Guild Wars 2

This thief up against a guild party + some pugs.

It lasted for like 6 minutes and we just could not kill the thief because of stealth.

I have asked on here about how to deal with stealth thieves before and all people said was “use AoE”. Well I’m an ele and I put down everything I could all over the place, but the damage wasn’t enough to get him lower to 50% health (with the help of the other 7).

It was fairly ridiculous. Like this player was superman and we were the goons in striped shirts he was making fools of.

Eventually they chased him down as he ran and I let them because I realized there was more important stuff to do in WvW than make a kill. Eventually they killed him because of the XP pop up.

I can’t imagine this is what the designers had in mind when designing the class.

Did he actually kill anyone?

The zerg does not always conquer… interesting.

I do this on my Ele all the time as a tank staff build. 10 in earth, 30 water, 30 arcane. Three cantrips, etc. I have like 20sec Protection buffs, and heal a “kitten” ton.

Granted, all it takes is a Mesmer to Mind Wrack crash me, or a couple Thieves to drop a brick on their 2 key, and I start having trouble… But yeah.

Just because you threw down AoEs, doesn’t guarantee you the kill. You have to be smart with your casts. I can throw down random AoEs too and not manage to kill anyone (stealth or not wouldn’t matter).

For D/D, Ring of Earth, Magnetic Grasp, Earthquake, Updraft, Frozen Burst are just some examples of on-que skills that can force a thief to waste their stealth, while keeping them in relatively close proximity to your position.

Clark Skinner.4902:

I have asked on here about how to deal with stealth thieves before and all people said was “use AoE”.

They’re wrong, spamming AEs is a decent way to deter a thief, but a terrible way to kill one. Either read their stealth and track/kill them, or accept that if they’re heavily survivability specced and have way more mobility than you it isn’t the stealth that is keeping them alive, it is the fact that you can’t catch them. Thieves can’t retain the ability to effectively defeat (not just occasionally down) multiple people while having heavy mobility/survivability, so they’re either killable or not a big worry.

Keep in mind that we cant immediately go back into stealth. If he hit u from in stealth, he has 3 seconds of “revealed” before he can go back in. With 8 people, 3 seconds should be more then enough time to down him, even if he’s specced for survivability.

With the way culling works in WvW, the 3 seconds of visible is more like 1 second if you’re lucky.

I agree 8 people should be enough to down him, but it wasn’t.

And he did down someone briefly. I couldn’t even believe it.

I was using staff attacks. Meteor shower, the #2 smaller aoe, the fire roll backwards, the air stun field, the earth cripple field and the rock explosion one. You can assume that I wasn’t placing them just anywhere. I was trying to surround so anywhere he went he’d get hit by something.

It could be culling, but he was around for 1-2 seconds after appearing, and given reaction time, skill channeling, and his dodge, there wasn’t much that could hit him.

Considering that there are 8 of us, of varying skill. The 2 best of a random group of 8 should be able to take down a good single player. With 6 more to help, there should be no contest. This must have been the best thief in all of GW2.

Clark Skinner.4902:

I agree 8 people should be enough to down him, but it wasn’t.

And he did down someone briefly. I couldn’t even believe it.

I was using staff attacks. Meteor shower, the #2 smaller aoe, the fire roll backwards, the air stun field, the earth cripple field and the rock explosion one. You can assume that I wasn’t placing them just anywhere. I was trying to surround so anywhere he went he’d get hit by something.

It could be culling, but he was around for 1-2 seconds after appearing, and given reaction time, skill channeling, and his dodge, there wasn’t much that could hit him.

Considering that there are 8 of us, of varying skill. The 2 best of a random group of 8 should be able to take down a good single player. With 6 more to help, there should be no contest. This must have been the best thief in all of GW2.

…or just some really bad/underleveled players!

Yeah, that’s a good point. In all honesty, it was PROBABLY just a bunch of level 30’s with no traits or stats. I’d wager a large majority of WvW’ers are sub level 50 who just wanna PvP and “jump to 80 for free”.

