Guild Wars 2

Zenith.7301:

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.

What about the “LF Thief” posts? In fact, a significant proportion of the GW2 community believes that thieves are extremely weak in dungeons.

Anyways, that’s not a good measure of how good necros are in dungeons. For example- perhaps nobody wants necros in their groups because of people like you, who say that necros must be bad in dungeon groups because nobody wants them in their dungeon groups. They see your comment, think “oh, well, necros must be bad”, and then try to keep them out of their groups, creating a self-perpetuating bias.

Rather, I like to look at necros from a more theoretical point of view. Necros are easily the second most survivable class, the first being guardians. Then, necros provide tons of mitigation via cripples, chills, fears, and blinds. On top of that, they can apply these conditions in an AoE, making necros even more powerful as a profession that can control the battlefield. Being so easily able to apply conditions, they necros can also mitigate enemy healing via poison, and do damage throughout lulls in fighting via DoT. On top of this, Minion Masters give NPCs a distraction that give others a chance to attack an open enemy. With Plague Signet, necros provide a way to remove conditions from friends, which they can use to heal themselves for more, or even to transfer them to enemies, which, with Epidemic, causes a mass of conditions that can easily overcome a mob.

No, necros don’t have the highest DPS, but they have the best DoT, control, and the second best tanking.

People think Thieves are OP? They’re not fun to fight, but not really OP. I main a Necro, but have played Ele and Guardian quite a bit as well. Those classes have one thing in common. All of their advantages and disadvantages are based on stats and mechanics. Necros have shroud. It gives them more hitpoints. That’s a stat.

Thieves have Stealth. It deprives me of the ability to target them, and creates uncertainty about their true location. Those aren’t stats.

Death Shroud happens on the screen, and in the game, and has a quantifiable result that can be understood while it’s happening.

Stealth doesn’t change any stats (most of the time), but just changes how much information I have about the current encounter. The result is not quantifiable because it isn’t based on a mechanical change. I can’t make a build to “counter stealth” really. I can make a build to “counter boon spam” or “counter condition spam.”

This has been a common thread in every MMO that included a profession/class with abilities that made them stealth/invis. They’re usually not all that OP. They’re just incredibly unfun to fight. Winning is an irritating chore, because it involves a lot of blind swinging and hoping you guessed right. Losing is just losing because you can’t
see what you’re doing.
Not OP, really….

Just.
Not.
Fun.

Arganthium.5638:

Zenith.7301:

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.

What about the “LF Thief” posts? In fact, a significant proportion of the GW2 community believes that thieves are extremely weak in dungeons.

Anyways, that’s not a good measure of how good necros are in dungeons. For example- perhaps nobody wants necros in their groups because of people like you, who say that necros must be bad in dungeon groups because nobody wants them in their dungeon groups. They see your comment, think “oh, well, necros must be bad”, and then try to keep them out of their groups, creating a self-perpetuating bias.

Rather, I like to look at necros from a more theoretical point of view. Necros are easily the second most survivable class, the first being guardians. Then, necros provide tons of mitigation via cripples, chills, fears, and blinds. On top of that, they can apply these conditions in an AoE, making necros even more powerful as a profession that can control the battlefield. Being so easily able to apply conditions, they necros can also mitigate enemy healing via poison, and do damage throughout lulls in fighting via DoT. On top of this, Minion Masters give NPCs a distraction that give others a chance to attack an open enemy. With Plague Signet, necros provide a way to remove conditions from friends, which they can use to heal themselves for more, or even to transfer them to enemies, which, with Epidemic, causes a mass of conditions that can easily overcome a mob.

No, necros don’t have the highest DPS, but they have the best DoT, control, and the second best tanking.

I’m talking to a genius who’s arguing thieves are weak in dungeon groups. In the very cof p1 farming official thread in the dungeon forums, the format calls for 1 or 2 thieves. In fractals thieves are essential for the dredge fractal.

I have a necro so my view is not theoretical. I just have 6 other lv80’s, 3 of them (mesmer, guardian, ele) which are far superior in the support and aoe side.

2nd best tanking goes to bunker classes. A bunker scepter ele can tank more damage in dungeons, as can an evasion ranger. So this is my cue to stop wasting time, especially with a person who would screw their group over by using minions.

I’m afraid that you’ve excluded the correct answer in your OP, i.e. the problem is player experience.

Give the following video a watch:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/81076-guru-state-of-the-game-with-arenanet-dev-tyler-bearce-jonathan-sharp-and-karl-mclain/

You will find a serious discussion of a rather bizarre train of thought, i.e., thiefs and mesmers may be a problem because absolute beginners have a problem with them. I’m actually not kidding; watch the video.

Did you see Mike Judge’s movie, Idiocracy? Not a very good movie but it posed an interesting question: what would happen to the world if society supported the dumbing-down of every aspect of it. If you have any question as to the likely outcome, watch the movie.

You don’t balance a whole game and level 80 professions around new players. You do avoid barriers to entry and support learning, but you don’t balance end-game professions around absolute beginners. I’m sure Mike Judge would be interested in the outcome of such thinking, but it’s facepalm material for a lot of us. Watch the video.

