched some outnumbered video, cool, wheres the video where the thief did something beneficial like changing the tides of battle with retaliation or something?

Heres example A)

Bob and joe(guardian and warrior) decide to go out and wander wvw, they just want to find solo newbs and stomp them(what other reason would you wander around? it servers no purpose to the whole wvw thing except to spy but we all know what bob and joe really want to do). Oh crap, a thief rolls in and bounces around like a ninja and slaughters them all, guess what the thief just killed 2 guys that really, all they wanted to do was stomp someone themselves but they got stomped, big deal. Respawn, repeat. The thief is not getting any further ahead then most players.

This game is not balanced around 1v1, its balanced around 5 man groups. So give up people. The only way to balance it now would be to redo the whole class which isn’t going to happen and any more changes are going to make an alright class unplayable in every aspect of the game except roaming, which is such a small, tiny, miniscule part of the game that it doesn’t even matter.

ive been screaming this at the top of my “keyboard” for many months. QQers QQ about roaming 1 v 1 scenarios and NOTHING more. never heard of complaints in pve or complaints in spvp. hell you never hear of complaints in group fights in wvw. ONLY 1 v 1. and if thats the case we should get mug crit back and many other nerfs. who cares of we kill 1` v 1s. if we could get our burst back which we lost….we would atleast be able to cut off reinforcements or something…maybe kill a mesmer b efore a portal bomb but thats impossible now.

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

P/P is awful, and your specialized role is taking out squishy targets in WvWvW SPvP with D/D (choose you kitten targets well if there is a guardian a bunker ele and thief go for the guardian… try to assassinate him if you fail no big deal switch back to shortbow and like you said provide long range dps and blast finishers till you can go back in with d/d and try to assassinate someone.

at least someone finally realizes this

“This game is not balanced around 1v1, its balanced around 5 man groups.”

Too many kitten kiddies getting mad they get kitten d 1v1 by a thief who has the element of surprise on them. They cry on the forums until we get nerfed and are useless in group play effecting us negatively especially in dungeons.

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Ya i have too many bad experience with thiefs in dungeons using stupid kitten like pistols or trying to run condition/support. They are the reason people dont like thiefs in PvE. A D/D thief out dps a zerker warrior anyday.

What’s funny is the Thief can hardly be considered the strongest roaming class in this game. Elementalists and Mesmers are still far superior roamers and they’re far more versatile too. Even Rangers with their bunker/regen builds do a better job at everything a thief can do.

No, the thing that garners so much complaint is stealth. It gets the same complaints in every MMO it’s ever been a part of and it’s often done by people who don’t bother to actually try the class to see how stealth works.

That all said, and coming from a thief ‘main’, I would have to say GW2 has the absolute worst implementation of the thief/rogue/assassin type class I’ve ever seen in any MMO. I’d argue the complaints are somewhat warranted, but a bit ignorant in their target. Personally, I see initiative regen as the only legitimate issue with this class, but I’m also not stupid enough to think you can start messing with it and expect the class to remain playable.

When all is said and done, the people complaining about the class are those who have never played it, insist on running around in less toughness than the thieves they’re fighting against, and are often quite awful players to boot.

Zepidel.5349:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Ya i have too many bad experience with thiefs in dungeons using stupid kitten like pistols or trying to run condition/support. They are the reason people dont like thiefs in PvE. A D/D thief out dps a zerker warrior anyday.

and they die in 1 hit from a boss doing it. the reason thieves arent liked in groups for dungeons is bc they keep having to revive them every 3 seconds and they offer 0 support. not bc they run stupid builds. if u wanna see whos good/bad take all good players with all good builds then compare. not take a bad player/build then compare thats just silly.

Sounds about right. You have to understand though, for most of these people, roaming is all that matters, because they think in a game balanced around group fights when it comes to classes, that every class is kitted for a 1v1 altercation, and so to them a 1v1 is a showing of who is more skilled, when really, all it is is a number of factors (which include class and environment) which dictate the result of the fight.

Do you ever see zergs trying to stack up on thieves? Lol, no.

