Guild Wars 2

Zacchary.6183:

hihey.1075:

Because 99% of the people playing this game are really bad.

This is [/thread] people.

Of course

Helicity.3416:

DeceiverX.8361:

And the saddest part is that our damage isn’t even the best burst in the game. Warriors, mesmers, guardians (yep), necromancers, and elementalists actually have better burst throughput.

Except this is not true. Provided you’re not terrible at thief you can wear down defensive cooldowns of every other class with repeated bursts faster than they can come back up. The repeated Reset -> Burst cycle of thief is greater than even a shatter mesmer’s

In addition (excepting some peculiar warrior builds) none of them can catch you; this means that unless you are very impatient and greedy the WORST you will do in a WvW fight is escape.

This is the reason why people have legitimate complaints about Thieves, the mix of truly impressive damage paired with resets and escape ability leads to intensely frustrating play experiences for the other player.

Try playing a necro for a while on a T1 WvW server and go roam, and you will swiftly learn why everyone hates Thieves.

Then why are the other half Axe/Shield+Greatsword warriors?

Also, T1 bears little to no room for solo roaming. This argument alone is redundant as we all know that even the smallest groups in T1 are composed of at least duo comps in TS.

Stun with pistol whip. Large aoe damage with Pistol whip. Evade with Pistol Whip. Interrupts with Pistol (and Blind if used in field). Aoe blind with Pistol. Whirling Axes Blind spam with Pistol Offhand. Reflect with Whirling Axes. Whirling Axes doing large aoe damage.

Large kitten teleport. Clears 3 condis. Can be used to decap and still rubberband back in time.
Can teleport in, spam EVADING pistolwhip that STUNS and teleport out. Rinse and repeat.

STEALTH – The concept of getting the first hit (that blinds -_-) is kittening OP. Poison field from shortbow, doesnt break stealth either (wtf?).

Sunt.6835:

Stealth is not broken. 30 shadow arts is broken
They ban SA and PU in touney for a reason

How is it broken? That’s complete and utter nonsense, especially in sPvP. SA thieves do absolutely nothing for your team- most of the time, they might as well not even exist (and with the amount of stealth they have, you wouldn’t notice them not existing anyways). Stealth thieves deal minimal damage and can’t decap points- they’re completely useless. You would be far better off taking a Mesmer or a Warrior, both of which would deal far more damage and be far more useful for point capturing than an SA thief.

As for SA/PU being banned in tourneys, I’ve never heard of that before. It’s certainly not banned in tPvP, if that’s what you mean, but I’ve never heard of a player banning them before in any “normal” player-run event either.

EDIT: also, to answer the OP, people think we’re broken because two of our specs are extremely easy to play (D/P and S/P). Not as easy as warrior, necro, or some engi specs for the amount of reward they give, but still very non demanding in terms of skill required.

Envy.8093:

Stun with pistol whip.

If you can land it. That’s actually not as easy as it seems, because targets tend to move.

Envy.8093:

Large aoe damage with Pistol whip.

IF you did hit with the stun, about half of it will hit the target, assuming no stunbreak is used.

Envy.8093:

Evade with Pistol Whip.

Well, yeah. You can’t get hit during the flurry. However, using it defensively often will get you killed, because it does the stun-part first which doesn’t evade… an during that time, whatever was coming at you, will have hit you already.

Envy.8093:

Interrupts with Pistol (and Blind if used in field).

Other classes have interrupts too. Also, if you use Blinding Powder and Headhshot right after, you will have burnt all your initiative without doing any damage.

Envy.8093:

Aoe blind with Pistol.

Almost completely useless for defense outside of PvE.

Envy.8093:

Whirling Axes Blind spam with Pistol Offhand. Reflect with Whirling Axes. Whirling Axes doing large aoe damage.

It’s a stolen skill from Warriors and can only be used once. And if you’re using it while standing in Black Powder, you’re stupid. Because if you do, you will hit nobody with it at all, unless that someone is even more stupid and autoattacks you with a melee-weapon during the cast. And the reflect is easy to avoid as well… don’t shoot at the Thief. Especially not with Killshot.

Envy.8093:

Large kitten teleport. Clears 3 condis. Can be used to decap and still rubberband back in time.

You forget that this skill has a cooldown of 50 seconds.

Envy.8093:

Can teleport in, spam EVADING pistolwhip that STUNS and teleport out. Rinse and repeat.

Can’t do that very often, due to initiative-cost. Also, a staff Ele standing at range and casting AoE’s on you would be much more dangerous in this case.

Envy.8093:

STEALTH – The concept of getting the first hit (that blinds -_-) is kittening OP.

Dodge or use any skill that lets you avoid an attack. Also, there are no stealth-attacks that blind you, so the “kittening OP” thing doesn’t even exist.

Envy.8093:

Poison field from shortbow, doesnt break stealth either (wtf?).

It doesn’t do any direct damage; that’s why. It’s not really relevant for anything either. Unless you get killed by Thieves who shoot poison fields at you while in stealth.

Only skilled players play thief because is the most difficult and underpowered class… yes yes XD

sminkiottone.6972:

Only skilled players play thief because is the most difficult and underpowered class… yes yes XD

Apparently alot of unskilled players are playing thief as well because players are starting to realize that Stealth > baddies.

sminkiottone.6972:

Zacchary.6183:

Apparently alot of unskilled players are playing thief as well because players are starting to realize that Stealth > baddies.

also good player with spammable stealth vs good player without stealth always wins the one with stealth.

Made a mistake ? no problem, go stealth and try again untill you get it right.

PROTIP: d/d conditions > any stealth build because:

1.) The heavy AOE bleeds will melt the thief.
2.) d/d is thief’s best chase setup.
3.) The heavy cripple d/d conditions provides aid (and aids) in chasing.
4.) Works without stealth.

sminkiottone.6972:

Only skilled players play thief because is the most difficult and underpowered class… yes yes XD

Lots of bad people play thief, because they watch youtube heroes all day and think its that easy.