PinCushion.7390:

People think Thieves are OP? They’re not fun to fight, but not really OP. I main a Necro, but have played Ele and Guardian quite a bit as well. Those classes have one thing in common. All of their advantages and disadvantages are based on stats and mechanics. Necros have shroud. It gives them more hitpoints. That’s a stat.

Thieves have Stealth. It deprives me of the ability to target them, and creates uncertainty about their true location. Those aren’t stats.

Death Shroud happens on the screen, and in the game, and has a quantifiable result that can be understood while it’s happening.

Stealth doesn’t change any stats (most of the time), but just changes how much information I have about the current encounter. The result is not quantifiable because it isn’t based on a mechanical change. I can’t make a build to “counter stealth” really. I can make a build to “counter boon spam” or “counter condition spam.”

This has been a common thread in every MMO that included a profession/class with abilities that made them stealth/invis. They’re usually not all that OP. They’re just incredibly unfun to fight. Winning is an irritating chore, because it involves a lot of blind swinging and hoping you guessed right. Losing is just losing because you can’t
see what you’re doing.
Not OP, really….

Just.
Not.
Fun.

Another way of putting it is annoying. It’s a basic aspect of the stealth mechanic and present in all stealth classes in all games. But, that’s what you balance around. A thief/rogue who makes a mistake and is left without a cooldown has just punched his squish ticket. There are always effective counters, but they are always annoying—charmingly so.

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.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

Ruggan.4102:

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.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

LOL Dagger Storm. And if you complain it’s an elite, the same is the case for ranger and necro, and engineers don’t even get stability unless it;s a 50% chance fromtossed elixir S.

Condi removal costs a slot — your condi removal is bundled into your heal. And from stealthing with traits, which you can use frequently.

P.S. Thief resets the fight for the reason anyone else tries to as well. They mess up, get a key skill dodged, etc. Thieves can just reset far more reliably than other classes, with only ele and mesmer having close to the ability to reset.

I don’t know why we keep arguing this; it always comes down to one simple truth: The people whining about Thieves being OP are the same people who can’t be kitten to actually learn how to fight a Thief. They don’t want to rely on skill or experience, they just want an “I beat Thieves” button.

We get it, people don’t like stealth because it’s inconvenient; I don’t like AoE attacks for the same reason – but I don’t see Thief players swarming the forums demanding they be immune to Area Effect attacks. (though wouldn’t that be nice!)

Seriously, you guys are going to keep beating on this drum until they nerf Thieves again, and again, and again, until the class is unplayable, and just sit back smiling because it doesn’t hurt you one wit.

So I just fought someone that is actually SMART about fighting Thieves and honestly, it made me rethink stealth some more. The thing about stealth is, you either stack it, thus losing precious time as your enemy will have time to heal the damage you’ve done to him. OR you don’t stack it and have a kitten poor chance of actually getting your BS off, especially whilst taking heavy damage while not doing any damage yourself until you position correctly which your OPPONENT controls. You’re the one trying to get your opponents back, but your enemy is the one who controls it thus easily being able to prevent the damage you’re trying to going to do and dealing damage himself, without feedback, but damage is still damage.

This is why I just went for S/D to be able to immobilize my enemy right before entering stealth so I can at least get my enemies back and at least uitilize ONE of our keyabilities of which are stealth attacks (albeit annoying positional requirements except for the pistol and SB one which are alright but don’t compare or aren’t as useful).

Ruggan.4102:

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight…

No, necros can’t hit walls to get health any more, it was fixed. And it was for the purpose of damaging the wall, not getting healing, because the healing (and really, the damage, it just was for contesting WPs) is so unbelievably kitten so as not to matter. In fact, are you honestly comparing 25 health per hit to being able to stealth? Because that is laughably bullkitten.

Zenith.7301:

Ruggan.4102:

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.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

LOL Dagger Storm. And if you complain it’s an elite, the same is the case for ranger and necro, and engineers don’t even get stability unless it;s a 50% chance fromtossed elixir S.

Condi removal costs a slot — your condi removal is bundled into your heal. And from stealthing with traits, which you can use frequently.

P.S. Thief resets the fight for the reason anyone else tries to as well. They mess up, get a key skill dodged, etc. Thieves can just reset far more reliably than other classes, with only ele and mesmer having close to the ability to reset.

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Ruggan.4102:

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight…

No, necros can’t hit walls to get health any more, it was fixed. And it was for the purpose of damaging the wall, not getting healing, because the healing (and really, the damage, it just was for contesting WPs) is so unbelievably kitten so as not to matter. In fact, are you honestly comparing 25 health per hit to being able to stealth? Because that is laughably bullkitten.

From March 26 Patch Notes “•Necromancer trait: Now allows life-stealing on walls in World vs. World”… so umm please get your facts straight. This was the last patch and that is what the patch notes said. As for comparing it… yea I can. People used to complain that thieves could hit walls ect to gain perma-stealth… they cannot anylonger and I agree with that… from the simple standpoint that inanimate objects don’t have eyes or other senses to make it so a thief could gain stealth. On the same token… walls don’t really have life so how does a necro steal life from them?

