Guild Wars 2

Ross Biddle.2367:

Zephyrus.9680:

+1 to OP.

I’ve noticed even fighting 1v1 there’s always (or usually?) like 1 second of ‘culling’ when coming out of stealth where they basically get the first couple hits in before even appearing and it’s not that culling from large numbers of players on the screen.

Last night on my thief I took down 2 ballistas from full in the middle of about 6 people spamming all over. Took 5+ mins and I didn’t die. On the way out, a couple of them left, I killed 2 of the people (probably 1v3 don’t remember), and escaped with my life. Perhaps a little luck too but this shouldn’t really be possible to get away with, with that many people doing all they could to stop me. And this was not the numbers where true culling happens.

With my build now (not D/D), 1v2s are generally not difficult and 1v3s (lvl 80s) are very possible (depends on classes), given enough time.

Blind, block, and dodge rolls are soft counters that can prolong a fight but some harder counters are needed to stealth. Like a conditional mechanic that would bring them out of stealth (say if they took 20% of their total hp in that instance of being hidden).

At least disable the initial cast of Shadow Step while CCed because that just seems like a game breaking escape skill to me.

TL;DR: Reworking the stealth/escape mechanics on theif are needed. More lazy damage nerfs are NOT needed.

IMO.

How about a stealth CD with a compounding factor. So the more times a thief goes into stealth during a single battle, the greater the stealth cooldown is each time after going back into stealth. To remove the “drop your balls and flee” BS, tie in a speed movement penalty (think of it as fatigue) that’ll mess with their run speed which would allow them to abuse fleeing to reset the fight (and the compounding stealth cooldown).

LoL, I was ALMOST with you til the running part. I wouldn’t hold my breath as even devs have stated they want the thief to be the class that can decide a fights over, and simply run away.

Columba.9730:

3k armor and thief hits me for >10.5 k. could never see him. how is this balanced?

My thief has 2k armor and gets hit for 10k with backstabs, you probably had stacks on vulnerability.

Sometimes I think people who don’t think thieves are a problem are playing a different game. I just don’t get it.

I play WvW almost exclusively and have just gotten used to the thief tax – i.e. I’m going to pay repairs a few times an hour from being ganked. I’m mostly roam alone or scout.

Last week I got ganked for 24.1k. Steal, backstab (then I mistakenly pressed #3 instead of mist form), heart seeker, heart seeker. Total time was about 3 seconds, I literally had time to press 1 key. Never saw the thief till they spiked me. Open plains west of Bay, just the 2 of us. If culling affects large groups as anet says, then culling wasn’t an issue.

I’m a d/d ele. in full exotic pvt gear. 1622 toughness, 2542 armor. Aside from food buffs that the maximum I can have. I’ve 1v1’d a lot in duels and have about a 50% record now, so I know I’m not terrible.

The way I see it:
ele – great movement, crappy damage, no stealth
thief – great movement, great damage, stealth

On my setup under fire attunement which is “heavy damage”, fire grab is the largest damage I can do, and the tooltip is 1103 (or 1765 against burning foes). Or I can try to cast my other “big” attack – churning earth. 3 3/4 second cast time, can’t move while casting, obvious animation, and the kicker? It hits for a whopping 2049.

So I had to decided – quit WvW or live with it. I really don’t think anet will fix it – they don’t see it as a problem. So I just live with it. Yeah it stinks, yeah it’s unbalanced and unfair, but WvW is still fun on the whole.

Columba.9730:

Adaneshade.2409:

Columba.9730:

Samhayn.2385:

Columba.9730:

Other games have stealth break on damage and break upon attacking. I don’t understand why this game made stealth even more powerful than it is in other games. Even in other games stealth causes mass complaints although it’s less powerful.

Stealth lasts 4 sec (speced) unless its shadows refuge. No other game limits stealth to this short of a duration. Hence the reason it does not break on damage.
If it broke on damage it would be useless and we would be low hp/ low armor warriors with no group support.

I don’t buy it. I have a top of the line system and I rarely see a thief at all when he attacks me.

I don’t care how “top of the line” your system is, you can’t solve server side issues >.<

That proves my point. Because of culling, stealth lasts much longer than 4 seconds and can be permanent. Tab targeting doesn’t work either, so don’t tell me to try that. I agree with the guy who said to fix culling first then adjust. The problem is that I have low confidence that it can be fixed, and I am tired of waiting for balance in WvWvW. Thieves essentially make WvWvW unplayable for me right now. How long should we wait?

You still don’t get it, and either don’t have the slightest clue about how anything works, are so desperately attached to your extremely inaccurate preconceptions, or (most likely) both.

There is not an issue with stealth. There is an issue with how stealth interacts with culling. Culling is being fixed, so until culling is fixed, no rational adjustments can be made to thief. Essentially, you’re demanding that since drunk drivers kill people in car accidents, we need to ban cars. If the drunks didn’t have cars, they couldn’t kill people in car accidents, so we’d fix the problem!

Lol, you claim to have been raged by a thief as a D/D ele in PVT gear, you didn’t bother to dodge? Use shocking aura? Mist form? Armor of earth? Lightning flash? Back draft? So many moves to counter backstab thief, but you just let them rage you. You were either afk or something else was going on, cause if you are anything other than a glass cannon D/D and are paying attention there is plenty you can do against back stab thieves.

Syeria.4812:

Columba.9730:

Adaneshade.2409:

Columba.9730:

Samhayn.2385:

Columba.9730:

Other games have stealth break on damage and break upon attacking. I don’t understand why this game made stealth even more powerful than it is in other games. Even in other games stealth causes mass complaints although it’s less powerful.

