Guild Wars 2

aimz.6287:

I heard we are getting a NERF as well this upcoming patch.

Source?
This was not mentioned on the ready up but rather that thieves would be getting some buffs.

Personal suggestion: Don’t believe anything you hear and 1/2 of what you see. If thieves are getting a nerf in the next patch Anet will announce it. If they have not announced it then there is no need to worry.

aimz.6287:

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…

Thieves get nerfed/buffed to keep the game balanced as well as they can.

People complain about thieves because they feel they are not balanced/fair in their eyes or they just despise the class for one agenda or another.

*Edit Since there are players questioning if Devs play thief I am including

Guild Wars 2 Developer Guide: PvE Thief
Karl McLain offers a beginner’s guide to the thief in GW2 PvE
http://youtu.be/CLEfsBTh6_A

Dee Jay.2460:

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.

Dee Jay,

Well said!!

I Honor your Bravery to the Truth.

(I was going to say something else but i like your version better)

In any game with a stealth class they call the stealth OP. Its the nature of being able to turn invisible and disengage because inherently the class is squishy as hell and people want the free kill.
A thief without stealth dies insanely fast like 1 guardian pull and whirl will take 80% health if they don’t have stun breaker available. Most classes can burst a thief down if they don’t enter stealth or evade spam their burst but when we do we get called OP because their burst didn’t kill us.

To those who says that Thief can not survive without stealth; i invite you to look at this class; The Assassin from Guild Wars.

The Assassin “A swift, silent master of shadows, daggers, and death. The Assassin can chain together increasingly deadly strikes that target a foe’s critical areas, killing quickly and efficiently”.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin

Show me where the Assassin needed or depended on “Stealth” to “Survive”?

You call yourselves “Assassins” yet The Assassin Does Not Stealth ?

You are “copy” of the Ninja Class.

Only Ninja class have Stealth, and Survive with Stealth*

http://www.cart-white.co.uk/ninja/stealth.htm

“It is often said that the Ninja is a supreme master of stealth, able to vanish in a puff of smoke”

Once again, I encourage you to pressure Arena.net to change your class name to Ninja instead of “Thief”

Thief Class consists of 3 class in one; Assassin, Ninja and Thief

It’s either Arena.net make up their mind and tell you, who you are?, and what you are? or continue face Judgment by the people and the community.

In the end,

Justice will be Served;

with or without the people and the community

You blamed poor profession design on a name choice?

I don’t get what your aiming at with that, aside from the fact that thief has a hard time staying alive without stealth so they should be renamed Ninja or assassin depending on their build.

I wouldn’t say stealth-less thieves die quick or are even weak. But compared to a thief who uses stealth they are easier to kill because anet made soo many stealth skills on them, they are almost supposed to work with it. It’s a bad concept but you look at the way stealthless thieves work and the way stealth thieves work, it’s much easier to lose target and hide in the shadows (not referring to the healing skill). Those with a higher skill set with thief can comfortably work outside of stealth but neither one is better than the other for how much they have to invest to make use of it.

Even so, it isn’t all that it’s hyped up to be, and people lose sight of that when they get ganked so.. they come here.. and vent, when its a simple l2p issue that’s forced on everyone. There is no introduction to stealth counters, you kind of get dumped into this pool of piranhas and are expected to fend them off with no experience. Some people make it out and no longer have the issue (ppl who play thief a lot, people who do their research on skills/tactics to counter them). Others just demand nerfs because it’s easier to nerf something than it is to balance it. I think we as thieves have seen the ugly truth behind that.

Issue with condition clearing? You get condi clearing.

Issue with damage output? Its very clear what stats you’re looking at.

Issue with stun locks? Keep a break stun on you.

Issue with stealth? There is a HUGE list on things that “work”. None of them are labeled as a stealth counter however, so its much harder for people to know them without asking or seeing them in action. That’s why people who play thief know their counters so well, not just because they know how skills work on their end, but they find people who have answers to their actions and start putting the pieces together. Until people ask or anet (or someone respectable) puts out a tutorial with each profession using counters against stealth targets we will never stop seeing nerf posts.

I stay alive without stealth better than most thieves do with it, Burnfall. I also have 4 stun breaks (shadowstep is 2, fyi). I don’t think you play thief. Please stop.

truth is stealth is kittenty to deal with for most classes but not all. It confusing and seeing how the most common burst build and form of defense is tied to it for this class many players still have issues with it. That being said it isn’t that stealth is OP but that it isn’t dealt with well by most builds. Any build with decent aoe and condi pressure will be fine vs a thief. Any build with decent number of stuns will be fine vs a thief. That is every class save ranger.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I stay alive without stealth better than most thieves do with it, Burnfall. I also have 4 stun breaks (shadowstep is 2, fyi). I don’t think you play thief. Please stop.

