Guild Wars 2

I want some serious answers please. No replies like: “cuz they’re stupid and need to l2p”, we (us Thief fanatics) know they are. I just want a constructive discussion why they’re “OP” supposedly.

Thank you.

Because people saw ANet was “debating” on reverting the 4s nerf…

This made all the wvw cry babies come post on thief forums for more nerfs.

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d ele or engineer arrives.

Thieves can both chase and disengage the best of any class, and people resent that despite the fact that thieves are not great in larger team fights, so they mainly roam.

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

swinsk.6410:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

That’s dumb. Why would you choose to die when you can disengage, wait for him to engage something else/blow cooldowns, and then kill him?

There is no reason to die as a thief. Nobody can win all their 1v1 setups, but you can decide which fights to participate in.

Ego got you stomped. Good thieves don’t care about the ego boost of fair 1v1’s. They care about making it alive while everyone else is dead.

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

Unless the thief is really determined and set up their utilities before hand for the express reason its not always that easy to escape, the moment your fighting someone that has learnt stealth isn’t a get away free card it becomes a lot more complicated.

The issue with players believing thief is OP comes down to 2 things, the first is stealth, this is a mechanic that is almost entirely based on the players at both sides, its one mechanical advantage is the anti-target lock system, which stops a select few moves, outside of that it is all about who plans the routes and such better, unfortunately in low tier and wvw this favours the thief, in higher tiers it favours the enemy.

Sure even the best person can’t always get the thief but once you know the general plays a thief can do while stealthed its not hard to prevent either their offense or their escape but it comes down to the players themselves rather than buttons pressed in game to counter or use the stealth well.

The second issue is the misconceptions about initiative, many many people see initiative as an infinite resource that allows endless spamming of moves, while it does allow a thief to utilize a weapon skill more than once initially once it is spent it is then equivilent to a cooldown. Granted at base regeneration rates the cooldowns tend to be 4, 5.32, 6.65 and 8 second cooldowns which is a lot faster than everyone elses which tend towards the 8, 10, 15, 30 pattern, however unlike those cooldowns all thief weapon skills share the same cooldown resource.

So while say a staff necromancer can hit hits 5, 4, 3 and 2 skill back to back and then each will have thier own individual cooldown a d/d thief attempting the same 5, 4, 3, 2 skill use would run out of initiative on his second skill (cnd 6, dancing dagger 4, 10 initiative spent, 2 left and 3 being the cheapest skill), and then as the necromancers skill recharges he can then pop them again and they would not effect the cooldowns of the remaining skill, but if a thief then popped his 3 point skill once he got that missing single initiative point all his weapon skills are now essentially on their full cooldown again.

Add to that the staff necromancer can then press ` and switch to a second weapon set that will have a fresh set of cooldowns to use while the staff ones cooldown while a thief swapping weapons still has no initative.

Zenith.7301:

swinsk.6410:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

That’s dumb. Why would you choose to die when you can disengage, wait for him to engage something else/blow cooldowns, and then kill him?

There is no reason to die as a thief. Nobody can win all their 1v1 setups, but you can decide which fights to participate in.

Ego got you stomped. Good thieves don’t care about the ego boost of fair 1v1’s. They care about making it alive while everyone else is dead.

So what if they disengage? What about it? Is it really that big of a deal? Why is it?

I honestly don’t see why if ever it would be a bad thing for you neccesarily if a Thief disengages. He can avoid every fight he wants, and? What’s so “OP” about being able to disengage a fight? You lose nothing, he loses nothing (Except for losing time if you’re going to be stupid and chase a Thief as a non-Thief, even as an Ele).

+1 to everything Dasorine said aswell. In higher-tiers it becomes a game of who can outsmart the other when the Thief is in stealth, of which favors the Thief, which it should, as the Thief spent the rescoures to go into stealth.

Zenith.7301:

That’s dumb. Why would you choose to die when you can disengage, wait for him to engage something else/blow cooldowns, and then kill him?

There is no reason to die as a thief. Nobody can win all their 1v1 setups, but you can decide which fights to participate in.

Ego got you stomped. Good thieves don’t care about the ego boost of fair 1v1’s. They care about making it alive while everyone else is dead.

Because it was a duel. We /bowed ahead of time.

He didn’t stomp me and if I had won I wouldn’t have stomped him.

