Guild Wars 2

I mean come on people, sure stealth thieves are annoying but look at this; other classes have the d/d ele, the ber mesmer, the beast master ranger, the bunker or retaliation guardian…..need I go on. Thief is good at one thing that’s walking around wvw killing people trying to wonder aimlessly or farm nodes. In pvp and pve thieves are beyond underwhelming and as part of the bigger wvw picture they contribute way less than any other classes. So to sum it up thieves can either be constantly stealth annoyances, that cant do much but troll or they can be extreme spike classes that are great vs single targets but can die really fast if they mess up. If a thief hits you they got REVEAL and remember if they are doing good dmg that means they are GLASS. There are few exceptions to this, but the thief needs the stealth to survive that’s it take that away and what do you have a really easy target.

Because they are poor players. Despite the advice given to them they would rather take the easy route and QQ for nerfs until Anet gives it to them.

/inB4flak

cerberus.1937:

I mean come on people, sure stealth thieves are annoying but look at this; other classes have the d/d ele, the ber mesmer, the beast master ranger, the bunker or retaliation guardian…..need I go on. Thief is good at one thing that’s walking around wvw killing people trying to wonder aimlessly or farm nodes. In pvp and pve thieves are beyond underwhelming and as part of the bigger wvw picture they contribute way less than any other classes. So to sum it up thieves can either be constantly stealth annoyances, that cant do much but troll or they can be extreme spike classes that are great vs single targets but can die really fast if they mess up. If a thief hits you they got REVEAL and remember if they are doing good dmg that means they are GLASS. There are few exceptions to this, but the thief needs the stealth to survive that’s it take that away and what do you have a really easy target.

well by your logic EVERY CLASS should have stealth as long they run berserker builds
how is thief underwhelming in pvp if all they need to do is spam #2 with daggers
use your blind and teleport skills in pve and shouldnt have a problem

the whole thieves deserve doing ridiculous damage because they are squishy as glass cannon excuse is not valid Every single class is squishy as glass cannon Except thief since they stealth and have the highest mobility and initiative system .

Rezzet.3614:

how is thief underwhelming in pvp if all they need to do is spam #2 with daggers

rezzet obviously has no clue. Spamming #2 with daggers will drain your initiative very fast and do only 50-60% damage to an opponent, who forgets to dodge. Afterwards, the thief is done for.

Also he has no clue why thieves are squishier than other classes. Thieves have access to a few stun breaks, but they don’t have invulnurability skills or blocking skills, or damage reduction skills. All they have is stealth, and they can still be hit easily while in stealth.

Obviously, Rezzet was not able to apprehend to counter stealth, most likely because he is lacking skills as a player and is now blaming the mechanics, instead of himself. Many people, who blame thieves and invisibility are the same as Rezzet. Don’t bother.

And if Anet should be lacking so much intelligence as to grant them their feeble wishes, there is nothing we can do about it except quitting to play thief. Anet will see the immense drop in thief players and revert the changes, just as they did before.

omg omg
they have stealth and 50% of the time are invincible !!!

Youkay.5294:

Thieves have access to a few stun breaks.

How many times do we have to do this discussion again? This is false, false, false, false.
They have the best access to stunbreakers in this game.

Youkay.5294:

All they have is stealth, and they can still be hit easily while in stealth.

False.
They have also insane dodging capability (15 points in Acrobatics, Withdraw and Vigorous Recovery).
Also, it is false that they can be hit easily while in stealth. A thief who doesn’t want to be hit while stealthed, doesn’t get hit. You make avoiding blind swings and random AoE looks hard.

sorrow.2364:

Youkay.5294:

Thieves have access to a few stun breaks.

How many times do we have to do this discussion again? This is false, false, false, false.
They have the best access to stunbreakers in this game.

Youkay.5294:

All they have is stealth, and they can still be hit easily while in stealth.

False.
They have also insane dodging capability (15 points in Acrobatics, Withdraw and Vigorous Recovery).
Also, it is false that they can be hit easily while in stealth. A thief who doesn’t want to be hit while stealthed, doesn’t get hit. You make avoiding blind swings and random AoE looks hard.

This is like saying that a warrior can have the best burst with axe while keeping the best mobility with GS//Sw/wh and still have shield stance and endure pain, while ignoring conditions from traits and food/runes.

A thief that goes 15 in acrobatics will have lower burst due to not having the 30pts on CS or lower survivability for the lack of 30 in SA.
If a thief has sword MH for the “endless” stunbreaker it won’t have dps from dagger main hand (and BS).
Using withdrawn on WvW makes you very vulnerable to conditions as HiS is the only (dmg)cond. removal most x/d builds use. Also, you loose one more source of stealth.
And yes, avoiding swings is hard when you need to be in melee range to get your BS or CnD off. Thats the real advantage of d/p, stealth away of melee range.

But no. there is no 30/30/30/30/30 build with s/d//d/d//p/d//sb having endless dodges, stunbreakers, stealth and 10k bs crit with mug + CnD and tons of hp/armor…

lLobo.7960:

This is like saying that a warrior can have the best burst with axe while keeping the best mobility with GS//Sw/wh and still have shield stance and endure pain, while ignoring conditions from traits and food/runes.

A thief that goes 15 in acrobatics will have lower burst due to not having the 30pts on CS or lower survivability for the lack of 30 in SA.
If a thief has sword MH for the “endless” stunbreaker it won’t have dps from dagger main hand (and BS).
Using withdrawn on WvW makes you very vulnerable to conditions as HiS is the only (dmg)cond. removal most x/d builds use. Also, you loose one more source of stealth.
And yes, avoiding swings is hard when you need to be in melee range to get your BS or CnD off. Thats the real advantage of d/p, stealth away of melee range.

But no. there is no 30/30/30/30/30 build with s/d//d/d//p/d//sb having endless dodges, stunbreakers, stealth and 10k bs crit with mug + CnD and tons of hp/armor…

You don’t need to have 30/30/30/30/30 to have the best of all traits.
30 in critical strike is more than enough to have good damage.
15 on Acrobatics are more than enough to have almost endless dodges.
15 in Shadow Arts are enough to have longer stealth times and condition cleansing on stealth.
Still, you have 10 traitpoints left to spend where you want to.
As you can see, you’re able to have the best of the thief defensive capabilities with 70 traitpoints.