Ruggan.4102:

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Ranger has ONE ability that can give them Stability other than Rampage as One, and only when bundled with a trait (Signet of the Wild, combined with Signet of the Beastmaster Grandmaster trait).
Necromancer has NO non-elite Stability except with a Grandmaster trait to get it when they Death Shroud.
Engineer’s only method of Stability other than Elixir X and Mortar (and you can’t move with Mortar which makes it rather moot) is throwing Elixir S, which will randomly give Stability or Stealth.
Also note that Signet of the Wild and Death Shroud will prevent the user from being able to stomp someone.

Oh and Thief can get Stability with Consume Ectoplasm.

Ruggan.4102:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Ruggan.4102:

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight…

No, necros can’t hit walls to get health any more, it was fixed. And it was for the purpose of damaging the wall, not getting healing, because the healing (and really, the damage, it just was for contesting WPs) is so unbelievably kitten so as not to matter. In fact, are you honestly comparing 25 health per hit to being able to stealth? Because that is laughably bullkitten.

From March 26 Patch Notes “•Necromancer trait: Now allows life-stealing on walls in World vs. World”… so umm please get your facts straight. This was the last patch and that is what the patch notes said. As for comparing it… yea I can. People used to complain that thieves could hit walls ect to gain perma-stealth… they cannot anylonger and I agree with that… from the simple standpoint that inanimate objects don’t have eyes or other senses to make it so a thief could gain stealth. On the same token… walls don’t really have life so how does a necro steal life from them?

That’s called a typo dude. If you actually bothered to check (which I just did just to be certain) you’d find out that you in fact can not steal health from walls any more, because it was a bugfix preventing you from doing so.
And what you’re left with is you comparing 25 health per hit, which needs 30 hits or so to even begin giving a kitten about, to being able to remove yourself from your opponents screen.

To answer the title question… Thieves are INCREDIBLY GOOD AT EXPLOITING LOW KNOWLEDGE PLAYERS. Really, when you don’t know what a profession can do (or how it does it), the Thief is the most dangerous of them all.

Once you know what a Thief can do, it’s super easy to fight and counter. Specially if you’ve played one and you know everything it can do and how he does it.

Problem is, there are lots of players (not so many really, but they scream louder so they look like a lot) that instead of figuring ways to counter something (and in Thief’s case it’s as easy as knowing how to use a good snare or how to move in combat instead of fixing your feet to the ground when you attack, though I admit that part is hard to learn for players with a lot of playtime in other MMOs as they’re used to combat that way) will call for nerfs.

The result is that it “balances” Thief against low knowledge players, but makes them more and more vulnerable and easier to counter against competitive players. So those players that don’t want to compete at a high level (or else they would be figuring ways to snare an opponent and move in combat, I’ve seen a lot of “stand still while shooting” players being victims of not so skilled thieves), force the Thief as a class to be worse at a high level so they can take it easier at low level gameplay.

The Thief is (was? idk, we are super limited right now in really competitive builds) fine as it is (we need that 3s revealed back and change it for the original idea of revealed even if not attacking that was fine and avoided perma-stealth). Other professions have many more ways to annihilate their targets and they’re not the target of so many whines.

thief: i am going to backstab you(venom, preparing for combo..go #5+F1+1)
…dodge/breakstun
thief: ok cya in 45 secs..uff
op

-a thief

Fenrir.4237:

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).

You don’t understand why that is OP? I will explain. He can go in for a fight and see how far he gets. Is he winning then he can finish it but is he losing he can disengage even if he is in a whole enemy zerg.

After disengaging if he still wants the kill he can follow his target and wait till it is weakened and that try another time. Still losing? He disengage again.

Ruggan.4102:

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Now that you got caught being dishonest about stability, you changed the subject to protection.

I just named you several classes who don’t have any stability other than their elite. It’s not just the thief.

As for ranger “protection”, the only protection you get comes from either speccing into wilderness survival, where you get 2 secs prot WHILE you dodge, making it actually at best a 1 second benefit of protection that is often wasted, and the other source of prot comes from nature magic, which is not taken because it competes for the trait for 33% longer regen boon duration. The prot trait on NM requires you be hit for over 10% of your health already, and has an internal cooldown.

And quite frankly, if you’re going to be so desperate as to bring stun switch traits in, why not mention the thief’s automatic shadowstep upon cc or his smoke powder upon hitting lower health traits? Oh, right, because it’s inconvenient for you.

But, hey, let’s make a switch. I’ll trade you a ranger for a thief, any day. I’m sure most pve groups will as well, as would wvw groups since the ranger’s pet is pretty much dead all the time in wvw, which means they operate under a permanent 30-40% damage handicap. When your damage gets cut by a third on most game types and has trouble keeping up with opponents because its ai sucks and its attack animations root it in place, then you get to complain.