In a real wvw fight I could have gotten away easily without any problems.

EDIT: Real thieves hone their their skills against the strongest of opponents every so often!

He eventually died to a zerg of blackgate and he was SOR. I am JQ. I lived.

There is actually a third issue but it isn’t thief specific and that is people drawing false conclusions based on certain happenings.

For example its possible in the best circumstances possible with team support (buffs and debuffs only) for a thief to hit 20K+ with backstab, now the circumstances that allow this are extreme and generally never going to happen in a real situation, but if it happens just once the player that experiences it starts using that as the baseline for ALL thieves, acting as if that is what all average thieves can do.

In the same way you have people that claim thieves have no risk and can escape regardless when in fact the few times thats happened the thief has been traited specifically to allow this and set up their utilities for that exact reason, any thief without that specific trait build and utilities would find themselves been stuck by a simple immobilize, but to that player that is what all thieves can do.

Then you have people that start combining the 2 and end up working off the assumption that thieves have 120 trait builds and 2 slots per armour piece.

This as said is not exclusive to the thief or even to this game, people will always start combining what is theoretically possible with specific builds together, heck I dare say their is someone out their that thinks warriors are OP because they can do 100blade full zerker damage while also building bunker.

And of course you have to add in a liberal amount of disregard for the penalties, sacrifices and limitations of such builds.

Heck, would you guys go even so far as to say that Thieves were balanced from the start? I would. Maybe not balanced completely, but pretty much all nerfs to the Thief since official release are unjustified imo and the only reason Anet did them is because they don’t want people leaving the game.

Fenrir.4237:

Zenith.7301:

swinsk.6410:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

That’s dumb. Why would you choose to die when you can disengage, wait for him to engage something else/blow cooldowns, and then kill him?

There is no reason to die as a thief. Nobody can win all their 1v1 setups, but you can decide which fights to participate in.

Ego got you stomped. Good thieves don’t care about the ego boost of fair 1v1’s. They care about making it alive while everyone else is dead.

So what if they disengage? What about it? Is it really that big of a deal? Why is it?

I honestly don’t see why if ever it would be a bad thing for you neccesarily if a Thief disengages. He can avoid every fight he wants, and? What’s so “OP” about being able to disengage a fight? You lose nothing, he loses nothing (Except for losing time if you’re going to be stupid and chase a Thief as a non-Thief, even as an Ele).

+1 to everything Dasorine said aswell. In higher-tiers it becomes a game of who can outsmart the other when the Thief is in stealth, of which favors the Thief, which it should, as the Thief spent the rescoures to go into stealth.

The point is, he can kitten up and get out. Another class kittens up, they die. You use your kits poorly on engineer or miss a prybar? Goodbye.

Because Invisibility sounds like Invincibility.
People get confused.

Zenith.7301:

Fenrir.4237:

Zenith.7301:

swinsk.6410:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

That’s dumb. Why would you choose to die when you can disengage, wait for him to engage something else/blow cooldowns, and then kill him?

There is no reason to die as a thief. Nobody can win all their 1v1 setups, but you can decide which fights to participate in.

Ego got you stomped. Good thieves don’t care about the ego boost of fair 1v1’s. They care about making it alive while everyone else is dead.

So what if they disengage? What about it? Is it really that big of a deal? Why is it?

I honestly don’t see why if ever it would be a bad thing for you neccesarily if a Thief disengages. He can avoid every fight he wants, and? What’s so “OP” about being able to disengage a fight? You lose nothing, he loses nothing (Except for losing time if you’re going to be stupid and chase a Thief as a non-Thief, even as an Ele).

+1 to everything Dasorine said aswell. In higher-tiers it becomes a game of who can outsmart the other when the Thief is in stealth, of which favors the Thief, which it should, as the Thief spent the rescoures to go into stealth.

The point is, he can kitten up and get out. Another class kittens up, they die. You use your kits poorly on engineer or miss a prybar? Goodbye.

You DO know that that’s not the reason why Thieves can escape so easily right? It’s not cuz “Oh, Thieves can make tons of mistakes so they have huge escapeability”, no…, every class can make huge mistakes. The reason why Thieves have escapeability is because they’re squishy. Or they take down a high priority target inside a group and get the heck away before he gets demoralized by the group.

