Guild Wars 2

As a condition Asura thief i love me some pain inverter on those heartseeker spammers.

Rabib.6580:

I just seen thief take down a group of 4 people, first person is down on the first attack, he restealths, the chase is on, cast random ae’s, no luck. Stomps the downed person from stealth (great idea, stomping from stealth). 3 on 1 now, rinse and repeat 3 more times. I counted 6 attacks to my 1, he hit me 6 times from stealth, i got off ONE (1) attack before I was dead. I don’t care if we all suck as players, 1 should never beat 4. Just another reason that WvW is dying, just send 1-2 thieves to the spawn points, and gank people all day long. Ya a really balanced class.

Invulnerability stomping is just as bad as stealth stomping actually worse since someone could always knock you off while in stealth . Stealth stomping is only an issue in 1v1 or 1vbadplayers. I personally hate the mist form stomping more than any thief stealth stomp.

Archonis.7249:

Tynan.6279:

Avigrus.2871:

I think that once a thief engages a target, there should be a cooldown before they can re-enter stealth…

There is although it is way to short, it should be more similar to other popular MMO’s not needing mentioned. Make the stealth cool down after engaging longer and then give the Thiefs a 60 sec cooldown vanish utility skill again similar to the other MMO’s.

Wow, that is way too long.

Combat in this game is much much shorter than 60 secs.

Tanky builds can kill each other faster than that.

I would say 5-7 secs. IF they were to extend the reveal bug, but that serious hurts our DPS and survivability.

If they would do something like that, they would have to buff us more with defense. More base health. Maybe add something to other abilities that will allow us to tank a bit better or they would have to make our burst even stronger.

Any way you look at it, if they nerf something. Then they have to buff something in order to keep some balance and then people will be complaining about that.

60 secs is a little to long ill give you that but make it 20-30 when going out of stealth and directly into combat would not hurt, if you are worried about not being able to stay alive agienst 5-10 people because you cant go stealth all the time, then ill say to you that your not supposed to be able to do that in any way, and with the fights being over real fast even for bunker type toons, i will then ask who have you been fighting and what have you been comparing to? as for myself i have had a few 5 mins fights and some 10-15 mins fights even within the last 5 hours, so eighter you have been up agienst some people way bether then you or you have been way bether then them or atleast that is my oppinion

RedOwl.7496:

I know it is in a line that is not spec’d for much. But ANET in last patch made it so they could spec for 150% movement while stealthed. Really? Really? This just shows how clueless they are about how overpowered thieves are in WvW and how they are more of a problem everyday.

If it makes you feel any better, the trait still doesn’t give +50 % boosted movement speed even after the supposed change.

Aberrant.6749:

Archonis.7249:

KensaiZen.3740:

FourTwenty.4268:

KensaiZen.3740:

Actually, you don’t have a 3 second window. The thief is perma invisible due to culling. That or using the move where they Phase out and can’t be hit. That or your already dead.

Which magical 3 second window is this?

everyone agrees culling needs to be fixed. no thief is denying this

Which is why the class is broken. Activating a skill that allows you to have extra stealth intended or not is a broken mechanic.

Being able to outrun every class while stealthed is a broken mechanic.

Being able to do pretty much insta kill on clothes and insane damage to heavies and get a garaunteed get out of jail free class is a broken mechanic.

I understand how thieves should be played and that they need their stealth. But to be able to stealth through out an entire fight is a rubbish mechanic. You have dodges and phasing and teleportations/shadow step as evasion tactics. To add stealth in there is just taking the biscuit.

I think stealth should just be on a much longer cool down. At least this way the thief get their chance to do the assassination style they love to do but the draw back is they have to do it in a certain amount of time without a get out of jail free card. If they fail they can still GTFO of dodge quicker then any class in the game.

So you suggest nerfing Thief because of a bug in culling that affects everyone?

That is so kittening dumb, I don’t even know what to say to you now?

It nulifies the revealed debuff.
It allows thieves to remain perma-invis with ease.
It gives players leaving stealth extra time to get in free hits.

This is why thief is OP right now.

The things that were put in place to stop the thief from doing what it’s doing right now are broken due to bugs. These bugs won’t be dealt with for some time. They need to do a short term fix until the bugs are dealt with.

So yea… it does affect everyone. Just some more than others.

So your fix is to kitten us in every other part of the game?

I swear people need to proof read for such illogical posts.

Korsbaek.9803:

60 secs is a little to long ill give you that but make it 20-30 when going out of stealth and directly into combat would not hurt, if you are worried about not being able to stay alive agienst 5-10 people because you cant go stealth all the time, then ill say to you that your not supposed to be able to do that in any way, and with the fights being over real fast even for bunker type toons, i will then ask who have you been fighting and what have you been comparing to? as for myself i have had a few 5 mins fights and some 10-15 mins fights even within the last 5 hours, so eighter you have been up agienst some people way bether then you or you have been way bether then them or atleast that is my oppinion

This demonstrates a lack of understanding as to how stealth integrates with the thief profession. Stealth is balanced to be used many times in a fight, with on-stealth traits and from-stealth attacks tuned around being consistently usable based on how much stealth is brought. Could that all be retuned? Sure. But if you reduce the number of times a thief can stealth in a given fight from, say, 5 to 1, then stealth attacks and traits would need a several hundred percent boost to reflect the new paradigm. For example, the thief trait that grants 2 stacks of Might when stealthing would need to be retuned to 10 stacks of Might when stealthing.

