Guild Wars 2

In my effort to gather some information, I would like to have the opinions of you guardians and warriors out there. How do you guys feel about thieves, especially glass cannon and backstab thieves? Do you feel they are too powerful against your class? Or are they just right? Do they need to be nerfed in your eyes?

Thanks to all who responded

I play all of them in sPvP (warrior, guardian, thief) and I’ll put it like this:
As long as you can survive the initial burst a glass cannon thief is a dead thief.

Warrior: go shield block, turn on EP, kill the glass cannon thief
Guardian is tough on his own with his almost perma protection, bubbles etc so I never had any problems with thieves here

The most irritating part is when a thief goes heavy stealth+blind build(i.e. D/P 10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/10/0). As a melee you’ll get very irritated by the fact that you can’t hit the thief In any case you can still counter that as well.

By the way heavy stealth+blind build works against other thieves (glass cannon / backstab) as they won’t be able to hit you

So no, there’s no problem with glass cannon or backstab thieves

I have had no problems with glass-cannon Thieves, so far. They are super squishy and, in most fights, will usually start backpedaling once they unloaded all their cooldowns and/or initiatives onto my Shield Stance or Endure Pain. The only time they kill me is when I’m already fighting another player(s) for quite a while.

i just dont think any class should be able to played like 2-2-2-2-2 stealth and wait for initiative then 2-2-2-2. they really need to look at the mechanics of the class in my opinion. im not saying its too powerful or whatever, just that the class mechanics support making one-button wonder players.

If I can minimise their initial burst, then I’m good. I only have problems with full power/crit glass cannon Thieves.

For context, I play a Hammer/Axe+Mace spec in sPvP so I’m usually in a good position to keep them locked down. I run with about 1800 toughness.

Thx for the replies, keep them coming. Very much appreciated.

A thief attacked me in a WvW jumping puzzle once. He stealthed so I just kept moving around swinging my hammer. He came out of stealth downed. :P

Mildly annoyed at times. They’re a nuisance class often played by idiots, yet because they’re easy to use and over-rewarding for the effort you put into it, it makes idiots believe they’re good at the game, undeservedly. Usually, most thieves that try to gank me I can kill after they predictably burn off all their initiative, just because they’re terrible players and it’s all they know how to do. It just gets on my nerves when I’m in the middle of a fairly even fight and a thief jumps out from behind a bush somewhere and spikes me down right after I finish a dodge roll, or similar. They walk off with an undeserved sense of self satisfaction.

Class balance? I think it’s a poorly thought out profession, in so much that it has far too many escape options for the massive damage it can perform. I envisioned the Thief as being… a Thief. Something that doesn’t do a lot of damage unless you let it, or when it’s able to start stacking benefits, as it plays. As in, it’s hard to catch and kill in a fight and it steadily builds power over time. Perhaps via… stealing? Whether draining your own power or literally taking bundle items. They’re honestly just Assassins from Guild Wars 1, which were also a poorly handled concept. Press 2 to win was just an asinine decision.

I would love to see what more people think. Anyone got anything else to add? :o

My only gripe w/ thiefs is their teleport and how it can go through walls and exploit early point captures.

I’d also like to see their teleport attack stacking corrected, thats the issues w/ their initial burst.

Well like others have said as long as you can avoid the initial blah blah….

Anyways once that’s occurred, you can start having some fun. Particularly with hammer.

Backbreaker hits whatever is closest to you if you’re not in range of your target. That includes stealthed thieves. Nothing more satisfying than shooting off a backbreaker only to find a thief unstealthed on his back.

Just about every hammer attack though except for the auto attack can severely hamper a thieves ability to do further damage. So if you see a thief stealth in a short distance to yourself, shoot off a couple of attacks. One of them will likely hit.

Bull’s rush will finish it’s action if they stealthed after/while you started it. So you’ll run into nothing, but there’s an invisible thief on the ground hungry for 100 blades.