So if you’re a level 80, it was ACTUALLY more like a 1v1 with 7 random onlookers. Consider that.

may i ask an silly question ?
Why would 8 ppls chase 1 thief for 10 minutes? He trolled you. I do that every day, every time i am bored.
I hit ppls to annoy them, with bow from range , stealth, take some distance and /wave and again and again. Sometimes i manage to keep 20 enemy’s on my back for few minutes while my server attack an objective, and i stop them to defend.
My weakness in this tactic is not Aoe from elementarist, is damage from glass cannon warriors /thieves / Eng – and knockbacks /clones /pets, and elementarists got an channeling spell for few seconds. 1 Ele channel it and 1 warrior do autoattacks on the area – Good Game.

Even if this group of 7, was entirely lv 30, which is not at all likely. They should have been more than enough to take out a single lv 80 player. Let alone with an experienced lv 80 helping them. Some were in a guild. A guild who WvW together is not likely a bunch of lv 30s who have never done WvW before, and they had more members around the map as well, it’s a pretty big guild on our server.

There were people who started and though the thief died and they left while more came in to try to kill the thief when they saw him surrounded by our group. Is it likely that none of those people were better than totally useless?

Something I just remembered. We had him downed for a moment but then he popped back up and had no problems continuing the fight for quite a while. There was definitely no time to heal, and the only other way I know of to get back up is to kill something while downed. Is this a thief down skill?

Clark Skinner.4902:

Even if this group of 7, was entirely lv 30, which is not at all likely. They should have been more than enough to take out a single lv 80 player. Let alone with an experienced lv 80 helping them. Some were in a guild. A guild who WvW together is not likely a bunch of lv 30s who have never done WvW before, and they had more members around the map as well, it’s a pretty big guild on our server.

There were people who started and though the thief died and they left while more came in to try to kill the thief when they saw him surrounded by our group. Is it likely that none of those people were better than totally useless?

Something I just remembered. We had him downed for a moment but then he popped back up and had no problems continuing the fight for quite a while. There was definitely no time to heal, and the only other way I know of to get back up is to kill something while downed. Is this a thief down skill?

This is sounding funnier and more like a fictional story now.

Kurow.6973:

Clark Skinner.4902:

Even if this group of 7, was entirely lv 30, which is not at all likely. They should have been more than enough to take out a single lv 80 player. Let alone with an experienced lv 80 helping them. Some were in a guild. A guild who WvW together is not likely a bunch of lv 30s who have never done WvW before, and they had more members around the map as well, it’s a pretty big guild on our server.

There were people who started and though the thief died and they left while more came in to try to kill the thief when they saw him surrounded by our group. Is it likely that none of those people were better than totally useless?

Something I just remembered. We had him downed for a moment but then he popped back up and had no problems continuing the fight for quite a while. There was definitely no time to heal, and the only other way I know of to get back up is to kill something while downed. Is this a thief down skill?

This is sounding funnier and more like a fictional story now.

He could be hacking. On one of Daphoenix video’s he downed a thief literally 3 times and he instant rezzed to full HP each time phoenix went for the finish.

Or everyone in the group sucks. Just saying.

Clark Skinner.4902:

Even if this group of 7, was entirely lv 30, which is not at all likely. They should have been more than enough to take out a single lv 80 player. Let alone with an experienced lv 80 helping them. Some were in a guild. A guild who WvW together is not likely a bunch of lv 30s who have never done WvW before, and they had more members around the map as well, it’s a pretty big guild on our server.

There were people who started and though the thief died and they left while more came in to try to kill the thief when they saw him surrounded by our group. Is it likely that none of those people were better than totally useless?

Something I just remembered. We had him downed for a moment but then he popped back up and had no problems continuing the fight for quite a while. There was definitely no time to heal, and the only other way I know of to get back up is to kill something while downed. Is this a thief down skill?

Well it can depend on the classes. Some classes aren’t very useful against this type of thief and some are quite hard counters to this type of trolling.

I can troll a group of 8 all day if they are the right class mix and/or not very experienced. But all it takes is one well played guardian or mesmer or another good thief etc in the group to make it 10x harder.

The biggest thing to focus on is CC CC CC CC CC. Some thieves will have half decent condition removal / stun breaking but most don’t. But even with all the removals in the world the amount of CC a group of 8 can dish out will have any thief running for the hills if done right.