People make the mistake of shoehorning stealth into one particular role when it really fulfills many functions for a thief. If you weakening it as a whole in an attempt to weaken one aspect (escape capability, for instance), everything else affected needs to be retuned and boosted.

The duration of stealths and ability to reapply stealth nearly at will is not the problem at all. The problem is partly in the fact that with a 3 second revealed debuff, the thief will be invisible 100% of the time. Anet could do a janky fix that simply increased the debuff time to about 6 seconds, causing the thief to ACTUALLY be revealed for 3 seconds, or they could somehow fix the culling problem so that a thief reveals when it attacks.

The other half of the problem, that would not get solved by setting the revealed debuff to 6 seconds, is that in the 3 seconds after the thief does the opening attack, there is plenty of time for 5-6 additional attacks, more if the thief uses quickness. The lack of rendering causes countering this to be extremely difficult if you are not playing the game with laser-sharp focus, and the ONLY fix to this is to fix the rendering issue, unfortunately.

Tynan.6279:

Avigrus.2871:

I think that once a thief engages a target, there should be a cooldown before they can re-enter stealth…

There is although it is way to short, it should be more similar to other popular MMO’s not needing mentioned. Make the stealth cool down after engaging longer and then give the Thiefs a 60 sec cooldown vanish utility skill again similar to the other MMO’s.

IMO I would prefer hidden characters to be removed from stealth if they are hit and not allow it to be reapplied for at least 5 seconds after being hit.

A second issue that perhaps should not be allowed is killing a downed player from stealth.

I’ve been ganked on multiple occasions by a pair of thieves or by a thief plus mesmer. This makes it incredibly difficult to survive as a glass cannon. It is easy to say dodge but by the time you know about the attack and are able to react your health can be down to zero. If they don’t get you first time they restealth and try again, trying to guess when that attack is going to come isn’t at all easy and you only have 2 dodges.

Serious.6940:

Tynan.6279:

Avigrus.2871:

I think that once a thief engages a target, there should be a cooldown before they can re-enter stealth…

There is although it is way to short, it should be more similar to other popular MMO’s not needing mentioned. Make the stealth cool down after engaging longer and then give the Thiefs a 60 sec cooldown vanish utility skill again similar to the other MMO’s.

IMO I would prefer hidden characters to be removed from stealth if they are hit and not allow it to be reapplied for at least 5 seconds after being hit.

A second issue that perhaps should not be allowed is killing a downed player from stealth.

I’ve been ganked on multiple occasions by a pair of thieves or by a thief plus mesmer. This makes it incredibly difficult to survive as a glass cannon. It is easy to say dodge but by the time you know about the attack and are able to react your health can be down to zero. If they don’t get you first time they restealth and try again, trying to guess when that attack is going to come isn’t at all easy and you only have 2 dodges.

The problem with that is in anything over a duel, stealth would become next to useless with all the crossfire flying around. And if they brought that over to PvE with it, well high level areas are AoE city, Thieves have low defense and no passive damage mitigation so they’d be pretty much ruined.

Archonis.7249:

Aberrant.6749:

Archonis.7249:

KensaiZen.3740:

FourTwenty.4268:

KensaiZen.3740:

Actually, you don’t have a 3 second window. The thief is perma invisible due to culling. That or using the move where they Phase out and can’t be hit. That or your already dead.

Which magical 3 second window is this?

everyone agrees culling needs to be fixed. no thief is denying this

Which is why the class is broken. Activating a skill that allows you to have extra stealth intended or not is a broken mechanic.

Being able to outrun every class while stealthed is a broken mechanic.

Being able to do pretty much insta kill on clothes and insane damage to heavies and get a garaunteed get out of jail free class is a broken mechanic.

I understand how thieves should be played and that they need their stealth. But to be able to stealth through out an entire fight is a rubbish mechanic. You have dodges and phasing and teleportations/shadow step as evasion tactics. To add stealth in there is just taking the biscuit.

I think stealth should just be on a much longer cool down. At least this way the thief get their chance to do the assassination style they love to do but the draw back is they have to do it in a certain amount of time without a get out of jail free card. If they fail they can still GTFO of dodge quicker then any class in the game.

So you suggest nerfing Thief because of a bug in culling that affects everyone?

That is so kittening dumb, I don’t even know what to say to you now?

It nulifies the revealed debuff.
It allows thieves to remain perma-invis with ease.
It gives players leaving stealth extra time to get in free hits.

This is why thief is OP right now.

The things that were put in place to stop the thief from doing what it’s doing right now are broken due to bugs. These bugs won’t be dealt with for some time. They need to do a short term fix until the bugs are dealt with.

So yea… it does affect everyone. Just some more than others.

So your fix is to kitten us in every other part of the game?

I swear people need to proof read for such illogical posts.

Proof reading for illogical arguments doesn’t help much if those people can’t think logically in the first place. At least you have to give Aberrant credit for choosing an appropriate name for himself.

Pyroatheist.9031:

The duration of stealths and ability to reapply stealth nearly at will is not the problem at all. The problem is partly in the fact that with a 3 second revealed debuff, the thief will be invisible 100% of the time. Anet could do a janky fix that simply increased the debuff time to about 6 seconds, causing the thief to ACTUALLY be revealed for 3 seconds, or they could somehow fix the culling problem so that a thief reveals when it attacks.