All I got out of this thread is thieves are OP because they can stealth and run away.

I think the picture explains why…

I have been hit this hard from thieves which are staying 90% of the time in stealth and somehow avoiding the revealed debuff (they hit me and become visible for a second at the most and re-stealth) and always manage to heal to close to 90% from 30% in just a few seconds. I have tons of other pictures including similar damage on 2k toughness (on different classes as well, I like to play like 4 classes)

I have tested the burst build on thief and got bored in a few hours playtime. The survivability due to the current stealth mechanic is a bit much considering the damage output and considering no other class has similar damage output with no trade-off (warrior burst for example has many weaknesses).

Thief is the pug stomper class. This is based on personal experience. I can easily destroy a group of 3 pugs, but when it comes to two guys who know what they are doing, I die easily.

When players see a thief stealth, they have no clue what to do.
“Omg, he disappeared?!!? Where’d he go?” swings sword randomly
But in reality, what he should be really doing is standing in an AoE circle, immediately move backwards away from the thief(to prevent backstab, which requires the thief to be up close) if he has no AoE. They should also be dodging the CnDs. Many pugs I play like to dodge my pistol shot that does 200 damage and gives 1 stack of bleed, when they really should be saving their endurance to dodge the CnD, effectively denying stealth and wasting 6 initiative(at least i think it’s 6). Dodge a few of those and he’s kittened.

Another reason are videos from known players (wild bill, yishi, even excala in the D/D ele sense). These players aren’t gods. Not nearly. Not even close. I see many in game since most in are Tier 1. Nothing truly impressed me other than they can kill pugs with ease, which any half decent dude can do. Even watching the videos, almost all of them are pugs or are horrible. I constantly see in those videos enemies reviving already dead players where the thief takes chunks out of his HP. Stupid things like that which make people think the thief is OP.

swinsk.6410:

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.

You are confusing the troll thieves and good thieves, and there are thieves who are both. Good thieves do duels every now and then, and in a duel running away is the same as doing alt-f4, that is, losing.
Good thieves also roam around the map, trolling stupid zerg-zombies who are foolish enough to take part in the futile cat-and-mouse type game.

P.S. Thief resets the fight for the reason anyone else tries to as well. They mess up, get a key skill dodged, etc. Thieves can just reset far more reliably than other classes, with only ele and mesmer having close to the ability to reset.

Yep, thief can and this is intended. Deal with it.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Yep, thief can and this is intended. Deal with it.

So suddenly working as intended automatically means it’s not OP.

Swim.6830:

I think the picture explains why…

I have been hit this hard from thieves which are staying 90% of the time in stealth and somehow avoiding the revealed debuff (they hit me and become visible for a second at the most and re-stealth) and always manage to heal to close to 90% from 30% in just a few seconds. I have tons of other pictures including similar damage on 2k toughness (on different classes as well, I like to play like 4 classes)

I have tested the burst build on thief and got bored in a few hours playtime. The survivability due to the current stealth mechanic is a bit much considering the damage output and considering no other class has similar damage output with no trade-off (warrior burst for example has many weaknesses).

To remain stealthed for 90% of the time they need to either be exploiting or spending 1/3-2/5 of a second at best visibile, which is not possible to do AND attack with anything other than perhaps CnD.

Even if the 90% was an over exageration, going by your screenshot they where hitting you with full auto attack chains or heartseeker and no cloak and dagger, that means they where hitting you for 1-2 seconds out of stealth every 3-4 seconds so that at best an 80% stealth uptime down to 66% stealth uptime.

Because they were not utilizing CnD (at least not on you) that means they are either using a 30s to 40s cooldown stealth move which means unless they loaded up heavily they are at best going to be able to do so twice (one of which has a cast time that lowers the stealth amount as well)

On top of this it means the thief is hitting you only every 3-4 seconds, with either a single auto attack chain or when you where low health the 1 heartseeker which is an incredibly low amount of damage to kill someone with.

As for the healing up 60% of their health, if they are gc thats 6k healing in 4 seconds max, outside of utilizing their hide in shadows heal the stealth regens are not going to manage that.

So either that thief is exploiting massively or your blowing the fight way out of proportion/you had some other issue such as remains of culling or some such.

Just FYI: Infiltrator Shot does not break stuns. It only moves the thief to the target area. Therefore, rooted thief uses infil shot. Rooted thief is still rooted thief, but now thief is over there.

Ruggan.4102:

Zenith.7301:

Ruggan.4102:

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.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

LOL Dagger Storm. And if you complain it’s an elite, the same is the case for ranger and necro, and engineers don’t even get stability unless it;s a 50% chance fromtossed elixir S.

Condi removal costs a slot — your condi removal is bundled into your heal. And from stealthing with traits, which you can use frequently.

P.S. Thief resets the fight for the reason anyone else tries to as well. They mess up, get a key skill dodged, etc. Thieves can just reset far more reliably than other classes, with only ele and mesmer having close to the ability to reset.

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Necro hp pool is on par with warriors. Thief, guardian, and elementalist have the tiny hp pools.