Travlane.5948:

Zepidel.5349:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Ya i have too many bad experience with thiefs in dungeons using stupid kitten like pistols or trying to run condition/support. They are the reason people dont like thiefs in PvE. A D/D thief out dps a zerker warrior anyday.

and they die in 1 hit from a boss doing it. the reason thieves arent liked in groups for dungeons is bc they keep having to revive them every 3 seconds and they offer 0 support. not bc they run stupid builds. if u wanna see whos good/bad take all good players with all good builds then compare. not take a bad player/build then compare thats just silly.

the bad ones do. If i mess up my dodges and what not and im sitting at 5k or less hp with no heal I go to shortbow and play it safe until im healed up etc… Secondly thieves have awesome support according to the current PvE meta. We bring the dps which is all that matter honestly BUT we have SR which is amazing for ressing, we also have loads of combo fields and a blast finisher whenever we want it + projectile reflection.

d/d + sb 25-30-0-15-0 is the best PvE build for the current meta period.

I’ve been saying the same thing for months. What they could do to fix 90% of the complaints about thief would have been to just make it impossible for stealth to stack and give us the revealed debuff every time we leave stealth – even if we don’t attack.

I do disagree with you that we’re useless in PvE, because we do bring good AoE with our short bow. We can weaken, poison and bleed our foes pretty good with it and at the same time utilize every combo field we see and deal pretty high physical damage with trick shot and cluster bomb. Melee is more difficult and will require the thief to have a decent level of understanding of both the dungeon and the class. We’re squishy but we can avoid most damage with countless evades, shadow steps and blinds. On top of this we are great for reviving our group. I’m usually the last man standing, and surviving, in my groups – as well as the main damage dealer and combo field abuser.

In sPvP we can deal nice AoE damage and deal with bunkers. A good thief is welcome in any PvP group because of our abilities to move quickly between points and ambushing our foe.

WvW. Well. We work mainly as supply runners and stopping dolyaks or other supply runners. Other than that I would say there isn’t much we can do ..

I want to clarify that I do not think that the thief sucks in PvP or PVE, I really enjoy my thief in pve especially, its a game, I have fun. I just meant to say it is very far from over powered. Its right in the middle ground. Not the best, not the worst, and some do way better with it based off profession knowledge and knowledge of the dungeon.

Zepidel.5349:

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

If I ever came across a thief trying to play healer/support in a dungeon id probably leave in shame.

A ranger/ele combined with a thief’s clusterbomb can do miracles though.
I don’t run support, but when possible I’d shoot clusterbomb on healing springs
Just wanted to comment on that part :P

Ya i have too many bad experience with thiefs in dungeons using stupid kitten like pistols or trying to run condition/support. They are the reason people dont like thiefs in PvE. A D/D thief out dps a zerker warrior anyday.

On the contrary. All the hate against the Thief in PvE comes for squishy zerkers dying all the time and being ejected from groups because they add nothing (dps while dead = 0, in fact it would be negative dps as you stop your allies dps while they’re ressing you all the time). I’ve never heard hate against support thieves though.

I can tell you I can use my support build and run Arah explorable mode with no one in the whole group breaking a single piece of armor and you see through playing it that your role is a big reason for that. You just need to know how to play your cards and doing so you don’t decrease your overal damage too much (it isn’t like you’re playing cleric gear or anything like that) and you help all your team maintain (and increase) their dps.

Metamega.9025:

I want to clarify that I do not think that the thief sucks in PvP or PVE, I really enjoy my thief in pve especially, its a game, I have fun. I just meant to say it is very far from over powered. Its right in the middle ground. Not the best, not the worst, and some do way better with it based off profession knowledge and knowledge of the dungeon.

I think the problem with the thief is that it is all of those things. The ability of a thief to survive is directly related to how good the person playing the thief is. Because all of a thief’s defense is “active” (meaning, you have to trigger your defense, either by dodge, blind, etc.) as opposed to “passive” (meaning toughness and vitality, that are there whether you trigger something or not), a thief’s ability to survive is in his ability to anticipate and outsmart his opponent. Because of this, a really good thief has the potential to be really good (high skill ceiling) and a bad thief will be really bad (low skill floor). When people complain about thief being op, what they really should be saying is that thief has too high of a skill ceiling (which I don’t agree with, it’s just that this is the problem that people have with the thief, and allows for better arguments than “thief is op because I got killed”).