The problem with nerfing stealth to account for culling is two-fold:

1. Culling doesn’t happen in most parts of the game, it’d be a brutal nerf to thieves in PvE when mobs don’t experience or care about culling. Same with s/tPvP, and non-dense WvW.

2. Culling doesn’t give the benefits that stealth gives. A culled thief and a stealthed thief can’t be seen, but the similarity ends there, a culled thief can be targeted, can’t use from-stealth attacks, doesn’t get stealth trait benefits, etc. So we’ve back to having to buff all those little things thieves get from stealth as a result of rebalancing around stealth uptime being halved.

Cactus.2710:

Archonis.7249:

Aberrant.6749:

Archonis.7249:

KensaiZen.3740:

FourTwenty.4268:

KensaiZen.3740:

Actually, you don’t have a 3 second window. The thief is perma invisible due to culling. That or using the move where they Phase out and can’t be hit. That or your already dead.

Which magical 3 second window is this?

everyone agrees culling needs to be fixed. no thief is denying this

Which is why the class is broken. Activating a skill that allows you to have extra stealth intended or not is a broken mechanic.

Being able to outrun every class while stealthed is a broken mechanic.

Being able to do pretty much insta kill on clothes and insane damage to heavies and get a garaunteed get out of jail free class is a broken mechanic.

I understand how thieves should be played and that they need their stealth. But to be able to stealth through out an entire fight is a rubbish mechanic. You have dodges and phasing and teleportations/shadow step as evasion tactics. To add stealth in there is just taking the biscuit.

I think stealth should just be on a much longer cool down. At least this way the thief get their chance to do the assassination style they love to do but the draw back is they have to do it in a certain amount of time without a get out of jail free card. If they fail they can still GTFO of dodge quicker then any class in the game.

So you suggest nerfing Thief because of a bug in culling that affects everyone?

That is so kittening dumb, I don’t even know what to say to you now?

It nulifies the revealed debuff.
It allows thieves to remain perma-invis with ease.
It gives players leaving stealth extra time to get in free hits.

This is why thief is OP right now.

The things that were put in place to stop the thief from doing what it’s doing right now are broken due to bugs. These bugs won’t be dealt with for some time. They need to do a short term fix until the bugs are dealt with.

So yea… it does affect everyone. Just some more than others.

So your fix is to kitten us in every other part of the game?

I swear people need to proof read for such illogical posts.

Proof reading for illogical arguments doesn’t help much if those people can’t think logically in the first place. At least you have to give Aberrant credit for choosing an appropriate name for himself.

He should of went with Abhorrent, because I find his thought process disgusting.

Archonis replied to one of my previous posts with:

“I would agree that damage should reveal us, if it wasn’t for how short our stealth is and also the monumental amount of AoE that is easy to throw around. Unless you could trait to reduce the reveal effect through Shadow Art or something.”

I agree that if damage would reveal you, that there should be a trait that gives a thief a chance to remain stealthed when damaged. After all, AOE is just a lucky toss of the net to try to find the invisible guy who is harassing you.

The big question is, what should the percentage be and how high up on a trait line should that trait be?

Dual said:

“The problem with that is in anything over a duel, stealth would become next to useless with all the crossfire flying around. And if they brought that over to PvE with it, well high level areas are AoE city, Thieves have low defense and no passive damage mitigation so they’d be pretty much ruined.”

Here’s the problem with that. A firefight is a firefight. You don’t see stealthed people charging across a firefight trying to do things. A thief shouldn’t be running face first into a bulletstorm in stealth. A warrior or guardian are the ones who should be doing that.

A thief should be edging around the back/side or perhaps using the shadowstep/shadow return to do a temporary advance burst. Thieves aren’t soldiers; they get to the frontline of the enemy by coming from the side, where bullets aren’t as frequent.

Tulisin.6945:

2. Culling doesn’t give the benefits that stealth gives. A culled thief and a stealthed thief can’t be seen, but the similarity ends there, a culled thief can be targeted, can’t use from-stealth attacks, doesn’t get stealth trait benefits, etc. So we’ve back to having to buff all those little things thieves get from stealth as a result of rebalancing around stealth uptime being halved.

Agree, some people don’t understand what culling is past it happens more often with a Thief.

I wish that people would understand that culling also affects a zerg as well, not just a stealthed thief.

I have run into a zerg that I had no idea was there until I died because of culling, so should there be an 80% damage decrease if a group of 15 or more are not visible for culling as well?

Makes about as much sense right?

I think that I just need to stay off the forums, too many people making kitten posts.

I’m trying to figure out how to talk with what Tulisin said and Archonis agreed with. This is my response.

You can’t say that culling doesn’t give the benefits that stealth gives. Culling doesn’t give ALL the benefits of stealth, yes. It doesn’t give the number benefits, the increase in power that a stealth attack has.

The benefit that culling gives similar to stealth is the benefit of the unknown. The confusion of not knowing exactly where the enemy is attacking you.

Sure, you can say “I know he’s attacking from behind because thieves get the most benefit from stealth attacks behind their enemies.” But where will he go from there? You don’t know yet. You still can’t see him. He still has most of his surprise because you aren’t sure where he is until a second or two later (based on culling).

And by the time the thief becomes visible, by the time you have a definite bead on him, he is able to stealth and confuse you even more. This is the advantage that people think is unfair about culling. This may not be as advantageous against extremely skilled players, but it probably still presents a problem to them.

jportell.2197:

Stupidly low health pool. Aside from that the system in WvW (Ie rendering/culling) is the real problem. This completely negates the 3s debuff when a Thief breaks stealth to enter combat. If it worked properly then thieves would be way deader. However as a mesmer fighting a thief is something i find challenging. Usually I win unless they pick me off when I am fighting someone else (Which is something Anet did intend) was for thieves to hop around the battle field picking off weaker opponents when they can.