You would almost die laughing at how many HS spam or unload spam thieves there are in t/spvp.

Zacchary.6183:

Apparently alot of unskilled players are playing thief as well because players are starting to realize that Stealth > baddies.

also good player with spammable stealth vs good player without stealth always wins the one with stealth.

Made a mistake ? no problem, go stealth and try again untill you get it right.

sminkiottone.6972:

Zacchary.6183:

Apparently alot of unskilled players are playing thief as well because players are starting to realize that Stealth > baddies.

also good player with spammable stealth vs good player without stealth always wins the one with stealth.

Made a mistake ? no problem, go stealth and try again untill you get it right.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Whenever I get chilled, chances are, I’m dead. When I fight a Necro that uses staff, chances are, I’m dead.

Also, BPS + whirling axe isn’t that bad lol. Drop it down in a cluster of people, and it’s not THAT bad.

“Why do people think we are OP” because thieves can do the most ridiculous stuff with evade-spam, stealth or mobility builds. Nobody likes being trolled by thieves when they are extremely difficult to attack back, not to mention getting that guaranteed stomp on almost every class with stealth/blind-field.

Especially in WvW, good lord thieves are downright broken for roaming. I don’t mind going toe-to-toe against good thieves. But the fact is that they usually decide when or where the fight takes place, and they always have the option to just say “bye” and stealth away if the fight isn’t going in their favor.

The only reason Thieves aren’t topping PvP right now is because bunker guardians, warriors and engineers can somewhat keep them at bay and the game mode (conquest) doesn’t favor stealth. Despite that, Thieves are still the best class at back-capping and roaming in SPvP causing unbalanced fights and stomping people, they still have an extremely well-defined role.

The moment we see any game mode along the lines of “kill everyone else and stay alive”, Thieves will be #1.
WoW Rogues all over again lol.

So you don’t mind being trolled by the AI from a Mesmer as they sit in stealth and melt you? Or a warrior tanking 3+ people on their own for a solid + minute on a capture point? Granted the warrior won’t win, the fact that they can sit there and gain near immunity and just run around is bad enough, same with engi and guardian. “T-words” come in various forms, going stealth and running away is the least effective especially when they retry it over and over and never succeed.

Oh and in pvp I’ve gone up against “t-word” warriors who spam conditions all day, and the second they realize they might lose they swap to nike mode and you can never catch them long enough to hurt them. Same with engineers, simply run to the underworld and back when they realize they can’t win. I’d rather have the thief gone and out of my sight than watch my target run away because they can’t fight unless the odds are in their favor. I’ve seen new-coming thieves with bigger cojones than these condi warriors and engineers I keep running into, only difference is they die easier.

NinjaEd.3946:

So you don’t mind being trolled by the AI from a Mesmer as they sit in stealth and melt you?

Those are also extremely annoying, if not even more frustrating to play against than Thieves. I’m not a fan of stealth in general because it hasn’t helped class balance in any MMO, you’ll always see the Rogue/Thief/etc style classes hovering around the top of PvP.
I don’t care about immortal bunker warriorsguardians, at least I can SEE them and they won’t be killing me any time soon. I can at least track their boons and attempt to time some CC to damage them, at least I know their LOCATION so I can simply avoid trying to 1v1 them. Not the case with Thief.

In GW2 a Thief remains in stealth regardless of having a billion conditions stacked on them or being pummeled into the ground with a greatsword, it makes no sense. Stealth-stomping or blind-field stomping has virtually no counter-play, nothing even comes close to Thieves at finishing off downed players.

Oh here’s another one, if I kill a stealthed thief and they remain stealthed in downed state – what??? One time that happened I didn’t wait long enough (was in a rush) and assumed the Thief had escaped in stealth, only to come back like 30 seconds later and see him ressing from that spot and running away. Next time I guess I’ll just waste time and keep sitting there doing nothing, waiting for his downed body to appear like 20 seconds after I had killed him. Or perhaps he escaped in stealth, no way to tell. Takes trolling to whole new levels lol.

Final point, and this one is completely valid and not me venting my frustration – Thieves have all the tools to completely destroy all other glass/zerker builds and are basically driving glassy PvP builds to extinction. Big thread about it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first

NinjaEd.3946:

So you don’t mind being trolled by the AI from a Mesmer as they sit in stealth and melt you? Or a warrior tanking 3+ people on their own for a solid + minute on a capture point? Granted the warrior won’t win, the fact that they can sit there and gain near immunity and just run around is bad enough, same with engi and guardian. “T-words” come in various forms, going stealth and running away is the least effective especially when they retry it over and over and never succeed.

Oh and in pvp I’ve gone up against “t-word” warriors who spam conditions all day, and the second they realize they might lose they swap to nike mode and you can never catch them long enough to hurt them. Same with engineers, simply run to the underworld and back when they realize they can’t win. I’d rather have the thief gone and out of my sight than watch my target run away because they can’t fight unless the odds are in their favor. I’ve seen new-coming thieves with bigger cojones than these condi warriors and engineers I keep running into, only difference is they die easier.

Confirmed: Amount of cajones inversely linked to SoloQ win ratio.

Helicity.3416:

DeceiverX.8361:

And the saddest part is that our damage isn’t even the best burst in the game. Warriors, mesmers, guardians (yep), necromancers, and elementalists actually have better burst throughput.

Except this is not true. Provided you’re not terrible at thief you can wear down defensive cooldowns of every other class with repeated bursts faster than they can come back up. The repeated Reset -> Burst cycle of thief is greater than even a shatter mesmer’s

In addition (excepting some peculiar warrior builds) none of them can catch you; this means that unless you are very impatient and greedy the WORST you will do in a WvW fight is escape.