Metamega.9025:

Thieves have one area that they shine in, roaming and outnumbering players not built to deal with it or inexperience, thats it, purely being annoying.

Unfortunately, this area of expertise strikes the most sensitive target of average Joe… his EGO.

Metamega.9025:

So I’m pretty squishy, I gotta stay in the back usually in zerg vs zerg fights, which leaves me with the bow or p/p. I know i got a pretty good blast finisher but I mean, its not game changing. I can take down stragglers too but I mean, don’t take long for a 5 man team to chase a straggler down either. Nothing special to the thief or the stealth. WvW is all about capturing keeps, castles, towers, and camps. Thieves have nothing special about doing that, maybe soloing camps, any class can do that though, they have leashes on them.

So this leaves me with roaming wvw thieves. Yah, I’m pretty solid here, “BUT IT DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BENEFICIAL TO MY SERVER AND IT DOES NOTHING TO MY OPPONENT BUT MAKE HIM RESPAWN”.

Actually, based on my experience the only time you really should be dying in a zerg v zerg is when the enemy has too many arrowcarts or multiple players with aoe and cc going after you.

All the aoe is aimed at your zerg, so the trick is to get away from your allies. So long as you have a dagger offhand you can always steal while near your enemies, which combined with clever positioning makes you really difficult to kill. Take sword if you want cleave and dagger if you want to spike down single targets and enjoy!

Where a thief really shines, however, is taking down enemy siege. For instance, there was a time when our server had lost SM and our mighty zerg decided to take it back. We blasted a few holes in the walls and rushed in, but the enemy pushed us back with arrow carts. The siege dragged on, so I sneaked in and took down every single arrow cart on the walls, by myself. After that our zerg managed to push through and I proceeded to repeat the process within the inner walls, but the WvW match ended before we could push through.

If one thief that knows what he’s doing can turn the tide of an entire siege, just imagine what a small group of them could do. Taking down siege took a while solo since once the enemy realized what I was doing they make my life difficult, but two or three thieves could clear out siege rather quickly.

Atherakhia.4086:

What’s funny is the Thief can hardly be considered the strongest roaming class in this game. Elementalists and Mesmers are still far superior roamers and they’re far more versatile too. Even Rangers with their bunker/regen builds do a better job at everything a thief can do.

No, the thing that garners so much complaint is stealth. It gets the same complaints in every MMO it’s ever been a part of and it’s often done by people who don’t bother to actually try the class to see how stealth works.

That all said, and coming from a thief ‘main’, I would have to say GW2 has the absolute worst implementation of the thief/rogue/assassin type class I’ve ever seen in any MMO. I’d argue the complaints are somewhat warranted, but a bit ignorant in their target. Personally, I see initiative regen as the only legitimate issue with this class, but I’m also not stupid enough to think you can start messing with it and expect the class to remain playable.

Actually, that is true…the only thing I have ever really had a problem with is the stealth mechanic. I can handle the idea that thieves are intended to be massive burst damage. I can handle some aspects of the stealth mechanic. What I have always had a problem with is the idea of being able to jump in and out of stealth infinitely, or nearly so, or at least seemingly so, and the escape via stealth if they are losing…only to return 3 minutes later when they think they have the advantage, and try it all over again.
I went through this for 15 minutes with a thief that wouldn’t leave me alone even though I beat the snot out of him five times in a row, until he finally caught me at a point when I was distracted by, and being attacked by some random animal life, and slightly low on health, and then he ganked me from stealth, I still almost killed him, but he managed to take me down between him and the yaks or wolves or whatever it was.

Admittedly, this might not have been so extremely irritating to me if I had not been simply trying to get to the borderlands jumping puzzle and get out. I never used to be much into wvw, but I really enjoyed the jumping puzzles, and spending 90 minutes just trying to get to the stupid thing because every time I’d almost get there some thief would pop out of stealth and slaughter me in 2 seconds started to grate on my rather generous endowment of patience.

But I read another post earlier this morning and I’m going to actually go ahead and start leveling my thief.
my problem, though, in general with this kind of class, and this is just a personal thing with me, is that the ability to stealth and then attack from stealth…it just feels like cheating somehow. I realize that is how the profession is designed…but it still feels that way to me.

anyway, I’ll try to stop being so antagonistic to thieves in future forum posts, as I level my thief and see how it goes.

stealth is OP, it makes you invincible !
and when you also can deal 35k+ backstabs,
then i wonder why not all players are thieves !

