Guild Wars 2

I was playing Guild Wars 2 earlier today and three times today three different people came up to me complaining how OP my thief/thieves are. Why on earth do people complain about thieves being OP. If anything, we are UP. I also heard we are getting a NERF as well this upcoming patch. Why ARENA net WHY??? Why do you listen to these terrible players? Why do thieves keep getting nerfed. It blows my mind… I just want to throw this out there and understand why we keep getting nerfed, and why people keep complaining on how thieves are so OP lol…

It’s too hard to learn to play, easier to cry for a nerf.

Only time anet played a thief (at least from what i recall) was new fractal preview and all they did was spamming unload and being dead 90% of the time so go figure… don’t believe me? Check their stream.

As far as complains go, majority do pve, pve spoils players, they expect you to stand still and fight toe to toe which thieves can’t do due to survival mechanics… stealth requires you to use brain and predict what thief will do next… most people just wanna press 1 2 3 4 5 and win.

They complain (in wvw) is mostly because:
1 – they are weak pvp-ers, that feel offended when they get a 1v1 reality check and never try to actually learn what can be done.(and nono, it’s never they that they are bad players, or their build is large fight oriented, it’s stealth/thief/that hylek over there’s fault)
2 – when they jump someone with 5+ people they expect loot and thief is the 1 class that can tell them “bye, sukaaaz!”

I roam nowadays on condi bunker warr. I have encountered a lot of thieves 1v1. Result – 0 deaths, some kills, many times they ran(I guess running away angers a lot people too, not me though).

Cynz.9437:

Only time anet played a thief (at least from what i recall) was new fractal preview and all they did was spamming unload and being dead 90% of the time so go figure… don’t believe me? Check their stream.

As far as complains go, majority do pve, pve spoils players, they expect you to stand still and fight toe to toe which thieves can’t do due to survival mechanics… stealth requires you to use brain and predict what thief will do next… most people just wanna press 1 2 3 4 5 and win.

Cynz, you are completely right… It’s terrible, and I think Arena.net needs to see this… Its sad that we need to be 30 in shadows arts to have a good survivability or to go in stealth for a bit to like be safe in a fight. And once thieves do go in stealth people complain… Like it’s terrible, and sucks for us.

Where did you hear we were getting nerfs? Also: watch the dev livestream of the balance team on Friday. They’ll be talking about a runes/sigil rework and changes to Critical Damage that will be very important to most thieves. My prediction is it will be buffed to be on par with conditions, balancing out the meta and making burst strong again.

Agreed, what is this source of information? I can’t find any leaked patched notes..

Its easier to throw the controller down and spill slander on a subject you don’t understand than to ask around or do some homework.

Until people actually look into these things and learn to play, we will be nerfed. Sorry, I meant “balanced”, it sounds better on paper that way. Good thieves will try, and adapt but eventually your cornered and left with two options. Abandon or fall into a waste basket of ideas that were never truly appreciated.

Hope some rouge comes along and straightens up the balance team this upcoming patch, I can’t take another month of watching mesmers dominate tpvp or trying to go toe to toe with a warrior and their trusty HS with lb and s/s in 1v1. I just can’t, I’d rather play the robber and be chased around the map than waste my breath pretending like I have or had a chance.

We keep getting nerfed because anet does not consult with players who understand the class. Instead, they get their profession balance suggestions from 4 random players from one of the gold leagues.

That means not all of the professions are accounted for and you can kitten well bet most if not all 4 of those players are biased towards their own profession.

Cynz.9437:

Only time anet played a thief (at least from what i recall) was new fractal preview and all they did was spamming unload and being dead 90% of the time so go figure… don’t believe me? Check their stream.

As far as complains go, majority do pve, pve spoils players, they expect you to stand still and fight toe to toe which thieves can’t do due to survival mechanics… stealth requires you to use brain and predict what thief will do next… most people just wanna press 1 2 3 4 5 and win.

yes yes and yes!

this upsets me. play the game longer. play it better. 90% of these players are just horrible or new or both. i NEVER have a problem against at hief when i play another class.

I just heard, I tried to look stuff up and couldnt find anything. The guy thought thieves were OP… So I don’t really trust him lol. Anyways, I hope we get that buff and I might watch them.