You have access to two weapon sets. If you want the damage of BS and endless stunbreaker, take them both as weapon sets. Obviously you’re renouncing the shortbow, but you have to renounce something for both endless stunbreakers and high burst capabilities. Anyway, S/D does deal good damage, don’t make it look it isn’t true.

Having Withdraw doesn’t necessarily mean you have no condition cleansing.
Don’t forget that IS, Shadowstep and Shadow’s Embrace are still there offering condition removals.

As for CnD, I think it doesn’t require to much skills to land your CnD then get away of the place you stealthed. As for D/P, as you said, you can stealth out of melee range if it is a problem.

@Sorrow, there few issues that you might encounter using that build, as you spread yourself a bit thin:
1- You won’t be able to heal effectively in stealth (Missing 30 points in SA), and so you will need to be quick with your skills for not to lose major health chunks once you are exposed.

2- To be able to perform a backstab, you need a D/x with the S/x set. If you engage with D/x, switching back to S/x will get you nowhere, you are exposed to burst damage, and if two people have immobilize they can make your fight pretty tough, and you might end up with not enough initiatives to perform your stealth combo (D/P) or CnD (D/D) once you switch back to that set. So I believe you are way better off with one specific set, unless you need S/x to remove boons, then go for the kill with other set. But to have S/X only for the shadowstep, is kind of futile in my opinion.
3- In zergs, without a Shortbow and healing in stealth, AOE will make it very tough for you to engage in close combat. Even if we suppose you managed to go in, attack few, then back out. The number of people you will tag is nowhere close than shortbow.

In theory, the way you put things up sound good, however, how feasible and effective are they when you try them out all together? Do you actually use this build?

sorrow.2364:

You don’t need to have 30/30/30/30/30 to have the best of all traits.
30 in critical strike is more than enough to have good damage.
15 on Acrobatics are more than enough to have almost endless dodges.
15 in Shadow Arts are enough to have longer stealth times and condition cleansing on stealth.
Still, you have 10 traitpoints left to spend where you want to.
As you can see, you’re able to have the best of the thief defensive capabilities with 70 traitpoints.

You have access to two weapon sets. If you want the damage of BS and endless stunbreaker, take them both as weapon sets. Obviously you’re renouncing the shortbow, but you have to renounce something for both endless stunbreakers and high burst capabilities. Anyway, S/D does deal good damage, don’t make it look it isn’t true.

Having Withdraw doesn’t necessarily mean you have no condition cleansing.
Don’t forget that IS, Shadowstep and Shadow’s Embrace are still there offering condition removals.

As for CnD, I think it doesn’t require to much skills to land your CnD then get away of the place you stealthed. As for D/P, as you said, you can stealth out of melee range if it is a problem.

There is no way a thief can survive fights in wvw without 30 in shadow arts. Yes, you can go full GC and get some unaware lonely wanderer, but you won’t be able to keep yourself in a fight that last longer than 10s (against minimum decent opponents) without the health regen in stealth. You dont have enough HP to stay in combat.

I tried 0/15/30/25/0 (s/d//d/p), and while it has great survivability it lacks dmg burst to get people down. And in bigger fights you cant do much without a shortbow. Its a great build to just survive untill your opponent gets bored or help arrive. I’ve fought good d/d eles and bunker engies/guards for more than 20min with this.

IS and SE are not really reliable as cond. cleanse. They work great, but if you get unloaded by a cond ranger, engi or necro you cant afford to stealth for the next 30s to remove it all, or spam IS untill you use all your ini. HiS is the best cond cleanse thiefs get, besides runes of Lyssa. The biggest threat to a thief is dmg conditions as we have really low HP, when you have all that bleed/poison/burn ticking you need to get it all out ASAP and not one by one over the next 10-20s at the cost of your ini and/or escape utility.

And hiting a CnD requires as much skill as it takes to dodge/block it. Even more when you are in a lagfest with the zerg nearby…

And not to mention, if you change swap your weapon from s/x to d/x in combat to get a burst out, you are out of your stun breaker for the next 10s and might have to set it again when you get back to s/x.

Azraeel.1238:

@Sorrow, there few issues that you might encounter using that build, as you spread yourself a bit thin:
1- You won’t be able to heal effectively in stealth (Missing 30 points in SA), and so you will need to be quick with your skills for not to lose major health chunks once you are exposed.

2- To be able to perform a backstab, you need a D/x with the S/x set. If you engage with D/x, switching back to S/x will get you nowhere, you are exposed to burst damage, and if two people have immobilize they can make your fight pretty tough, and you might end up with not enough initiatives to perform your stealth combo (D/P) or CnD (D/D) once you switch back to that set. So I believe you are way better off with one specific set, unless you need S/x to remove boons, then go for the kill with other set. But to have S/X only for the shadowstep, is kind of futile in my opinion.
3- In zergs, without a Shortbow and healing in stealth, AOE will make it very tough for you to engage in close combat. Even if we suppose you managed to go in, attack few, then back out. The number of people you will tag is nowhere close than shortbow.

In theory, the way you put things up sound good, however, how feasible and effective are they when you try them out all together? Do you actually use this build?

I don’t need the D/ bursting capability.
I usually run 0/30/15/25/0 with Shortbow + S/D or D/D according to the enemy you’re facing (so if you’re facing a team with many Eles/Guardians, I switch to sword, dagger otherwise).

30 in Shadow Arts isn’t really needed that much.
The heal you take from stealth is easily balanced by the lower cooldown of Withdraw, with also its ability to disengage the fight.

It’s just a matter of choices. Either you run a more stealth-reliant build with 30 in Shadow Arts or you invest your traitpoints in Acrobatics renouncing to some stealth capability, but, still, you can have a bit of them both.

lLobo.7960:

There is no way a thief can survive fights in wvw without 30 in shadow arts. Yes, you can go full GC and get some unaware lonely wanderer, but you won’t be able to keep yourself in a fight that last longer than 10s (against minimum decent opponents) without the health regen in stealth. You dont have enough HP to stay in combat.