You play S/P right? I think that evades and ports are much better for survivability than stealth – I personally prefer D/P but take Withdraw over HiS because of the low cooldown and evade. People complain about stealth and evades on thief but are typically people who have not played them and don’t realize how difficult it is to survive as a thief (compared to a lot of other classes/builds) – one mistake your kittened. I would argue that SB#3 is a bit too spammy and could use some kind of small tweak like an aftercast like Jumper suggested…

Yep. I love the challenge of having no stealth and the absolute need to time my dodges before a big burst or face the consequences of defeat. And yeah :x, I feel that SB 3 might also be a bit spammy. It’s hilarious though, to be immobilized for 6 seconds with both R4I and Withdraw on CD and have 10+ people on you, only to SWAP TO SB and spam 3 until something’s off CD or the immobilize wears off, and is fantastic for surviving that kind of situation.

I think that’d be a judgment more than a fact that steathless thieves survive better than those who use it. In a 1v1 it may be close but a 1v2+ it starts to lean more towards stealth just because most people are chickens with their head cut off and the thief can lurk in their stealth while they wait for the right time to pounce.

My s/tpvp build I only use stealth for the small condi clear but i never spam it nor stay in it for more than 7 seconds (bps+blinding powder). I can say not abusing stealth is hella fun but when overwhelmed it helps to have that reset or escape to live and fight another day. Also i dont use sb in s/tpvp but b 3 spam is just funny to watch haha. More often than not they die moments later because the evade duration wasn’t enough to get a utility skill off cd for their escape.

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.

Actually, I think I remember them using a thief in a LW update (one of the Southsun ones) where, again, they just spammed unload.

There was also a PvE video where Jon was using some kind of P/D thief. I zoned out after about five minutes.

Ninja, that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I, personally, am able to survive much better stealthless than most people can with stealth. I’m not making any claims for what is more survivable overall.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Ninja, that wasn’t what I was saying at all. I, personally, am able to survive much better stealthless than most people can with stealth. I’m not making any claims for what is more survivable overall.

ahh misread. I also forgot when people say “most thieves” they usually mean “most thieves are baddies” hence cannot live without stealth. Stealth-less thievery is fun you got me there.

I believe every class get cried about being OP in their class discussion forums/in game with the exception of rangers. (lol)

It’s mostly a learn to play issue. Once people realize how predictable and cheesy stealth-focus builds are and actually carry break stun moves, they’ll start saying how much thieves suck in this game.

I play a thief alongside my Guardian now, but my wariror will probably become a condi bunker roamer. Thief is WAY more fun than I thought it cold ever be. I used to think stealth was op as hell and just simple as kitten to use. Nope, it’s simple to get into stealth, but thieves are about positioning, mobility, and playing “dirty.” People whine stealth and blind is op because they don’t know how to handle it.

After playing the other side, though, I’m telling you now, conditions ruin any thieves day. So many ways to rid yourself of them, but the health pool is only so big. The weapon versatility is daunting as well. S/D is my love right now for the mobility and flanks, but it’s freaking hard to just burst someone with that, because it’s not burst. D/D is the burst, but the lack of infiltrator’s strike saddens me. Love the shortbow, but that is NOT a real dueling weapon imo. That’s the support/mobility weapon that i can’t seem to get off one of my weapon slots. D/P… it’s so simple, but so annoying at the same time.

Yet, pve’ers don’t want to learn a class to counter it, they just want to whine. This is stuff I’ve learned from falling in love with a stealth class (I NEVER play stealthies in any game, always tanks) an realizing how they work. Now I kill plenty of thieves with my guardian just by bunkering and wearing them down, keeping them from overstealthing, catching them in Banishes (yup, GS/Hammer here). It’s fun. If they call you op, go ahead and let them. Show them how broken being a squishy class that can hide and do high damage to someone that just sits there and wacks a boss for 5 minutes is.

Burnfall.9573:

To those who says that Thief can not survive without stealth; i invite you to look at this class; The Assassin from Guild Wars.

Thief =/= Assassin. There is a whole different archetype for the thief, it’s detailed in the books and I invite you to read them. I’ve pointed then out to you before but you ignore them.

As far as the thief archetype goes, it’s more familar to the Rogue/Shadowdancer in D&D. I do like that name, Shadowdancer.

