Guild Wars 2

Okay I will be honest and say I did not read the former responses, but I would like to give my opinion. I’m playing a warrior as main character (not the omg zerk build, playing something more balanced on damage and survivability)

In my opinion thief’s are not necessarily OP, there is one problem I have with thief’s though. Due to the massive amount of stealth they have I sometime start to get the feeling I’m playing hide and seek instead of having a battle and especially if they are specded as deathblossem thief they are practical impossible to kill to the massive stealth time and them being invulnerable during deathblossem. On the other side they will not kill me also, since I actually have enough condition removal and I did not mention the annoying caltrops yet. But my opinion is, if the stealth up-time of thief’s get lowered there is not that much of a problem with them, unless you play glass-cannon. Glass-cannon thiefs own other glass-cannon because of stealth, if you hate it don’t play glass-cannon. It’s even so that if I can get a good sight on the thief, most of them will die because lack of survivability that is something else as to much stealth. So I think the stealth possibilities of thiefs should be seriously lowered, but in trade for that they should get viable builds that are not stealth-ed glass-cannon, omg I can always escape in stealth.

The only thing remotely ‘OP’ about thieves is stealth stomping, and even then stability stomping is arguably way more effective.

Really, unless you’re a new player or hopelessly outmatched, you shouldn’t die to a thief unless:

A: You’re already weakened from a previous fight and low on health and with your skills on cooldown.
B: You’re outnumbered
Or C: You’re uplevelled and/or in full glass.

Without a decent team to support them and set up their ‘insane burst’, thieves are only slightly higher then warriors on the food chain, and that’s only due to stealth.

Seryi.7936:

or in full glass.

Being in glass doesn’t justify downing in half a second. It’s happened many times in sPvP. 3 seconds I can understand. Less than one? No way.

But this isn’t about ridiculous burst damage. It’s about stealth allowing thieves to reset fights where they should have rightly died.

It’s also about being able to solo 5 people (even if they’re bad players). No other class can do that. Noone should be able to do that. 5 people should always always be able to beat a single player no matter how talented.

bhagwad.4281:

Seryi.7936:

or in full glass.

Being in glass doesn’t justify downing in half a second. It’s happened many times in sPvP. 3 seconds I can understand. Less than one? No way.

But this isn’t about ridiculous burst damage. It’s about stealth allowing thieves to reset fights where they should have rightly died.

It’s also about being able to solo 5 people (even if they’re bad players). No other class can do that. Noone should be able to do that. 5 people should always always be able to beat a single player no matter how talented.

I would generally agree assuming the enemy players are competent. But the thing is, what do you intend to give back thieves in exchange? The reason they stealth isn’t just to be annoying or complete kittens, stealth is the only thing keeping them from going splat.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the revealed debuff reduced back to 3 seconds but applying every time stealth ended, rather then just after you deal damage that breaks stealth…but at the moment, thieves already die so easily if they screw up versus competent opponents, it’s ridiculous.

bhagwad.4281:

Seryi.7936:

or in full glass.

Being in glass doesn’t justify downing in half a second. It’s happened many times in sPvP. 3 seconds I can understand. Less than one? No way.

But this isn’t about ridiculous burst damage. It’s about stealth allowing thieves to reset fights where they should have rightly died.

It’s also about being able to solo 5 people (even if they’re bad players). No other class can do that. Noone should be able to do that. 5 people should always always be able to beat a single player no matter how talented.

1 second? I take it you run full glass cannon, and that would be the explanation of it.

How can you say that no class should be able to do it? Any good player can easily kill 10 up leveled and bad / new players. If you’re good at something and others just joined or doesn’t understand the game, shouldn’t you be able to do that then?

On the other hand I’ve seen elementalists tear apart 10 or more people without even reaching 50% health. I’ve seen guardians jump into Zergs, splitting them up and chasing down one by one. I’ve seen mesmers kill 5-10 man groups with skill. I’ve seen about every single class (some in game and some on YouTube) tear apart small groups of 2-10 players. They are just better players.

One more thing I’d like to mention: 90% of the thief videos out there are before the patch, which means that there was still a culling problem. Most of the enemy players in those videos will see the thief for just one second, now they got four seconds, and that should be plenty of time to kill a thief. I rip other thieves limb by limb with my guardian. I laugh at other thieves with my thief and my Mesmer just stands there, wondering when she will ever meet a thief that can out play her

bhagwad.4281:

Dasorine.1964:

bhagwad.4281:

swinsk.6410:

That video does not show anything about balance.

It’s a skilled player vs. a bunch of bads mostly. The players he downs and stomps are usually bads even if there is a decent player around.

I guarantee you if you take the most skilled GW2 player in the world and pit them against the worst players who don’t even know what their skill bars do, they would still die to 4-5 of them on any profession other than the thief.

Show me another video of the same type utilizing another profession downing a group of five people. I’d like to see it.

You may not like it, but no one is that good. At the most one person can solo two or maybe three others. If they can reliably take on more than that, then there’s something seriously wrong with balance.

More people should always win provided the others are not just standing around doing nothing. There are limits to how far “skill” should take you.