Thieves are always gonna do what they do. You’re never gonna be at full HP with all of your skills available all the time. Dying to a thief is a fact of PvP. The other fact is that thieves HATE warriors.

i personally doesn’t hate thief..but i’m now struggling on how to counter such thief that can be stealth at his whim…

there’s a thief i met on W3,where we..yes…WE,4 of us vs 1 thief….and we got screwed..fast!

the thing is he can be invisible at anytime he wants..i didn’t know why he is immune to damage controls…i spam hammer burst,stomp,fear and he’s immune all the time and my engi friend’s control seems miss him all the time also

the only thing i can think of as of now is if a group met such thief best prob to just stack to one another…

any other advice or tips i can jave?? :P

i just dont think any class should be able to played like 2-2-2-2-2 stealth and wait for initiative then 2-2-2-2. they really need to look at the mechanics of the class in my opinion. im not saying its too powerful or whatever, just that the class mechanics support making one-button wonder players.

I’m not really sure what build you think can do 2-2-2-2-2 stealth…. Sword 2 is a shadowstep, that can’t be it… Pistol 2 is a very low damage shot that applies vulnerability, I doubt that’s it… Dagger 2 does piss-poor damage until the target is under 50%, that can’t be it… Shortbow 2 is decent but would be absolutely horrid if you just rapid-fire hit it… Nope, no idea what you’re talking about.
However, the Warrior with a greatsword can do the same damage as a well played thief by doing: 2! autoattack for 8 seconds! 2! autoattack! 2! They tend to live longer, too, without having to actively avoid attack.

mbelcikuwh.1379:

i personally doesn’t hate thief..but i’m now struggling on how to counter such thief that can be stealth at his whim…

there’s a thief i met on W3,where we..yes…WE,4 of us vs 1 thief….and we got screwed..fast!

the thing is he can be invisible at anytime he wants..i didn’t know why he is immune to damage controls…i spam hammer burst,stomp,fear and he’s immune all the time and my engi friend’s control seems miss him all the time also

the only thing i can think of as of now is if a group met such thief best prob to just stack to one another…

any other advice or tips i can jave?? :P

Biggest and best tip : Never evade towards a thief in combat, evade away from him and keep your front in his direction.

Also, just because he’s invisible, doesn’t mean he’s invincible. I notice when I pop stealth, people immediately stop attacking and just stand there while I’ve moved maybe 2 feet. You never want to do that. Keep attacking, and your best tool against us is immobilizations, knockdowns, stuns, ect. And AOEs, my god they hurt. AOE is your best weapon.

Free kill after surviving the initial burst.

Hmm, the thing with thieves is there are 2 types.

Bad (90 percent), those who you stomp over in hotjoins. There’s going to be lots, because let’s face it, it’s a kids class. People who want to own with minimal difficulty. Those ones you will destroy. These are the same guys who will play mesmers,guardians, bunker eles or glass cannon HB warriors. You will kill them whatever class they choose (except bunker eles, complete faceroll class).

Good thieves?, nightmare to face. The reason? Cloak and dagger. A complete BS ability. 3 second (4 traited) stealth anytime. All they do is use pistol 1, drop caltrops on dodge so you have a perma bleed+snare (doesn’t matter if you remove conditions as it will reapply instantly) and shoot you. As soon as you get close they hit c+d, doing damage and dissapearing then just dodge away leaving caltrops and start shooting you again.

If the guy playing the thief has any ability whatsoever he should never lose against you. Ever. He can do all this using 2 keys+dodge.

Cloak and dagger may cost 5 initiative but it will always be up due to initiative regen. And whenever he goes stealth he will regen health/drop conditions. So enjoy facing that.

Could you counter that with the hammer f1 or the GS whirling attack? GS range would be reduced by snare but it might be enough, idk. Sometimes snares actually seem to improve it, if they’re close enough already. I’d expect hammer to have the same jump distance.

thief glass cannon hits warriors for 10k backstabs

condition thief will kitten you no matter whats ur build and what u do ( as long as hes not a noob)

He could just dodge as you press the hammer leap. If you do manage to get him in the stun he still has a stun breaker as a utility, then a simple button press and back into stealth.

Gs whirl is redundant as the caltrops stop reduce it to about a few steps.

The dropping caltrops on dodge is the bs part. There’s no timer, so it’s every dodge, and considering thieves can dodge ALOT due to traits you are always wading through caltrops in a fight (which are stacking bleeds every single step +snare duration.

I came out a fight once with a 25 second snare….i mean really???

usually i just leg it – too much effort involved in killing a thief. find some target far away – bulls rush and #5 – bye.

oh and bye to this forum too. just got an infraction for making a joke with no harrassment involved. it was “not contributing to the topic”. wow.