This is the reason why people have legitimate complaints about Thieves, the mix of truly impressive damage paired with resets and escape ability leads to intensely frustrating play experiences for the other player.

Try playing a necro for a while on a T1 WvW server and go roam, and you will swiftly learn why everyone hates Thieves.

That’s not burst, that’s sustained pressure. Burst is the capacity to frontload immense damage into a very short period of time. The only skills the thief has which can do damage coefficients to such extents are backstab and pistol whip.

Plenty of classes can catch you. Mesmer GS has ranged advantage, equal stealth potency, mesmer AOE shatter/teleport, ranger has both a reveal and stealth tracking and the ranged advantage, Warrior running a sword can catch you. A decent guard can teleport and/or CC you. Necros and eles can chill/immobilize/cripple at range.

It was stated T1 is more about zergs. It’s arguable some of the lower-tier servers have better roaming parties than T1’s do. To also expect play is better on T1 servers is ludicrous seeing as most players on the T1 servers now have just bandwagoned there. What SoR did in S1 last year was impressive, and that’s my former server (moved down to FC due to a large group of friends from another game playing there). If you’re roaming as a solo necro, you’re doing it wrong, and even then, necromancers stand a much better chance against thieves than a lot of other classes due to death shroud giving them so much health and all the AOE/condi potential they have.

To call thieves OP because they solo roam better than other classes is totally absurd. That’s the specialty niche role the class is designed to perform in and is lackluster in all other aspects of the game. This is the same source of complaints from scrubs in tPvP thinking that because thieves are better solo roamers than mesmers and eles, they need to be nerfed. It has to do with the meta and the role the player is trying to perform more than the class having numbers that are too high.

Wintel.4873:

Final point, and this one is completely valid and not me venting my frustration – Thieves have all the tools to completely destroy all other glass/zerker builds and are basically driving glassy PvP builds to extinction. Big thread about it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first

So basically because glass builds are afraid to die, it makes thief OP?

I don’t understand. The whole point of building an assassin in any game is to deny the opponents’ DPS. Most of this “drive away” has to do with offhand pistol blind field and less with stealth, seeing as in sPvP thief burst damage is just straight up bad because crit damage caps at 60% as opposed to 122% in WvW. The blind field simply prevents easy retaliation and allows for HS-permastealth. I need to keep iterating this in every thief QQ thread I see, because the hate is misdirected. The counter to DPS is to assassinate them. What does this mean? The thief if matched up against a player of equal skill will be at a stark disadvantage of the opponent isn’t a GC because they lack the burst to kill them efficiently and the staying power to actually deal sufficient damage to finish off a tankier foe.

DeceiverX.8361:

So basically because glass builds are afraid to die, it makes thief OP?

You need to re-word your statement to this:
“So basically because all glass builds get destroyed by thieves, it makes thief OP?”
To which I would respond “Yes”.

The rest of your post solidifies my point further, because you openly admit that thieves hard-counter all other glass builds and trying to justify why it should stay that way:

I don’t understand. The whole point of building an assassin in any game is to deny the opponents’ DPS. Most of this “drive away” has to do with offhand pistol blind field and less with stealth, seeing as in sPvP thief burst damage is just straight up bad because crit damage caps at 60% as opposed to 122% in WvW. The blind field simply prevents easy retaliation and allows for HS-permastealth. I need to keep iterating this in every thief QQ thread I see, because the hate is misdirected. The counter to DPS is to assassinate them. What does this mean? The thief if matched up against a player of equal skill will be at a stark disadvantage of the opponent isn’t a GC because they lack the burst to kill them efficiently and the staying power to actually deal sufficient damage to finish off a tankier foe.

I stated the blind field from offhand pistol does because the other DPS cannot retaliate properly.

I also stated the entire purpose of building an ASSASSIN is to hard-counter DPS. Thief =/= assassin. Very, very far from it. You want an assassin, go look at some other game videos, or even at RPG’s in general, where the assassin role is to literally one-shot the target from stealth or lose the fight. This has existed almost everywhere from Dungeons and Dragons to a lot of modern MMO’s. Not to mention ANet’s blatant ties with D&D seeing as a ton of the skill and mechanic name are the same as they are there.

But what you’re doing is disregarding all the thieves which build S/D or P/P and even arguably S/P who don’t assassinate targets.

Your disposition is almost entirely targeted at thieves which run D/P. D/D is a very fair build and easy to counter due to its predictability. S/P is predictable and just outright weak in a lot of cases, S/D is good against boon-spammers… and that’s about it. P/P is just not very good. P/D is only good for perplexity/condi builds, which are OP not because of any thief mechanics but because perplexity/condition builds are OP in themselves.

So pretty much you’re stating that people who build solely to counter other GC’s are shutting down GC’s, and this is a problem?

So wait, if in an sPvP game, a team decides to play all heavies, the usefulness of the thief decreases immensely? In a many vs many scenario, the assassin only finds himself spamming 2 and 4 with shortbow and not actually contributing to the fight in any significant way unless the enemies walk into his telegraphed skills?

I think your beef lies more in being shut down and not learning to play around/work with what appears to be strong than it is believing you’re right in your assumptions just because your experience is all you have to reference.

The only real counter-play to thieves is to join the bunker meta and have fun sitting on nodes all day. I personally don’t find that very fun.

I mostly play Ele (surprise!) and static discharge Engineer so that’s probably the reason I find Thieves extremely frustrating to play against. Even if I out-play them they just stealth and run away, then kill me a few seconds later when I’m busy fighting someone else. It’s infuriating.
Most of them run extremely cheesy builds that either appear to evade-spam like 6 times in a row (I’m not even exaggerating) or just heartseeker-spam when they find me around ~50% health, or troll with constant back-capping our home point with stealth. There is some other build that seems to apply blinds with almost every attack, or heals the Thief every time they dodge or enter stealth.