I think the answer to the openers question is simple:

The main reason is the stealth mechanic.

For the explanation I will illustrate 4 Situations. Be aware that in 1 vs 1 Situations there will always be a “better one” which would eventually win the fight.

Situation 1: Thief (better one) vs NonThief, Result: Thief wins.
Situation 2: Thief vs NonThief (better one), Result: NonThief would win, but Thief runs, denying the win to the NonThief.

Situation 3: NonThief runs into a Zerg, Result: NonThief dies.
Situation 4: Thief runs into a Zerg, Result: Thief runs.

I won’t argue that it still depends on the Build the Thief plays.
I won’t argue that other classes also may run from a Zerg.
I won’t argue that it depends on the players skill.

But the thief does have an advantage because of the stealth mechanic.

(Btw.: I play a thief myself. And because of those reasons I prefer going to WvW with him instead of my other chars.)

Im still amazed at entire zergs letting the thief escape ><

The zergs I’ve ran with only allow em to escape if theres some bigger threat to take care of such as any non thief enemy in the same area.

Thieves really do not help themselves when their defense always revolves around either “everyone else is bad except thieves”, “everyone else is dumb except thieves”, and similar statements you consistently see posted.

Just looking at it logically it is not statistically possible for everyone else except thieves to be bad/dumb players.

You guys really need to come up with a justifiable reason that you get some of the best mechanics in the game for mobility and evading combat combined with some of the best damage capabilities.

Other classes tend to have to give things up for those type of benefits.

There was a guy posting sPvP screen shots the other day and every match up was 3/4 thieves and mesmers with the couple oddballs from one of the other classes. That right there tells me something is wrong. It is a known fact that people gravitate to the overpowered classes.

Fritz.5026:

Thieves really do not help themselves when their defense always revolves around either “everyone else is bad except thieves”, “everyone else is dumb except thieves”, and similar statements you consistently see posted.

Just looking at it logically it is not statistically possible for everyone else except thieves to be bad/dumb players.

You guys really need to come up with a justifiable reason that you get some of the best mechanics in the game for mobility and evading combat combined with some of the best damage capabilities.

Other classes tend to have to give things up for those type of benefits.

There was a guy posting sPvP screen shots the other day and every match up was 3/4 thieves and mesmers with the couple oddballs from one of the other classes. That right there tells me something is wrong. It is a known fact that people gravitate to the overpowered classes.

Its the fact that the good non thieves have no issue with us, the problem comes in when your talking about the lower tier content where players are new and inexperienced such as hotjoin sPvP and WvW where the majority of players are going to be new, inexperienced or yes just bad.

Once the players learn about stealth they tend not to have issue, this is also why thieves tend to never have issues against other thieves on their alts, because they know exactly what stealth is capable of and the exact ways to counter them.

As for giving something up, to obtain the second best mobility in the game and a reasonable amount of burst damage a thief has: The least amount of effective health in the game, no access to any damage reduction/block boons or powers, very little to no support boon access, very little to no offensive boon access, low skill damage coefficients, low weapon skill use amounts.

This means if a thief has rolled for either the big burst (which I wont get into how “good” it is compared to others potential) or for an evasive build (you generally cannot have both without dropping down the effectiveness of either to the point where its on par with most peoples hybrids) they have no defense that isn’t instantly counterable by a single CC or an experienced player (note the experienced player doesn’t need a special build, they just need to be experienced)

Zenith.7301:

Ruggan.4102:

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Now that you got caught being dishonest about stability, you changed the subject to protection.

I just named you several classes who don’t have any stability other than their elite. It’s not just the thief.

As for ranger “protection”, the only protection you get comes from either speccing into wilderness survival, where you get 2 secs prot WHILE you dodge, making it actually at best a 1 second benefit of protection that is often wasted, and the other source of prot comes from nature magic, which is not taken because it competes for the trait for 33% longer regen boon duration. The prot trait on NM requires you be hit for over 10% of your health already, and has an internal cooldown.

And quite frankly, if you’re going to be so desperate as to bring stun switch traits in, why not mention the thief’s automatic shadowstep upon cc or his smoke powder upon hitting lower health traits? Oh, right, because it’s inconvenient for you.

But, hey, let’s make a switch. I’ll trade you a ranger for a thief, any day. I’m sure most pve groups will as well, as would wvw groups since the ranger’s pet is pretty much dead all the time in wvw, which means they operate under a permanent 30-40% damage handicap. When your damage gets cut by a third on most game types and has trouble keeping up with opponents because its ai sucks and its attack animations root it in place, then you get to complain.

Actually, what you did was point out the stability that other classes have that are non elite. See when you say that X class has no non-elite stability except A-B-C… then you actually are pointing to abilities that are non-elite that do indeed grant stability… so umm yea. As for getting caught and switching to protection… actually I mentioned protection in the same post so I have no clue what you mean by that.