Btw, Assassin in GW1 weren’t well represented in PvP.

For the same reason People have called for nerfs to stealth since DAOC, Because Stealth is incredibly overpowered in pretty much every game.

The Stealthers itself have been becoming more and more silly as time has gone on as well.

You look at a DAOC stealther, Something that wasn’t a “Light Tank” but instead something that had to rely on landing a Backstab usually or swapping tons of weapons with poison to bring down a foe… to something like WoW, where now The Stealther is basically the Light Tank with a crap ton of utility thrown in.. and since the traditional role of a stealther in an RPG isn’t used in MMO’s (Disabling traps, opening locks ect ect) they’ve been pretty much pigeoned holed into basically being a Melee Range Heavy Nuker class.

Now with that said.. People dislike running into a class that can pop on them for massive amounts of damage that usually ends the fight.

GW2 takes this 10 steps further, by giving class all the toys that past MMO’s have tacked onto Stealthers, like Evades, Blinds, CC, and gives it the ability to go into stealth over and over again… People didn’t like fighting Stealthers when they could unload on them at the start of the fight, Being able to do it over and over again and when they get in trouble, simply vanish at the drop of the hat just makes people angry.

So yes, people will continue to complain, You’ll just have to accept that..

Terravos.4059:

For the same reason People have called for nerfs to stealth since DAOC, Because Stealth is incredibly overpowered in pretty much every game.

The Stealthers itself have been becoming more and more silly as time has gone on as well.

You look at a DAOC stealther, Something that wasn’t a “Light Tank” but instead something that had to rely on landing a Backstab usually or swapping tons of weapons with poison to bring down a foe… to something like WoW, where now The Stealther is basically the Light Tank with a crap ton of utility thrown in.. and since the traditional role of a stealther in an RPG isn’t used in MMO’s (Disabling traps, opening locks ect ect) they’ve been pretty much pigeoned holed into basically being a Melee Range Heavy Nuker class.

Now with that said.. People dislike running into a class that can pop on them for massive amounts of damage that usually ends the fight.

GW2 takes this 10 steps further, by giving class all the toys that past MMO’s have tacked onto Stealthers, like Evades, Blinds, CC, and gives it the ability to go into stealth over and over again… People didn’t like fighting Stealthers when they could unload on them at the start of the fight, Being able to do it over and over again and when they get in trouble, simply vanish at the drop of the hat just makes people angry.

So yes, people will continue to complain, You’ll just have to accept that..

um my rogue in wow had waaaaay more tools than thieves in this game will ever have~

i think she had something like 60+ keybinds if i recall correctly lol

Learning classes works both ways actually. I played nearly 3k hours on ranger before I changed to thief (with short period on guard, but nvm). Yday I killed 2 rangers at once… normally, I’d say they were total noobs, but knowing it from other perspective, I’ll just say they were average. To have real view on balance, one would need to play all classes for very long time (to encounter as much different situations as possible), with multiple builds and gear sets.

So yeah, people will always cry about thieves. From the lack of knowledge, but also from simple frustration (as pointed in previous posts). Hell, even I hate to fight against other thief

frans.8092:

Burnfall.9573:

To those who says that Thief can not survive without stealth; i invite you to look at this class; The Assassin from Guild Wars.

Thief =/= Assassin. There is a whole different archetype for the thief, it’s detailed in the books and I invite you to read them. I’ve pointed then out to you before but you ignore them.

As far as the thief archetype goes, it’s more familar to the Rogue/Shadowdancer in D&D. I do like that name, Shadowdancer.

Btw, Assassin in GW1 weren’t well represented in PvP.

Once Again!!!

THIEF IS NOT ASSASSIN

YOU ARE CALLED THIEF, NOT ASSASSIN

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin

ASSASSIN DO NOT STEALTH, ONLY NINJA

*THIEF DO NOT STEALTH, ONLY NINJA

ONLY NINJA STEALTH

http://www.cart-white.co.uk/ninja/stealth.htm

Would you say, Security Guard= Police Officer?

Would you say, Pen= Pencil ?

A security guard is a police officer. His job description is different. You still go through the same process and have a badge as a security guard, just a different employer.

Viking Jorun.5413:

A security guard is a police officer. His job description is different. You still go through the same process and have a badge as a security guard, just a different employer.

Incorrect!

A Police Officer is a sworn Law Enforcement Officer employed by a municipal, county, or state government agency and has powers of arrest.