Most thieves are running builds that seem to revolve around ridiculous extremes whether it be stealth, evasion, mobility, CC, damage, self-healing or some crazy combination of those.
I don’t bother with WvW because I know I’m going to get DESTROYED by Thieves all day long, they are the undisputed kings there.

OK, for only this one time (wont happens again) I will not say thief is OP. But tell me how you gonna kill a thief when he decides to stealth and run away?
To clarify my point of view. I only win when my opponent is dead and buried.

Greezzz

MiniMe.1960:

To clarify my point of view. I only win when my opponent is dead and buried.

Greezzz

If they are running away that means they haven’t won either. I’d call that a draw.

You run engi and you complain about theif? I am confused.

I would MUCH rather have an average decap engi on my team than an average theif.

edit: It just clicked in my head that you run Ele as well, so yes when a theif jumps you, he is going to hit you hard. That’s his job. Your job, is to see that theif, and prevent that jump via positioning, utils, cc, whatever the case may be. Just because theif X is better than ele Y at doing his job, doesn’t make him OP. I am on my phone so I am not sure if that came out right, not trying to be rude or anything just stating my opinions

Just to throw this out there, I was in sPvP, and yes, it’s possible to one shot a Thief with an Ele. I couldn’t tell you what happened because I don’t play Ele, but I was running toward the point, RtL hits me, I’m immob’d then I drop in the next two hits before I can even react. Running a D/P trickery build, stealth is 1sec w/ HiS, or 1.5 with aftercast + HS. I don’t carry Blinding Powder in PvP because, well for obvious reasons. zOMG ELE OP.

The point, if you’re running a glass build, you should be able to kill other glass builds. That’s the nature of them, hence why they’re called GLASS.

DeceiverX.8361:

Helicity.3416:

DeceiverX.8361:

And the saddest part is that our damage isn’t even the best burst in the game. Warriors, mesmers, guardians (yep), necromancers, and elementalists actually have better burst throughput.

Except this is not true. Provided you’re not terrible at thief you can wear down defensive cooldowns of every other class with repeated bursts faster than they can come back up. The repeated Reset -> Burst cycle of thief is greater than even a shatter mesmer’s

In addition (excepting some peculiar warrior builds) none of them can catch you; this means that unless you are very impatient and greedy the WORST you will do in a WvW fight is escape.

This is the reason why people have legitimate complaints about Thieves, the mix of truly impressive damage paired with resets and escape ability leads to intensely frustrating play experiences for the other player.

Try playing a necro for a while on a T1 WvW server and go roam, and you will swiftly learn why everyone hates Thieves.

That’s not burst, that’s sustained pressure. Burst is the capacity to frontload immense damage into a very short period of time. The only skills the thief has which can do damage coefficients to such extents are backstab and pistol whip.

Plenty of classes can catch you. Mesmer GS has ranged advantage, equal stealth potency, mesmer AOE shatter/teleport, ranger has both a reveal and stealth tracking and the ranged advantage, Warrior running a sword can catch you. A decent guard can teleport and/or CC you. Necros and eles can chill/immobilize/cripple at range.

It was stated T1 is more about zergs. It’s arguable some of the lower-tier servers have better roaming parties than T1’s do. To also expect play is better on T1 servers is ludicrous seeing as most players on the T1 servers now have just bandwagoned there. What SoR did in S1 last year was impressive, and that’s my former server (moved down to FC due to a large group of friends from another game playing there). If you’re roaming as a solo necro, you’re doing it wrong, and even then, necromancers stand a much better chance against thieves than a lot of other classes due to death shroud giving them so much health and all the AOE/condi potential they have.

To call thieves OP because they solo roam better than other classes is totally absurd. That’s the specialty niche role the class is designed to perform in and is lackluster in all other aspects of the game. This is the same source of complaints from scrubs in tPvP thinking that because thieves are better solo roamers than mesmers and eles, they need to be nerfed. It has to do with the meta and the role the player is trying to perform more than the class having numbers that are too high.

Wintel.4873:

Final point, and this one is completely valid and not me venting my frustration – Thieves have all the tools to completely destroy all other glass/zerker builds and are basically driving glassy PvP builds to extinction. Big thread about it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first

So basically because glass builds are afraid to die, it makes thief OP?

I don’t understand. The whole point of building an assassin in any game is to deny the opponents’ DPS. Most of this “drive away” has to do with offhand pistol blind field and less with stealth, seeing as in sPvP thief burst damage is just straight up bad because crit damage caps at 60% as opposed to 122% in WvW. The blind field simply prevents easy retaliation and allows for HS-permastealth. I need to keep iterating this in every thief QQ thread I see, because the hate is misdirected. The counter to DPS is to assassinate them. What does this mean? The thief if matched up against a player of equal skill will be at a stark disadvantage of the opponent isn’t a GC because they lack the burst to kill them efficiently and the staying power to actually deal sufficient damage to finish off a tankier foe.

well said. you SHOULD not nerf characters based strictly on 1v1’ing. should be 80% teamplay and 20% solo 1v1 play ratio based on how OP they are. thief is top 3 in 1v1’ing but dead last in group play. should they be nerfed? no they should be buffed so they can play team play. engineer and mesmer are both as good or or better(engineer) in 1v1…. its just bad players that have a hard time with it. gw2 has no tutorials like gw1 had. i noticed that really probably made atleast a LITTLE bit of difference too.

Wintel.4873:

DeceiverX.8361:

So basically because glass builds are afraid to die, it makes thief OP?

You need to re-word your statement to this:
“So basically because all glass builds get destroyed by thieves, it makes thief OP?”
To which I would respond “Yes”.