Choose a random class, put in gw2 wvw solo you tube it = there you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuLki4fP648

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeD5yRL2i3Q

They aren’t proof of anything other than WvW is filled with uplevels and a good player can beat bad players

Nope:

First video: Guardian never solos more than 2 people. In fact, at one point there are five people and the video display says “Death inevitable”!

Because everyone knows that no one no matter how good can ever solo 4 people at the same time. I’m afraid this video merely proves my point. No profession other than the thief is arrogant enough to assume that they’re better than 5 people combined.

They’re not. It’s the class mechanic that allows it to happen.

Second video: Engineer at no point solos 4-5 people.

I’m sorry but nothing compared to the thief video shown here. No profession no matter how well played should ever be able to take down 4-5 people solo even against complete noobs.

Heroes don’t exist.

Well, you are good to point out 2 of the 5 videos lol…. I do notice you don’t mention the Warrior one… you know where the warrior is doing 12-20k dmg with a strike by pressing the 1 key. I only point this out because thief haters are always complaining about the thief spamming 3 and doing 10k with a BS… never once do they mention these 12k hits by other classes…

Ruggan.4102:

Well, you are good to point out 2 of the 5 videos lol…. I do notice you don’t mention the Warrior one… you know where the warrior is doing 12-20k dmg with a strike by pressing the 1 key. I only point this out because thief haters are always complaining about the thief spamming 3 and doing 10k with a BS… never once do they mention these 12k hits by other classes…

To be fair when he made the post there was only the 2, I’ve added more as I found reasonable examples.

And yeah… in total a full backstab burst chain has a base damage of 1814 damage which is technically doable in 1 second IF you steal in behind the target and they are stood perfectly still and doing nothing if your not stealing in behind and they aren’t afk its going to take 2-3 seconds realistically if you manage to pull it off at all (one good dodge is all it takes to end the entire chain and put the thief in a bad position for 45 seconds) and is doable every 45 seconds and consumes half the base initiative.

A warrior axe autoattack chain deals 1648 base damage every 3.6 seconds with no cooldown and no costs.

If you take out the mug the backstab chain base damage drops to 1310 damage but is then usable every 4-8 seconds depending on the movement of both players and wether you hit initiative starvation or not.

And tbh it doesnt fair that much better against most other professions either…

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

By the way, Phor, it’s the job of other classes to call for nerfs on other classes. Defend your own class and ask for your own buffs. I’m not going to sit here crying for your class to be buffed in PvE when it clearly needs to be nerfed in PvP and WvW. Fight your own battles bro, I don’t ask you to sit there posting in Necro forum asking for badly needed buffs on Necro.

Thieves and Mesmers are always in denial about their classes being OP. (Despite Mesmer being significantly more balanced than Ele or Thief.)

Its amazing… every post you have ever made in this forum has called for one nerf or another to the thief… and, even after receiving what you were calling for, you then cry out and call for more. You have never stated a convincing argument as to why, never shown any proof as to what makes a thief OP, never even made a convincing statement in your defense as far as I can tell. However, you come to the thief forums, cry about the thief being OP… and in the same breath admit that as long as it doesn’t affect your class, you could care less if thief is nerfed into dust… This to me says but one thing… it says that you are simply trolling the forum and joining onto the band wagon of others who either lost a fight to a thief or were somehow disgraced after a thief or another class showed you that what you thought was godly was actually crap (namely that you thought you were godly until a thief showed you otherwise).

Please, unless you plan to contribute to the conversation in an intelligent manner and with some respect… refrain from comment so that the average IQ level in the room may raise significantly.

The class isn’t op, it just performs it’s job. In, kill, out. If it get’s caught in between this the thief is dead. Assassinating will always be op when it’s able to be executed but thieves rip apart like a wet paper towel when build for full dps and spike damage. Guardians, warriors, mesmer, and a good ele will decimate a thief if used properly.

Dual.8953:

I’m pretty sure Yishis could pull off stuff like that with any profession. Notice how much attention he gives to choosing his target, knowing where the enemy is, and when he’s in over his head. He’s way better then an average player and in his vids he’s commonly picking the easiest targets he can and working his way up. Notice how knows he can’t pull the stunts he pulls against seasoned players.
It creates a very skewed image when you pit a pro like that against a bunch of lowbies and call that an accurate scale of balance.

/agreed. Yishis is an extraordinary player on many levels, and I am lucky enough to play with him. No matter what he does with a thief, if he records it and puts it on youtube people are going to cry nerf.

How about people stop using Yishis’s videos as an example, and instead record their own experience on video? I bet there is a good answer for that…

bhagwad.4281:

Seryi.7936:

or in full glass.

Being in glass doesn’t justify downing in half a second. It’s happened many times in sPvP. 3 seconds I can understand. Less than one? No way.

A GC spec justifies being downed in a second because the defense and vitality that would have prevented it is what you sacrificed for your damage. And that’s fine. But running GC and then complaining that you can’t survive bursts is asking to have your cake and eat it, too.

From the 14th december update notes:
“[Thieves] can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game…”

bhagwad.4281:

But this isn’t about ridiculous burst damage. It’s about stealth allowing thieves to reset fights where they should have rightly died.

It’s also about being able to solo 5 people (even if they’re bad players). No other class can do that. Noone should be able to do that. 5 people should always always be able to beat a single player no matter how talented.