Zenith.7301:

The point is, he can kitten up and get out. Another class kittens up, they die. You use your kits poorly on engineer or miss a prybar? Goodbye.

Only slightly better than others, stealth and the one or two shadowsteps are not a guaranteed escape against experienced players and of course because of the way the class is balanced its a lot easier to go down after a mistake than anyone else.

You keep talking as if stealth is a guaranteed escape mechanism which it is not.

The biggest problem is stealth. Stealth mechanically denies the opponent information needed to fight properly. Yes, autoattacks can be used to find them (except when they can’t ie Ele and Engy not even HAVING a melee weapon with an attack chain without bringing a utility) but even then it’s swinging in the air hoping that you correctly guessed which direction they went. Even mesmers, the class intended to fight by manipulating information in the fight, only distract and confuse their opponents (barring stealth use), which can be countered by paying attention. Stealth mechanically removes the information from the player’s screen.
Maybe it’s not even OP, but it certainly is not fun. Losing can be fun, but really only when you feel you were outplayed, which is rarely a feeling you get when you are mechanically denied information.
And games are for having fun.

Its only flailing wildly if you forgot where the thief was when he stealthed and his condition on stealthing, which if your not keeping track of then your not really pvping very well.

Why don’t you ask your Maker Why did they make you Thieves OP?

Stealth is an interesting mechanic in that its effectiveness is determined by how well the player uses it and how well the opponent responds to it. I think an issue with it can be long stealths, such as that granted by shadow refuge. With your average 3/4 second stealth, you can use certain abilities to counter a potential sneak attack, but with longer stealths you can use an ability and have it expire before the thief may choose to break stealth, leaving you with the impression you can’t really do anything against it.

Why are they considered OP by most people though? I think it’s simply the burst damage, although this has been significantly reduced. It is countered quite easily in most cases and i view GC thieves as free kills most of the time though. The profession as a whole is lacking in almost every area imo. Thieves do have some strengths, and our ability to escape a fight is unmatched for whatever that’s worth, but it cetainly due for some buffs.

Dasorine.1964:

Its only flailing wildly if you forgot where the thief was when he stealthed and his condition on stealthing, which if your not keeping track of then your not really pvping very well.

Okay then, so you swing once, hit him. Swing again, you hit him again. Is he in the same spot? Is he moving around to your right, your left, running away, what? It tells you jackall. Or: swing again, miss. Where did he go? Which direction? Did he just dodge your attack and is in fact still near you? You guess, hope you were right. Sure, experience helps make you right more often, but it’s still guessing.
Being forced to guess, not because of player action, but because of the game not giving you the information you need to not guess, is a terrible design choice.

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d ele or engineer arrives.

Thieves can both chase and disengage the best of any class, and people resent that despite the fact that thieves are not great in larger team fights, so they mainly roam.

Your argument is invalid b/c ele can still blink away while rooted but also has the added benefit of being able to cleanse any and all conditions without even thinking about it. Ele also has access to invulns and stability whereas thieves don’t. Same deal with mesmer and they have good invis to get away as well. Guard has access to all these things as well (granted harder to do but still very doable). Only difference is that a guard doesn’t need to blink away. A pure tank guard can walk into the middle of a zerg and tank for 20s then just casually walk out alive. Not exaggerating here, I’ve seen it done… multiple times…

So what I am hearing is that you don’t want thief to play smoothly so you want it nerfed even more… makes PERFECT sense

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dasorine.1964:

Its only flailing wildly if you forgot where the thief was when he stealthed and his condition on stealthing, which if your not keeping track of then your not really pvping very well.

Okay then, so you swing once, hit him. Swing again, you hit him again. Is he in the same spot? Is he moving around to your right, your left, running away, what? It tells you jackall. Or: swing again, miss. Where did he go? Which direction? Did he just dodge your attack and is in fact still near you? You guess, hope you were right. Sure, experience helps make you right more often, but it’s still guessing.
Being forced to guess, not because of player action, but because of the game not giving you the information you need to not guess, is a terrible design choice.

They just stealthed, how did they do it? CnD off me?
Then they are still in melee range

where they high health or on their last legs?
if they were high health they are likely going for the backstab, that limits where they are going to be to a limited area, an area I control and can do something about

If they where on their last legs they are most likely trying to flee, they could be shadowstepping unless I noticed they used it in combat, if they have then they are most likely going to try and take the safest fastest option away from danger, that comes down to where your fighting, in an open field they will make a bee line away from me towards the nearest cover or towards friendly land, if im in a canyon or other pass then its directly away from me in one of 2 direction, if theres other people around its going to be away from them etc etc.