Yup, we’re OP and that’s why 90% of any player you pass bein’ a warrior

Thiefs, guys, thiefs are every….. uhm ne no wait, they’re not.

What ppl think to be “unfair” is our high dps because they don’t (f*cing) get that we play the maybe most risky class in game. We go into melee with the least HP and just medium armor?!

Swimfan.8014:

Yup, we’re OP and that’s why 90% of any player you pass bein’ a warrior

Thiefs, guys, thiefs are every….. uhm ne no wait, they’re not.

What ppl think to be “unfair” is our high dps because they don’t (f*cing) get that we play the maybe most risky class in game. We go into melee with the least HP and just medium armor?!

With no aegis, or protection, or invulnerability, or burst heals.

NinjaEd.3946:

Swimfan.8014:

Yup, we’re OP and that’s why 90% of any player you pass bein’ a warrior

Thiefs, guys, thiefs are every….. uhm ne no wait, they’re not.

What ppl think to be “unfair” is our high dps because they don’t (f*cing) get that we play the maybe most risky class in game. We go into melee with the least HP and just medium armor?!

With no aegis, or protection, or invulnerability, or burst heals.

BUT! We have stealth thus we’re OP. I win the argument simply because I used stealth to justify that we’re OP.
If you complain about anything else that we might not have, you’re wrong because we have stealth and thus we’re OP and don’t need anything else.
If you complain about anything being unfair towards thieves, you’re wrong because we have stealth and actually it’s unfair towards anyone else that isn’t a thief.

(sarcasm/mockery – Since some people don’t pick up on it… Basically if you look at anyone arguing against thieves in any sort of form or shape, they bring up stealth to justify what they’re saying (it might not be in the first post… but down the road they will pull that card out))

This is a l2p issue for 99.999% of the people in this game, seriously. Thief is right behind ranger as the easiest class to kill for me. If people would take a few minutes every day to get aquainted with the thief class and learn it’s ins and outs, I can guarantee nobody would be complaining anymore.

About the upcoming changes: Could be a nerf or a buff. If it’s a nerf then thieves will feel it the most. If it’s a buff then we will barely notice it (I’m looking at you, assassin’s reward.)

Thief is not really all that overpowered.
However it is not a L2P issue either. Please people, stop saying that. It is not true.

It is a frustration issue.
Fighting against someone whose blinds destroy any of the slower weaponsets, is constantly disappearing, deals damage quickly, teleports around, and can just disappear if the fight goes bad is downright annoying.
It doesn’t matter if the thief lives or dies, wins or loses, it is not fun in any way to be on the receiving end. All the nerfs in the world won’t stop people from saying thieves are OP, because how powerful the thief is, is simply not the problem at all. The fight needs to be fun for both players, not just one.

I came into the Thief forums to see what thieves were saying about the balance changes, and its kind of funny to seeing you cry about other people cry for nerfs to your class as if you are totally innocent in all of this.

magic fly.2041:

It doesn’t matter if the thief lives or dies, wins or loses, it is not fun in any way to be on the receiving end. All the nerfs in the world won’t stop people from saying thieves are OP, because how powerful the thief is, is simply not the problem at all. The fight needs to be fun for both players, not just one.

While Warriors have high armor and health, Rangers have lots of control and pets to hide behind, guardians have lots of healing, etc……Stealth is the primary (read : Only) survival mechanic the Thief has access to. Unless Anet changes the method that thieves rely on for survival, then fights with thieves (for you and many people) will always only be fun for the thief.

Chrispy.5641:

Rangers have lots of control and pets to hide behind,

You mean that thing people can safely ignore and literally walk through because it can’t hit a moving target?

Kravick.4906:

Chrispy.5641:

Rangers have lots of control and pets to hide behind,

You mean that thing people can safely ignore and literally walk through because it can’t hit a moving target?

Yup, thats the one. I didn’t say it was functional.

magic fly.2041:

[…]It is a frustration issue.
Fighting against someone whose blinds destroy any of the slower weaponsets, is constantly disappearing, deals damage quickly, teleports around, and can just disappear if the fight goes bad is downright annoying.[…]

Hm… that’s a valid point… but… What about Prismatic Understanding Mesmers?

It’s the nature of stealth + burst.

It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.

The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.

I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.

I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s the nature of stealth + burst.

It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.

The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.

I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.

I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.