Culling does amplify the problem immensely, but there is still an imbalance with the thief class that creates the problem in the first place. If it was just culling, there would be little thief hate on the spvp board. If you play spvp, or just look closely at the board there, you will see the heart of the problem so many people seem to miss.

It’s not that thieves cannot be countered by L2P. They can. It’s not that you can’t make decent roamer builds with most classes to counter them. You can. What makes the imbalance, and makes thieves OP for much of pug spvp and wvwvw content, is that the skill required to play a hit ’n run thief is much lower than the skill required to counter it. Yeah, I see all the elitists here giving tips, but guess what? That should only be required for ranked spvp and tpvpv, but not wvwvw and pug spvp. Many casual players may not ever reach the amount of skill required to counter even a mediocre thief, though probably a bad thief, and there are lots of those.

You are always going to run into better players and get your kitten handed to you, but it shouldn’t happen when you run into someone of equal or lower skill which is what is happening. Let’s face it, 3 button clicks and then spamming #1/CnD or HS does not match the skill required to twitch your stun breaker, evade, counter with CC against an unseen or highly mobile target, and then DPS them down before your CC wears off and they run off.

Now if Anet wants to cater to higher skilled play, then likely they don’t see this as much of a problem, and thus we haven’t seen much movement here. Hey, they already said they want to focus on the e-sport aspect. But let’s not deny it IS making the game imbalanced for the majority of players here and many ARE leaving because of it. So, Anet has to decide what direction they want to take with this: focus on the smaller, more prestigious ranked spvp arena, or implement some balance for player of average skill to stop more exodus.

My personal vote is not to kill thief burst/stealth builds, but to just make it harder to pull off so its not just a matter of spamming a few buttons for a 2-3 second kill. It should take several rapid, various attacks, multiple CCs mixed in, key positioning (at least BS requires this), and timing (NOT SPAMMING) to down someone in several (5-6) seconds. But hey, I think most burst builds are OP in this game from many professions. I’d rather see lower damage skills with lower CDs across the board.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

They’re kinda broken in small fights, in large fights though they’re all but useless.

Especially the ones that aim for the cheese backstab strat, where they just stealth, backstab, spam hearsteeker, then stealth again.

Main thing is that you don’t really get the satisfaction of killing them when you win. When a thief is about to die versus me, he just uses CnD, shadow refuge, and I never see him again.

Actually.
In large fights they are amazingly destructive.
Devonas Rest have a huge population of thieves in their zergs.
Like.

D:

You roll in with more people and the next thing you know (as a Commander) you’re dead and everyone around you is dead.

Stealth stake.

Seems legit.

A non physical being able to put a pole through your face.

Same for Mist form.

Thief Answer –
No, you just need to learn to play and not leave your back available

Every other player-
Yes, this is the lowest skill level class that griefers and 12 year olds play. I have been hit for 28K in three seconds on my Ranger. They permastealth and the game animation is broken. Which means that they can pop out of stealth and go back in before you even see them. They can get away from almost any attack and can stealth while taking damage. This is the only game in history that allows that. It’s known, ANET doesn’t care the least and thieves will continue to grief. Roll a Guardian or Warrior to give them a hard time.

Yes, more warriors please!! I need more badges ^.^

Archonis.7249:

So you suggest nerfing Thief because of a bug in culling that affects everyone?

No other class benefits from the culling issue as much. Mesmers almost, but they’re just below thieves on the list of classes needing to be brought in line.

You’re proud of abusing a broken mechanic? You really thought all those easy kills were representative of skill? You make me laugh.

My main problem with thieves is that they can stealth mid-combat with very little cooldown in between stealths. Even another MMO I’ve played that shall remain un-named had better balancing for thieves/rogues. In that MMO, there were very few skills where they could stealth mid combat and they were on long cooldowns. I was just against a thief that was stealthing every 10 secs or so. That’s just asinine. In PvP in this game, thief seems the carebear class, because all you have to do is stab ppl in the back for 15k+ dmg and stealth every 10 secs.

Magiofdeath.2745:

My main problem with thieves is that they can stealth mid-combat with very little cooldown in between stealths. Even another MMO I’ve played that shall remain un-named had better balancing for thieves/rogues. In that MMO, there were very few skills where they could stealth mid combat and they were on long cooldowns. I was just against a thief that was stealthing every 10 secs or so. That’s just asinine. In PvP in this game, thief seems the carebear class, because all you have to do is stab ppl in the back for 15k+ dmg and stealth every 10 secs.

The problem is that you’re bringing in conceptions from other games and classes that work entirely differently. In the context of GW2, stealth is not a long-term limited-use skill used to set up ambushes or open combat. Stealth is a short duration combat tool that grants access to from-stealth attacks, prevents targeting, and can be traited for other short-term benefits. In other games, stealth usually means you can’t directly attack the stealthed person, whereas in GW2 it just means you have to aim your attacks instead of letting tab-target’s autoaim do it for you. “Stealthing every 10 seconds or so” sounds powerful if you impress upon it your notions of what stealth is from other games (an expensive and powerful mechanic), when in GW2 it is every 10 seconds for a 3 second effect that doesn’t even prevent damage.