Its less guessing more environmental and combat awareness thats made a lot easier the moment you have access to CC and when fighting them when they are visible setting up things for the inevitable stealth. This is why new players struggle but experience players dont, and why thieves aren’t really present in high end sPvP and why I can roll a fresh character, jump into WvW at level 4 and kill thieves.

Dasorine.1964:

likely … most likely … could be … most likely

Dasorine.1964:

guessing

Yes there are elements of guess work involved but there are in ALL pvp encounters

A warrior pops up over the hill, what is he going to do, is he going to use x ability, is he going to have x utility, whens he going to use such and such, which way is he going to move etc etc.

Dealing with it is what makes you skilled in pvp

Dasorine.1964:

Yes there are elements of guess work involved but there are in ALL pvp encounters

A warrior pops up over the hill, what is he going to do, is he going to use x ability, is he going to have x utility, whens he going to use such and such, which way is he going to move etc etc.

Dealing with it is what makes you skilled in pvp

And all of these things the warrior may do become immediately visibly apparent the moment they start doing them, because they follow the far superior design choice of “giving both players relevant information”.

You can see the warrior, thats the only additional information you get compared to a thief going stealthed.

In fact while stealthed a thief is less dangerous as they are not attacking and they have limited options once they are in stealth, they can attack normally in which case stealth was almost pointless, they can go for the stealth attack which either are about as strong as most peoples regular skills or have a highly positional requirement (a requirement the enemy controls) or they can escape, non of which are guaranteed and non of which require more information than where they where, what their condition was and what the surroundings are like.

But sure let damage numbers pop up, make stealth translucent rather than total invisibility, but you’d better give thieves defensive boon access and give stealth damage reduction as base and such.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dasorine.1964:

likely … most likely … could be … most likely

Dasorine.1964:

guessing

It’s not guessing once you hit 1 chain of your autoattack. I’m not going to tell you either what to do after you see that your AA chain changes. Thieves themselves already told you how to counter most of what they do. Especially Dasorine did, which I don’t hold against him, and I understand it’s for the sake of arguing this topic.

Btw, are you kidding me? Eles and Engineers have the best dogging AoE in the game, so what if you don’t get feedback or not? The Thief either enters the AoE you laid around you, waits for it to go away and disengages his stealth by doing so, or he takes the AoE and Stealth attacks you.

Invisibility isn’t Invincibility, when the Thief enters stealth you try to outplay him. He then has a choice to make and act accordingly to what you did.

Thieves are severly gimpped (really Anet, this word is censored? :/) right now. The ONLY viable set in my eyes is D/P together with SB. Just because Offhand Pistol is so good, Backstab is the best stealth attack a Thief can have, and because Shadowshot makes it so that you can glue yourself to your enemy whilst still blinding and still dealing really good damage. And yes, HS + BP stealth CAN be countered, please don’t even try to argue about it. The only stealth that cannot be countered is Blinding Powder utility, which is on a 40 sec cd eitherways. Oh and the stealth on steal, which sucks in itself to begin with as there are many more important traits in that tree that are pretty much a must as a Thief.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dasorine.1964:

Yes there are elements of guess work involved but there are in ALL pvp encounters

A warrior pops up over the hill, what is he going to do, is he going to use x ability, is he going to have x utility, whens he going to use such and such, which way is he going to move etc etc.

Dealing with it is what makes you skilled in pvp

And all of these things the warrior may do become immediately visibly apparent the moment they start doing them, because they follow the far superior design choice of “giving both players relevant information”.

different people prefer different playstyles. You want people to see you coming but can’t do anything about it. I want to take people unawares and quickly overwhelm them then get out just as fast. That’s why I like thief. There are a LOT of people capable of avoiding a large portion of thief dmg and be able to take advantage of the situation. If 1 person is able to do amazing feats with w/e class of their choosing then that mean ANYBODY can do it. It’s just a matter if getting good with the class you play.

Dasorine.1964:

You can see the warrior, thats the only additional information you get compared to a thief going stealthed.