The rest of your post solidifies my point further, because you openly admit that thieves hard-counter all other glass builds and trying to justify why it should stay that way:

I don’t understand. The whole point of building an assassin in any game is to deny the opponents’ DPS. Most of this “drive away” has to do with offhand pistol blind field and less with stealth, seeing as in sPvP thief burst damage is just straight up bad because crit damage caps at 60% as opposed to 122% in WvW. The blind field simply prevents easy retaliation and allows for HS-permastealth. I need to keep iterating this in every thief QQ thread I see, because the hate is misdirected. The counter to DPS is to assassinate them. What does this mean? The thief if matched up against a player of equal skill will be at a stark disadvantage of the opponent isn’t a GC because they lack the burst to kill them efficiently and the staying power to actually deal sufficient damage to finish off a tankier foe.

everything has a risk…. and nobody runs GC other than thieves and dum dums :P GC has no place in team play

Travlane.5948:

everything has a risk…. and nobody runs GC other than thieves and dum dums :P GC has no place in team play

Nobody runs GC other than thieves because nobody else can as they just get destroyed by thieves.

Regarding GC builds in team play, I’d say GC Shatter Mes is still very powerful, but one of the biggest reasons they’re out of the meta atm is because of thieves. GC Meditation Burst Guardians also are quite powerful. Berserker Hambow Warriors are also good in teamplay, although it would depend on if you consider berserker hambow warriors “bruisers” or “GC” GC Power Necros are also very strong and still see play somewhat. GC Eles are also kinda gimmicky, but they can be powerful if played well simply that the input/output ratio compared to a GC thief is just really imbalanced.

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

everything has a risk…. and nobody runs GC other than thieves and dum dums :P GC has no place in team play

Nobody runs GC other than thieves because nobody else can as they just get destroyed by thieves.

Regarding GC builds in team play, I’d say glkittenter Mes is still very powerful, but one of the biggest reasons they’re out of the meta atm is because of thieves. GC Meditation Burst Guardians also are quite powerful. Berserker Hambow Warriors are also good in teamplay, although it would depend on if you consider berserker hambow warriors “bruisers” or “GC” GC Power Necros are also very strong and still see play somewhat. GC Eles are also kinda gimmicky, but they can be powerful if played well simply that the input/output ratio compared to a GC thief is just really imbalanced.

GC thief can kill another GC thief in 3 seconds. a GC mesmer or guardian or several others can do it in 4 seconds if not also somtimes in 3 secs. we are talking such nominal differences here. GC goes down fast against GC. people think “thieves kill GC so fast” but its bc thieves usually run GC….. now if other classes usually run GC u would say GC builds just die fast. but the fact we think"THIEF" when the word GC comes up ….its basically an unfair connection based off of a very high average. GC does not belong to thief class alone. thief does run GC much more than any other classes combined. GC on ANY class will be melted by other GC builds also on any other class.

Travlane.5948:

GC thief can kill another GC thief in 3 seconds. a GC mesmer or guardian or several others can do it in 4 seconds if not also somtimes in 3 secs. we are talking such nominal differences here. GC goes down fast against GC. people think “thieves kill GC so fast” but its bc thieves usually run GC….. now if other classes usually run GC u would say GC builds just die fast. but the fact we think"THIEF" when the word GC comes up ….its basically an unfair connection based off of a very high average. GC does not belong to thief class alone. thief does run GC much more than any other classes combined. GC on ANY class will be melted by other GC builds also on any other class.

I get the feeling we’re talking about incredibly different levels of play and competition.

And GC thief vs GC thief fights usually last much longer than 3 seconds, mostly because of the stealth mechanic. Mesmer has Decoy as well. Guardians have shelter, and meditation heals, etc.

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

GC thief can kill another GC thief in 3 seconds. a GC mesmer or guardian or several others can do it in 4 seconds if not also somtimes in 3 secs. we are talking such nominal differences here. GC goes down fast against GC. people think “thieves kill GC so fast” but its bc thieves usually run GC….. now if other classes usually run GC u would say GC builds just die fast. but the fact we think"THIEF" when the word GC comes up ….its basically an unfair connection based off of a very high average. GC does not belong to thief class alone. thief does run GC much more than any other classes combined. GC on ANY class will be melted by other GC builds also on any other class.

I get the feeling we’re talking about incredibly different levels of play and competition.

And GC thief vs GC thief fights usually last much longer than 3 seconds, mostly because of the stealth mechanic. Mesmer has Decoy as well. Guardians have shelter, and meditation heals, etc.

im talking about dmg. and at higher lvl play…thief has NO chance against many classes…. 3 in particular. Engineer, necro, guardian. they totally laugh at GC thief. thing is you are like many other players you consider 1v1 to be the benchmark for considering OP’ness. has absolutely near nothing to do with OP. is op being able to kill 1 person in 3 secs? or being able to battle 10 people for 30 secs without dying? in that case warrior,engineer,necro,guardian are all OP. theif cant last 3 secs against 10 people. even with stealth. i know bc ive been playing engineer and my build alone has 6 or 7 things to deal with stealth…not specifically but can. i laugh at thieves when i play engineer… and when im on my thief (main) i really dont want to run into them or necros….as the good ones will rip you apart or you will end up playing “run away heal and reengage game” which costs your team ALOT of strategic advantage. in general running thief costs team.

few suggestsions that would make thief a better team player. maybe not all but some or mixed few together.

1) make thief medium tier HP base
2) increase condi removal non stealth based
3) Fix P/P set entirely so it has Aoe fire/burn (6 init) and aoe poison(4-5 init)
4) unroot Pistol whip
5) Reverse IR nerf
6) increase base toughness 7-8% in spvp/tpvp only

i have dozens more butall pretty small changes.

Travlane.5948:

few suggestsions that would make thief a better team player. maybe not all but some or mixed few together.

1) make thief medium tier HP base
2) increase condi removal non stealth based
3) Fix P/P set entirely so it has Aoe fire/burn (6 init) and aoe poison(4-5 init)
4) unroot Pistol whip
5) Reverse IR nerf
6) increase base toughness 7-8% in spvp/tpvp only

i have dozens more butall pretty small changes.