I tried 0/15/30/25/0 (s/d//d/p), and while it has great survivability it lacks dmg burst to get people down. And in bigger fights you cant do much without a shortbow. Its a great build to just survive untill your opponent gets bored or help arrive. I’ve fought good d/d eles and bunker engies/guards for more than 20min with this.

IS and SE are not really reliable as cond. cleanse. They work great, but if you get unloaded by a cond ranger, engi or necro you cant afford to stealth for the next 30s to remove it all, or spam IS untill you use all your ini. HiS is the best cond cleanse thiefs get, besides runes of Lyssa. The biggest threat to a thief is dmg conditions as we have really low HP, when you have all that bleed/poison/burn ticking you need to get it all out ASAP and not one by one over the next 10-20s at the cost of your ini and/or escape utility.

And hiting a CnD requires as much skill as it takes to dodge/block it. Even more when you are in a lagfest with the zerg nearby…

And not to mention, if you change swap your weapon from s/x to d/x in combat to get a burst out, you are out of your stun breaker for the next 10s and might have to set it again when you get back to s/x.

As I said, you’re not running both weapon set. S/x bursting capability isn’t bad in any form.

Also, you can live without 30 in SA. Withdraw is a great escape healing skill which can easily overcome (with also the vigor it gives) to the absence of healing in stealth.
IS+SS+stealth is reliable to cleanse you up just like HiS+Stealth.

@Sorrow, so I can see you enjoy a build that relies more on dodge and disengaging than stealth, and honestly that’s the way to go with S/D builds. Thus, I was right concerning both sets, you either use S/D or D/D at a time. Using both at the same time will greatly limit your capability. It feels like it will hinder you. At least that’s my personal opinion.

25/30/0/0/15
why would you need sa&acrobatics when you can instagib ppl ???

@ rezzet
sry but your completely wrong. Best mobility haha that a good one again I point you to builds I listed d/d way more mobility and press a few skills for full health and spam condition removal, then there are the war with perma swiftness and the long range rush and leaps…granted war are really hurting in pvp but you said mobility, then theres the ranger that doesn’t even have to chase you just send his BESERKER PET in while he runs completely BUNKER TANK REGEN. So people need to take in all the facts ex complain about the one thing thief is good at; as far as pve thief is by far the most underwhelming no denying it. Here is another fact people who spam stealth CANT spam attacks. Lets break this down to make it easier to understand; so this spam class is d/p and the black powder half the stealth combo =6 Initiative then you got the other half of the combo heartseeker which has to leap through the smoke field = 3 more Initiative. So that’s 9 Initiative for 3 seconds of stealth and any theories that they can still spam attacks after keeping those up is completely false. So please take in all the facts before you tear down one class for being good at ONE thing and try to make it nerfed so hard it will be good for NOTHING whatsoever.

Wait…you admit that the thief is built for trolling and irritating people.

And then you ask why the thief hate?

I think you answered your own question.

So you admit its just your own inability to deal with thieves why your asking for all the nerfs? this class annoys me and I don’t like them nerf it……seriously O_o. Also I said that’s the only VIABLE builds we got left you don’t like it but you asked for it by getting us nerfed into these last 2 options only got yourselves to blame. I don’t like saying it but learn to play stealth isn’t the eles invulnerability or the guards block.

Yay, ANOTHER thread that boils down to, “I don’t like stealth, so nerf something about Thieves.”

you guys wanted so many nerfs….this is what u left the thief class with. a roamer build. and a spam 3 3 3 3 3 in spvp build….and thats nto what was left its what was given to us bc of our nerfs.

Travlane.5948:

you guys wanted so many nerfs….this is what u left the thief class with. a roamer build. and a spam 3 3 3 3 3 in spvp build….and thats nto what was left its what was given to us bc of our nerfs.

Like thief was nerfed because community asked for it…
It’s not that ArenaNet nerf and buff things according to their testing…

cerberus.1937:

So you admit its just your own inability to deal with thieves why your asking for all the nerfs? this class annoys me and I don’t like them nerf it……seriously O_o. Also I said that’s the only VIABLE builds we got left you don’t like it but you asked for it by getting us nerfed into these last 2 options only got yourselves to blame. I don’t like saying it but learn to play stealth isn’t the eles invulnerability or the guards block.

Lol – your question is “why the thief hate”. And I told you. I can melt a thief’s face off with my phantasm mesmer. But that doesn’t mean I like thieves. The answer to “why the thief hate” is already in your question. They’re trolls and irritating.

sorrow.2364:

Travlane.5948:

you guys wanted so many nerfs….this is what u left the thief class with. a roamer build. and a spam 3 3 3 3 3 in spvp build….and thats nto what was left its what was given to us bc of our nerfs.

Like thief was nerfed because community asked for it…
It’s not that ArenaNet nerf and buff things according to their testing…

from the videos ive gathered this is what i see: (first off cant tell if thats sarcastic as it loses tone and depth due to plain black and white reading) but anyway what i gather from the official videos/interviews is that they usually hypothesize and run numbers etc but never use the scientific method or use controls etc very “observational” only. the actual test comes in once they form a general consensus and put it into effect. the actual community is the test. kind of like when they nerfed stealth :P didnt work so well. or rather too well. and had to revert it in some areas. not only that it killed spvp stealth builds. hence why they are really ever played.

Travlane.5948:

from the videos ive gathered this is what i see: (first off cant tell if thats sarcastic as it loses tone and depth due to plain black and white reading) but anyway what i gather from the official videos/interviews is that they usually hypothesize and run numbers etc but never use the scientific method or use controls etc very “observational” only. the actual test comes in once they form a general consensus and put it into effect. the actual community is the test. kind of like when they nerfed stealth :P didnt work so well. or rather too well. and had to revert it in some areas. not only that it killed spvp stealth builds. hence why they are really ever played.