Be mobile, when he reappears, stun/root, he will disappear again, AOE where he disappeared. GG. Full stealth thieves lacks stun breakers, so if you manage to stun them, then more often than not, they will remain stunned in place for the duration (even if he disappeared), without some kind of stun/root, you’ll have to hit air and hope you hit him.

Bananasmile.4126:

Be mobile, when he reappears, stun/root, he will disappear again, AOE where he disappeared. GG. Full stealth thieves lacks stun breakers, so if you manage to stun them, then more often than not, they will remain stunned in place for the duration (even if he disappeared), without some kind of stun/root, you’ll have to hit air and hope you hit him.

I wouldn’t count on full stealth thieves lacking stun breaks. I run with a shadow step utility + 30 in shadow arts line including removing 2 conditions every time I stealth. Couple that with the fact I have 19.5k hp and 2600 armor without my gear even done, one aoe burst likely won’t affect me that much as I can keep stealthing if I need to while I regen.

The best CC’s against thieves are really knockdowns and knockbacks. Also avoiding CND is the most important thing for a stealther thief. I have 2 ultities to stealth with + my heal, but if I’m missing CND more then once or twice those are going to be used up quickly.

I find condition engi’s as one of the best counters to my build as they can stack so many conditions so many times it forces me to keep stealthing and stay stealth for its duration to get rid of them.

I’m running p/d atm if that wasn’t clear.

Glass backstabbers are the ones who are likely to be lacking stunbreakers fyi.

Keeping mobile was good advice btw.

Oh I wanted to add one mistake I see a ton of players make against me. When I go stealth they start randomly dodge rolling. Well if my sneak attack is avoided it doesn’t reveal me and I can try again, so they waste all their dodges and I get a free full damage sneak attack. Stay mobile once they stealth and be ready to dodge as soon as you start getting hit, or be ready with a stun break if they are using stuns.

Another thing, most times in a 1vx fight like this the thief (like me) will pick and focus on a certain target. If you are the one getting focused, for god’s sake try to stay near as many allies as you can.

Clark Skinner.4902:

This thief up against a guild party + some pugs.

It lasted for like 6 minutes and we just could not kill the thief because of stealth.

I have asked on here about how to deal with stealth thieves before and all people said was “use AoE”. Well I’m an ele and I put down everything I could all over the place, but the damage wasn’t enough to get him lower to 50% health (with the help of the other 7).

It was fairly ridiculous. Like this player was superman and we were the goons in striped shirts he was making fools of.

Eventually they chased him down as he ran and I let them because I realized there was more important stuff to do in WvW than make a kill. Eventually they killed him because of the XP pop up.

I can’t imagine this is what the designers had in mind when designing the class.

Are you on Sorrow’s Furnace / Anvil Rock by chance?
Because I may know this Thief who clowned a group of invaders in WvW who were sitting near this point in the BPBL.
Foghaven Supply Camp, if I’m not mistaken.
Wait, it could be the group that I worked near Askalion Hills fort.
And if you are from either of those servers and you are part of the groups I’m referring to, the +xp gain you got wasn’t from me
But two things working against you in those situations if it was:
1.) You had about 3 people who were up-leveled and clearly in horribly low level gear / insanely low toughness.
2.) None of you were actively spamming “Target Nearest Enemy > Call Target”. If you aren’t in a group, call target won’t work- but I can assure you, I can’t do kitten against people in the same group for that exact reason. The crosshairs stay on the thief, disappearing when I stealth, yet reappearing immediately when I come out right over my head- completely negating whatever advantage culling would give me.

No, Crystal Desert.

My immobilize isn’t spammable and my knockdowns need to be right next to the enemy. Both have 40 second recharge. By the time he is out of stealth, appears on my screen and I target him again, my skill channels, he is either mid-dodge or stealthed again, and then I am stuck waiting for a recharge. It just seems like dumb luck is what wins.

He wasn’t targetting me, but he was using at least 1 gun. This was around the east side of a borderlands keep, near one of the towers where there’s a very tall archway you walk under to get into the Tower. I saw the enemy downed marker on the map just before getting the xp.