As for damage being cut in 1/3… apperantly you have not actually taken a look at the patch history for thieves and their abilities since just about every single weapon skill and ability HAS been reduced by at least 33%. As for Rangers, in a single patch their spirits were increased, their damage was increased, and their overall survivability was increased… that was just one patch mind you.

just for an example watch this guys video:

this was just the first video i clicked on, i did not even have to try

please explain to me how another class, such as a ranger or necromancer, could pull off the same things.

edit – the guys commentary is so funny though. “Well I noticed things were not going my way so I stealthed” … for the 100th time in less than 10 minutes.

I’d point out that for the most part it was against uplevels, they even specifically state so, hence why the NPC’s did far more damage and CC to them at the start than the players did.

Again you cannot take the lowest tier stuff and say “look they can kill the new players how OP is that!” as many many people can do that against a number of uplevels.

Find me a video of high tier competitive pvp with a thief in it and then you might just have a point, but saying a thief is OP because they can kill uplevels in wvw is just silly.

Fritz.5026:

just for an example watch this guys video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWywAXmVP4

this was just the first video i clicked on, i did not even have to try

please explain to me how another class, such as a ranger or necromancer, could pull off the same things.

edit – the guys commentary is so funny though. “Well I noticed things were not going my way so I stealthed” … for the 100th time in less than 10 minutes.

That exact video is not one of the best to show how OP the thief class is. Those players are totally clueless, letting a single thief take them all down one by one.

That crap can only happen in wvw…

OGDeadHead.8326:

Fritz.5026:

just for an example watch this guys video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWywAXmVP4

this was just the first video i clicked on, i did not even have to try

please explain to me how another class, such as a ranger or necromancer, could pull off the same things.

edit – the guys commentary is so funny though. “Well I noticed things were not going my way so I stealthed” … for the 100th time in less than 10 minutes.

That exact video is not one of the best to show how OP the thief class is. Those players are totally clueless, letting a single thief take them all down one by one.

That crap can only happen in wvw…

like i said it was the first video i clicked on.

regardless of the other players you cannot sit there and tell me another class can pull off the same things.

he uses stealth to be able to take on large groups and consistently get out of trouble.

the other players could be complete noobs and they would still steamroll any other class.

The thief being able to run away when things don’t go their way is not punishment enough. Other classes die.

The thief can run away and then come back. They need to win just once. Other classes need to beat them in every encounter.

Disengaging is not punishment. If you attack and the other person is better than you, you should die. Period.

Other classes have escape mechanisms but you can at least somewhat counter them. You at least know when they’re running away. If the thief stealths, you don’t know which direction they’re running – ahead or behind. In fact you don’t know whether they’re going to run at all. I’ve fought many thieves who stealth and then I start dodging, swinging etc expecting an attack that never comes. The thief has run away.

But he’ll be back in a few mins. I guarantee it.

And THAT is unfair.

For whatever its worth and its most likely not much I think its the stealth mechanic. If you simplify it to say a game of checkers and imagine one player who has full view of the board as well as his opponents moves and reactions and another player who cannot see his opponents moves and can simply react to say a checker suddenly going missing from the board then you can see why people like to complain. It creates an idea of the game being heavily stacked in favor of one party. Add to this excellent mobility, high bursts and the ability to spam damaging moves consecutively which no other class can do and yeah, people are going to complain. I think that if the stealth were handled in a manner similar to other multi player match ups where the player is faintly visible (distortion, preadator effect, what have you) and even if a thief in stealth then would then have a to hit penalty (that is to hit the thief) you’d see a lot of complaints die away as at least a player could feels though they are stategizing against their opponent. Right now you get dinged out of left field and it feels cheap. This was the same complaint with culling and the removal of that is almost universally praised so yeah, I’m leaning towards stealth makes a thief feel OP.

Mr Pin.6728:

For whatever its worth and its most likely not much I think its the stealth mechanic. If you simplify it to say a game of checkers and imagine one player who has full view of the board as well as his opponents moves and reactions and another player who cannot see his opponents moves and can simply react to say a checker suddenly going missing from the board then you can see why people like to complain. It creates an idea of the game being heavily stacked in favor of one party. Add to this excellent mobility, high bursts and the ability to spam damaging moves consecutively which no other class can do and yeah, people are going to complain. I think that if the stealth were handled in a manner similar to other multi player match ups where the player is faintly visible (distortion, preadator effect, what have you) and even if a thief in stealth then would then have a to hit penalty (that is to hit the thief) you’d see a lot of complaints die away as at least a player could feels though they are stategizing against their opponent. Right now you get dinged out of left field and it feels cheap. This was the same complaint with culling and the removal of that is almost universally praised so yeah, I’m leaning towards stealth makes a thief feel OP.

I would have to agree. It is the ability to consistently stealth in combat and avoid retaliation.

The video I posted is perfect proof of that. Any other class would have died over and over with the stunts the thief was pulling off.

Stealth is a poor mechanic for a pvp game, but at least in other games once a stealth character is in combat they cannot enter stealth again. If they mess up, they die. It at least brings some amount of fairness to the playing field.

Sure he might be able to gank one guy, but then he will pay for it.