When I play glass cannon berserker/crit build, i accecpt i’m a free kill for thieves.

When I play my toughness/condition build its a fun fight. This build has stomp, its fairly easy to time since i have a feeling for the duration of stealth I can generaly guess correctly when they are in range. rifle butt too. And kick. The 5 ability on off hand sword is also a nice anti thief tool. Just wait a sec after stealth, hit five, and they either let their stealth run out, or they get countered for a nice bleed and I avoid the backstab damage.

Thieves are pretty easy, I have Retaliation proc for 5 seconds when someone crits me through traits, so after the thief’s initial burst they are left almost dead and then they die after 1 or 2 swings of my sword.

Balanced. Can be underpowered with the right team composition and/or mind set.

Rather deal with a good Thief than a Mesmer or Engi with half a brain.

Easy kill usually.

I understand Thief, or Assassin, or whatever some of you may call Rogue… this class is all about owning people with the element of surprise. They have the privilege to choose their opponent, ways to open the fight, or to escape. Thieves should successfully assassinate anyone who is not well prepared or not knowing that she/he is about to get throat-cut.

I personally don’t think glass cannon thieves are OP much here because they are so squishy. They could die by random AoEs. Anyway, I think the way the Devs designed the Thief class is right – Master of Assassination…. Please don’t nerf them!

However, I think as a warrior we definitely need more tools to counter Thieves, even to other classes as well (off-topic). I don’t play Guardian so I don’t really know what they need. Sorry! But Warrior, I feel very limited on my number of skills I have. I always play 100b with Greatsword and Axe-Shield. Every time I know a Thief is coming to my way, I switch to Axe-Shield, spam Button1, and PRAY. She/He opens up on me, I hit her/him, but miss, she/he would stealth away. She/He continuously opens up on me, at some point I activate my Shield Stance, luckily I get some blocks. I barely have any hit on her/him. Soon I die. (Maybe I’m a noob, or he is just too good). I wish I could have a 3rd weapon slot to carry a Hammer, so I could at least knock him down, and buy more time. You would say “then carry a hammer”. So bad idea to have 3rd weapon slot. Maybe just design a button that allow me to switch my Shield into my main hand(right) so it gives me 3 more defensive Shield skills to use (this idea of using shield in main hand is from a person from this Forum, sorry, I couldn’t remember her/his name). Because why not? Warrior is master of weapons, why should we use only 2.5 weapons??? (0.5 is Shield and Horn)

Sorry, kinda off-topic up there, but I totally feel very limited to counter a Thief (include other classes) when I know she/he is coming to get me. Still, a Thief should be able to take me out if he catch me unprepared.

Thank you for reading this long post! Great day you all!

I focus on WvWvW, and I think Thieves can be irritatingly dodge-y, but I also think that’s part of their class style. If I get Backstabbed and it leads to my death, I blame myself. If I catch one who doesn’t have the appropriate survivability traits to get out of my stun combo (Hammer/GS Warrior), he drops hard and fast. Most of the time when one kills me, it’s because I was unprepared, or too many of my utilities/abilities are on CD from fighting others.

I think perma-stealth mechanics are a little overboard in WvWvW and could use some sort of diminishing returns system. Something along the lines of “If you stealth while stealthed, you get 50% of the stealth duration added on to the current stealth duration”.

Also, lag contributing to the delay between a Thief coming out of stealth and actually showing up is frustrating, but that isn’t the Thief’s fault, so the Thief class shouldn’t be blamed.

A good Thief will easily disengage and restealth.

Thief is OP in it’s current state. Thankfully, a nerf is coming.

bwillb.2165:

i just dont think any class should be able to played like 2-2-2-2-2 stealth and wait for initiative then 2-2-2-2. they really need to look at the mechanics of the class in my opinion. im not saying its too powerful or whatever, just that the class mechanics support making one-button wonder players.