Tulisin.6945:

Clark Skinner.4902:

I have asked on here about how to deal with stealth thieves before and all people said was “use AoE”.

Either read their stealth and track/kill them,

Lol, good luck with that stealth reading…

I agree with what dank said about dodging. A lot of people dodge right away when a p/d go stealth, I think it’s habit from fighting backstab thieves, but a good p/d usually waits for a good time before he uses sneak attack it also gives them time to regen initiative and heal. And about staying with the group, I agree halfway. From my experience when someone starts running away and I chase to try and down them, that’s a bad move if the group is fairly large, cause ill have my back to everyone else and start eatting damage pretty hard.

Aside from that, have you tried playing a p/d thief before, if not try it sometimes, you’ll have a better feel for how a thief moves when using stealth. I gotta say most of the time when I’m stealthed people do things that just really don’t make sense like eles using aoe skills miles away and I’m still standing next to them , never took 1 step and thinking , really even if I wanted to be there at that spot i couldn’t move 3849494 mph across the map to where your aoeing

Loading.4503:

I agree with what dank said about dodging. A lot of people dodge right away when a p/d go stealth, I think it’s habit from fighting backstab thieves, but a good p/d usually waits for a good time before he uses sneak attack it also gives them time to regen initiative and heal. And about staying with the group, I agree halfway. From my experience when someone starts running away and I chase to try and down them, that’s a bad move if the group is fairly large, cause ill have my back to everyone else and start eatting damage pretty hard.

Aside from that, have you tried playing a p/d thief before, if not try it sometimes, you’ll have a better feel for how a thief moves when using stealth. I gotta say most of the time when I’m stealthed people do things that just really don’t make sense like eles using aoe skills miles away and I’m still standing next to them , never took 1 step and thinking , really even if I wanted to be there at that spot i couldn’t move 3849494 mph across the map to where your aoeing

Are you playing thief ? If its true just start playing ranger or different char.

Zgroza Czarnych.6190:

Loading.4503:

I agree with what dank said about dodging. A lot of people dodge right away when a p/d go stealth, I think it’s habit from fighting backstab thieves, but a good p/d usually waits for a good time before he uses sneak attack it also gives them time to regen initiative and heal. And about staying with the group, I agree halfway. From my experience when someone starts running away and I chase to try and down them, that’s a bad move if the group is fairly large, cause ill have my back to everyone else and start eatting damage pretty hard.

Aside from that, have you tried playing a p/d thief before, if not try it sometimes, you’ll have a better feel for how a thief moves when using stealth. I gotta say most of the time when I’m stealthed people do things that just really don’t make sense like eles using aoe skills miles away and I’m still standing next to them , never took 1 step and thinking , really even if I wanted to be there at that spot i couldn’t move 3849494 mph across the map to where your aoeing

Are you playing thief ? If its true just start playing ranger or different char.

My first 80 was a ranger and played it for about 5k kills. Then I made a mesmer and played it for about 10kish kills. Then I made an thief and then ele (all 80’s). The majority of my playtime is between the ele and thief now because I find them the most fun. I’ve played just about every thief build out there.

That said I can handle thieves from any build with any of my classes, unless they just outplay me.

I totally agree with everything loading said..

dank.3680:

Zgroza Czarnych.6190:

Loading.4503:

I agree with what dank said about dodging. A lot of people dodge right away when a p/d go stealth, I think it’s habit from fighting backstab thieves, but a good p/d usually waits for a good time before he uses sneak attack it also gives them time to regen initiative and heal. And about staying with the group, I agree halfway. From my experience when someone starts running away and I chase to try and down them, that’s a bad move if the group is fairly large, cause ill have my back to everyone else and start eatting damage pretty hard.

Aside from that, have you tried playing a p/d thief before, if not try it sometimes, you’ll have a better feel for how a thief moves when using stealth. I gotta say most of the time when I’m stealthed people do things that just really don’t make sense like eles using aoe skills miles away and I’m still standing next to them , never took 1 step and thinking , really even if I wanted to be there at that spot i couldn’t move 3849494 mph across the map to where your aoeing

Are you playing thief ? If its true just start playing ranger or different char.