“only”, yeah, sure, because humans don’t use their sight for nearly everything. That’s why we are not afraid of the dark and easily navigate in it, don’t need highly-trained animals for the blind, and don’t take excessive precautions to avoid eye injury.

Fenrir.4237:

It’s not guessing once you hit 1 chain of your autoattack.

Yeah, actually it is, momentarily knowing a rough idea of their location does not make you informed.

randomfightfan.4091:

different people prefer different playstyles.

And no one prefers fighting what they can’t see.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

The biggest problem is stealth. Stealth mechanically denies the opponent information needed to fight properly. Yes, autoattacks can be used to find them (except when they can’t ie Ele and Engy not even HAVING a melee weapon with an attack chain without bringing a utility) but even then it’s swinging in the air hoping that you correctly guessed which direction they went. Even mesmers, the class intended to fight by manipulating information in the fight, only distract and confuse their opponents (barring stealth use), which can be countered by paying attention. Stealth mechanically removes the information from the player’s screen.
Maybe it’s not even OP, but it certainly is not fun. Losing can be fun, but really only when you feel you were outplayed, which is rarely a feeling you get when you are mechanically denied information.
And games are for having fun.

“Fun” is subjective. Some people enjoy the mind games.
Fun is an even more subjective then the concept of overpower, thus it is moot.

Dasorine.1964:

Zenith.7301:

The point is, he can kitten up and get out. Another class kittens up, they die. You use your kits poorly on engineer or miss a prybar? Goodbye.

Only slightly better than others, stealth and the one or two shadowsteps are not a guaranteed escape against experienced players and of course because of the way the class is balanced its a lot easier to go down after a mistake than anyone else.

You keep talking as if stealth is a guaranteed escape mechanism which it is not.

It is if you chain skills properly. Not everyone is as clairvoyant as you seem to suggest. You’ve got 1 teleport, plus two from the bow, and a target drop from stealth to gain distance while you run a speed signet.

If you can’t get away with that, then good luck playing any other class. It won’t be pretty.

Other classes have to sti still if they get rooted. All you need to do is switch to shortbow.

Dual.8953:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

The biggest problem is stealth. Stealth mechanically denies the opponent information needed to fight properly. Yes, autoattacks can be used to find them (except when they can’t ie Ele and Engy not even HAVING a melee weapon with an attack chain without bringing a utility) but even then it’s swinging in the air hoping that you correctly guessed which direction they went. Even mesmers, the class intended to fight by manipulating information in the fight, only distract and confuse their opponents (barring stealth use), which can be countered by paying attention. Stealth mechanically removes the information from the player’s screen.
Maybe it’s not even OP, but it certainly is not fun. Losing can be fun, but really only when you feel you were outplayed, which is rarely a feeling you get when you are mechanically denied information.
And games are for having fun.

“Fun” is subjective. Some people enjoy the mind games.
Fun is an even more subjective then the concept of overpower, thus it is moot.

Mind games is what mesmer does. Having no feedback at all is not a mind game.

swinsk.6410:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d or engineer arrives.

I fought a condi/confusion mesmer the other day in wvw.

We dueled like 4 times and I lost all 4. I almost killed him once but the confusion+bleeds was too much even for shadows embrace.

Thieves are not OP. They are just frustrating to zerging noobs who feel entitled to stomp roll anything they see because they are 100 and you are 1.

Yes i have to agree with this post here, i roam more than erg, personally because zerging isnt that fun to me because of the fact that it ends up to just whoever has the bigger zerg. but so far ive won most of the fights i run into mostly due to patience and knowing if i can take them or not. i lose to most Mesmers, i have some trouble with elementalist. But the rest are quite simple. i believe most people think that Thieves are OP is because of our roaming power and escape, other classes dont have as much escape as us or as much burst (besides warriors burst) but to counter this we have the smallest health pools in the game. but i can also see why they would think we are OP even though we are not.

Zenith.7301:

Dasorine.1964:

Zenith.7301:

The point is, he can kitten up and get out. Another class kittens up, they die. You use your kits poorly on engineer or miss a prybar? Goodbye.

Only slightly better than others, stealth and the one or two shadowsteps are not a guaranteed escape against experienced players and of course because of the way the class is balanced its a lot easier to go down after a mistake than anyone else.

You keep talking as if stealth is a guaranteed escape mechanism which it is not.