I guess that HB got nerfed, because ArenaNet listens to the community and people said HB is OP the first months.
Also, I guess Necros will have vigor and more mobility next patch? It’s not like ANet said “we are not going to give mobility to necros anyway” despite the fact that anyone agrees he needs it.
Also, why Moa Morph is still there? I think that anyone except mesmers agree that skills shouldn’t be in the game at all.

So no, ANet doesn’t balance around what people say.
They just check if something everyone is complaining about is really overpowered and nerf it accordingly. They can be right, they can be wrong. But, usually, when they’re wrong, they fix the problems the next patch.

Thief was nerfed probably because people complained for a real reason, not because “bads QQ in the forums, L2p”.

bhagwad.4281:

cerberus.1937:

So you admit its just your own inability to deal with thieves why your asking for all the nerfs? this class annoys me and I don’t like them nerf it……seriously O_o. Also I said that’s the only VIABLE builds we got left you don’t like it but you asked for it by getting us nerfed into these last 2 options only got yourselves to blame. I don’t like saying it but learn to play stealth isn’t the eles invulnerability or the guards block.

Lol – your question is “why the thief hate”. And I told you. I can melt a thief’s face off with my phantasm mesmer. But that doesn’t mean I like thieves. The answer to “why the thief hate” is already in your question. They’re trolls and irritating.

Pot calling kettle black…

Excalibur.9748:

bhagwad.4281:

cerberus.1937:

So you admit its just your own inability to deal with thieves why your asking for all the nerfs? this class annoys me and I don’t like them nerf it……seriously O_o. Also I said that’s the only VIABLE builds we got left you don’t like it but you asked for it by getting us nerfed into these last 2 options only got yourselves to blame. I don’t like saying it but learn to play stealth isn’t the eles invulnerability or the guards block.

Lol – your question is “why the thief hate”. And I told you. I can melt a thief’s face off with my phantasm mesmer. But that doesn’t mean I like thieves. The answer to “why the thief hate” is already in your question. They’re trolls and irritating.

Pot calling kettle black…

Honestly if it wasn’t for thieves I would run something else.

The only complaint I see over and over is that stealth makes thieves be:
1) unkillable – since a decent thief can usually get away – if they know it is a bad situation.
2) able to reset a fight easily.

First off, you can say both of those about rangers, eles or mesmers, who have very good mobility (especially when running away from a bad situation) as well as great protection and heal options. You can also say 2 about guardians.

I think people get annoyed by thieves because there is a low skill floor, and a mediocre thief can still be kind of annoying. They don’t realize that even if it does take a lot of skill to do what a thief is doing, the opponent doesn’t always see it. Because new players don’t see what the thief is doing, they feel like they either win or lose a battle, with no control over the outcome. They don’t see the narrowly timed dodge while in stealth that saved the thief from an attack that would have killed it. They also don’t see the unused (because of it’s long cooldown) shadowstep that has been sitting on that bar, just waiting for an immobilize. They don’t see the careful thought that went into picking out an injured target to use the burst on. They don’t see the long cooldown on that burst, which forces the thief to retreat if it doesn’t work out well, because staying in the battle is suicide. They really don’t understand how glassy thieves are (even when built tanky) and how important it is to build glassy for survivability because shorter battles are safer battles for thieves.

For thieves in wvw (the only setting where they are at all strong) shadow arts really is the only way to be consistently survivable. Evasion/acrobatics are great in small groups and 1v1s, but in big battles, these builds are not consistently survivable. Also making a build like Jumper’s s/d acrobat build – which apparently is doing great in pvp, makes you still vulnerable to a large group and aoe and you lose a lot of mobility and access to stealth, so solo/small group roaming becomes much riskier, since a larger group can take you out, and zerg vs zerg is just out of the question.

The point about zerker gear is really important for people to get…a thief has decent dps if they build glassy, even when not bursting. But in order to be doing damage they have to be taking damage. If a thief does not build glassy, their dps really suffers, but they still go down relatively easily. So having a glassy burst build is actually more survivable than a tanky build. To put some ballpark and very unprecise numbers on it, the glassy burst build might have to hit the opponent 6 times for them to go down, and then has to worry about dodging/avoiding maybe kittens from the opponent. They might be able to survive 2. A tanky build might be able to survive kittens, but it will need like 20 hits to get the opponent down, which means it has to still avoid damage from 10-15 hits – this is not to mention allies, which will pile on the thief the longer the fight goes.

@bhagwad.4281
Is not a moa morph Ber Mesmer just as annoying as a stealth thief…..mass opinion yes you got stealth, clones, evade, invulnerable, spam conditions, teleport, and oh yah Mass AOE DMG no room to criticize thief there!

I haven’t decided if I want to play a thief or a engineer yet. But I feel your pain, and have some insight on your question OP. After playing a rogue for years in EQ, an infiltrator extensively in DAoC, a Rogue even longer in WoW and more recently a operative in SWTOR I can say that I have learned people do not like to die without being able to defend themselves.

Because no matter how skill based the act is, no matter how hard it is for the sniper to set up that shot, for the assassin to set up that combo, or how many stars have to align for the thief to get their instagib it doesn’t pit the 2 players against one another.

Instead it pits the assassin type player against the mechanics of their class, so if they do everything right they get the kill and win. The skill of the opponent does not even come into play because the opponent is dead before they can reasonably react. This is why most MMOs that have an instagib (stealth) class is full of nerfs for that class very early on. No one likes it and everyone complains.

Stealth is the other big key to this. Because being able to kill someone quickly is not enough to truly bring out the QQ no… you have to also have a way to kill them without them knowing they are doomed before hand. Like the first point I made this plays into the feeling that the victim cannot even defend themselves. See even with instant killing mechanics, some are more tolerated than others. No matter how annoying that sniper is or in the case of this game, a rifle warrior. We as players can prepare for them knowing where they are, when they are setting up a shot and of course take steps to protect yourself from the attack. With stealthing characters this is not the case. You cannot even prepare for the attack that will instantly kill you. this can make the class from the outside seem cheap and very easy to play. (even though it may be the hardest class and mechanic in the game)

Thirdly escaping, No one likes a “coward” especially one that can run away so well. Often in these games the assassin character has mobility and evasive skills to offset their lack of defenses. The hate comes in when these skills are so polished and useful that they completely deny a kill. In other words when you finally get those cheap, thieves in your sights. They can just run away easily, just disappear and come back when the fight is convenient to them and of course inconvenient for the opponent.