I think the keyword here is “less experienced players”.

aimz.6287:

Why ARENA net WHY??? Why do you listen to these terrible players?

Just because Devs are terrible players too

People don’t like fighting classes that stealth because they don’t think it’s fighting fair, I get that. I also get that people don’t enjoy hunting an enemy that’s bursting you down one by one, and disappearing as soon as you see him. Honestly, I get that.

The thing to remember here is that you’re fighting a rogue. Expecting a rogue to fight fair is like expecting a dog to learn to play the mandolin. Ain’t gonna happen.

That said, I don’t especially enjoy being chased from one end of the borders to the other AND BACK AGAIN by 3+ warriors who see my thief as a lootbag-on-legs (lol). I also don’t enjoy being stun-locked, and being forced to watch my character die whilst the other player removes my ability to fight.

If this is what passes for Queensbury rules in this game, you can bet your *$! that I’ll backstab them and dance around laughing in stealth, fear them off cliffs as they try to chase me, and just generally be annoying. And I’ll enjoy it too.

Last night was fighting Ele,Necro and two Rangers all of them start trowing their kitten on me and i immediately used degger storm i did not get a chance to start useing stelth they all died by their own stupidity,all of them started F…. thief this F thief that i seriously dont know what is theier F… problem! This is PvP learn to play F…rabbits, I kill i die it is not problem to me.When i start to play this game i were killed a lot facerolled ,so i stop play thief for a month and rolled evry class in game!……………………………

Kolly.9872:

aimz.6287:

Why ARENA net WHY??? Why do you listen to these terrible players?

Just because Devs are terrible players too

Should watch the “Fractured” preview gameplay, where the dev died over and over and over on his p/p thief. Granted he was ridiculous for using nothing but p/p to begin with but… it was laughable. Even his buddy behind him was laughing.

Ibbuli.4027:

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s the nature of stealth + burst.

It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.

The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.

I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.

I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.

I think the keyword here is “less experienced players”.

I regret to mention it, but Silkroad online probably tops GW2 in stealth exploit.

You get like 200% dmg bonus, and it’s permanent, and they put it on the hardest hitting class in the game. There was no ground target skills or directional skills, it was all click based so you can imagine how ridiculous it was. Nothing like watching a mage meteor you for 280k or a rouge twin stabbing you for 200k.

95-99% of people that PvP in this game are terrible. They get backstabbed, run around in circles confused about what is happening and then finally die to the thief. Then they proceed to cry on the forums. Since these players aren’t good enough to just play thief to figure out its weaknesses, it’s much easier to just cry about it.

squeezebag.4618:

95-99% of people that PvP in this game are terrible. They get backstabbed, run around in circles confused about what is happening and then finally die to the thief. Then they proceed to cry on the forums. Since these players aren’t good enough to just play thief to figure out its weaknesses, it’s much easier to just cry about it.

so heres the problem. if they nerf thief again and again…the GOOD players playing against thief which WERE already on fair grounds…are now OP .

trying to nerf so average to bad players can play competitively is a bad idea bc it ruins a class against good players.

Ibbuli.4027:

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s the nature of stealth + burst.

It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.

The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.

I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.

I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.

I think the keyword here is “less experienced players”.

Yes but you can’t design a mechanic around the notion that everyone dealing with it is a pro player.

ANet dropped the ball here. Even Revealed was merely an afterthought.

Instead of making Stealth a Thief’s defensive tool they made it the Thief’s universal tool for everything from setting up damage, over healing , blinding and condition cleansing.

It does too much and is yet too essential for Thief survival for them to play without.

NinjaEd.3946:

Kolly.9872:

aimz.6287:

Why ARENA net WHY??? Why do you listen to these terrible players?

Just because Devs are terrible players too

Should watch the “Fractured” preview gameplay, where the dev died over and over and over on his p/p thief. Granted he was ridiculous for using nothing but p/p to begin with but… it was laughable. Even his buddy behind him was laughing.

Would like to point out that dev playing that thief wasn’t necessarily a balance dev, and has no obligation to even play the game even if he is designing the content. I’d imagine some of the people that work at Anet aren’t particularly good at the game because they don’t play much in their spare time.

Also throw in the fact it was a test account on a test server (not live), which means it’s not his actual character and likely pre-made by someone else and everything already selected. The guy might be playing a class he’s never played before.