Dual and I both already addressed that Elementalists can do the same thing. As can a Ranger, Mesmer, Engineer, or Warrior of the right skill build and skill level.

And ArenaNet has already said that Thieves, out of all the classes, are supposed to be able to dictate the pace of fights—which includes retreating if things aren’t going their way.

From an interview (http://kotaku.com/5780900/the-guild-wars-2-thief-is-a-rogue-like-none-other):
“The wise Thief player will know when to retreat and recharge.”
“…the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.”

phor.7952:

The videos posted so far prove VERY convincingly that these players don’t have any clue how stealth works (or dagger storm either). When the Thief stealths they stop attacking. When he drops Shadow Refuge, they just stand around with their thumbs up their butts. When he pops Dagger Storm they blow their ranged cooldowns…
Videos like that aren’t evidence that Thief is overpowered, they’re evidence that bad players are bad.

……………………………………….

While I do not believe the current mechanics make thief “overpowered”, I really do wish they would have went through with their original nerf of stealth and just hit us with a couple seconds of “revealed” even if you didn’t attack to break stealth.
Getting rid of the zerg surfing and “perm”-stealth could open the door for some buffs that would finally help us in PvE.

“bad players are bad.” and again somebody who claims they are all bad players. Basically of the 20+ people there are in that first video everybody is a bad player. And all the players in the other video’s are also all bad. So basically thief’s have some special magic find ability to only run into bad players? And about not understanding stealth, if that was true those players don’t have a problem with not understanding any other ability from any other profession so if stealth would be so hard to understand for not thief’s that would make it OP by that fact alone. Anyway, is has nothing to do with not understanding it. Lets take your arguments.

“When the Thief stealths they stop attacking.” They don’t all stop attacking immediately. In the first fight in the first video you see they keep attacking when he is invisible but indeed just for a few more sec. Because like I said before, more then those few sec are useless. The thief can go in any direction (360 degree) so after 5 sec he can be any-ware. Keeping attacking becomes useless because you don’t know where to attack.

About the raged attacks. Lets say ranger and there longbow. A ranger can only manually shoot one arrow that requires a target (still testing if an invisible thief actually can be hit) with the exception of Rapid_Fire http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rapid_Fire You see then blow their ranged cooldowns (so it’s not cooldowns but cooldown) but what happens is that they start shooting and that attacks keeps shooting (that is one attack that shoots multiple arrows) and at that moment the thief uses Dagger Storm. At moment they have to try and stop the kill else it will keep on shooting and hitting them self. And then they have a new cooldown.

Devata.6589:

“bad players are bad.” and again somebody who claims they are all bad players. Basically of the 20+ people there are in that first video only! everybody is a bad player. And all the players in the other video’s are also all bad. So basically thief’s have some special magic find ability to only run into bad players?

This particular brand of magic is called video editing. It is decidedly OP.

Kitcat.1739:

Devata.6589:

“bad players are bad.” and again somebody who claims they are all bad players. Basically of the 20+ people there are in that first video only! everybody is a bad player. And all the players in the other video’s are also all bad. So basically thief’s have some special magic find ability to only run into bad players?

This particular brand of magic is called video editing. It is decidedly OP.

Yeah true except for the problem that people complain about this because they see it happen in the game itself unedited and that the first video posted seems to be one unedited video. I didn’t see a place where they took something out.

In the video’s that are supposed to prove that other classes can do the same (don’t see them really proving that. I mean the engineer can run in a true a zerg but dot not attack in the zerg and does not hang around the zerg and most of the other fights are mainly 1 vs 1 / 1 vs 2 not 1 vs 5 for the exception of the nec that has 1 fight with a group) I indeed do see they they cut out stuff mainly when they die.

good players dont die to d/d backstab…..its true…..if u dont think so u are obviously a less than good player…..and theres nothing wrong with that….just stay with a zerg and keep zerging on

Devata.6589:

Yeah true except for the problem that people complain about this because they see it happen in the game itself unedited and that the first video posted seems to be one unedited video. I didn’t see a place where they took something out.

But in the same vein you have all the people who have no issues with thieves and take them down regularly or even see a thief hunting down the new players and stop them.

The difference being only a few of them come to the forums and state this because why would you rush to the forums to say you don’t have an issue with something, compared to the people who struggle against it and automatically think its unfair and come and complain.

The videos really don’t prove much at all, between editing, it being WvW, potential staging and the sheer variance of what happens player to player there as good at proving anything as the headshot videos from counterstrike are (endless endless headshot videos from counterstrike)

We need more sustained damage options. Our options for non-burst damage are a JOKE.

we need a starting 15 intitiative amount.

or just decrease SOME skills. kittening eles can spam skills LITERALLY for hours without stopping. tell me how tahts not OP and the fact they have the best healing best defense / dmg reduction best mobility and best all condi removal/cc removal in game….soudns balance right? all these nubs complain bc thieves can burst and kill nubs in 2 secs once every 60 secs……which does NOTHING to the wvw scores or the other teams/zergs…..has no real bearing….its actually BETTER. ill tell you what i run with the best guild in tier 3……that said i would run our guild against a guild of the same amount all thieves burst build and we would own them all in less than 8 seconds. i guarantee that…..plz keep this in perspect when u hate on thieves.