The mixture of not able to adequately fight against an instagibber and also unable to kill them reliably along with their ability to pick fights that are in their favor from the beginning and stay away from fight that are not in their favor make them a very much hated set of classes in any MMO. Though definitely my favorite type of characters.

I understand the hate. Especially with the thieves in this game who are still in the area of right spec, correct rotation, perfect timing, = dead enemy. No matter if that spec requires insane skill, or even a 30 minute cooldown, the hate is that you aren’t fighting a player they don’t get to react you are just playing against yourself and how well you can master the instagib mechanic. WoW got around this by severely reducing the damage rogues do out of stealth, but increasing their ability to disable opponents and put out sustained damage after the initial jump. making their incapacitate abilities the core of their mechanic but giving the opponent ample time and skills to get out of the disables and fight back no matter how futile that may be. >:)

I’m hoping that Anet finds a similar solution. something that lets thieves be thieves. But while removing that instantly dead mechanic that makes everyone hate them. Thieves don’t have to be one trick ponies, and most (that I know) don’t want to be.

Wow people should read entire post before making such long remarks that are completely off base. Well don’t worry I did the same thing to your post I skimmed stoped reading after you missed the whole point THIEVES CANT SPAM STEALTH AND ATTACKS PERIOD ITS ONE OR THE OTHER. Please read the post next time we got limited initiative and it doesn’t allow for best of both worlds you got high power and few seconds of stealth or a lot of stealth and no attack that’s it end of story please play thief before you thy to defend nerfing it. STEALTH is necessary for STEALTH attacks this may sound weird but you cant take stealth away from thieves they have no uses other than roaming. All your crying got thieves nerfed down to these two builds they are beyond useless in wvw zergs and lets not even go into pvp or pve. So congratulations you got what you wanted a thief that is only good at one thing and now your complain about that one thing omg will you people never give up?

cerberus.1937:

Wow people should read entire post before making such long remarks that are completely off base. Well don’t worry I did the same thing to your post I skimmed stoped reading after you missed the whole point THIEVES CANT SPAM STEALTH AND ATTACKS PERIOD ITS ONE OR THE OTHER. Please read the post next time we got limited initiative and it doesn’t allow for best of both worlds you got high power and few seconds of stealth or a lot of stealth and no attack that’s it end of story please play thief before you thy to defend nerfing it. STEALTH is necessary for STEALTH attacks this may sound weird but you cant take stealth away from thieves they have no uses other than roaming. All your crying got thieves nerfed down to these two builds they are beyond useless in wvw zergs and lets not even go into pvp or pve. So congratulations you got what you wanted a thief that is only good at one thing and now your complain about that one thing omg will you people never give up?

Really?

1. said I love thief like classes.
2. said that these were the perceptions of the opponents
3. Never said anything about a nerf
4. was answering the question posed by the OP “why all the thief hate?” to the best of my experience. And included why all classes of that type get hate.
5. in case you didn’t get it… I love thief classes.

Perhaps you should take your own advice?

cerberus.1937:

I mean come on people, sure stealth thieves are annoying but look at this… So to sum it up thieves can either be constantly stealth annoyances, that cant do much but troll …

The answer is in the question. It’s not because thieves are strong, it’s because they’re annoying. Other classes don’t annoy and/or frustrate other players as much as thieves do.

Perma stealth?! You have 4 seconds to stun or burst him after he gets out of the stealth, and if he is a glass cannon then he is dead within 2 secs…

@Lokki.1092
To be honest I quit reading once you started going on how thieves were OP; like I said the QQ brought thieves to this. Seriously look at pve stealth is useless:
1 doesn’t reset agro tables bringing me to point 2
2 OH NO I am almost dead ill stealth …..TOO BAD enemies keep attacking you while you are in stealth
3 PVP has no issues killing off thieves and constant stealth is pointless since you cant cap nodes that way
4 you wonder why you are getting killed by thieves in wvw anymore here is your answer that ONLY thing left to do
so stop claiming thieves are OP when they can ONLY do 1 thing you wouldn’t be getting killed by 100 thieves is thieves had something else they could actually do.
Real point here is your wont get insta killed NO MATTER WHAT unless you are running full zerker and even then you really have to have no idea what to do, be afk, or not paying attention to not see a thief coming. Seems that lots of people don’t have issues killing thieves in wvw even now any good Bunker/ Retaliation Guard, Ber Mes Beast Master Ranger, Semi Tank HB War, D/D Ele, or even Necromancers have no issues at all. Do thieves need more QQ to incite more hate and nerfs no; they need something else they can actually do with their character. If your only argument is people hate thieves for being thieves that’s kinda pointless. Do you hate birds for being birds? Thieves have 3 seconds of stealth and who cant see a thief from 3 seconds away not to mention they have to get to you , get behind you, and land their backstab. There are things such as BLOCK, INVUNERABLE, DODGE, FEAR, EVADE, KNOCKBACK, KNOCKDOWN, STUN, IMOBALIZE, I think I made my point. As for the rest of wvw when is the last time you saw a zerg of thieves taking your tower/ garrison ect. They have good SINGLE target dmg only so you cant say thieves should go do something else when they CANT.

cerberus.1937:

@bhagwad.4281
Is not a moa morph Ber Mesmer just as annoying as a stealth thief…..mass opinion yes you got stealth, clones, evade, invulnerable, spam conditions, teleport, and oh yah Mass AOE DMG no room to criticize thief there!

“Just as annoying”? With a 180 second cooldown? No. Annoying, yes. Just as annoying? Not in the same league.

And your question had nothing to do with mesmers. You asked “Why the thief hate”. You got your answer. You answered it yourself in fact.