My first 80 was a ranger and played it for about 5k kills. Then I made a mesmer and played it for about 10kish kills. Then I made an thief and then ele (all 80’s). The majority of my playtime is between the ele and thief now because I find them the most fun. I’ve played just about every thief build out there.

That said I can handle thieves from any build with any of my classes, unless they just outplay me.

I totally agree with everything loading said..

OK make video with this ranger who get 5k frags in 1 month Im w8 for your link. Show me how easy you kill meny thiefs.

Avigrus.2871:

Tulisin.6945:

Clark Skinner.4902:

I have asked on here about how to deal with stealth thieves before and all people said was “use AoE”.

Either read their stealth and track/kill them,

Lol, good luck with that stealth reading…

Never played ‘Battleship’, did you?

Zgroza Czarnych.6190:

dank.3680:

Zgroza Czarnych.6190:

Loading.4503:

I agree with what dank said about dodging. A lot of people dodge right away when a p/d go stealth, I think it’s habit from fighting backstab thieves, but a good p/d usually waits for a good time before he uses sneak attack it also gives them time to regen initiative and heal. And about staying with the group, I agree halfway. From my experience when someone starts running away and I chase to try and down them, that’s a bad move if the group is fairly large, cause ill have my back to everyone else and start eatting damage pretty hard.

Aside from that, have you tried playing a p/d thief before, if not try it sometimes, you’ll have a better feel for how a thief moves when using stealth. I gotta say most of the time when I’m stealthed people do things that just really don’t make sense like eles using aoe skills miles away and I’m still standing next to them , never took 1 step and thinking , really even if I wanted to be there at that spot i couldn’t move 3849494 mph across the map to where your aoeing

Are you playing thief ? If its true just start playing ranger or different char.

My first 80 was a ranger and played it for about 5k kills. Then I made a mesmer and played it for about 10kish kills. Then I made an thief and then ele (all 80’s). The majority of my playtime is between the ele and thief now because I find them the most fun. I’ve played just about every thief build out there.

That said I can handle thieves from any build with any of my classes, unless they just outplay me.

I totally agree with everything loading said..

OK make video with this ranger who get 5k frags in 1 month Im w8 for your link. Show me how easy you kill meny thiefs.

I would love to be able to make vids if my PC could handle it believe me.. I have 21,789 total wvw kills at this moment by the by.

<- w8’ing
<- w8’ing

Spathis.7540:

The zerg does not always conquer… interesting.

8 ppl isnt a zerg good sir

Oh common ,8 people ? What were you doing ,sitting pretty?He can’t stay in stealth forever .When he shows up , imobilise , stun , nuke.Shouldn’t be a problem for 8 people LOL.But I bet you’re just exagerating or lying.Lame..

Yesterday I won a 1v100 cause I’m so stealthy. All 80’s of course. I was utilizing the stealthing-confuses-people-and-causes-them-to-stop-pushing-buttons bug

NightyNight.1823:

Oh common ,8 people ? What were you doing ,sitting pretty?He can’t stay in stealth forever .When he shows up , imobilise , stun , nuke.Shouldn’t be a problem for 8 people LOL.But I bet you’re just exagerating or lying.Lame..

Well he probably isn’t. I’ve seen this happen even against coordinated groups. Even without a bunch of bads.

A common example of where this can happen in WvW and a thief makes an impact is around siege engines. A lot of times you and a stealth-heavy thief can just agree to disagree and move on about your business, but when you don’t have that option it can be just brutal. Very few classes have AoE sufficient to deter a thief, and those people are usually so glassily spec’d that they make tasty first targets.

The only time I’ve ever successfully driven thieves off (with my admittedly underpowered and badly-in-need-of-fixes engineer that basically can never beat a stealth thief in a million years) in a situation like that is by knocking them off cliffs. And that generally only works once (and terrain doesn’t allow it).

I’m not sure what happened with the OP, but it’s definitely the case that sometimes thief stealth is ludicrously powerful and there really should be some way to ward them off that doesn’t involve terrain or some sort of high-level coordination or glass cannon aoe. And “dodging and understanding the thief” is not a valid answer. That’s what you do against every class.