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.

This is probably the best statement that sums up how players feel after fighting a thief. Stealth has no counter, sure you can try and predict where the thief is going to be, but ultimately your just swinging wildly in the air hoping to hit him. That in turn leads to frustration and ultimately not a fun fight, it almost feels like thieves have an unfair advantage.

Blinding Powder also only lasts 4 seconds on a 40 second cooldown.

EVERY single other means of stealth a thief has gives away his position.
Cloak and Dagger requires you to be right next to someone.
Smoke Field + Heartseeker or Blast Finisher – attack the smoke field.
Shadow Refuge – AoE the refuge, or even better use a pull/knockback and you’ll instantly de-stealth the theif.

It’s REALLY not as hard as you’re making it out to be once you know which abilities grant stealth and how they work. You’re acting as though a thief can just perm-stealth whenever he wants and you can’t do anything about it.

Rusc.4978:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Adaneshade.2409:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Oh, and the fact that every thief on the planet spams either Heartseeker, DeathBlossom, or Pistolwhip (This not so much after the nerf) as though they make a thousand dollars every click of the same overused worn out button. I kind of want to see how many Thief mainers have their ‘2’ key completely disintegrated.

Shouldn’t use absolutes like “every”, it just weakens your entire argument. S/D, for instance, is a very popular setup, as is P/D; neither of which even have those abilities you claim EVERY thief spams.

In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a single thief in high tier PvP that spams any ability as it’s purely a ticket to an kitten whooping vs opponents with IQ’s higher than that of a brick.

Hi, I play high tier PvP.

I see heartseeker. Alot.

I see Deathblossom. Alot.

I also see Thieves guild. Alot.

Does it mean that my team loses to it? Generally no, despite backstab -> heartseeker being so strong. It’s just overused, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more diversity in Thief so that I might actually pick one up again and not have to rely on 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2 or some other nonsensical skill.

I’d like to mention that you see HS a lot because it’s used as a key part of two different setups (D/D and D/P)—but, to be fair, HS spam is one of my pet peeves because it makes all Thief players look like idiots.

You see Thieves’ Guild because it’s pretty much the only viable elite in small-scale PvP. Dagger Storm is far more situational, and Basi Venom is pretty much laughable now.

When I see a Thief spamming DB, I laugh at them as they blow all of their initiative on my dodges…and then I kill them.

One of the reasons you see HS so much is purely gap closing. Many classes have perm swift, which most thieves build don’t have much access to. Even with 50% faster speed during stealth it can be quite hard to keep melee pressure on a perm-swift target without using HS quite a bit – short of dodge rolling every 2 seconds.

The supposed “kings of mobility” are really anything BUT that..

I haven’t yet played any other class except my main (elementalist), but I can least get basic understanding of how to respond to fighting styles by learning through longer fights and observing my opponents. (i.e. Oh, that pink mesmer bubble really screws me up, lets not run through that). With thieves its more like: “What in the world just happened? How did I die? How can I learn to react to that?” It takes either playing thief or having someone demonstrate how to kill them to actually have a clue, and its all because of the high burst + stealth prevents learning counter-tactics through observation. That is frustrating to people who just want to have fun b/c they can’t grow through just playing. Further, b/c of the huge burst out of stealth and great gap-closing ability (with the shortbow I believe), it makes it nearly impossible to say “crap, a thief, I hate these fights, run!” They will chase you down and kill you. With a guardian or mesmer or anything else, I can see them so I can make the decision when to disengage. As a thief, the choice of which fights and when is 100% in your control. That is a little bit too powerful. My suggestion would be to tone down on the stealth big time, decrease the burst a bit, but give more slipperiness (perhaps thieves can have 3 dodges), and more sustained damage. I understand thieves are supposed to be excellent gankers, but right now it seems to be just a little too pronounced.

Honestly I feel that the thief profession is already fine as it is. The 4 seconds revealed debuff has added salt into the wound so why the need to nerf more? Plus, the culling should be the main problem (fixed) and has nothing to do with our previous revealed debuff.

Rusc.4978:

From the 14th december update notes:
“[Thieves] can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game…”

And ArenaNet has already said that Thieves, out of all the classes, are supposed to be able to dictate the pace of fights—which includes retreating if things aren’t going their way.

From an interview (http://kotaku.com/5780900/the-guild-wars-2-thief-is-a-rogue-like-none-other):
“The wise Thief player will know when to retreat and recharge.”
“…the Thief is built around hopping in-and-out of combat. If you don’t know when to back off, you’re going to die.”

I highly agree with the post above.
That’s just how thieves are played. If you don’t know how to utilize these skills provided properly, then you’re pretty much screwed.