Could GW2 stealth be converted into a stealth system similar to those found in other games? Sure. But that’d also mean GW2’s stealth would need to gain things like 100 % evasion to direct attacks, from-stealth attacks would have to be massively buffed to account for the new rarity of stealth, stealth traits would need buffs for the same reason, etc. Of course, people don’t actually want that, they want stealth to be as rare and expensive as it is in some other games while continuing to be as weak and short-term as it is in GW2.

I don’t completely agree with you that stealth is a ‘weak’ mechanic in this game. I guess I should just start throwing traps all over the freakin place every 10 secs since there is no way to tell where the player went once they use stealth – you have to guess.

Really, they just need to get rid of PvE things in WvW. If I want to PvP, I will gladly go to sPvP, but its annoying that in order to get 20 mystic coins and 10 jugs of karma per month via monthly achievements, I am forced to do WvW. You’d have to be dumb to skip out on 20 mystic coins and 10 jugs of karma.

Thief class… Anet’s designers tried really hard – that is apparent. It’s not working out – they need to take it back to the drawing-board, ASAP.

L2P helps, most Thieves are bad and easily crushed by people who know their gimmicks (being familiar with the sound-effects helps when you’re being 2-spammed by some invisible jerk).

BUT, that doesn’t excuse kittenty design – the culling issue is major, Thieves rub salt in the wound, as they are – I hazard to guess most who yet remain in WvW are somewhat tolerant toward culling in colossal zerg battles – less so when a Thief vanishes without a trace contrary to the rules of the game (yes, even in a fairly small crowd, stealth and make a little distance on your opponent and you will never ever re-render, we all know it), and when he takes the opportunity to come back at you once again with the most powerful alpha-strike in the game? People get upset.

The issue will not disappear (at least not until they ‘fix’ culling – but are any of us holding our breath on that? Really? That bird flew the coop, the people who couldn’t accept it are long-gone).

Tulisin.6945:

Magiofdeath.2745:

My main problem with thieves is that they can stealth mid-combat with very little cooldown in between stealths. Even another MMO I’ve played that shall remain un-named had better balancing for thieves/rogues. In that MMO, there were very few skills where they could stealth mid combat and they were on long cooldowns. I was just against a thief that was stealthing every 10 secs or so. That’s just asinine. In PvP in this game, thief seems the carebear class, because all you have to do is stab ppl in the back for 15k+ dmg and stealth every 10 secs.

The problem is that you’re bringing in conceptions from other games and classes that work entirely differently. In the context of GW2, stealth is not a long-term limited-use skill used to set up ambushes or open combat. Stealth is a short duration combat tool that grants access to from-stealth attacks, prevents targeting, and can be traited for other short-term benefits. In other games, stealth usually means you can’t directly attack the stealthed person, whereas in GW2 it just means you have to aim your attacks instead of letting tab-target’s autoaim do it for you. “Stealthing every 10 seconds or so” sounds powerful if you impress upon it your notions of what stealth is from other games (an expensive and powerful mechanic), when in GW2 it is every 10 seconds for a 3 second effect that doesn’t even prevent damage.

Could GW2 stealth be converted into a stealth system similar to those found in other games? Sure. But that’d also mean GW2’s stealth would need to gain things like 100 % evasion to direct attacks, from-stealth attacks would have to be massively buffed to account for the new rarity of stealth, stealth traits would need buffs for the same reason, etc. Of course, people don’t actually want that, they want stealth to be as rare and expensive as it is in some other games while continuing to be as weak and short-term as it is in GW2.

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

It seems to me that the thread is not so much a thief thread as it is a Cloak and Dagger, and culling thread when you look at the most valid points. The getting killed while downed issue may be aggravating, but I can’t support that argument. I think if C&D were tweaked slightly then a lot of complaining would stop.

I would also encourage thieves in general to experiment a little more with builds, there are more weapons out there than dual daggers and dual pistols my stealthy bros!

I will just keep rolling along on my tank thief, killing you all slowly but surely.

Cactus.2710:

Archonis.7249:

Aberrant.6749:

Archonis.7249:

KensaiZen.3740:

FourTwenty.4268:

KensaiZen.3740:

Actually, you don’t have a 3 second window. The thief is perma invisible due to culling. That or using the move where they Phase out and can’t be hit. That or your already dead.

Which magical 3 second window is this?

everyone agrees culling needs to be fixed. no thief is denying this

Which is why the class is broken. Activating a skill that allows you to have extra stealth intended or not is a broken mechanic.

Being able to outrun every class while stealthed is a broken mechanic.

Being able to do pretty much insta kill on clothes and insane damage to heavies and get a garaunteed get out of jail free class is a broken mechanic.

I understand how thieves should be played and that they need their stealth. But to be able to stealth through out an entire fight is a rubbish mechanic. You have dodges and phasing and teleportations/shadow step as evasion tactics. To add stealth in there is just taking the biscuit.

I think stealth should just be on a much longer cool down. At least this way the thief get their chance to do the assassination style they love to do but the draw back is they have to do it in a certain amount of time without a get out of jail free card. If they fail they can still GTFO of dodge quicker then any class in the game.

So you suggest nerfing Thief because of a bug in culling that affects everyone?

That is so kittening dumb, I don’t even know what to say to you now?

It nulifies the revealed debuff.
It allows thieves to remain perma-invis with ease.
It gives players leaving stealth extra time to get in free hits.

This is why thief is OP right now.