OT: if bob and joe don’t win every time 2 vs 1, or even 1vs1, they come and complain on forums

DanH.5879:

stealth is OP, it makes you invincible !
and when you also can deal 35k+ backstabs,
then i wonder why not all players are thieves !

OT: if bob and joe don’t win every time 2 vs 1, or even 1vs1, they come and complain on forums

Stealth does not make you invincible. By no means. I have a Thief and a Guardian and use both in WvW. When I come up against another Thief I feel much more comfortable when I am with my Guardian as I have tons of AOE dmg and I would say 1/3 times the Thief appears laying on the ground rdy to be stomped. Other outcomes are that he flees or I die (about even). But Thieves still take dmg in Stealth!

35k+ Backstab? Until you show me a picture of that I say you are lying. After it has been nerfed backstab can do 15k+ top. Maybe some can do 18k but not reliable. And those builds are pure glasscannon meaning the Thief has10k health with no armor…. So you need 3 or 4 regular hits to get them down… As already mentioned you need AOE’s to hit them in stealth or just run around spamming your chain/*1 Skill.

I have a really good knowledge about Thieves as I play one 50% of my time and I know they can be beaten even though they have a huge burst and stealth. Just try to learn how…

BTW: I just hope you where sarcastic

@DanH: Avoid sarcasm and facetious remarks. You never know who’s reading the thread.

Thief is alright in PvE if you know the encounter and can avoid the damage. They hit very hard but aren’t Warriors, and in PvE, anything that isn’t a Warrior/Mes/Guard is considered to be at a disadvantage.

SPvP has rulesets that limit the potential of the class, but at running around unmolested and setting up lethal group ganks with Shadow Refuge the Thief is useful and thus valuable. Anybody that says that Thieves aren’t good in SPvP is ignorant. They are also the best at Hotjoin glory farming, if you want that.

In WvW, stealth abuse allows you the choice to do as you will – that combined with their speed makes them the absolute best at roaming with no risk involved in any activity. They aren’t exceptional when it comes to zerg fighting – and it depends on the type of zerg fight. A zerg cutting pain train demands a shortbow with endless autoattacks and cluster spam – which deals good damage and gets you lots of bags. In those everlasting zerg standoffs the Thief is way worse – you have to actually know what your doing and pick your target intelligently.

Small scale WvW is where the Thief excels – they can hit where and when you are weak as desired with little risk in the action and everything to gain, which is why people hate them. When Elementalists had an even easier time doing this, they were hated too. It’s the way of it. The only defense people have been able to come up with for their performance in WvW is trying desperately to downplay the importance of free camps, free scouting, free cows and free harassment – which D/D Eles used too and only the dense and gullible actually believed.

Craig.2403:

I think the problem with the thief is that it is all of those things. The ability of a thief to survive is directly related to how good the person playing the thief is. Because all of a thief’s defense is “active” (meaning, you have to trigger your defense, either by dodge, blind, etc.) as opposed to “passive” (meaning toughness and vitality, that are there whether you trigger something or not), a thief’s ability to survive is in his ability to anticipate and outsmart his opponent. Because of this, a really good thief has the potential to be really good (high skill ceiling) and a bad thief will be really bad (low skill floor). When people complain about thief being op, what they really should be saying is that thief has too high of a skill ceiling (which I don’t agree with, it’s just that this is the problem that people have with the thief, and allows for better arguments than “thief is op because I got killed”).

This. I’ve barely played a thief but even in that little time I’ve realized that you either die instantly or don’t get so much as a scratch on you. A really good thief will probably kill most people without every being touched 1v1 and will can cause havoc to groups even. Even if they aren’t able to eventually kill a whole group, a good thief is basically still unkillable themselves. (And before it’s said, roaming certainly helps in WvW because those groups you take out or even that one person are just as likely to be heading to the zerg or to a POI to accomplish something that helps their world as they are to simply be running around looking for scrubs to kill.)

If the OP really wants to make an argument that thieves aren’t overpowered (in WvW), they should get into whether other professions that are played well are basically unkillable. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but that would be a much better argument than, “Killing people does nothing!”