BlackBeard.2873:

I haven’t yet played any other class except my main (elementalist), but I can least get basic understanding of how to respond to fighting styles by learning through longer fights and observing my opponents. (i.e. Oh, that pink mesmer bubble really screws me up, lets not run through that). With thieves its more like: “What in the world just happened? How did I die? How can I learn to react to that?” It takes either playing thief or having someone demonstrate how to kill them to actually have a clue, and its all because of the high burst + stealth prevents learning counter-tactics through observation. That is frustrating to people who just want to have fun b/c they can’t grow through just playing. Further, b/c of the huge burst out of stealth and great gap-closing ability (with the shortbow I believe), it makes it nearly impossible to say “crap, a thief, I hate these fights, run!” They will chase you down and kill you. With a guardian or mesmer or anything else, I can see them so I can make the decision when to disengage. As a thief, the choice of which fights and when is 100% in your control. That is a little bit too powerful. My suggestion would be to tone down on the stealth big time, decrease the burst a bit, but give more slipperiness (perhaps thieves can have 3 dodges), and more sustained damage. I understand thieves are supposed to be excellent gankers, but right now it seems to be just a little too pronounced.

Well, maybe because I have lots of experience with dealing with stealth from playing DotA quite a lot, I never found stealth to be the problem in dealing with thieves. Even more than in DotA, where stealth can be anything from 6 seconds(with max movespeed) to permanent invisibility, invisible players will try to move to a spot, where they have an advantage over you. From the circumstances before they stealth, you can have a pretty good idea already of what they are gonna try to do. And try to act accordingly, learn this way by trial and error.
Granted, you’d need to have loads of experience in fighting stealth before you can think of learning to fight thieves without playing a thief yourself to learn how their skills work before. And also, I got a lev 80 thief by now, so now my knowledge of countering thieves comes from 3 sources anyway

naphack.9346:

Well, maybe because I have lots of experience with dealing with stealth from playing DotA quite a lot, I never found stealth to be the problem in dealing with thieves. Even more than in DotA, where stealth can be anything from 6 seconds(with max movespeed) to permanent invisibility, invisible players will try to move to a spot, where they have an advantage over you. From the circumstances before they stealth, you can have a pretty good idea already of what they are gonna try to do. And try to act accordingly, learn this way by trial and error.
Granted, you’d need to have loads of experience in fighting stealth before you can think of learning to fight thieves without playing a thief yourself to learn how their skills work before. And also, I got a lev 80 thief by now, so now my knowledge of countering thieves comes from 3 sources anyway

Those are very good points about how to fight a thief, and I do have the timing down more (wait to about 3 then dodge, or put up shocking aura, or other defense), but I still have a very hard time learning without getting outside advice or playing the class. Against EVERY other class, I can learn by just playing and observing why I died. Against a thief, I am still left saying “What just happened?!” Mesmers can also be annoying b/c of the lack of observability, but it is toned down b/c they lack the burst and aren’t as fast.

That being said, I am planning on rolling a thief so that I can learn to counter, plus I really like the mobility in combat (thus why I enjoy the D/D ele play-style). Its just that I don’t have to actually play any other class to learn the best way to counter. That is the real reason why so many players who are learning hate stealth. Its really hard to learn from observation when the fights are fast (1-5 seconds often when bursted down) and the opponent is invis. Maybe a quick 5-second replay on death would help.

BlackBeard.2873:

naphack.9346:

Well, maybe because I have lots of experience with dealing with stealth from playing DotA quite a lot, I never found stealth to be the problem in dealing with thieves. Even more than in DotA, where stealth can be anything from 6 seconds(with max movespeed) to permanent invisibility, invisible players will try to move to a spot, where they have an advantage over you. From the circumstances before they stealth, you can have a pretty good idea already of what they are gonna try to do. And try to act accordingly, learn this way by trial and error.
Granted, you’d need to have loads of experience in fighting stealth before you can think of learning to fight thieves without playing a thief yourself to learn how their skills work before. And also, I got a lev 80 thief by now, so now my knowledge of countering thieves comes from 3 sources anyway

Those are very good points about how to fight a thief, and I do have the timing down more (wait to about 3 then dodge, or put up shocking aura, or other defense), but I still have a very hard time learning without getting outside advice or playing the class. Against EVERY other class, I can learn by just playing and observing why I died. Against a thief, I am still left saying “What just happened?!” Mesmers can also be annoying b/c of the lack of observability, but it is toned down b/c they lack the burst and aren’t as fast.

That being said, I am planning on rolling a thief so that I can learn to counter, plus I really like the mobility in combat (thus why I enjoy the D/D ele play-style). Its just that I don’t have to actually play any other class to learn the best way to counter. That is the real reason why so many players who are learning hate stealth. Its really hard to learn from observation when the fights are fast (1-5 seconds often when bursted down) and the opponent is invis. Maybe a quick 5-second replay on death would help.

Kill cams might help, but that’s what I thought the obsevation mode was going be for in sPvP. You could follow higher level thieves, seeing their setup and playstyle, and watching what play counters them.

Here is my opinion.To make it short not dodging cloack and dagger alowing thief to stealth easy and as we all know a thief’s strongest attack comes from stealth.Than when i kill someone in spvp i would get comments like:
“1-5-1-5-1-5 l2p you don’t have any skill….and so on” what i don’t get either…
First of all if i was using 1 and 5 only i would be daed in a sec.Its almost like they don’t see how i use f1 for steal the,the healing skill of course,calltrops,ambush trap,shadow refugee and thiefs guild.I guess you can’t be one of the so called “pro players” when playing a thief.Why?
Because guys will call you spamming noob if you win and if you lose they still call you noob.
It makes spvp a very sad expirience.Its full of raging guys who just have to tell you how bad you are when they lose and how op thief is.I think the only option to play spvp normaly is to switch to the combat log instead of chat first moment when you get in.At least that way you don’t have to hear all the QQ.