The things that were put in place to stop the thief from doing what it’s doing right now are broken due to bugs. These bugs won’t be dealt with for some time. They need to do a short term fix until the bugs are dealt with.

So yea… it does affect everyone. Just some more than others.

So your fix is to kitten us in every other part of the game?

I swear people need to proof read for such illogical posts.

Proof reading for illogical arguments doesn’t help much if those people can’t think logically in the first place. At least you have to give Aberrant credit for choosing an appropriate name for himself.

I suggested a fix that would break thief in all other parts of the game? Where did I suggest a fix at all in here? The only temporary fix I’ve suggested in other threads is to increase the revealed time so that thieves are visible for some amount of time… and then to roll that back once the main issue is resolved. Even with that, thieves would still be getting in those free initial hits.

Seriously… all I did was state how the current bugs help thieves more than other classes.

If you feel that the thief needs no working reveal debuff, little to no visible time, and the ability to get in free hits before they can be seen to function then that’s just sad…

I know a lot of thieves have become reliant on these bugs, but it’s not at all balanced, nor what the dev’s had intended.

I refuse to play my bug exploitative thief. It was my first 80 and I’ve been waiting a long long time for some fixes which have not come.

I want my thief to functioning properly.

You might want to consider rolling up an alt. If that’s what you need, it doesn’t sound like you’ll like thief at all once it’s working as intended. I on the other hand can’t wait.

Blrrgh.6908:

I would also encourage thieves in general to experiment a little more with builds, there are more weapons out there than dual daggers and dual pistols my stealthy bros!

I agree, although dual pistols is a pretty rare build and doesn’t synergize very well with stealth. The main reason that D/D builds are so common is that the brunt of the nerfs since release have weakened control/defensive/sustained damage thief builds moreso than the burst backstab build. Sword-based builds used to be more viable, for instance.

Relentliss.2170:

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

How do you envision a stealth counter mechanic? I think something similar to a stunbreak is in order. If someone wants to use a utility slot to counteract one use of a thief’s stealth, that wouldn’t be out of line. The problem is that the majority of counter stealth mechanic suggestions are akin to “stealth goes away if the thief takes damage”, which easily negates the whole mechanic for almost zero opportunity cost.

Blrrgh.6908:

It seems to me that the thread is not so much a thief thread as it is a Cloak and Dagger, and culling thread when you look at the most valid points. The getting killed while downed issue may be aggravating, but I can’t support that argument. I think if C&D were tweaked slightly then a lot of complaining would stop.

I would also encourage thieves in general to experiment a little more with builds, there are more weapons out there than dual daggers and dual pistols my stealthy bros!

I will just keep rolling along on my tank thief, killing you all slowly but surely.

What’s there to experiment with? P/P is awful and S/P is only viable as a burst. S/D, with more conservative use of C&D and more reliance on tactical shadow steps would be interesting if flanking strike wasn’t so terrible.

Not saying C&D shouldn’t be looked at, because a heavier meta of D/D eles would be FAR FAR worse than dealing with some random ganking and culling frustration, but are very limited build options for thieves. You can play the build itself many different ways of course…but because so much of the two main builds (D/D, P/D) is loaded into stealth mechanics, it’s not easy to find a happy medium of balance.

I will say that imo the shortbow is underused and forces the thief into a different type of cat and mouse game, which to me is more ultimately rewarding. This requires thief players to take it on themselves to push the limits of their class in non-optimal damage builds, something which I do not see happening. Thieves don’t have to play a dps/spike role to be effective in WvW. They don’t even have to kill anyone to make a huge impact for their team. This is all biased due to the fact that I am a WvW player, in an organized WvW guild, on a fairly well organized WvW server.

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

How do you envision a stealth counter mechanic? I think something similar to a stunbreak is in order. If someone wants to use a utility slot to counteract one use of a thief’s stealth, that wouldn’t be out of line. The problem is that the majority of counter stealth mechanic suggestions are akin to “stealth goes away if the thief takes damage”, which easily negates the whole mechanic for almost zero opportunity cost.

No regain Initiative during stealth
Remove stealth from some weapon abilities, make it tied more to class skills, thus giving it a CD

done

Relentliss.2170:

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

How do you envision a stealth counter mechanic? I think something similar to a stunbreak is in order. If someone wants to use a utility slot to counteract one use of a thief’s stealth, that wouldn’t be out of line. The problem is that the majority of counter stealth mechanic suggestions are akin to “stealth goes away if the thief takes damage”, which easily negates the whole mechanic for almost zero opportunity cost.

No regain Initiative during stealth
Remove stealth from some weapon abilities, make it tied more to class skills, thus giving it a CD

done

Congratulations, you’ve successfully made BS burst specs and DB Condition build’s thief’s only viable specs, effectively forcing all thieves to go D/D if they want to perform effectively.

What if ANet programmed it so that even with culling, thieves and mesmers are prioritized to show up first over other classes?

Dual.8953:

Relentliss.2170:

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

How do you envision a stealth counter mechanic? I think something similar to a stunbreak is in order. If someone wants to use a utility slot to counteract one use of a thief’s stealth, that wouldn’t be out of line. The problem is that the majority of counter stealth mechanic suggestions are akin to “stealth goes away if the thief takes damage”, which easily negates the whole mechanic for almost zero opportunity cost.

No regain Initiative during stealth
Remove stealth from some weapon abilities, make it tied more to class skills, thus giving it a CD

done

Congratulations, you’ve successfully made BS burst specs and DB Condition build’s thief’s only viable specs, effectively forcing all thieves to go D/D if they want to perform effectively.