What? You were off to a good start and as soon as you hit 3 I lost ya. Pistol whip hits like a truck IF you manage to get the enemy to stand still, which is next to impossible alone without some long cooldowns (DV, BV). Letting someone run at you with a lawn mower would be broken beyond belief.

And thief doesn’t need burn, they just need to bump the pressure we can apply with bleeds and give us more options for poison/torment. Pistol aa just needs to be more obvious in what it wants. If you use p/x for condi, 99% you are p/d, in which case you have CnD, which means stealth, which means sneak attack. Bump the bleed duration from sneak attack (buff for condi p/d), and buff the direct damage of the aa while reducing the aftercast (buff for power p/p). The aa needs to be more clear in what its there for, especially for a hybrid weapon set on the class that least likely works as a hybrid. Condi pistol uses sneak attack and aa and #3, power pistol should use more than unload for its effective dps.

Travlane.5948:

people think “thieves kill GC so fast” but its bc thieves usually run GC….. now if other classes usually run GC u would say GC builds just die fast. but the fact we think"THIEF" when the word GC comes up ….its basically an unfair connection based off of a very high average. GC does not belong to thief class alone. thief does run GC much more than any other classes combined. GC on ANY class will be melted by other GC builds also on any other class.

This. A million times this. You picked thief. Every thief / rogue / assassin in the history of games is a bursty GC type. We die easy but output a bunch of damage early. You want sustained damage? Play a warrior. We’re medium AC melee for a reason. Thief / Rogue / Assassin is synonymous with GC.

I played the thief and maxed his level
i honestly don’t feel there are any flaws or broken things in the profession.
SO what if they wanna go in stealth, the whole fun is in stealth mode

I don’t care about stealth. What makes thieves OP is the immense burst capacity they have. Who cares about stealth when they’ll kill you in their initial rotation. This is purely in WvW where scaling is ridiculous. And no, the 10% crit nerf won’t help much. In WvW thieves need a minimum of 25% damage reduction. Especially on Heartseeker which takes no skill at all to use. Also, Initiative makes thieves WAY too macro friendly.

Thieves remind me of 3-5 year old little boys. Play fight with your kids and you’ll see they put their heads down and charge at you. Flailing and swinging as you usually just put you hand on their head and hold them at bay. That’s kinda the way dagger Thieves are. Even the animation is that way. The exception is, 3-5 year olds don’t hit like the Incredible Hulk! Thieves should be annoying and fast, with stealth. Not all that and being a powerhouse too. That’s why they are OP in WvW.

I think the problem here is that some people take all builds possible for a thief and roll them into one big “This is what thieves can do” ball. But they freely separate the other classes in to their own multiple proper builds.

Travlane.5948:

im talking about dmg. and at higher lvl play…thief has NO chance against many classes…. 3 in particular. Engineer, necro, guardian. they totally laugh at GC thief. thing is you are like many other players you consider 1v1 to be the benchmark for considering OP’ness. has absolutely near nothing to do with OP. is op being able to kill 1 person in 3 secs? or being able to battle 10 people for 30 secs without dying? in that case warrior,engineer,necro,guardian are all OP. theif cant last 3 secs against 10 people. even with stealth. i know bc ive been playing engineer and my build alone has 6 or 7 things to deal with stealth…not specifically but can. i laugh at thieves when i play engineer… and when im on my thief (main) i really dont want to run into them or necros….as the good ones will rip you apart or you will end up playing “run away heal and reengage game” which costs your team ALOT of strategic advantage. in general running thief costs team.

few suggestsions that would make thief a better team player. maybe not all but some or mixed few together.

1) make thief medium tier HP base
2) increase condi removal non stealth based
3) Fix P/P set entirely so it has Aoe fire/burn (6 init) and aoe poison(4-5 init)
4) unroot Pistol whip
5) Reverse IR nerf
6) increase base toughness 7-8% in spvp/tpvp only

i have dozens more butall pretty small changes.

if you want to talk about “higher level play” please at least play at the “higher level.”

Your post reeks of severe misinformation and major L2P issues that aren’t existent in “higher level play.”

For one, depending on weaponset choice, Thief has a 4/6 Matchup vs both Engineer and Necromancer (in favor of the latter,) and maybe a 3/7 matchup vs GC Guardian. VS Bunker Guardian, I’d say the matchup is probably 7/3 favor of thief. “No chance?” not really, just L2P.

If you want to talk about hard counters, try playing a Condi Engineer vs Condi Necro THEN come back to talk about “no chance.”

Going to need to disagree with you Trav regarding your statements about thief needing buffs. While I do not believe this class needs any real “nerfs” (minor reworks to pistol offhand, bonuses to pistol mainhand/dual pistol, the obvious removal of perplexity runes, changes to stealth and revealed, etc.), this class is far from underpowered. It rocks the DPS charts second only to GC ele (there is NO comparison here, anyone who says thief does more damage than GC ele has never played against or as a good GC ele), however its trade-offs are pretty real in its low survivability, party support, and staying power. In a 3v3, a thief will find himself picking off the weakest target/squishiest one, usually entering the fight after others to get the surprise. Meanwhile, your other two party members need to fight at a disadvantage to get CC cooldowns blown against them and other major nukes out of the way before you can really engage. Frankly, this can honestly get your party killed, and not abiding by this is begging for death.

Stealth proves a lot more potent in sPvP than WvW because thieves are tankier in sPvP than they are in PvE/WvW. By how much? 50% minimum. Yep, 50% or more health/defensive stats running a glassy crit build. That number is absurd and gives thieves the staying power necessary to engage and stay in fights while being border-line invincible. With the crit damage cap where it is in sPvP, it also encourages thieves to build even tankier and work with trait lines not normally used in WvW GC builds which only augment their abilities. Strictly speaking, a sPvP thief will be horrible in WvW, and vice versa, due to how the stats differ. A GC thief in WvW will not be running a build both capable of high stealth uptime AND immense burst; they need to pick one, whereas one in sPvP will be able to get their damage capped and then spec elsewhere for more durability and utility.