Did you fight Slic (Wild Bill)? He is probably one of the best P/D thieves out there.

Anyways, this sounds like a issue caused by the culling bug… If you could only see him for 1-2 seconds then it’s the culling. I have done something similar, trolling smaller groups in WvW. It’s pretty easy, but I have a hard time finishing people off as they can easily resurrect each other before I can make the killing blow. A thief doing this is most of the time just using all his utility skills and doing it for one single purpose – trolling the kitten out of people

Geiir.7603:

Did you fight Slic (Wild Bill)? He is probably one of the best P/D thieves out there.

Anyways, this sounds like a issue caused by the culling bug… If you could only see him for 1-2 seconds then it’s the culling. I have done something similar, trolling smaller groups in WvW. It’s pretty easy, but I have a hard time finishing people off as they can easily resurrect each other before I can make the killing blow. A thief doing this is most of the time just using all his utility skills and doing it for one single purpose – trolling the kitten out of people

That’s why I run with signet of malice and daggerstorm, when they group up to start rezzing, they just sit there eatting up dmg from ur ds and usually u can finish off the person in downstate like that

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

By chasing one guy for 6 minutes?

Asum.4960:

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

By chasing one guy for 6 minutes?

If that keeps them off the siege operators that are knocking down a wall, it’s a good use of time.

Still, this idea that it is a thief’s deity-given-right to be able to never be killed is sort of tedious for every other class to endure. Even supertank guardians and engineers (the ONE not broken wvw/pvp spec for engineer) are not as durable as a stealth thief because they have to endure hits, whereas the skilled thief really doesn’t.

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

By chasing one guy for 6 minutes?

If that keeps them off the siege operators that are knocking down a wall, it’s a good use of time.

Still, this idea that it is a thief’s deity-given-right to be able to never be killed is sort of tedious for every other class to endure. Even supertank guardians and engineers (the ONE not broken wvw/pvp spec for engineer) are not as durable as a stealth thief because they have to endure hits, whereas the skilled thief really doesn’t.

They are not “durable” in any way. They just run away. And if you hit them, they are dead. If you can’t, then i guess the joke’s on you.

Now turn it around and try to build a Thief as tank, sitting on a PvP note, and then compare them to Guardians, Warriors, Elementalists, Engeneers, Necros and so on.

Who is suddenly OP now? And who is weak? (Exactly, that’s not how it works)

The only broken class in GW 2 is mesmer, where one skill can bypass for example the defensive of a whole keep, the walking time of a golem, the travel time between two notes, or making instant attacks of hundreds of players in one spot possible.

What does the Thief do again?
Running away well alone?

Ok.

//E:

Once i was defending a supply camp together with a guardian.
5 People ran up to us, and we prepared for battle.

I picked the most squishy target, and made myself ready to burst him down first with a backstab combo, therefore i stealthed.

What happened next is that i got bursted down instantly by random AoE (meant for the guardian).

After that i watched the guardian taking out 3 poeple in under 30 seconds while taking close to no damage (and if, it was healed up in about a second), leaving the other 2 running away in fear (actual fear, not the CC).

I wish i could trade my stealth for that actual survive ability (AND damage).

Asum.4960:

They are not “durable” in any way. They just run away. And if you hit them, they are dead. If you can’t, then i guess the joke’s on you.

The joke is on me for having an 80 engineer. Short of going full glass there is basically no way to kill a stealth heavy thief for the class I have in WvW-able shape. But that’s neither here nor there.

Theives can move through the battlefield, harry a target, and then run. Most tanks wish they could do that, because in general they can’t get too far out of formation for fear of being locked down and focused beyond what they can mitigate. Thieves never have this problem, and can disengage at will. That’s durability, no matter how you slice it.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad, but it’s pretty difficult to stop as it stands. And since you cannot tell if you’re hitting them it’s basically impossible to tell if your efforts to CC or AoE them are working.

And this “they do no damage” that people keep citing is sort of crazy to lots of other players… even balanced thieves do very good damage compared to what a lot of other balanced class specs handle, while still having some of the best damage mitigation tricks in the game. This shows in PvP, and it shows in WvW.