Redball.7236:

NinjaEd.3946:

Kolly.9872:

aimz.6287:

Why ARENA net WHY??? Why do you listen to these terrible players?

Just because Devs are terrible players too

Should watch the “Fractured” preview gameplay, where the dev died over and over and over on his p/p thief. Granted he was ridiculous for using nothing but p/p to begin with but… it was laughable. Even his buddy behind him was laughing.

Would like to point out that dev playing that thief wasn’t necessarily a balance dev, and has no obligation to even play the game even if he is designing the content. I’d imagine some of the people that work at Anet aren’t particularly good at the game because they don’t play much in their spare time.

Also throw in the fact it was a test account on a test server (not live), which means it’s not his actual character and likely pre-made by someone else and everything already selected. The guy might be playing a class he’s never played before.

Do you mean that Devs are balancing a class (Thief), they have never played before?They are balancing a class (Thief) without actually know how that class work?
…That makes sense

I’m pretty sure nowhere in what I said did I say that a balance dev would never have played that class before.

The person playing the thief in that livestream is not on the balance team.

Still anet chose him to play thief on a live stream. Says something about some of their decisions. They don’t make mistakes all the time, but some of them are just like “da heck? Really?”.

there is no dev playing thief as far as i know

i can confirm (saw it myself) they play mesmer, warrior, ele and engi…idk about other classes

Cynz.9437:

there is no dev playing thief as far as i know

i can confirm (saw it myself) they play mesmer, warrior, ele and engi…idk about other classes

Granted this will sound insane, but could a dev respond on this? Don’t have to say who or if they’re in your opinion, good. Just confirm or deny if there are actual dev’s playing thief or are all the changes directed towards us player feedback.

I was told by a hambow 2.0 Warrior yesterday that Thief is actually the easiest class in the game to play in tPvP because of the ability to evade constantly, perma-stealth, do massive cleave DPS, and reset the fight at will.

The most hilarious part? I was using 10/30/0/0/30 SB + D/P, where evades are practically non-existent, perma-stealth is impossible, cleave doesn’t exist, and the ability to reset a fight does absolutely nothing for your team.

In other words, people have no kittening idea how Thieves work, but being killed by one obviously means that they’re OP, there’s no other answer.

Incurafy.6329:

stuff

In other words, people have no kittening idea how Thieves work, but being killed by one obviously means that they’re OP, there’s no other answer.

Well well, isn’t this a glorious circle-jerk?

I complain because I didn’t roll a thief sooner, so I can play the victim card, and brush off any feedback by touting “L2P”.

Eloquence.5207:

Well well, isn’t this a glorious circle-jerk?

I complain because I didn’t roll a thief sooner, so I can play the victim card, and brush off any feedback by touting “L2P”.

FYI The thief circle-jerk exists because baddie circle-jerk continues to produce some influence over the devs. And that circle-jerk existed WAY before the circle-jerk you are labeling.

And for the record, good feedback comes from people who know what they are talking about. Most of the players who cry about thieves tend to be bad players who neglect to do simple things like maintaining situational awareness, NOT afking outside a keep and learning all of the other professions so they know what to expect from each of them.

But baddies want their free lootbags, not honorable combat. They want that self assurance that they are not bad players without putting forth the work, something that thieves have to do just to pull off the one move that requires the most set up and planning in the game. And better yet, you can’t just heal your mistakes away as a thief. Our best heals are SoM passive and Hide in Shadows.

But none of you would know that because you don’t know a thing about thieves. Try playing a profession with almost zero “oh ****” buttons for once.

EDIT: And you know what, it’s kind of offensive to have an ignorant person’s word heard over mine especially since I have clocked a good 90% of my game time on one and spent at least 80% of the time I spent on it testing traits and skill combinations in PvX. Do you know what it feels like to have everything you worked for suddenly not count?

The main problem is that the majority of people in balance discussions don’t play the classes they talk about. Experience against a class is very different from experience within a class.

Also, for some strange reason the balance team seems very enamoured with stealth. The thief class as a whole is too weak, but stealth specifically is too strong. You can see the glorious result when a stronger class is also given stealth (PU mesmers), an unholy result which only very specific builds can beat, of which nearly all are other types of mesmers.