The current mechanics are skewed in the thieves favor and to make matters worse most thieves just think everyone else is bad/dumb because their classes mechanics will not allow them to do the same things.

Fritz.5026:

regardless of the other players you cannot sit there and tell me another class can pull off the same things.

he uses stealth to be able to take on large groups and consistently get out of trouble.

the other players could be complete noobs and they would still steamroll any other class.

Actually they can, I’ve seen guardians take on similiar groups and win barely taking any damage, mezmers can do so in their own way, elementalists can do so as well and escape much easier than a thief can, necro when played well can use death shroud and elites to wreck groups of uplevels and such.

There is very few professions that would have no hope against similiar groups of uplevels and those tend to excel elsewhere instead.

Its all relative, that thief would not have managed the first downed if the players he was against knew how to fight a thief in the same way a bunker guardian can be broken by someone who knows how to counter that style of play and such.

The big difference, the very crux of basically all this arguement comes down to the fact that stealth isn’t something you just click a button and it instantly counters it, its something thats countered almost exclusively by knowing how it works, how the thieves are going to use it and then using your regular skills to take them down.

When compared to something like protection which you don’t have to think about at all you either ignore it and hammer and put up with doing less damage and being unable to kill the bunker or you press a button and its gone (until they put it up again)

Dasorine.1964:

Swim.6830:

I think the picture explains why…

I have been hit this hard from thieves which are staying 90% of the time in stealth and somehow avoiding the revealed debuff (they hit me and become visible for a second at the most and re-stealth) and always manage to heal to close to 90% from 30% in just a few seconds. I have tons of other pictures including similar damage on 2k toughness (on different classes as well, I like to play like 4 classes)

I have tested the burst build on thief and got bored in a few hours playtime. The survivability due to the current stealth mechanic is a bit much considering the damage output and considering no other class has similar damage output with no trade-off (warrior burst for example has many weaknesses).

To remain stealthed for 90% of the time they need to either be exploiting or spending 1/3-2/5 of a second at best visibile, which is not possible to do AND attack with anything other than perhaps CnD.

Even if the 90% was an over exageration, going by your screenshot they where hitting you with full auto attack chains or heartseeker and no cloak and dagger, that means they where hitting you for 1-2 seconds out of stealth every 3-4 seconds so that at best an 80% stealth uptime down to 66% stealth uptime.

Because they were not utilizing CnD (at least not on you) that means they are either using a 30s to 40s cooldown stealth move which means unless they loaded up heavily they are at best going to be able to do so twice (one of which has a cast time that lowers the stealth amount as well)

On top of this it means the thief is hitting you only every 3-4 seconds, with either a single auto attack chain or when you where low health the 1 heartseeker which is an incredibly low amount of damage to kill someone with.

As for the healing up 60% of their health, if they are gc thats 6k healing in 4 seconds max, outside of utilizing their hide in shadows heal the stealth regens are not going to manage that.

So either that thief is exploiting massively or your blowing the fight way out of proportion/you had some other issue such as remains of culling or some such.

The screenshot is not the fight I mentioned. I was too startled to even take a screenshot of that one, because they were in stealth 90% of the time. I have played thief a while so I am almost 100% positive they were exploiting. If they were to be revealed for more than a second I would have downed them…

no idea, totally balanced if you ask me

xaendark.1346:

I think the answer to the openers question is simple:

The main reason is the stealth mechanic.

For the explanation I will illustrate 4 Situations. Be aware that in 1 vs 1 Situations there will always be a “better one” which would eventually win the fight.

Situation 1: Thief (better one) vs NonThief, Result: Thief wins.
Situation 2: Thief vs NonThief (better one), Result: NonThief would win, but Thief runs, denying the win to the NonThief.

Situation 3: NonThief runs into a Zerg, Result: NonThief dies.
Situation 4: Thief runs into a Zerg, Result: Thief runs.

I won’t argue that it still depends on the Build the Thief plays.
I won’t argue that other classes also may run from a Zerg.
I won’t argue that it depends on the players skill.

But the thief does have an advantage because of the stealth mechanic.

(Btw.: I play a thief myself. And because of those reasons I prefer going to WvW with him instead of my other chars.)

conquest mode means that if thief run he lose the fight.
pretending win= kill : ok you right
pretending win = 500 points : ok you wrong

Swim.6830:

The screenshot is not the fight I mentioned. I was too startled to even take a screenshot of that one, because they were in stealth 90% of the time. I have played thief a while so I am almost 100% positive they were exploiting. If they were to be revealed for more than a second I would have downed them…

Which makes me have to ask, if they were exploiting and the fact that had they been visible for even a single second you would have downed them, how does that make the current survivability granted by stealth too much? considering non-exploiting thieves are either revealed for 4 seconds (more than enough time to kill them) or doing no damage due to the aforementioned limitations to the mechanics?