@bhagwad.4281
So your answer is hate thief for being a thief what a great idea, if it wasn’t nerfed into 1 area and 2 builds you might have less QQ from people getting owned by roam thieves. Long story short you don’t want to be owned by a thief either PLAY GOOD or stick to your ZERG. If thieves could roll pve like any other class you wouldn’t find so many roaming wvw but alas that’s only thing you left them with; so its your fault deal with it. No matter how much you want thief to be a single target war it will always be a thief so better come up with we hate thief because it can do something we cant aka thief is thief.

Youkay.5294:

Rezzet.3614:

how is thief underwhelming in pvp if all they need to do is spam #2 with daggers

rezzet obviously has no clue. Spamming #2 with daggers will drain your initiative very fast and do only 50-60% damage to an opponent, who forgets to dodge. Afterwards, the thief is done for.

Also he has no clue why thieves are squishier than other classes. Thieves have access to a few stun breaks, but they don’t have invulnurability skills or blocking skills, or damage reduction skills. All they have is stealth, and they can still be hit easily while in stealth.

Obviously, Rezzet was not able to apprehend to counter stealth, most likely because he is lacking skills as a player and is now blaming the mechanics, instead of himself. Many people, who blame thieves and invisibility are the same as Rezzet. Don’t bother.

And if Anet should be lacking so much intelligence as to grant them their feeble wishes, there is nothing we can do about it except quitting to play thief. Anet will see the immense drop in thief players and revert the changes, just as they did before.

no you like others Assume i have no clue that thief has traits increasing Max initiative and initiative regen even gain initiative with auto attack and that theres an initiative rune .

sure thiefs dont have acces to many stun breakers but they got a cooldownless stun breaker with sword mainhand and lots of shadowsteps and teleport .

how exactly is thief squishier than other classes other classes cripple themselves with invulnerability as it disables utilities and skills.

also i never said anything about stealth nor that i cant kill thiefs just that theres a huge skill gap between playing thief and playing other classes.

cerberus.1937:

@Lokki.1092
To be honest I quit reading once you started going on how thieves were OP; like I said the QQ brought thieves to this. Seriously look at pve stealth is useless:
1 doesn’t reset agro tables bringing me to point 2
2 OH NO I am almost dead ill stealth …..TOO BAD enemies keep attacking you while you are in stealth
3 PVP has no issues killing off thieves and constant stealth is pointless since you cant cap nodes that way
4 you wonder why you are getting killed by thieves in wvw anymore here is your answer that ONLY thing left to do
so stop claiming thieves are OP when they can ONLY do 1 thing you wouldn’t be getting killed by 100 thieves is thieves had something else they could actually do.
Real point here is your wont get insta killed NO MATTER WHAT unless you are running full zerker and even then you really have to have no idea what to do, be afk, or not paying attention to not see a thief coming. Seems that lots of people don’t have issues killing thieves in wvw even now any good Bunker/ Retaliation Guard, Ber Mes Beast Master Ranger, Semi Tank HB War, D/D Ele, or even Necromancers have no issues at all. Do thieves need more QQ to incite more hate and nerfs no; they need something else they can actually do with their character. If your only argument is people hate thieves for being thieves that’s kinda pointless. Do you hate birds for being birds? Thieves have 3 seconds of stealth and who cant see a thief from 3 seconds away not to mention they have to get to you , get behind you, and land their backstab. There are things such as BLOCK, INVUNERABLE, DODGE, FEAR, EVADE, KNOCKBACK, KNOCKDOWN, STUN, IMOBALIZE, I think I made my point. As for the rest of wvw when is the last time you saw a zerg of thieves taking your tower/ garrison ect. They have good SINGLE target dmg only so you cant say thieves should go do something else when they CANT.

pst Thief has a skill called Steal that shadowsteps you behind your target and traited stealths you even better if you combine it with basilisk venom .

odds are Fear Knockback Knockdown Dodge evade stun imobilize will be useless since they wont usually land.

2 oh enemy spotted me and hurt me LOL i’ll just stealth and teleport away and heal and /laugh 12 times

3 so why is it fair for thieves to punish berserker players for running berserker builds but its unfair for other players to kill berserker thiefs?

@Rezzet.3614
all I got to say is lol learn to play thief before trying to critique it. As far as the rest goes go right ahead and spam 2 you will be out of initiative with nothing to show for it since its weaker than auto attack above 50% health. Then there are the war and guard and ranger that can run full tank and still dish major dmg with little effort. As for your theory on traits traiting spam initiative really hurts your dmg output only reason people trait this is for lots of stealth; and finally we come to the last part here ill show you STEAL “Shadowstep TO YOUR FOE and steal from them” NOT BEHIND THEM and since when does dodge or evade have to LAND. Getting behind target is all on thief there is no magic button to appear behind someone and if there was any ok player would know the bs was coming and DODGE, EVADE, INVUNERABLE, OR BLOCK also FEAR AT YOUR OWN LOCATION DOESNT REQUIRE TARGET NONE OF THESE DO! On top of that there is a thing called Ber/Moa morph Mesmer that runs same ex dmg with little effort and almost no risk due to mass clones and stealth oh yah forgot to mention they have aoe dmg too not just single target dmg. This lack of basic knowledge is amazing; in PVE the enemies still attack you even when you STEALTH they don’t stop because you are stealthed…so stop treating invisibility as oh know I cant see them that means they are invincible.

P.S. Id like to see this initiative RUNE plz

cerberus.1937:

@Rezzet.3614
all I got to say is lol learn to play thief before trying to critique it. As far as the rest goes go right ahead and spam 2 you will be out of initiative with nothing to show for it since its weaker than auto attack above 50% health. Then there are the war and guard and ranger that can run full tank and still dish major dmg with little effort. As for your theory on traits traiting spam initiative really hurts your dmg output only reason people trait this is for lots of stealth; and finally we come to the last part here ill show you STEAL “Shadowstep TO YOUR FOE and steal from them” NOT BEHIND THEM and since when does dodge or evade have to LAND. Getting behind target is all on thief there is no magic button to appear behind someone and if there was any ok player would know the bs was coming and DODGE, EVADE, INVUNERABLE, OR BLOCK also FEAR AT YOUR OWN LOCATION DOESNT REQUIRE TARGET NONE OF THESE DO! On top of that there is a thing called Ber/Moa morph Mesmer that runs same ex dmg with little effort and almost no risk due to mass clones and stealth oh yah forgot to mention they have aoe dmg too not just single target dmg.