The real problem lies in stat capping for sPvP and how there’s no incentive to build all into one stat like there is in WvW. Yes, thief damage is insane in WvW, but it’s not the best, and in order to achieve such numbers (outside of perplex builds which again is a problem with the runes and not the thief itself), it’s very easy for the thief to get rolled. I was fighting yesterday against a hammer warrior. He managed to knock me down, and I proceeded to get killed in three hits. Yep, it only took three, and I run a tankier (valk) build. A true GC berserker would have died in two.

In WvW, the thief is far from overpowered, despite its damage frontloading (again, other classes do better, such as axe warrior), and the builds you see in sPvP wouldn’t work anywhere else except in sPvP. It has less to do with the thief being OP but the restrictions in sPvP which allow the thief to strictly have better build options which give them moderate burst potential but more importantly the staying power and utility they need to overcome their weaknesses.

It’s possible that some trait movement could resolve some of these issues, but I think what needs to be better addressed is the stat capping and the meta not moving from the one DPS roamer style of play which screams thief (as that is the basis for the class design) ultimately preventing a lot of other dynamics/classes from being considered more potent. Simply nerfing the thief’s damage or nerfing stealth or whatever it may be won’t actually solve the problems for any given game mode; if anything, it’s going to make it worse.

Liza.2758:

shorter reveal

Since when?

Envy.8093:

Stun with pistol whip. Large aoe damage with Pistol whip. Evade with Pistol Whip. Interrupts with Pistol (and Blind if used in field). Aoe blind with Pistol. Whirling Axes Blind spam with Pistol Offhand. Reflect with Whirling Axes. Whirling Axes doing large aoe damage.

Large kitten teleport. Clears 3 condis. Can be used to decap and still rubberband back in time.
Can teleport in, spam EVADING pistolwhip that STUNS and teleport out. Rinse and repeat.

STEALTH – The concept of getting the first hit (that blinds -_-) is kittening OP. Poison field from shortbow, doesnt break stealth either (wtf?).

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Play a thief before you post. Can’t believe you even used the words “Pistol Whip” when it comes to pvp. If you had any merit to your post, that alone wiped it out.

Thief is a class of extremes it either does extremly well against some classes and just destroys them or gets steam rolled really badly, thats why you see the 2 sides arguing “omg so op” and the other saying they should learn to play.

you are not op, you are broken.

jihm.2315:

you are not op, you are broken.

we talking humpty dumpty broken or malfunctioning robot army broken?

I mention humpty dumpty because he is similar to glass and breaks easy.

The Thief is not op the stealth in this game is broken. It is why this game will never be taken seriously and why you will only every see Stealth Mesmers/Thiefs if they ever implement duels.

Much like in Guild Wars 1 where you only saw player Assassins in Hero Battles. Also, if a death match mode is every put into this game I can almost say that the vast majority of the teams would be 1 Guardian/4 Thieves or 1 Guardian/4 Mesmers.

Stealth is broken and everyone knows it. The only reason why other Thieves and Mesmers don’t complain about it is because they have it.

They stealth you dodge their ridiculously predicable attack… you gain nothing. They are still stealthed and you are down one dodge and their backstab skill is already off cool down. You block their backstab you gain nothing, they are still in stealth and their skill is off cool down. You have very nearly killed them, they stealth and basically that is “gg” unless you happen to get lucky and guess which way he ran.

The Thief players are not good and the class itself is mediocre. It is stealth that is the problem. All the pro players (which have left by the way) suggested scrapping this horrible system of stealth and placing something in the game that takes skill and has counters.

As of right now there are only two true counters to stealth. One is a bought item only usable with WvW supply while the other is a ranger skill with a natural cool down of 40 seconds for 4 seconds of revel and can only be used on a Thief before he stealth.

Vanthian.9267:

It is why this game will never be taken seriously and why you will only every see Stealth Mesmers/Thiefs if they ever implement duels.

You mean like the Obsidian Sanctum arena duels, in which I participate quite often? Because newsflash thieves are kinda low tier there. Someone spoke out of line I think…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/VaaCrow-3076

My reply had the meme “You Don’t Say”, it was deleted and infracted.
But yeah… it was worth it.
Only one other person besides me (BobbyT) came up with the idea of “wait a minute… maybe it’s the ele’s problem…”, default is thief OP.

Vanthian.9267:

The Thief is not op the stealth in this game is broken. It is why this game will never be taken seriously and why you will only every see Stealth Mesmers/Thiefs if they ever implement duels.

Much like in Guild Wars 1 where you only saw player Assassins in Hero Battles. Also, if a death match mode is every put into this game I can almost say that the vast majority of the teams would be 1 Guardian/4 Thieves or 1 Guardian/4 Mesmers.

Stealth is broken and everyone knows it. The only reason why other Thieves and Mesmers don’t complain about it is because they have it.

They stealth you dodge their ridiculously predicable attack… you gain nothing. They are still stealthed and you are down one dodge and their backstab skill is already off cool down. You block their backstab you gain nothing, they are still in stealth and their skill is off cool down. You have very nearly killed them, they stealth and basically that is “gg” unless you happen to get lucky and guess which way he ran.

The Thief players are not good and the class itself is mediocre. It is stealth that is the problem. All the pro players (which have left by the way) suggested scrapping this horrible system of stealth and placing something in the game that takes skill and has counters.

As of right now there are only two true counters to stealth. One is a bought item only usable with WvW supply while the other is a ranger skill with a natural cool down of 40 seconds for 4 seconds of revel and can only be used on a Thief before he stealth.