It is if you chain skills properly. Not everyone is as clairvoyant as you seem to suggest. You’ve got 1 teleport, plus two from the bow, and a target drop from stealth to gain distance while you run a speed signet.

If you can’t get away with that, then good luck playing any other class. It won’t be pretty.

Other classes have to sti still if they get rooted. All you need to do is switch to shortbow.

you wont have 2 from shortbow if you’ve been in combat at all and signet speed isn’t that helpful when others are capable of permaswiftness and such.

A thief has one of the better chances of escaping yes, but they are not guaranteed like you suggest, others like elementalists get similiar escape chance but with the addition of better over all defenses.

It basically comes down to a good thief can escape and a good player can stop them, when two people meet its whoever is better that will tend to come out on top as neither are guaranteed to win with just the mechanics alone.

I’d wager people are a lot more angry about the 15s stealth from Shadow Refuge, or 12s from Black Powder / Leap, than anything else stealth related. 3-4s stealths are strong jukes in the right terrain, but not guaranteed disengages; 15s stealths are more or less guaranteed disengages.

There’s also a lot of rage about gap closing + burst, especially in the bottom tiers. A lot of people still die to C&D + Mug → Backstab, and it feels really bad when that happens.

Personally I think the whole C&D → C&D → C&D for basically permanent stealth by hitting pets and random animals is pretty stupid.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dual.8953:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

The biggest problem is stealth. Stealth mechanically denies the opponent information needed to fight properly. Yes, autoattacks can be used to find them (except when they can’t ie Ele and Engy not even HAVING a melee weapon with an attack chain without bringing a utility) but even then it’s swinging in the air hoping that you correctly guessed which direction they went. Even mesmers, the class intended to fight by manipulating information in the fight, only distract and confuse their opponents (barring stealth use), which can be countered by paying attention. Stealth mechanically removes the information from the player’s screen.
Maybe it’s not even OP, but it certainly is not fun. Losing can be fun, but really only when you feel you were outplayed, which is rarely a feeling you get when you are mechanically denied information.
And games are for having fun.

“Fun” is subjective. Some people enjoy the mind games.
Fun is an even more subjective then the concept of overpower, thus it is moot.

Mind games is what mesmer does. Having no feedback at all is not a mind game.

Yes it is. It’s predicting where the stealthed opponent will go. Are they making a break for it or flanking you. What are your weak points you need to cover. Those questions are the very essence of a mind game.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Fenrir.4237:

It’s not guessing once you hit 1 chain of your autoattack.

Yeah, actually it is, momentarily knowing a rough idea of their location does not make you informed.

How? It tells you where they are the moment your AA chain changes. Not enough info? Not gonna tell you what to do afterwards after that though since I’m not going to spoon feed people on how to beat Thieves like most of my Thief buddies did, while they STILL didn’t put those counters into practice and are still whining about the Thief class itself.

Fenrir.4237:

I want some serious answers please. No replies like: “cuz they’re stupid and need to l2p”, we (us Thief fanatics) know they are. I just want a constructive discussion why they’re “OP” supposedly.

Thank you.

Because their style is annoying to fight against. Whether or not it’s really OP, it certainly is often not fun for the person fighting them.
Whether it’s when the Thief bails every time they’re about to lose, or when they tear you open faster than you can react with a shadowstep burst combo (which Eles can also do).
I’ve fought fellow Thieves on my own Thief plenty of times and thought “Wow, that’s why everyone hates us.”

Grimwolf.7163:

Fenrir.4237:

I want some serious answers please. No replies like: “cuz they’re stupid and need to l2p”, we (us Thief fanatics) know they are. I just want a constructive discussion why they’re “OP” supposedly.

Thank you.

Because their style is annoying to fight against. Whether or not it’s really OP, it certainly is often not fun for the person fighting them.
Whether it’s when the Thief bails every time they’re about to lose, or when they tear you open faster than you can react with a shadowstep burst combo (which Eles can also do).
I’ve fought fellow Thieves on my own Thief plenty of times and thought “Wow, that’s why everyone hates us.”

Every class is annoying to fight against in someway, wether you like it or not;

Warrior – …Let’s just skip this one…, mmkay?

Guardian – Extremely hard to kill, perma-protection and retaliation and very good stability uptime with good enough CC cleansing.

Engineer – Tons of CC, tons of conds, tons of AoE, whilst having a choice of being hard to kill.