Time in stealth needs a nerf. 50-70% uptime is good, the current 100% potential uptime is ridiculous. At the same time, thieves need a significant survivability buff that does not depend on stealth, AND an increase in damage. It would be ok to be less survivable than a warrior should the damage be massively greater to compensate; at the moment the damage numbers aren’t very different, but the warrior has so much greater survivability the whole scale is off-kilter.

To talk about a mesmer vs thief discussion properly you need experience playing both, to talk about thief vs warrior you need to play both, etc. Balancing all 8 classes against each other requires experience in all 8 classes. The current approach to things needs a lot of improvement… decisions by committee don’t work well because not all members of the committee have equal input.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yes but you can’t design a mechanic around the notion that everyone dealing with it is a pro player.

ANet dropped the ball here. Even Revealed was merely an afterthought.

Instead of making Stealth a Thief’s defensive tool they made it the Thief’s universal tool for everything from setting up damage, over healing , blinding and condition cleansing.

It does too much and is yet too essential for Thief survival for them to play without.

The thing is getting all the bonuses you mentioned already takes 60 trait points (with 0 in power trait line), not to mention you can only pick some, not all of the stealth bonuses as most of them are stuffed to Shadow Arts. If you just pick up all the condition cleans and regens, you can’t maintain stealth as you need the initiative gains when stealthing and such. (Or reduced recharges on deception skills)

Cynz.9437:

there is no dev playing thief as far as i know

i can confirm (saw it myself) they play mesmer, warrior, ele and engi…idk about other classes

Next time you go have lunch with them or whatever it is you do with them that allows you to know exactly what they do in the game, can you ask them when they plan to add new game modes? kthx!

Leadfoot.9071:

Cynz.9437:

there is no dev playing thief as far as i know

i can confirm (saw it myself) they play mesmer, warrior, ele and engi…idk about other classes

Next time you go have lunch with them or whatever it is you do with them that allows you to know exactly what they do in the game, can you ask them when they plan to add new game modes? kthx!

i do pvp/wvw and i saw them playing those classes, doh

Ohhh I see, you’re saying that the devs don’t play thieves because if they did you would have seen them? I guess you must play a LOT and have MANY accounts so you can play on multiple screens? Or maybe the devs have a rule that when they play the must find where Cynz is playing and be sure to play nearby. Very interesting…

i Don’t get this “spam more (insert ability)” comment. let’s take the legendary heartseeker. it’s pretty usless doing on ppl whit more then 50% hp. and once a theif starts leaping u can cc him easy, he can’t evade whit Roll or move while in the air.
so it’s more nooby to have no cc’s for a 2 spamming theif then a theif spamming 2

Me my self have no big problems whit theives when i play other classes since i know how they work. ofc a good theif can still be a pain in the kitten , If they don’t want to get killed you can’t stop them from running.

Leadfoot.9071:

Ohhh I see, you’re saying that the devs don’t play thieves because if they did you would have seen them? I guess you must play a LOT and have MANY accounts so you can play on multiple screens? Or maybe the devs have a rule that when they play the must find where Cynz is playing and be sure to play nearby. Very interesting…

read what i wrote again, i said i can confirm they play certain classes, i did say idk about the rest
stop twisting my words

Actually you said:

Only time anet played a thief (at least from what i recall) was new fractal preview…

It’s a common trend I see on the forums of people saying “devs don’t care about x”, “devs don’t play their own game”, “devs do this”, “devs do that” – as if you really know what they are thinking or doing. It’s just ridiculous hyperbole and I find it annoying so I’m just busting your balls about it.

magic fly.2041:

Thief is not really all that overpowered.
However it is not a L2P issue either. Please people, stop saying that. It is not true.

It is a frustration issue.
Fighting against someone whose blinds destroy any of the slower weaponsets, is constantly disappearing, deals damage quickly, teleports around, and can just disappear if the fight goes bad is downright annoying.
It doesn’t matter if the thief lives or dies, wins or loses, it is not fun in any way to be on the receiving end. All the nerfs in the world won’t stop people from saying thieves are OP, because how powerful the thief is, is simply not the problem at all. The fight needs to be fun for both players, not just one.

I agree 100%. Same goes for solo eles and warriors who can reset fights when they are losing. It has nothing to do with OPness or l2p, it’s entirely fun/frustration issue.