Can’t counter stealth? How about dodging CnD? How about interrupting HS when used inside smoke field?<—————-That is stealth counters, not a stealth trap or sic’em.

CobOfCorn.6352:

the only build I believe is truly OP would be the 10/0/30/0/30 P/D build with full dire gear.

out of curiosity what utilities/traits did you slot?

NinjaEd.3946:

Travlane.5948:

few suggestsions that would make thief a better team player. maybe not all but some or mixed few together.

1) make thief medium tier HP base
2) increase condi removal non stealth based
3) Fix P/P set entirely so it has Aoe fire/burn (6 init) and aoe poison(4-5 init)
4) unroot Pistol whip
5) Reverse IR nerf
6) increase base toughness 7-8% in spvp/tpvp only

i have dozens more butall pretty small changes.

What? You were off to a good start and as soon as you hit 3 I lost ya. Pistol whip hits like a truck IF you manage to get the enemy to stand still, which is next to impossible alone without some long cooldowns (DV, BV). Letting someone run at you with a lawn mower would be broken beyond belief.

And thief doesn’t need burn, they just need to bump the pressure we can apply with bleeds and give us more options for poison/torment. Pistol aa just needs to be more obvious in what it wants. If you use p/x for condi, 99% you are p/d, in which case you have CnD, which means stealth, which means sneak attack. Bump the bleed duration from sneak attack (buff for condi p/d), and buff the direct damage of the aa while reducing the aftercast (buff for power p/p). The aa needs to be more clear in what its there for, especially for a hybrid weapon set on the class that least likely works as a hybrid. Condi pistol uses sneak attack and aa and #3, power pistol should use more than unload for its effective dps.

some were suggested bc p/p has no defense so it might as well push people off areas or something. pistol whip is strong but s/p doesnt help when u run thru AOE in wvw and die in 3 secs but unrooted u can do some dmg to a few people before you die. same in spvp when you are on a cap…ucant stay in the cap and fight so they end up cappingit bc thief evades/invis/dodge/runs away etc. IR nerf is annoying for players to fight against but its the only not stealth way to get away from dmg. i think that on stuns it should NOT work…but anything else should be instant like normal shadow returns. toughness in spvp/tpvp is a must. just enough to give a lil bit of cap support. thief HP is arguably fine in spvp/tpvp but our dmg is capped so our lack of defense really hurts that much more.

Reikou.7068:

Travlane.5948:

im talking about dmg. and at higher lvl play…thief has NO chance against many classes…. 3 in particular. Engineer, necro, guardian. they totally laugh at GC thief. thing is you are like many other players you consider 1v1 to be the benchmark for considering OP’ness. has absolutely near nothing to do with OP. is op being able to kill 1 person in 3 secs? or being able to battle 10 people for 30 secs without dying? in that case warrior,engineer,necro,guardian are all OP. theif cant last 3 secs against 10 people. even with stealth. i know bc ive been playing engineer and my build alone has 6 or 7 things to deal with stealth…not specifically but can. i laugh at thieves when i play engineer… and when im on my thief (main) i really dont want to run into them or necros….as the good ones will rip you apart or you will end up playing “run away heal and reengage game” which costs your team ALOT of strategic advantage. in general running thief costs team.

few suggestsions that would make thief a better team player. maybe not all but some or mixed few together.

1) make thief medium tier HP base
2) increase condi removal non stealth based
3) Fix P/P set entirely so it has Aoe fire/burn (6 init) and aoe poison(4-5 init)
4) unroot Pistol whip
5) Reverse IR nerf
6) increase base toughness 7-8% in spvp/tpvp only

i have dozens more butall pretty small changes.

if you want to talk about “higher level play” please at least play at the “higher level.”

Your post reeks of severe misinformation and major L2P issues that aren’t existent in “higher level play.”

For one, depending on weaponset choice, Thief has a 4/6 Matchup vs both Engineer and Necromancer (in favor of the latter,) and maybe a 3/7 matchup vs GC Guardian. VS Bunker Guardian, I’d say the matchup is probably 7/3 favor of thief. “No chance?” not really, just L2P.

If you want to talk about hard counters, try playing a Condi Engineer vs Condi Necro THEN come back to talk about “no chance.”

thats all i have been playing this week. rampagers engineer and i do find necros the hardest but conditions dont bother me at all. really. almost at all. so not sure what ur talking about. oh you mean the full condition transfer? yeah that doesnt bother me at all. plz look up some engineer skills/traits. particularly turret cleanse and autmated response.

DeWolfe.2174:

I don’t care about stealth. What makes thieves OP is the immense burst capacity they have. Who cares about stealth when they’ll kill you in their initial rotation. This is purely in WvW where scaling is ridiculous. And no, the 10% crit nerf won’t help much. In WvW thieves need a minimum of 25% damage reduction. Especially on Heartseeker which takes no skill at all to use. Also, Initiative makes thieves WAY too macro friendly.

Thieves remind me of 3-5 year old little boys. Play fight with your kids and you’ll see they put their heads down and charge at you. Flailing and swinging as you usually just put you hand on their head and hold them at bay. That’s kinda the way dagger Thieves are. Even the animation is that way. The exception is, 3-5 year olds don’t hit like the Incredible Hulk! Thieves should be annoying and fast, with stealth. Not all that and being a powerhouse too. That’s why they are OP in WvW.

you realize 2 other classes arguably 4…can do the same exact thing within less than a second of thief or just as fast? mmmm? so lets nerf all 4 and buff thief defense bc the lack of defense is thewhole reason for our burst. agreed?

Travlane.5948:

you realize 2 other classes arguably 4…can do the same exact thing within less than a second of thief or just as fast? mmmm? so lets nerf all 4 and buff thief defense bc the lack of defense is thewhole reason for our burst. agreed?

Thief doesn’t need a buff. The class is good at what it does and if it did any more it would just be overpowered. If anything, offhand pistol and/or heartseeker need a nerf.