Ranger – The pets are so kitten annoying, you can’t LoS the ranger since then the pet will just run after you and DPS you.

Mesmer – Tons of targetbreaks, clonespam, ridiculous amount of invuln uptime, Portal, can burst easily every 10-15 secs without much effort, Moa Elite as well.

Elementalist – Tons of AoE, tons of self heals, good amount of CC, one of the best cond cleanse in the game, tanky whilst still doing very good DPS.

Necromancer – Death Shroud and his Lich Form elite are so annoying, tons of DPS while still maintaining good surviveability due to Death Shroud. Also good amount of conds.

Yes, this is a rough sketch of how annoying every class can get, but I’m roughly trying to make the same point as you are to prove one, if that makes sense.

Annoying to fight isn’t limited to Thief, stop being biased.

Fenrir.4237:

Annoying to fight isn’t limited to Thief, stop being biased.

I hope to God you weren’t dumb enough to just say I’m biased against the Thief. Thief is my main, and anyone who spends much time on the forums should know that much.
I have an entire site dedicated to the Thief class.

LOL, necro, “tons of dps”. That’s just too cute by half.

Grimwolf.7163:

Fenrir.4237:

Annoying to fight isn’t limited to Thief, stop being biased.

I hope to God you weren’t dumb enough to just say I’m biased against the Thief. Thief is my main, and anyone who spends much time on the forums should know that much.
I have an entire site dedicated to the Thief class.

Doesn’t mean you’re not biased towards your own class. I don’t find Thieves annoying to fight against at all, I actually like fighting them out of all classes. I find it way more annoying to fight Ele, Mesmer or Guardian than a Thief, by a longshot. Idk about you.

Zenith.7301:

LOL, necro, “tons of dps”. That’s just too cute by half.

Know what’s even cuter? This right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gXKLbrvMk
Learn your kitten bro before even trying to make fun of me.

Just wanted to say that this discussion is going to start to go off-topic. Stop picking the nitty gritties, seriously, this is a discussion about “Why idiots think Thief is OP” not about wether Thief is annoying or wether or not Necro having tons of DPS is right.

Fenrir.4237:

this is a discussion about “Why idiots think Thief is OP”

Congratulations on throwing any semblance of credibility this topic may have had in the trash. Your Freudian slip shows your true intent.

Last thing this section needs are whine threads and coutner-whine threads with an insidious plan to look super-skilled-wonderful.

Some of these replies remind me why we got nerfed in the first place. Lets be factual a good player will not let you disengage. That tent and your stealth doesn’t mean kitten vs someone who spams the tent, knocks back, or has even the faintest clue what they are doing. Most of you have gotten away with bs that is confusing to some but to experienced players doesn’t mean a kittening thing. And that’s the truth. Most thieves get away scott free, think they play the OP class, and never really have to fight anyone that can kill them. the really sad part is is many players are so bad at any form of PvP that we have to get nerfed to dumb it down.

Brag about how you can disengage every fight truth is you can’t. You just so rarely run into builds that shut you down that you have some fantasy that thieves reset fights all the time. You do vs crappy players but not vs anyone who knows the class.

Thieves aren’t OP players are just really bad. Please don’t let the delusions get to you. If you are having issues with thieves it is either you, your build, or both.

Fenrir.4237:

Know what’s even cuter? This right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gXKLbrvMk
Learn your kitten bro before even trying to make fun of me.

Just wanted to say that this discussion is going to start to go off-topic. Stop picking the nitty gritties, seriously, this is a discussion about “Why idiots think Thief is OP” not about wether Thief is annoying or wether or not Necro having tons of DPS is right.

I just wanted to say- I have major respect for necros. They’re a highly underused and underrated class that I think has a lot of potential.

As for the topic… Probably because they simply haven’t learned how to play against one yet. Honestly, a lot of the thieves that I see are one-trick ponies; once you avoid their first wave of attacks, you’ve pretty much won. The only reason, I imagine, that this works is because people just don’t understand thief tactics. Maybe they haven’t played a thief themselves. Once you understand the thief’s mobility and stealth, you are guaranteed to have at least equal ground to decent thieves, you’ll overpower weak GC thieves, and, with the best thieves… It’ll be a very difficult but very fascinating battle.

Because 90% of the people who are complaining about thiefs are players who never played one.