Now turn it around and try to build a Thief as tank, sitting on a PvP note, and then compare them to Guardians, Warriors, Elementalists, Engeneers, Necros and so on.

Engineers make medicore point holders, so don’t trot them out. But I agree with you here; thieves should have better bunker options in their GM traits. I think a bunker evade tank would be really cool.

Even if we take this argument at face value, the truth is that the thief is one of the most complete, unbuggy, and “functional” classes in the game right now, along with the warrior. Those of us playing necros, engineers, or rangers are rather tired of being told “you need to learn to play” by GC thieves who have comparatively huge margins of error againt classes that are bug-ridden and/or home serious design issues. The fact that we can find builds that rely on non-class-specific mechanics to essentially not die to anything but a glass cannon is not exactly a great counter argument.

Not that it’s your problem to solve if you’re main-ing thief. But the attitude is pervasive and tedious and starts arguments.

The only broken class in GW 2 is mesmer, where one skill can bypass for example the defensive of a whole keep, the walking time of a golem, the travel time between two notes, or making instant attacks of hundreds of players in one spot possible.

Portal is fine. It’s great, even. I wish more classes had the power to group-transport. It’d make WvW more fun.

Running away well alone?

In WvW, harrying camp cappers, siegers, and supply runs is very effective. Thieves are nearly unstoppable in this role. Which is neat and cool, but I wish it weren’t quite so one-sided.

stealth is just overpowered 3 seconds sure as the thief appears it takes 1-2 seconds to spot him enough time to stealth again so you basically have 1 second to shoot a stun/interrupt/immobilize and hope it hits him fast enough before he vanishes. so yea using 3 seconds cooldown as excuse isnt gonna fool anyone. specially when your stealth can remove conditions and regen. thief goes invi with 40% health pops up with 80%-100%.

Aeden.5896:

Did he actually kill anyone?

No, he was just being annoying.

But this seems to be reason enough to nerf the profession into the ground for some people…

I really hate this sub forum and the whingers it attracts.

NightyNight.1823:

He can’t stay in stealth forever

With culling in W3 yes, yes he can.

culling doesn’t exists with 8 ppl + 1 thief …
culling is a problem only with greater numbers.
I think the problem here is not culling but sleeping ppl.
gj thief.

30+ ppls could not get my thief on wvwvw and I don’t have any invis, so its not invis problem

Where’s the video? I looked forward to seeing this in action

LOL…only 8? Where is the challenge?
There are 3 things that make 1vX where X can be anything (yes you can fight 30, 50, it does not matter) possible:
1. Bad players.
2. Culling issue.
3. WvW unbalanced equipment.
Good players benefit from 3 as well and know how to counter 2.
Bad players are bad players, it is impossible to balance them against good players (unless the game detects how bad you are and applies appropriate buffs on you to compensate for the lack of skill)…..proof: single player could kill a group of 10 bad players in quake and quake was a ‘perfectly balanced’ game (FPS).

He had a clue. You all didn’t.

I saw something similar last night. The thief took down a group of maybe 5 – I was around, ressing, and being focused at times and I legged it when too many others drifted over from his team. It was the group not really knowing what was going on and culling.

The thief really didn’t appear for any more than 1 second unless attacking, and even then it wasn’t for anymore than a couple of seconds. I know I was watching for him like a hawk and wasn’t even able to get an arrow shot off in short range to immobilise him from stealth he was popping so fast, but ey. I’m sure this annoys players no end, it is a bug however and does occur and its the reason why this can happen. Experienced players can deal with it but it don’t make it right.

Elmuerto.9840:

The thief really didn’t appear for any more than 1 second unless attacking, and even then it wasn’t for anymore than a couple of seconds. I know I was watching for him like a hawk and wasn’t even able to get an arrow shot off in short range to immobilise him from stealth he was popping so fast.

Shoot your arrow anyways, stealth doesn’t stop it from hitting. Time spent trying to lock on with tab target is time that could be spent simply killing the thief by attacking. Over-reliance on tab targeting is one of the reasons stealth is so effective in PvP.