P.S. Id like to see this initiative RUNE plz

however if your oponent hasnt seen you you can move behind and steal to them

or if hes just running you ll steal behind him as well before he even notices you

your opponent wont be able to dodge your first strike if he dint see you block usually requires a shield wich not everyone has invulnerable also makes the oponent unable to use skills as well so he wont kill anyone during this state thief auto attack is really strong as well so its not like heartseek does paper damage to begin with

and that was a kitten out i call signets runes and call runes sigils for some reason.

PS i play a thief at times so im not talking things blindly

i know heartseek spam is a waste of resources but go to pvp rooms or wvw and you ll see most thiefs blasting up to 4 and 5 heartseekers at a time .

cerberus.1937:

@bhagwad.4281
So your answer is hate thief for being a thief what a great idea, if it wasn’t nerfed into 1 area and 2 builds you might have less QQ from people getting owned by roam thieves. Long story short you don’t want to be owned by a thief either PLAY GOOD or stick to your ZERG. If thieves could roll pve like any other class you wouldn’t find so many roaming wvw but alas that’s only thing you left them with; so its your fault deal with it. No matter how much you want thief to be a single target war it will always be a thief so better come up with we hate thief because it can do something we cant aka thief is thief.

Your mental gymnastics are amusing. In one breath, you admit the thief is a troll. On the other hand you wonder why everyone hates the thief. You expect what exactly? That people should not hate a troll? What world do you live in?

I play just fine thank you. I’m r42 and I smear thieves’ face all over the floor without a problem. But I never respect them the way I respect a guardian, warrior, necro etc. The thief is a troll and they deserve to be hated because that’s life.

What is the great mystery here?

Like I said it comes down to a simple issue. The archetype of thief, rogue, assassin, sniper is one that does not revel in fighting fair. These classes do not challenge their opponent openly with honor. No they take the smart path and kill you when you are at your weakest, most vulnerable and then loot your corpse/collect on the contract.

This is fun gamplay for the player, but it is not so fun to play against. That is why these classes are universally hated in multiplayer games.

The Guild Wars 2 thief still has the ability to kill a target without them being able to fight back. People don’t care if it’s hard to do, uncommon, or in one aspect of the game the 15 fights you lost to a warrior that you could only get to half life doesn’t stick out as much as the one time a thief jumped you and you were dead before you could push a button.

Perceptions are key to the hate, and perceptions say that thief classes are cowardly, cheap, and ultimately OP… Which as an archetype is true. An assassin would and could kill any other archetype ever because they never fight fair poisoning food, attacking a sleeping opponent and so on, and a good assassin would never ever challenge someone to a duel or fight openly. However this has to be translated well in a game to make the assassin feel like an assassin, but not make the opponents feel like they have no chance against said assassin.

Most games scale back the opening burst, add more dps and give thief classes more thief like skills to increase out of stealth survivability. Smoke bombs, flash grenades, blinding powder, tendon rupturing, sap weapons, and all manner of other utility and skills that disable an opponent while you kill them. What this accomplishes is your thief still feels like a thief and has the same overall damage, but opponents can actually fight back making them feel like the thief isn’t cheap and OP. It also means that thieves get to have good PvE damage because they actually have more DPS than the one trick pony opening attack, and their sustained damage is now on par with the other classes.

I’ve seen the launch, nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, buff, nerf, fix of thief classes for over a decade now over many games and it still baffles me that developers still put in the assassin 1 hit quitter classes at all in MMOs. People don’t like them and they get changed every time I don’t get why they go through all that and not just make them the accepted way from the beginning.

SO basically all I hearing is I hate thief because they can do something I cant this is just sad and fyi there is no initiave rune sigil nothing. Thieves need stealth to do stealth attacks that’s the way devs made them don’t hear me complaining about mesmers clones invulnerable morph conditions ect, guards constant blocks, necros multiple life bars, wars ability to roll anything in pve while just standing there the list goes on and on. So I guess if they gave thieves spammable clones blocks ex life and heal we wouldn’t need stealth would we but we wouldn’t be thieves we would be lame copies of your classes. Try being honest with yourself how many people couldn’t kill a thief if they saw you coming from far away and you were running ber build w/o stealth. Don’t complain about something that isn’t broken.

Lokki.1092:

Like I said it comes down to a simple issue. The archetype of thief, rogue, assassin, sniper is one that does not revel in fighting fair. These classes do not challenge their opponent openly with honor. No they take the smart path and kill you when you are at your weakest, most vulnerable and then loot your corpse/collect on the contract.

This is fun gamplay for the player, but it is not so fun to play against. That is why these classes are universally hated in multiplayer games.

The Guild Wars 2 thief still has the ability to kill a target without them being able to fight back. People don’t care if it’s hard to do, uncommon, or in one aspect of the game the 15 fights you lost to a warrior that you could only get to half life doesn’t stick out as much as the one time a thief jumped you and you were dead before you could push a button.

Perceptions are key to the hate, and perceptions say that thief classes are cowardly, cheap, and ultimately OP… Which as an archetype is true. An assassin would and could kill any other archetype ever because they never fight fair poisoning food, attacking a sleeping opponent and so on, and a good assassin would never ever challenge someone to a duel or fight openly. However this has to be translated well in a game to make the assassin feel like an assassin, but not make the opponents feel like they have no chance against said assassin.

Most games scale back the opening burst, add more dps and give thief classes more thief like skills to increase out of stealth survivability. Smoke bombs, flash grenades, blinding powder, tendon rupturing, sap weapons, and all manner of other utility and skills that disable an opponent while you kill them. What this accomplishes is your thief still feels like a thief and has the same overall damage, but opponents can actually fight back making them feel like the thief isn’t cheap and OP. It also means that thieves get to have good PvE damage because they actually have more DPS than the one trick pony opening attack, and their sustained damage is now on par with the other classes.