If the term “OP” is used, then it is used improperly.

A more understandable complaint (validity thereof is dabatable) is that certain thief builds are “consequence-free”. That is to say that while it may be easy to take down a thief in a 1v1 where both players commit, or to say that a thief may have issues taking down another class 1v1, a thief can easily change his or her mind and disengage, fleeing the fight. A thief is MUCH better at this than other classes, allowing a properly tech’d thief to pop into and out of enemy zergs with little consequence, unless they’re particularly unlucky with the enemy’s AOE’s. If a thief engages two other classes of equal skill, they’ll have issues. But if a thief is in front of an enemy zerg and trying to escape, they can. This is the cause of much of the frustration, a frustration previously amplified by the fact that if a thief fles a zerg, members of the zerg used to not see the thief past a short distance due to culling.

Whether this perceived imbalance regarding facing one’s consequences justifies changes to mechanics is up for debate. I’d personally like to see some changes which make it so escape requires more skill than it does now, perhaps with a flicker-on-hit mechanic, but remaining engaged is rewarded with better mechanics to stay alive whilst maintaining combat- perhaps involving maneuverability (double jumping?) or additional (timing intensive) dodge mechanics.

In any case, I feel that while the 3 >> 4 second change was a mistake which just broadly caused people unwarranted issues, the original idea of reveal on any stealth exit would have cut down on certain cheesy techniques- I’d say that making reveal just 2 secs across the board, and having reveal applied on all de-stealths would be a step in the right direction in terms of cutting down on cheese which sullies the thief name.

Thief is to OP 3 reasons:

Stealth ability is way too long.

Hard to fight back when they can be in stealth 80%+ of the fight and move out of your AOE traps and snares at will. This is the number 1 reason why people hate thieves. Their ability to keep you from seeing them in order to retaliate outside of AoE attacks is way to over the top.

Mobility is way too good

They can get out of roots slows anything that inhibits their ability to move. Movement is independent of conditions that slow that ability.

DPS spike is way too high
They can spike kill you almost instantly unless your class has the ability to trigger protection when hit. No other class in the game has all 3 advantages in one so the theif is OP due to that fact.

Everyone knows this that has played a theif up to lv80 with full PvP gear. It is very easy to kill every other class once you know your casting orders and watch your condition bar so you don’t kill yourself when your mez bombed. No other class can compete with a thiefs abilitys.

RoenHawk.5891:

Thief is to OP 3 reasons:

Stealth ability is way too long.

Hard to fight back when they can be in stealth 80%+ of the fight and move out of your AOE traps and snares at will. This is the number 1 reason why people hate thieves. Their ability to keep you from seeing them in order to retaliate outside of AoE attacks is way to over the top.

Mobility is way too good

They can get out of roots slows anything that inhibits their ability to move. Movement is independent of conditions that slow that ability.

DPS spike is way too high
They can spike kill you almost instantly unless your class has the ability to trigger protection when hit. No other class in the game has all 3 advantages in one so the theif is OP due to that fact.

Everyone knows this that has played a theif up to lv80 with full PvP gear. It is very easy to kill every other class once you know your casting orders and watch your condition bar so you don’t kill yourself when your mez bombed. No other class can compete with a thiefs abilitys.

While you could complain about high DPS, which would already be unbelieveably ridiculous, the first two points you made are just ridiculous. You do not understand how a thief is played at all, period. Please, actually read the posts on this thread, it’s what they are here for.

My main issue with thieves is their ability to disengage. I can beat most theives that come at me, but invariably as soon as they start to lose they disappear off. I know they will be back and we go through it all again usually with the same outcome. Eventually, inevitably they will win an engagement and it suddenly doesnt mattr if I beat them 3-4 in a row because they always escape and ultimately did catch me out.

Makes it not even worth my bother fighting them.. usually I avoid thieves not because I am scared but just because its pointless – they will disappear the second it hasnt gone as they planned.

I’m super late to this party but from my experiences the most frustrating thing a thief is capable of is the complete control of a fight. Stealth allows them to start and stop as they wish, to disengage and flee, to disengage and then re-engage, etc. The ability to control the flow of a fight is powerful, and no other class comes close to the Thief in this regard. Many classes cannot disengage a fight even if they wanted to.

That’s how I see it.

When someone says “OMG <blank> IS OP NERF IT!!”, it translates into “<blank> kills me too much and I am too stubborn to adapt! Nerf it!!”

A good player would play as a thief to learn how one goes about being a thief. After a while, they will understand attack patterns and adjust their other toon’s gear/skills and attack patterns to better handle situations vs. a thief.

A good thief will do the same, especially vs. another thief….

But a very good player will take one class with one build and dominate no matter what because they have experimented with multiple builds on every class.

My point is “OP” is the warcry of the bad player, especially in a game where there are numerous counters for everything.