I’m not really sure what build you think can do 2-2-2-2-2 stealth…. Sword 2 is a shadowstep, that can’t be it… Pistol 2 is a very low damage shot that applies vulnerability, I doubt that’s it… Dagger 2 does piss-poor damage until the target is under 50%, that can’t be it… Shortbow 2 is decent but would be absolutely horrid if you just rapid-fire hit it… Nope, no idea what you’re talking about.
However, the Warrior with a greatsword can do the same damage as a well played thief by doing: 2! autoattack for 8 seconds! 2! autoattack! 2! They tend to live longer, too, without having to actively avoid attack.

im not exactly sure how to respond to this, because its flawed in more than one way.

first off, GS and 100b are so over rated its silly. GS has one of the worst adrenaline attacks of any weapon choice for a warrior, but yes 100b. well the thing noone ever wants to actually look at with 100b is that it takes like 3.5 seconds for the attack to run its course while you are rooted in place. if the attack was instant i could see the uproar over its damage, but seriously, if you let someone attack you for 3.5 seconds straight you are going to take a lot of damage. 100b is not the problem there.

secondly, are you seriously acting like a one button playstyle is something that should be defended? you can change 2-2-2-2 to 3-3-3-3 if it suits your favorite weapon better, the point remains the same. its the only class in the game that has mechanics that support mashing the same button over and over and creating one button players.

like i said, im not claiming the class is overpowered or whatever else, i will leave that for others to discuss. i just think the mechanics of the class need to be looked at since its essentially designed to be the choice class for bad players and on top of that it gets stealth and teleports. its just really lame.

Doomdesire.9365:

mbelcikuwh.1379:

i personally doesn’t hate thief..but i’m now struggling on how to counter such thief that can be stealth at his whim…

there’s a thief i met on W3,where we..yes…WE,4 of us vs 1 thief….and we got screwed..fast!

the thing is he can be invisible at anytime he wants..i didn’t know why he is immune to damage controls…i spam hammer burst,stomp,fear and he’s immune all the time and my engi friend’s control seems miss him all the time also

the only thing i can think of as of now is if a group met such thief best prob to just stack to one another…

any other advice or tips i can jave?? :P

Biggest and best tip : Never evade towards a thief in combat, evade away from him and keep your front in his direction.

Also, just because he’s invisible, doesn’t mean he’s invincible. I notice when I pop stealth, people immediately stop attacking and just stand there while I’ve moved maybe 2 feet. You never want to do that. Keep attacking, and your best tool against us is immobilizations, knockdowns, stuns, ect. And AOEs, my god they hurt. AOE is your best weapon.

hey man thanks for the tip..i may have to learn more on how to counter such build

ooh and one other thing…how can he possibly damage us,the team while not having disengage from stealth mode? does a thief disengage from stealth if they got damage?

i’m pretty sure we stacked up and starts spamming a loads of CC while getting hit..every one of us…

i spam 4,5 and F1 from hammer,stomp,fear…my engi friend spam all of his CC and we both and the rest got downed really really fast without him getting hurt at all…

Thieves? Surely you mean the punching bags who are fond of running and poofing away.

I find majority of thieves will not follow my warrior into water cause they know they wont win that fight. Thieves also have terrible ranged and all their ranged skills are predictable and easily beaten.

As a thief, I’ve noticed that it’s very hard to kill a good warrior. A good warrior will block my attacks with that shield skill or, if I’m running Haste+Pistol whip, Warriors who can stun break with stability and then 100b absolutely destroy me. Rifle warriors tend to be the easiest to kill, don’t think I’ve ever really had a problem with one. x/Shield if played well tend to be quite good at interrupting a thief chain.

My only gripe with thieves is because of the culling issue in W v W making them perma stealth, you can get hit by 2 back stabs before you can actually see the thief, and just when you see him poof back to stealth.
it took 10 players bursting AOE and chasing him down to be able to kill him and finally get the supply camp cap meter going again.

heart seeker spammers are np. its the ones that 4 shot you that are a massive pain (3k armor too..)

stealth thieves are annoying but not overly dangerous. as long as you know not to stand in one place to get backstabbed

I use a hammer and sword/warhorn. So my feelings…

I feel… stroooong!

I personally am sick of thieves and hope they get nerfed hard, they have “too much utility burst and control” all bundled in one defective package

when backstab can hit for upwards of 6k+ in one hit combined with CaD and the damage from stealing its stupid

and if they want to gtfo? stealth.

and if they want to support? stealth rez.

boy I wish warriors had even 1/2 that presence.

Don’t get me wrong, I stomp on most thiefs but that doesn’t mean they’re not extremely broken.

My issue with thieves is not their insane burst, the damage is easy to counter.

The problem is that once they get countered or outplayed, they don’t get punished at all. They can just stealth and teleport away, wait for their skills to recharge and hit another target. There’s literally no risk to playing a thief.