I mean if you add into the fact that very very few attacks wont actually hit a stealthed thief meaning if you know where they are you can kill them with next to no risk of being hurt by them yourself…

i have seen a few of these thieves that attack while in stealth and go into stealth without using a skill etc. they are hackers … they are very rare and non skilled players. they just use in laymens terms a cheat code. ignore it…go on about your day…report them and take a pic/video if u can although a pic doesnt prove anything. ic an show you a tip to get their names. ive stopped a few this way m yself. target them click /join or /invite …at first it wont show the name…and obviousl a cheater wont join ur party so u can get his name/ ID…so immediately after u click join or invite his blank face will come up on the top left of your screen QUICKLY NOW go to waypoint in SAME ZONE and when u go to the WAYPOINT QUICKLY LOOK at his name. it will show up if he didnt cancel it. then whisper him u have him on video and then go report his cheating kitten

because its no risk.

thiefs can run with impunity, and keep trying again. they can put out stupid burst with no warning, and run when they mess it up.

its a cowards profession.

high risk should come with high reward, but thief is all reward no risk.

Fritz.5026:

just for an example watch this guys video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWywAXmVP4

this was just the first video i clicked on, i did not even have to try

please explain to me how another class, such as a ranger or necromancer, could pull off the same things.

edit – the guys commentary is so funny though. “Well I noticed things were not going my way so I stealthed” … for the 100th time in less than 10 minutes.

f me. Thats totally kitten I knew they were broken as hell, but that vid……thats not skill, thatss noobeasymode.

brb, rolling thief. I’ve never seen a class so unbalanced in a game as this.

A class that hits very hard with no warning, and has no need to hide behind stuff to sneak up on me, has a repeatable gap closer to finish me off if I stop dodging to use my heal, and can just stealth or use bow to teleport away, heal to full, and sometimes return ad infinitum until they get lucky, is simply obnoxious.

I haven’t lost many fights against thieves lately, and they certainly are not overpowered, but they aren’t fun to fight either.

I see a lot of thief’s say that people don’t like thief’s because they don’t understand the stealth. Well first of all, players don’t need to learn all about other professions to battle them so if that is required for thief’s does that not make them OP even by that fact.
Secondly I think it is not true that once you understand stealth the problem go’s away. People do try to cripple thiefs and use melee and AoE to attack them but the fact is that they are invisible. That means they have a 360 degree angle where they can go to and every step they make the area where they can be becomes bigger and thief’s probably the fastest profession in the game so that area where they can be increases like crazy.
It is not for nothing that in most games that have stealth you are out of stealth when you are in combat.

In addition, see in that video how he get damages while he is stealth and he keeps stealth. Thats also crazy. He should get out of stealth when he gets damage. I always place trebs and do AoE and usually do hit him but even while I am doing this he is able to get away and there is the 360 degree thing again. He can go all directions. No way I know where is is 2 sec later. You see that perfectly in the video.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Fritz.5026:

just for an example watch this guys video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWywAXmVP4

this was just the first video i clicked on, i did not even have to try

please explain to me how another class, such as a ranger or necromancer, could pull off the same things.

edit – the guys commentary is so funny though. “Well I noticed things were not going my way so I stealthed” … for the 100th time in less than 10 minutes.

That exact video is not one of the best to show how OP the thief class is. Those players are totally clueless, letting a single thief take them all down one by one.

That crap can only happen in wvw…

A whole zerg of clueless people and all the other players not in the zerg are also clueless. He does not die once and he is fighting most of the time 1 vs more. But I guess they are just all clueless people.

honestly….all those upscales…did u notice? all those easy ranger targets….. none of them used ANY CC skills. they deserve to die they sucked and just ran and didnt fight. any class can cut together a video of fighting crap players. i just did an 8 min fight 1 v 1 with a mesmer and a thief. i dont care how you play. u have to have 2 good players in a 1 v 1 to last 8 mins or more. that said. he prolly showed you about 10% of his fights for the day…the other 90% consist of 1 v 1 2 v 1 and 20 v 20s ect where GOOD PLAYERS use blind…immobilize….stun…. knockback and the thief dies inless than 2 secs. would u like me to make a video of the same build getting owned? and i can make it with all the evades/ports a thief can have and still how you how easy it is to die. how many times CND misses or u dont click SS fast enough. its hard to respond to CC in a perfectly timely manner. thieves are EXTREMELY FRAGILE. the most so in the game. they are SOOOO fragile that infact having the dmg they do is BARELY a fair trade off for their defense. its like showing a film of michael jordan dunking on 100 people. but in reality thats only the first several years of his long career. so u cant say he dunked on everyone everday throught every year of his career. :P

10,000+ damage steal then cloak and dagger in a 2 hit move in less than half a second and didnt see them at all. Not exactly fair.

Also best heal in the game, forgot to add this.

10k damage, never seen it or witnessed it.

personally i think thieves are fine, if you catch a thief you can nearly kill them there and then depending on how good the player is two things will happen

1) they will flee
2) they will turn the tables.

now thieves can be countered, just get used to predicting the stealth.

thieves are fine, that video linked, hell i could link you a mesmer one creating much more havoc than that and you can easily find them through clones.

Yishi’s video….not many people will play THAT good, i guarantee it.