Zacchary.6183:

When someone says “OMG <blank> IS OP NERF IT!!”, it translates into “<blank> kills me too much and I am too stubborn to adapt! Nerf it!!”

A good player would play as a thief to learn how one goes about being a thief. After a while, they will understand attack patterns and adjust their other toon’s gear/skills and attack patterns to better handle situations vs. a thief.

A good thief will do the same, especially vs. another thief….

But a very good player will take one class with one build and dominate no matter what because they have experimented with multiple builds on every class.

My point is “OP” is the warcry of the bad player, especially in a game where there are numerous counters for everything.

Your argument seems to suggest that it’s impossible for anything to be overpowered.

ele/mesmer is more OP than thieves. thieves can be really good only if the player has a very high reaction time and lots of experience on a thief. tbh even if a thief kills you in wvw it changes nothing. bc chances are its in a group of 3 or less or 1 v 1. and if ur in 3 or less or 1 v1 ur not doing anything productive anyway. pffft

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Zacchary.6183:

When someone says “OMG <blank> IS OP NERF IT!!”, it translates into “<blank> kills me too much and I am too stubborn to adapt! Nerf it!!”

A good player would play as a thief to learn how one goes about being a thief. After a while, they will understand attack patterns and adjust their other toon’s gear/skills and attack patterns to better handle situations vs. a thief.

A good thief will do the same, especially vs. another thief….

But a very good player will take one class with one build and dominate no matter what because they have experimented with multiple builds on every class.

My point is “OP” is the warcry of the bad player, especially in a game where there are numerous counters for everything.

Your argument seems to suggest that it’s impossible for anything to be overpowered.

In a game that is constantly rebalanced, it is impossible for something to be truely overpowered because it all boils down to who complains harder. WoW goes through this. Runescape goes through this.

Even if something is truely overpowered, there is always a way to counter it. Yet people would rather gain the advantage from the nerf than find one.

Zacchary.6183:

In a game that is constantly rebalanced, it is impossible for something to be truely overpowered because it all boils down to who complains harder. WoW goes through this. Runescape goes through this.

Even if something is truely overpowered, there is always a way to counter it. Yet people would rather gain the advantage from the nerf than find one.

Not entirely true, there has been occasions in such games when something truly broken gets dropped in, though these cases tend to be akin to exploits that may possibly be counterable but only in extreme slim chance fashion.

That said nothing the thief does really reaches that level at all, the fact that good players are having no issues against thieves and thieves lack of real high tier presence sort of shows it too.

Because even the most inexperienced player can kill someone with more experience.
Then again that is their role, 1 on 1, so I suppose that should be the case since they aren’t very wanted in dungeons.

why are thieve’s O.P?..um,…maybe it’s the whole..disappear, can’t be targeted, whilst in stealth regen and lose conditions, appear, disappear can’t be targeted, massive movement speed, multiple shadow steps out of range, high burst ability. Anytime a player can disappear at will…really bad idea. The thief has been designed with play style in mind and no real thought to how that will fit into pvp. In a pact of 3 or more, if you lose your target on thief, it is overly difficult to regain quickly. The stealth removes locked targeting. I can’t understand how this is even a question..“The ability to disappear.” is that not obvious enough why it is O.P? one hit from cloak and dagger gives 4 seconds stealth. The mesmer elite mass invisibility gives 4 seconds stealth..can you not see the skill disparity? one class has 4 ways of obtaining stealth on par with a different professions elite skill with none of the cool downs.

^
By your logic then mesmer is op because they can have summons up at all times and from numerous sources. Most classes can only have summons after using an elite skill. Thief is one exception where they CAN trigger one more IF the enemy triggers a trap to summon the … uh… summon. Rangers are op too I guess cause they can attack you from 5000 range. Necro is op because they have 2 health bars. Etc. etc. Complaining about a class mechanic (one that isn’t even remotely close to op if the enemy has any sense of what they’re doing) is redundant.

how that will fit into pvp

If the thief stealths in pvp, you are winning. You are now caping and the thief isn’t.

In a pact of 3 or more

A pack of 3 or more guardians have the ability to never die and always be able to res. A pack of 3 or more mesmers, good luck fighting through 9 targets. A pack of 3 or more necros, hope you like being feared. A pack of 3 or more hammer warriors, hope you weren’t planning on moving any time soon.

The stealth removes locked targeting

Lol, no it doesn’t. Try playing a thief. Have a lbow ranger use rapid fire (easiest example), go stealth, and watch how every shot not only follows and hits you, but shows the ranger exactly where you are going.

one hit from cloak and dagger gives 4 seconds stealth

it gives 3s stealth (4s if traited) and uses half the initiative bar. To put that into perspective, that’s 2 ability uses before all weapon skills go on cool down. Hope you don’t miss that first cnd or have it get blocked.

Not to mention your complaints of how they do super op damage, super movement speed, and super invis skills, would require more than the 70 points capped traits. 0-30-30-10 does not do strong damage, it does okay damage but what you’re describing is more of a 25-30-30-20-15.

tldr ~ The way you wrote this makes it sound like you are experiencing an ignorance problem. Everybody has them, you just need to learn the class and you won’t be having any problems.

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.