Cloak and dagger is the problem tbh.

It’s a 5k hit combined with vulnerability + 3 secs of stealth (4 traited).

It costs 5-6 initiative so i’m sure whoever made it thought , ‘well, they’ll only be able to use this every so often….’

Not so!!! With initiative regen it’s pretty much usable every 3 seconds if you spam the 1st attack key button. Spam 1, drop caltrops, c+d, rinse and repeat.

Could you imagine if someone said ’ Well you can have eviscerate, it’s on a 5 second timer, it will hit for 5-6 k each time though. And you become unhittable for 4 seconds afterwards…..’

You’d say ’ that sounds ridiculous.’.

I just think if you hit something which is in stealth, it should pop out of stealth. Like every other single game in existence…..there;s a reason for that mechanic, when it doesn’t exist you become far too strong (just like thieves ate atm).

So, am I the only Norn here, using the Snow leopard stealth in case of emergency? It saved me many deaths, including some from those backstabbing misfits.

@Phaeris

It’s funny, it was mentioned a few posts up that just because you can’t see the person doesn’t mean they are INVINCIBLE. You can still hit. you can still swing. Most abilities still hit whatever is near by / in front of you regardless of having something targeted. Stealth =/= Immune or invincible.

The utility caltrops is very strong, the dodge caltrops aren’t though. I would definitely save your condition removal for the utility (which has an animation, easy to tell).

Also, i’m curious which kinds of initiative regen are you referring to. Only so i can further clarify.

I’m not trying to start a fight here, i’m just trying to educate people and clear misconceptions.

Knowing is half the battle, right?

lol… a thief.? really? hahaha omnomnom they taste nice… am yet to see a theif kill me everyone Q.Q about them being OP but they really are not…and u can say… oh maybe the theif just sucks…. no… maybe… i can play my warrior well enough to kill a theif?

I use axe sheild with high toughness and quite a lot of crit, enough anyway. I have no issues with theives, the quickness ones are hilarious, pop stun breaker, hit sheild bash, evicserate and they dont stay up long if they dont run away.

The more tougher based theives though, always offer a cracking fight. There was a theif last week from Drakkar, had an amazing 1 on 1 with him, went on for ages, although he did have canons from a keep on his side, I wont by a very small margin, gave his corpse a /salute.

But , when I was condition build, I couldnt deal with them at all.

@archnemesis.

Any thief worth his salt won’t get hit when he’s stealthed. If he stands in the way of you swinging your weapon then he’s a bad thief and you were going to beat him anyway.

I honestly love how people say ‘save your condition removal for X’. Condition removal only removes 1 condition, and rarely the one you want. So when i’m poisoned/snared/bleeding/vulnerable…….and taking another step in caltrops reapplies the bleed instantly.

Also – Patience, Initial strike, Quick recovery, Preparedness, hastened replenishment.

All able to have in the same build, basically complete up time on initiative for a shortbow spam 1 + caltrops dodge + c+d > stealth > shortbow 1 rinse and repeat. It’s not even hard. (throw in thieves guild for fun…..)…

Only problems i have is thieves stealthing every 3-5s using pistol or so. Another one is when they run. Mage with 10 seconds cooldown blink along with permanent speed buff! They can teleport across half of the map within 30 seconds. :/

I think a lot of folks here have not played against good thieves.

Good ones will go through their backstab combo, soften you up, and then just stealth and use their shortbow blink to run away if backup arrives, and then proceed to do upwards of 8k damage with their cluster bomb attack, often in combination with a smoke field or shadow refuge for hilarious AoE stealth nonsense.

There are a lot of bad thieves out there, of course, because they are a fotm class, but good ones just make you wonder wtf the devs were thinking when they gave a class this much burst AND utility AND escape abilities…

I run into a lot of thieves in WvW that try to exploit the culling problems by chaining invis > backstab but they seem to forget that invisibility does not equal invincibility. Just stay in groups and carry an invis of your own (snow leopard form)

Danny.1594:

lol… a thief.? really? hahaha omnomnom they taste nice… am yet to see a theif kill me everyone Q.Q about them being OP but they really are not…and u can say… oh maybe the theif just sucks…. no… maybe… i can play my warrior well enough to kill a theif?

Why is it the only ones who claim they beat Thieves easily are those who seem to have mental problems?