Guild Wars 2

I’ve read a lot of whining about Thieves in WvW. Most of the whines are about a couple of things:

1) They perma stealth, and I can’t do anything to them because of it.

2) They hit really hard from across the map, and I die so fast I can’t do anything about it.

I’ve played a lot of WvW lately, and I have one thing to say….

What?! I honestly went in expecting to get absolutely schooled by thieves on a daily basis. It never happened. I’ve been absolutely destroyed by GROUPS with thieves in them, sure. I’ve been beat up pretty badly by Thieves that were obviously run by very good players. But mostly, I’ve been pretty disappointed by thieves in general.

Stealth: It’s very predictable. Everyone has AoE skills, and when someone stealths you can usually guess where they are. AoE them, and then swing your weapon at the floating numbers. That’s IT! Like, I was actually a little nervous about it at first! But, it turns out, stealth isn’t that big a deal. It doesn’t last long unless they’re not fighting anyone, and if they’re not fighting anyone….I don’t really care. I’m not gonna get bent over the supply camp thing. That’s obviously going to get fixed sooner or later.

Burst: Again, it’s very predictable. If a thief stealths near me and he’s facing me, I just dodge. They miss their opener about half the time. Even if they land the opener, I just CC them and use my heal. Now we’re even. I’m -1 Heal, and they’re -1 Offensive CD. I don’t see how people are getting instantly dropped by Thieves unless they have really bad armor. Also, any thief that has tried to burst me is giving the game away. I instantly know, because they’re trying for a quick burst kill, that their armor sucks and they’ll fold like fresh laundry.

Culling: I actually like culling. I tend to get the culling problem when there’s a LOT of people WvWing nearby. So, if I start to get people strangely popping into combat for no reason I know I’m about to get zerged hard. So I know to run away. Maybe it doesn’t really work that way, but it works ok for me so far. Maybe this is a holdover from my DAoC days.

So, there you go. A WvW perspective from someone that has never played a thief at all, beyond like level 3. Stealth QQ is overstated. Burst QQ is way overstated. Culling QQ is justified, but way overstated. Thieves are fine, and awesome players will wreck people with them. But bad players will just eat a lot of dirt and gank other bad players, no matter what class they play.

Finally, I’m not that good at PvP. I die a lot. I don’t really mind it, though. It’s WvW. Dying is part of the game. I just wanted to say that I don’t think I’m God’s Gift to PvP, but I do think that I’m just a regular player that has been very confused about all the Thief whining after I started doing WvW and totally wrecking most of the thieves that jump me (because they’re made of glass).

P.S. I purposely didn’t post this in the WvW forums because it’s class specific.

Culling is a serious thing. I think it depends on a lot of factors, but generally a thief gets 2-3 extra hits before you can see him, and this happens again every time he pops in and out of stealth. You’re right that the instagib factor is massively overstated — I play a thief myself, with armor made out of freakin’ paper, and an enemy thief has never been able to spike me down from full health in one burst — but the extra stealth from culling does force you to run away when you could otherwise counterattack your enemy.

There’s also the issue of contesting camps while hidden, which isn’t insurmountable but it is massively annoying — and different from how it works in SPvP.

A dev just posted that they will be fixing the camp contesting rules to follow sPvP with regards to stealth, so that problem will soon be fixed.

Thief (and maybe D/D Ele arguably) is the best “pubstomping” profession out there. WvW is chalk full of bad players who are too busy complaining to learn the other classes in order to counter.

If you know mechanics and what your enemy can do, Thieves (any prof really) are fairly balanced. If you don’t understand, Thieves are invisible, magical, pwnmonsters that your mommy told you didn’t exist.

Thieves are not overpowered in spvp or wvw.

They were not overpowered before the two previous patch nerfs either…

ASP.8093:

Culling is a serious thing. I think it depends on a lot of factors, but generally a thief gets 2-3 extra hits before you can see him, and this happens again every time he pops in and out of stealth. You’re right that the instagib factor is massively overstated — I play a thief myself, with armor made out of freakin’ paper, and an enemy thief has never been able to spike me down from full health in one burst — but the extra stealth from culling does force you to run away when you could otherwise counterattack your enemy.

There’s also the issue of contesting camps while hidden, which isn’t insurmountable but it is massively annoying — and different from how it works in SPvP.

I don’t find it to be a big deal. It’s just another flavor of “Lag Killed Me.” It’s existed in every MMO I’ve ever played. At least we’re not getting mass DCed because 40 other dudes charged into battle the same time we did.

PinCushion.7390:

At least we’re not getting mass DCed because 40 other dudes charged into battle the same time we did.

That actually happens to a lot of people. Hence the whole Lost Shores disconnect fiasco.

PinCushion.7390:

I don’t find it to be a big deal. It’s just another flavor of “Lag Killed Me.” It’s existed in every MMO I’ve ever played. At least we’re not getting mass DCed because 40 other dudes charged into battle the same time we did.

It’s really awkward when only one class brings the lag, though, y’know? Oh, well, devs promised a fix soon, for both this and the stealth-capping thing.

Here’s the thing:

You sound like a reasonably competent player.

That means that the majority of the forum QQ is irrelevant to you. As a reasonably competent player, you know how to figure out what the enemy is doing and adapt to it. When you first encountered stealth, you were a little nervous. However, you figured out how to counter it and started countering.

The people who QQ on the forums will almost always reveal one of three things on investigation:

1. They are underleveled and undergeared fighting lvl 80s in exotics.
2. They have a build specifically countered by the build they’re fighting.
3. They made no attempt to adapt and learn to fight the enemy.