Don’t see how it would. That is all people run anyways. Would fix a lot of issues. Not sure how its fair that every other class in the game must run a tank spec just because your OP… fix one class to make all the others better.

To go further.
Bring the theif nerfs from spvp to WvW.
Make spamming any ability cost more and more initiative with each cast removing HS spam.

TBH the reason the other weapons are not used is because they are only 1.5x better than everyone else’s and not 3x like the daggers.

Relentliss.2170:

Dual.8953:

Relentliss.2170:

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

How do you envision a stealth counter mechanic? I think something similar to a stunbreak is in order. If someone wants to use a utility slot to counteract one use of a thief’s stealth, that wouldn’t be out of line. The problem is that the majority of counter stealth mechanic suggestions are akin to “stealth goes away if the thief takes damage”, which easily negates the whole mechanic for almost zero opportunity cost.

No regain Initiative during stealth
Remove stealth from some weapon abilities, make it tied more to class skills, thus giving it a CD

done

Congratulations, you’ve successfully made BS burst specs and DB Condition build’s thief’s only viable specs, effectively forcing all thieves to go D/D if they want to perform effectively.

Don’t see how it would. That is all people run anyways. Would fix a lot of issues. Not sure how its fair that every other class in the game must run a tank spec just because your OP… fix one class to make all the others better.

To go further.
Bring the theif nerfs from spvp to WvW.
Make spamming any ability cost more and more initiative with each cast removing HS spam.

TBH the reason the other weapons are not used is because they are only 1.5x better than everyone else’s and not 3x like the daggers.

Here’s how it works. Cloak and dagger, is the lynchpin of P/D and S/D builds, P/D needing it for applying bleeds and S/D needing it to inflict Daze. Both builds require up-time to be effective, especially in S/D’s case. S/P and P/P are all unpopular sets and SB is kept for it’s very impressive utilities but despite that, not many players make builds focused on it. S/P used to be popular for it’s burst but since it’s nerf it’s been pretty much dropped off the map.
The reason D/D is left standing is BS builds are already on a cooldown due to their many boons and DB because it requires no set up. Upon thinking about it, D/P may see a slight rise, but it’d likely be only as it’s own BS build.

zen.6091:

S/P is only viable as a burst.

I could hardly disagree more – look at the control options you have – cripple; immobilize; stun; daze (a high velocity, insta-cast, ranged daze no less); AoE blindness.

Shadowstep (sword 2) is cheap enough to spam almost constantly, is an un-interruptable gap-closer, breaks all stuns, and removes a condition… oh, and it immobilizes on-hit – something most builds struggle to counter.

Headshot is the terror of anyone trying to use a channeled ability – oh, you try to cast a heal on yourself? pop Trying again huh? pop Don’t need to worry about leaving it off cooldown for a special occasion, spam away.

Black powder shot… well, it’s a smoke combo field, projectile combo finisher, and AoE blind, do I need to elaborate more?

Pistol whip is a fine interrupt (stun), and it’s many hits (9 IIRC) are quite handy for proccing on-crit effects (like initiative regen); as a ‘burst’ skill it’s… poor, might as well auto-attack. Hasted it’s downright inescapable.

As well as being extremely difficult to pin-down and put conditions on, some builds are utterly helpless against the S/P Thief, and burst damage has squat to do with it (doesn’t hurt though!). Feel free to stack that Vit/Toughness and initiative regen traits, you are quite competitive and survivable even in the complete absence of any stealth skills whatsoever.

It is a matter of skill. Noob thief or just a thief is not a problem. But good thief… He could kill you, your teammate and a guy who was just running with you. I met such a thief. It was totally impossible to kill him. I dont know how good were those two guys, but they were killed and me so… The same thing with mesmers. Mesmer is a free kill, but when mesmer’s skill reaches some point, he becomes unkillable.
Anet should change some mechanics so noobs wouldn’t be a free frag, and skilled guys wouldn’t be ubstopable…

Stealth stomping: Earlier today I was following this zerg to a siege in EB since my guild wasn’t on. We faced off an enemy zerg at a distance and I got downed due to previous focus fire and conditions. I was in the middle/back of our zerg and figured I would be rezzed any second since I was at about 1600-1800 range from the enemy zerg. Instead I got stomped. The Thief reappeared seconds later, 1200 range away from me and ran to the enemy zerg.

So no, stealth stomping isn’t something that only works in 1v1.

So basically the Thief finished you before your teammates bothered to get you up, by successfully making it into the middle of your zerg, then infiltrated back to friendly forces, while the 2 forces where pew pewing each other at range.

Dual.8953:

Relentliss.2170:

Tulisin.6945:

Relentliss.2170:

I would argue that this game has copied Moba game’s mechanics. In Moba games there are items that weaken stealth. If there were none of these items, as there are in this game, everyone would have to go tank or stealth themselves just to survive. And this is exactly what has happened. Clearly, stealth in its present form is OP and culling is being abused terribly, making it worse.

How do you envision a stealth counter mechanic? I think something similar to a stunbreak is in order. If someone wants to use a utility slot to counteract one use of a thief’s stealth, that wouldn’t be out of line. The problem is that the majority of counter stealth mechanic suggestions are akin to “stealth goes away if the thief takes damage”, which easily negates the whole mechanic for almost zero opportunity cost.