Mesmer counters thief very well if played properly. But you don’t balance for top skill levels. You balance for the average players. That goes both ways. You don’t balance for top skill thieves vs averages. Point is, even with all my xp, I don’t know enough to judge and neither do most people. In the right hands and the right situation, most every class can be OP.

Similar reasons as for Mesmer-hatred. Both classes thrive on:
-Positioning and control of position. (i.e. Stealth/Shadowstep/Teleports/Lockdown/Gap-Closers)
-Deceptive combat (Feeds into the first point to a high degree)
-General mindscrewing of the enemy (Segues from points 1 and 2)

Of course, what do folk expect of the Professions favoured by Lyssa’s tricky self? Obviously flowers and cute singing, the way folk go on about “Nerf Thief!” or “Mesmer is sooooo OP!” We’re not the frigging Carebears, peeps – we’re the two jobs what specialise in dueling/dropping a lone target. Failing that, either class can at least troll a small group before turning up dead/deciding to GTFO.

Past that, it’s human nature to hate something you can’t easily control or conquer.

The problem is kind of simple. The complaint has been the same in many MMOs over time. Stealth is inherently OP. That being said if you ad in the possible maneuverability, burst, and the fact it can be used in combat it makes a class that most every other MMO said cant exist. Combat stealth has been a big no no for a long time. The problem with thief is that it has so much access to combat stealth that only a few builds that can beat it in the game. When you apply the fact that thieves have so much maneuverability and it doesn’t cancel out stealth plus a stun break that acts as a double movement skill. It becomes a class that can be truly oppressive. No class can actually keep up or lock down a well played thief and that is the truth et ceteris unum. Why there is no direct counter to stealth I do nto know. Even game with very little stealth have it. However this is probably due to bad design and the thief for the most part is too reliant on stealth.

That being said this applies to PvP only and i still believe thief is severely underpowered in PvE.

Thief (and mesmer) punish the other players the most out of all of the classes for not understanding the mechanics/playstyle.

To a new player the thief teleported to them, disappeared, did large damage, downed the player, disappeared again, and spiked.

To a good player the thief opened with steal, used c&d, did a backstab etc., c&d again, then stealth spiked.

The reality… in a higher skilled fight the thief is actually at a disadvantage. There are many ways to counter thieves.

However in an lower skilled fight the thief is at an advantage. New/casual players get frustrated easily. They will go complain about thief being “OP” and ask for nerfs on everything more frequently. Higher skilled players will seek to find the counters.

Didn’t read everyone’s former posts, so sorry but it is 4 pages long

@OP – A lot of people think that Stealth is OP because it limits options (It doesn’t because you can still attack without having us Targeted (Unlike WoW)). However I promise if you took Stealth away, anyone who isn’t a dodge build will have to respec or quit. I remember being a newbie during the BTW and I have to say, the only reason I could do some events was because of Stealth.

Thief doesn’t have enough Survivability without stealth unless you are constantly dodging, and even with dodging you then give up quite a bit damage to get that.

Is Stealth a problem in high level play? Most people will say so.
Is Stealth a problem in low level play? I don’t think most people would agree on this one.

There are a couple of reasons:
1. First people who not know how to fight stealth
2. In hotjoin, D/D and D/P is ridiculously easy to play. It doesn’t take much skill to be good (of course those who are great do have skill). Those some people in who then complain about the thief doesn’t see how poor they are then in tPvP.

style.6173:

There are a couple of reasons:
1. First people who not know how to fight stealth
2. In hotjoin, D/D and D/P is ridiculously easy to play. It doesn’t take much skill to be good (of course those who are great do have skill). Those some people in who then complain about the thief doesn’t see how poor they are then in tPvP.

That can be said about any weapon set for any profession. Guild Wars 2 never did require that much skills because you were given preset skills that didnt change since lvl 5? D/D, D/P seem to be really popular among thief and generally get the most attention.

Boulderbolg.3460:

Dual.8953:

I’m pretty sure Yishis could pull off stuff like that with any profession. Notice how much attention he gives to choosing his target, knowing where the enemy is, and when he’s in over his head. He’s way better then an average player and in his vids he’s commonly picking the easiest targets he can and working his way up. Notice how knows he can’t pull the stunts he pulls against seasoned players.
It creates a very skewed image when you pit a pro like that against a bunch of lowbies and call that an accurate scale of balance.

/agreed. Yishis is an extraordinary player on many levels, and I am lucky enough to play with him. No matter what he does with a thief, if he records it and puts it on youtube people are going to cry nerf.

How about people stop using Yishis’s videos as an example, and instead record their own experience on video? I bet there is a good answer for that…

When I got sick of the RTL changes to my beloved D/D Ele, Yishis’s videos became the inspiration for me to go back and level my Thief to 80. Now that my thief is fairly well geared and I have a basic understanding of the class, I’ve found that so much is based upon player skill and not that the thief is as OP as I once thought. Yes, I can do some amazing damage to another target but it’s based upon them making mistakes. Often, I find that I’m in over my head and so I just stealth and run away.

Because they kill average elementalists in 2 hits and if you hit them back they just become invisible?

Surviving a thief burst is the only reason why all elementalists had to go bunker.

That said, I don’t think they should nerf thieves but instead they should buff the ele base toughness or vitality.