I’ve seen the launch, nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, buff, nerf, fix of thief classes for over a decade now over many games and it still baffles me that developers still put in the assassin 1 hit quitter classes at all in MMOs. People don’t like them and they get changed every time I don’t get why they go through all that and not just make them the accepted way from the beginning.

wait what… your telling A-net they are doing something wrong with their game and balancing ???

Ohh man, your in trouble now.

doesnt matter that what you say realy is true…
they still ignore you… its their game.. so they must know whats best… right ?

Iam not saying everything i say is perfect.
what i say over and over to people, is that something is very wrong in the balance of this game, allowing some people to 1 hit others.. while others cant even get half that dmg…

cerberus.1937:

SO basically all I hearing is I hate thief because they can do something I cant this is just sad and fyi there is no initiave rune sigil nothing. Thieves need stealth to do stealth attacks that’s the way devs made them don’t hear me complaining about mesmers clones invulnerable morph conditions ect, guards constant blocks, necros multiple life bars, wars ability to roll anything in pve while just standing there the list goes on and on. So I guess if they gave thieves spammable clones blocks ex life and heal we wouldn’t need stealth would we but we wouldn’t be thieves we would be lame copies of your classes. Try being honest with yourself how many people couldn’t kill a thief if they saw you coming from far away and you were running ber build w/o stealth. Don’t complain about something that isn’t broken.

????

Please use line breakers.

Its easier to read then, and doesnt just look like a wall of ????

^ please make useful comments. Good enough for you ?

edit Please, make useful comments! Does this meet your satisfaction?

eldain stenlund.4306:

wait what… your telling A-net they are doing something wrong with their game and balancing ???

Ohh man, your in trouble now.

doesnt matter that what you say realy is true…
they still ignore you… its their game.. so they must know whats best… right ?

Iam not saying everything i say is perfect.
what i say over and over to people, is that something is very wrong in the balance of this game, allowing some people to 1 hit others.. while others cant even get half that dmg…

Perhaps… but I don’t think it will be me or any single person’s influence that will make this change happen. I have not played a single major game that has this class in it that these changes didn’t happen. And really I don’t get thieves like the above poster who are fighting it. More survivability, higher DPS, and more burst in exchange for what? the not so impressive burst that thieves get now? right now thieves are getting nerf after nerf after nerf and now in PvE they hit like a wet noodle and have the survivability of one, because of their “burst problem” Anyone who played a Rogue in WoW or a stalker in CoV or any assassin class in any game knows this cycle.

I don’t agree with you that it is imbalanced that a class can 1 shot another class because thieves have the proper drawbacks for that ability. I concede though that it feels cheap and just lame that the thief can kill someone without actually engaging them and that’s the reason it should be fixed.

I get it. If there was a skill, combo that took perfect timing, 20 keystrokes, and a 30 minute cooldown that also disabled all other skills, but instantly killed a person; people would still hate on it. because it feels cheap to be killed without chance to fight back. Even though that combo is complete garbage, people will play it and troll others and people will QQ on the forums about it.

because thieves are annoying as hell to fight against. they’re really fun to play though (superior mobility, disengage at any time).

only class that is more annoying to fight against might be mesmer, but then again you can actually run from mesmer. it’s harder to run from a thief. basically that makes thief the most annoying class to fight against.

I never had any survival problem in pve on wow. while i played my rogue.
not dps or survival. its pve…

Rogues in wow was more of a warrior in leather.
we were fighthing visible.. we opened in stealth to get abit head start.
But after that we had to go face to face and use our other tools.

We only had 1 stealth escape if things went realy bad. vanish.. on a long cooldown.
(1.5 – 2 min).
and still a bleeding or a dot or any kind of aoe, took us out of stealth also.

the question is: Why doesnt A-net learn from wow or other games.

the resilience was a realy big nerf for the rogue in wow. since they are the class that was made for critical burst dmg.
And still, rogues was fine.
we just had to learn how to play against these harder armors.

Vitality and thoughness doesnt work in GW2…
so what is needed then ??
(it might have slight effect if you sacrifice everything for vitality and thoughness)

I see 3 ways to get thieves in line with others.
*Either you put in a new stat to gears, similar to resilience. (good and bad).
*Give more armor to all classes. will help survive both pve and pvp…
*Nerf thief dmg as they have now… (will mostly result in a long bad consequense).

best of 3 bad things is the resilience.
something that takes away abit of the burst skill dmg… just make sure you classify the backstab and killshot or any super high crit dmg into “burst skill”. so it gets affected by the resiliense.

eldain stenlund.4306:

I never had any survival problem in pve on wow. while i played my rogue.
not dps or survival. its pve…

Rogues in wow was more of a warrior in leather.
we were fighthing visible.. we opened in stealth to get abit head start.
But after that we had to go face to face and use our other tools.

We only had 1 stealth escape if things went realy bad. vanish.. on a long cooldown.
(1.5 – 2 min).
and still a bleeding or a dot or any kind of aoe, took us out of stealth also.

the question is: Why doesnt A-net learn from wow or other games.

the resilience was a realy big nerf for the rogue in wow. since they are the class that was made for critical burst dmg.
And still, rogues was fine.
we just had to learn how to play against these harder armors.

Vitality and thoughness doesnt work in GW2…
so what is needed then ??
(it might have slight effect if you sacrifice everything for vitality and thoughness)

I see 3 ways to get thieves in line with others.
*Either you put in a new stat to gears, similar to resilience. (good and bad).
*Give more armor to all classes. will help survive both pve and pvp…
*Nerf thief dmg as they have now… (will mostly result in a long bad consequense).

best of 3 bad things is the resilience.
something that takes away abit of the burst skill dmg… just make sure you classify the backstab and killshot or any super high crit dmg into “burst skill”. so it gets affected by the resiliense.

or you could, you know, L2P like the rest of us have.

ye… l2p comment again… hello.