A Security Guard is an employee of a private company with no Law Enforcement powers.

when talking about thief you forgot the swashbuckler as well as the fencer. Because YES our sword fighting dodging style is that of a duelist

God give me more dodge and Mai Trin animation on the use of pistol whip

Potato potato. They still go through the same training, and you can’t make that comparison.

We’re the thieves. Deal with it. Please stop posting ignorant opinions.

Burnfall.9573:

frans.8092:

Burnfall.9573:

To those who says that Thief can not survive without stealth; i invite you to look at this class; The Assassin from Guild Wars.

Thief =/= Assassin. There is a whole different archetype for the thief, it’s detailed in the books and I invite you to read them. I’ve pointed then out to you before but you ignore them.

As far as the thief archetype goes, it’s more familar to the Rogue/Shadowdancer in D&D. I do like that name, Shadowdancer.

Btw, Assassin in GW1 weren’t well represented in PvP.

Common Sense!

THIEF IS NOT ASSASSIN

No need to yell.

I point you, once more, to “Ghosts of Ascalon” and “Edge of Destiny” whith Dougal Keane and Caithe representing Arenanet’s idea’s on their Thief class. If you want to further discuss the Thief class within Guildwars 2 it should be in reference to the thief archetypes as they are presented in those books.

If you want to look outside the Guildwars lore, I suggest we focus on thieves and similar characters from commonly known fantasy literature, rather then some bendable ‘common sense’ yells. We could for instance, look at Bilbo Baggins, who could go invisible at will. Then there is Grey Mouser, companion of Fafhrd (a rather Norny fighter and rogue) and a nimble and adept duellist.

In games there is the Rogue, well known from Dungeons and Dragons, who could stealth – with the prestige class Shadowdancer they could into stealth while in plain sight of their foes – and deal extra damage against ‘prone’ characters, or from behind, or from stealth.

There are so many concepts surrounding the Thief/Rogue that yelling “Common Sense” and “Assassin =/= Thief” can never do justice to this subject.

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…

But many times on Live Stream they did say they Mainly play warrior, and you never see any but 1 play a thief on Live Streams, and that 1 guy played it terribly ( like a new player would play a thief, a cool fun looking bad style that doesnt work… aka, p/p venom share with the non optimal traits for p/p).

Burnfall.9573:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin

Show me where the Assassin needed or depended on “Stealth” to “Survive”?

I can imagine the QQ if we got traits like
Critical Defenses For 4…9…10 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block. Critical Defenses refreshes every time you land a critical hit. or Flashing Blades For 5…25…30 seconds, you have a 75% chance to block incoming attacks while attacking. If you block an attack in this way, your attacker takes 5…17…20 damage.

Guildwars is very, very different from Guildwars 2

Burnfall.9573:

frans.8092:

Burnfall.9573:

To those who says that Thief can not survive without stealth; i invite you to look at this class; The Assassin from Guild Wars.

Thief =/= Assassin. There is a whole different archetype for the thief, it’s detailed in the books and I invite you to read them. I’ve pointed then out to you before but you ignore them.

As far as the thief archetype goes, it’s more familar to the Rogue/Shadowdancer in D&D. I do like that name, Shadowdancer.

Btw, Assassin in GW1 weren’t well represented in PvP.

Once Again!!!

THIEF IS NOT ASSASSIN

YOU ARE CALLED THIEF, NOT ASSASSIN

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin

ASSASSIN DO NOT STEALTH, ONLY NINJA

*THIEF DO NOT STEALTH, ONLY NINJA

ONLY NINJA STEALTH

http://www.cart-white.co.uk/ninja/stealth.htm

Would you say, Security Guard= Police Officer?

Would you say, Pen= Pencil ?

So are you saying…
We should do this:

Here’s your problem. A class has to be spec’d to take on a thief, lets face it. I have a Necro that has to be spec’d that way as well as my ranger and war and just about everything else. My thief dominates simply because they can not target me in battle with the constant stealth. Period.

When I see a thief coming at a distance, I know to switch to “reveal trait” on my ranger, however, a good thief can still win 50/50.

Now, most players in like WvW are NOT spec’d for that. Their mechanics simply aren’t fast enough to retarget and take on a stealth thief. So, they get wiped. I have done it many many times in WvW to 2 – 3 at a time, knowing they most likely arent spec’d to stop me.

Hence, herein lies the problem. If players have to spec into something specific to take us on, then the balance shifts and people complain, and honestly, I don’t blame them. I know I am a killing machine on my thief and I think it’s great and fun. But, when not on my thief, I see the drawbacks of it. Opponent being able to stealth and lose target is very hard to defend against for a majority of builds.