You hit an enemy player and they (essentially) gain this effect:
Gain all boons
Inflict All conditions
Gain invulnerability for 5 seconds
CC your attacking enemy player for 3 seconds
Meanwhile Thief:
When struck, die. Or take that crappy trait, and when struck gain stealth for no apparent reason other than to die.
Don’t believe me?
1)Warrior gains retaliation for free if crit too hard, endure pain, balanced stance, etc. Also fire aura so some free might. Weapon swaps and their magical class mechanic delete conditions so hard and fast.
2)Ele? You guys know the truth, why bother.
3)Wanted to steal a mesmer? No MORE! Enjoy your free counter daze, the daze that’s even longer on you than them. The best part? They can mindlessly press all of their F skills and kill you in the process. GG condition pressure where you just got stunned by your own skills and by their very clumsy follow up where they LITERALLY PRESSED ALL THE BUTTONS THEY COULD AT ONCE and die too it because lets be real here, clearly outplayed by the 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/0/f1/f2/f3/f4 combo.
4)Ranger doing massive damage and you wanna crit them to death or apply massive condition? Pfft nah, there pet absorbs conditions passively, they apply protection and weakness for free, and the pet can taunt you and reveal you 24/7 meaning you die. Oh and taunt is unblockable/undodgable still, with apparently no ICD (got stun tauned by wolf so I stun broke, then got stun taunted by Eagle… yay). Just in case its not enough, the reveal negates 1/4 of your mechanical capability (stealth attacks) while increasing pet damage+move speed by 40%. No worries though, you can equip shadowstep to break both of these stuns which then gets followed by a Longbow2 that tracks you and you already used your steal to engage and save a teammate. GJ rallybot.
5) Necromaner gets a free fear on cc, that fear can apply damage, when they click death shroud they get 5 million possible buffs and debuffs as well as free skills like Dagger 5 or Axe 3. Most of their skills get extra benefits into them that are monumental and amazing (signets convert boons, wells leech+protection, DS already spoken for)
6) Guardians causing problems? Just hit em. Oh wait, that burn block+aegis. Man outplayed. Just wait a sec to cleanse those burns. OH crap, they just broke 7 by pressing one skill and getting 3 procs at the same time. Just break it. Wait its back. Break it again. Outta cleanse? No worries, you’re op. Find a way. Dead? Gods, you suck at this game and were totally outplayed.
7) Engineer is the only one I have respect for (AND THEY ARE THE SECOND MOST OVERLOADED) because its almost as bad off as we are. The good Engis are notable, but most are ignorable. Still though, cc them to get protection+blinds off. Hit them to get stunned. Get hit for massive damage, conditions, and basically death. Try to come at them, and they will just drop multiple kits. Explosions and elixirs have massive boon traitings, the utilities give tons of options and have multiple fantastic uses. No joke, they are overloaded but the good ones are absolutely amazing (though most try to run burn cheese).
8) Revenant is like a hyper upgraded, well cared for Thief. Its like Gandalf as he should have been (Lotr reference). Sword 3 dodge forever and apply huge increasing damage. Auto is faster. The hammer can nuke massive damage out with ease in an aoe from 1200 range (our longbow is mediocre 900, but you know that number 5 is so op). Conditions are no biggie, and they can support everyone.
And now we are at Thief. The only thing left to overload is our damage, our steal, and our stealth. However our damage is easily mitigated by the above reasons and our stealth is getting either outclassed or removed instantly. What we have left is steal, problem is we need sustained damage and Thief is simply too squishy for sustained damage (because remember, when you cc someone they actually benefit from it more than they get hurt).
tl:dr? Thief is out dated, I am salty from losing to crappy players who just press all the buttons in an unpredictable manner and somehow win. Meanwhile on my Ranger, Ele, Necro, etc etc I can beat these guys practically blindfolded. As Thief? I pray to god they don’t sneeze in my direction. I already know people are gonna say “stop beating a dead horse” or “u r so bad, l2p u scrub lerd”. I just had to vent, please excuse this.