If you have a lvl 80 thief and have played a lot you know how they react, how they work, how weak they can be.

Do i run around and scream that eles, mesmers, guards and warriors are op? No, because i dont have much exp with them, even if i fail 80% of the time against an guardian i wont say hes op, hes just better and knows how to play his class. Well Warriors are basiclly the only class which i always win against because most of them play plain dumb, blind, dodge, bleeding bleeding bleeding, poison, thiefs guild, dodge, bleeding bleeding bleeding, stealth, heartseeker – bye bye warriors. Unless he stuns me, knocks me down and kills me in the first 5 seconds of the fight – still: dont think hes op in PVP (but he is in PVE imo).

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Dasorine.1964:

Its only flailing wildly if you forgot where the thief was when he stealthed and his condition on stealthing, which if your not keeping track of then your not really pvping very well.

Okay then, so you swing once, hit him. Swing again, you hit him again. Is he in the same spot? Is he moving around to your right, your left, running away, what? It tells you jackall. Or: swing again, miss. Where did he go? Which direction? Did he just dodge your attack and is in fact still near you? You guess, hope you were right. Sure, experience helps make you right more often, but it’s still guessing.
Being forced to guess, not because of player action, but because of the game not giving you the information you need to not guess, is a terrible design choice.

Obviously that’s what you do, but it’s not what I, or any other experienced Thief will do. When another Thief goes into stealth we can usually estimate exactly where they are at any given moment.

How?

Because we were paying attention and we know that a Thief going into stealth is doing so for one of two reasons:

1. To do a small fight reset in order to gain back some health and reposition themselves.
2. To move in for a Backstab/Tactical Strike if a D/x or S/x Thief or to let off a Sneak Attack if a P/D Thief.

In scenario #1, all you need to do is follow the Thief in the direction they went and 9 times out of 10 you will get at least one full auto-attack chain into them before you lose them, and considering that most auto-attack chains go for around ~3 seconds, the Thief will be out of stealth at this point and you can continue to CC them/etc.

In scenario #2, we do practically the exact same thing, but we pay attention to the distance we keep between ourselves and the Thief, after approximately 2-3 seconds you dodge to avoid their Backstab/Tactical Strike while making sure to be denying them your back for the extra damage/daze.

Alternatively, in scenario #2, you can laydown as much AoE around you as possible in addition to the movement + dodge.

It’s really not that difficult, and it’s a buttload more effective than you make out. There’s a reason that Thieves take so much kittening damage while in stealth (hint: it’s not because we’re hard to find with an auto-attack).

As for the problem of weapon sets without auto-attack chains, the combat log still works nicely for this, although I admit that this is a little bit of a problem, it’s more of a game design flaw than something to do with the Thief class.

^ Adding to that: for many thieves, movement patterns in stealth are highly predictable. I mean, we’re only human. There’s no reason to believe that we can’t act in a predictable manner.

Thieves excel at killing baddies.

Baddies excel at crying on forums.

Forum mystery solved.

From a Necromancer.

Fenrir.4237:

Grimwolf.7163:

Fenrir.4237:

Annoying to fight isn’t limited to Thief, stop being biased.

I hope to God you weren’t dumb enough to just say I’m biased against the Thief. Thief is my main, and anyone who spends much time on the forums should know that much.
I have an entire site dedicated to the Thief class.

Doesn’t mean you’re not biased towards your own class. I don’t find Thieves annoying to fight against at all, I actually like fighting them out of all classes. I find it way more annoying to fight Ele, Mesmer or Guardian than a Thief, by a longshot. Idk about you.

Zenith.7301:

LOL, necro, “tons of dps”. That’s just too cute by half.

Know what’s even cuter? This right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gXKLbrvMk
Learn your kitten bro before even trying to make fun of me.

Just wanted to say that this discussion is going to start to go off-topic. Stop picking the nitty gritties, seriously, this is a discussion about “Why idiots think Thief is OP” not about wether Thief is annoying or wether or not Necro having tons of DPS is right.

You consider rooting some noob who didn’t dodge dark pact — with an obvious cast time and animation-- on a well and spamming a supposedly “strong” autoattack “tons of DPS”?

I’d love to have some of what you’re having.

Where the hell are all those “LF Necromancer” posts in dungeon speed runs? Because I see none.