No regain Initiative during stealth
Remove stealth from some weapon abilities, make it tied more to class skills, thus giving it a CD

done

Congratulations, you’ve successfully made BS burst specs and DB Condition build’s thief’s only viable specs, effectively forcing all thieves to go D/D if they want to perform effectively.

Which is what the majority of people don’t understand when they give suggestions for mechanical stealth nerfs. Most suggestions would result in forcing even more thieves into the complained-about builds because even though they’d be nerfed a little bit, every other viable build would be nerfed even more.

I find it funny how people call WoW a broken kitten game (which it is), and then say anet should make gw more like wow. Hmmmm

kbenton.4915:

I find it funny how people call WoW a broken kitten game (which it is), and then say anet should make gw more like wow. Hmmmm

I thought wow did a good job with stealth though. They didn’t have permastealthed killing enemies before the enemies could ever defend themselves.

A thread a few days back asked why so many bunker builds are popular in wvw… the one answer is thieves… if one class can make every person in wvw want to try bunkering there is a big problem

Unfortunately thieves are great at taking advantage of culling in WvW but no better than average in other areas, tournaments included. So both buffing and nerfing them are not good options. The only solution is fixing culling.

Columba.9730:

kbenton.4915:

I find it funny how people call WoW a broken kitten game (which it is), and then say anet should make gw more like wow. Hmmmm

I thought wow did a good job with stealth though. They didn’t have permastealthed killing enemies before the enemies could ever defend themselves.

Excuse me? WoW had stunlocking.

Stop trolling, please.

magicthighs.5372:

Columba.9730:

kbenton.4915:

I find it funny how people call WoW a broken kitten game (which it is), and then say anet should make gw more like wow. Hmmmm

I thought wow did a good job with stealth though. They didn’t have permastealthed killing enemies before the enemies could ever defend themselves.

Excuse me? WoW had stunlocking.

Stop trolling, please.

not trolling. I was addressing stealth, not other things. stop the personal attacks please.

covenn.7165:

The reason they are crying is:

2. Even a bad player can be successful with a thief

This is false. Either you’ve never played a thief before or you’ve had the misfortune to have met one or two really good thieves while ignoring the other hundred that you crushed under your foot.

I love thieves. A lot. But I can tell you that, after all of this time, I still am nowhere near my idea of “successful”. With the build I currently run, I generally can

1. Put up a good 1v1 fight against enemies (though a win isn’t guaranteed)
2. Use hit-and-run tactics on a mob to pick off a few enemies here and there.
3. Make my thief do mediocre damage, but ready to stealth into oblivion if necessary.

depending on what skill set I have on my bar going into battle.

However, I am far from saying that my thief is “successful”. I still die. A lot. I still find myself making a mistake and then getting chopped to pieces by an enemy warrior’s Hundred Blades. I still find that one nooby bunker guardian with all the best gear that will never- ever- die, and have to find myself retreating from battle because they’re OP.
And that’s me. I’ve been a fairly dedicated thief since September.

Now, looking at around 90% of other thieves, I can guarantee you that the first thing that pops into my mind is not “ermahgerd too OP”. Uh, no. In fact, in WvW, I find that thieves tend to be one of the- if not the- weakest possible class you can find enemy players playing as. A good thief has mastered their stealth mechanic, initiative, etc to make for either a very crude (D/D :p) or graceful (IMO, S/P) attacker. Either way, they turn out to be quite excellent, but even then, they are nowhere near unstoppable. However, most thieves are really bad, nooby ones who see posts like this on the forums and think “Wow, if I choose a thief as my main, I’ll totally blow the kitten out of everybody!”. Then, they get onto the field and are stomped into the ground by literally every other class. Thieves require a lot of skill.

In short: this is just a lie. Most thieves are awful. There are a few good ones. Just because you lost to a couple of those doesn’t mean you have to come whining to us to tell us that thieves are OP.

Sorry, but 95% of the players disagree. witness the 3000 post thread. Even most thieves admit that they are laughably opd in wvw.

sahamk.5672:

It is a matter of skill. Noob thief or just a thief is not a problem. But good thief… He could kill you, your teammate and a guy who was just running with you. I met such a thief. It was totally impossible to kill him. I dont know how good were those two guys, but they were killed and me so… The same thing with mesmers. Mesmer is a free kill, but when mesmer’s skill reaches some point, he becomes unkillable.
Anet should change some mechanics so noobs wouldn’t be a free frag, and skilled guys wouldn’t be ubstopable…

To me this shows that skill matters. This is a good thing. If anything I wish they would make skill matter MORE than numbers in WvW (stupid mass res’s from downed state).

Btw… I’ve also had people whisper me on my guard and on my eng and tell me that the class is OP… and yet I’m able to smash most other players who are playing the supposedly OP class. It’s a skill thing, not a class thing. Thankfully A-net has said that they don’t balance based on the lower/mid levels of skill.

Note I’m not trying to say I’m a godlike player with any class… just that I’m better than most randoms in WvW. It also took some time/practice/thinking on how I can counter other classes.

jportell.2197:

A thread a few days back asked why so many bunker builds are popular in wvw… the one answer is thieves… if one class can make every person in wvw want to try bunkering there is a big problem

I find that bunker builds are nearly useless and are just a crutch for bad players. I can mitigate/avoid/deal more damage in a balanced set up Vs. some one who just refuses to learn to react to attacks with something other than passive hp/toughness. That doesn’t therefore mean thief (or any other class) is OP… it does show how many people are unwilling to practice and learn though…