Stealth lasts 4 sec (speced) unless its shadows refuge. No other game limits stealth to this short of a duration. Hence the reason it does not break on damage.
If it broke on damage it would be useless and we would be low hp/ low armor warriors with no group support.

I don’t buy it. I have a top of the line system and I rarely see a thief at all when he attacks me.

I don’t care how “top of the line” your system is, you can’t solve server side issues >.<

That proves my point. Because of culling, stealth lasts much longer than 4 seconds and can be permanent. Tab targeting doesn’t work either, so don’t tell me to try that. I agree with the guy who said to fix culling first then adjust. The problem is that I have low confidence that it can be fixed, and I am tired of waiting for balance in WvWvW. Thieves essentially make WvWvW unplayable for me right now. How long should we wait?

You still don’t get it, and either don’t have the slightest clue about how anything works, are so desperately attached to your extremely inaccurate preconceptions, or (most likely) both.

There is not an issue with stealth. There is an issue with how stealth interacts with culling. Culling is being fixed, so until culling is fixed, no rational adjustments can be made to thief. Essentially, you’re demanding that since drunk drivers kill people in car accidents, we need to ban cars. If the drunks didn’t have cars, they couldn’t kill people in car accidents, so we’d fix the problem!

First – why is it that many thieves have admitted that they can spec for perma stealth?

Secondly, I do get it. What you don’t seem to understand is that above all other classes, thieves far and away benefit the most from culling, because they can us it to create perma stealth.

Third, why can’t adjustments be made ONLY in wvw until culling is fixed? I’ve seen no proof that culling can be fixed. I’ve seen no promise that it will be fixed, and I’ve seen no date by when it shall be fixed. How long is reasonable to allow thieves to disproportionately benefit from culling? All other classes eventually become visible. Thieves often can and do remain invisible during entire fights.

You are desparate to preserve god mode for you thief. That I DO understand.

We’re not playing a different game. But we know how to best thieves. I have lost yesterday to one thief only. And it was a fair fight, the thief wasn’t pure glas cannon and I knew in the moment, the battle shifted to his favor, that I made a mistake (premature shatter + missclick) and I was gone^^

I can only repeat: learn2play!

The eles I see do big dmg and have great healing. Don’t trust the tooltips, they are mostly wrong, go out and see the numbers ur attacks do on the opponent.

I like to fight thieves. Not because I beat them all the time, but because it is about anticipation and tactics. If u can anticipate the thieves moves, and mostly u can, then they are easy foes. Concerning backstab: All classes have some kind of dmg immunity or evade skills, push back or stuff like that, that can be used even in daze and are mostly also stun breakers. so u hit one button and u’re out of it. Yes u need reaction, but if u don’t have that, u will be owned anyway. And why do u need tab targeting? Just cast ur skills in the direction where u’re looking. It is weird, why can I target thieves who come out of stealth (and i don’t see them rendered) and others claim they can’t. Either ur playing a different game or u make smth wrong…

Wow, it’s kind of funny and sad to see all the thieves coming here to rush in and say they’re not overpowered it’s just everyone elses lack of skill. I sure wish I could hit backstab and heartseeker 1-2x and instantly incap people.

Columba.9730:

You are desparate to preserve god mode for you thief. That I DO understand.

Rofl. I have a thief. At lvl 50 or so. Didn’t touch her for weeks. Why am I still interested that thieves don’t get nerfed? Because it is not necessary imho.

Ppl claiming thieves are imba should make a video of how them fighting thieves (from the beginning to the end) and show it. Because I believe, if they do, we will be able to see what was the real issue. And if my experience is any indication: the defeat was brought by a lack of skill and reaction.

Desterion.6407:

Wow, it’s kind of funny and sad to see all the thieves coming here to rush in and say they’re not overpowered it’s just everyone elses lack of skill. I sure wish I could hit backstab and heartseeker 1-2x and instantly incap people.

U couldn’t show better, that u have no understanding of thief mechanics…

well you didn’t address my points, but whatever. I don’t think having a 50th thief makes you objective…

Ninya.3942:

Lol, you claim to have been raged by a thief as a D/D ele in PVT gear, you didn’t bother to dodge? Use shocking aura? Mist form? Armor of earth? Lightning flash? Back draft? So many moves to counter backstab thief, but you just let them rage you. You were either afk or something else was going on, cause if you are anything other than a glass cannon D/D and are paying attention there is plenty you can do against back stab thieves.

I was stunned after the first 2 attacks which came instantly. Of all the things you listed only mist form or lightning flash would have saved me. I said I hit Shocking Aura by mistake – mistake because I was stunned it didn’t go off. Lightning flash needs a ground target to get off so it’s hard to pull of very quickly when you don’t expect it.

So, aside from mist form, exactly what is it that I need to do against backstab thieves?

TyPin.9860:

I can only repeat: learn2play!

The eles I see do big dmg and have great healing. Don’t trust the tooltips, they are mostly wrong, go out and see the numbers ur attacks do on the opponent.

The tooltips are not wrong, they represent an average of the weapon attack vs. an average 80 (I forget the actual armor value they use for the calcs, but it’s on the wiki). It gives you an idea how much damage a skill does even though in actual combat obviously it changes depending on the stats of your opponent.

No d/d eles I know of would ever say they do big damage. Heck even glass canon staff eles don’t do big damage. I’ve dueled other d/d eles and we give up after 5-10 minutes because we can out damage the other so much that they can’t heal through it.

I a dueled a warrior and won twice. His burst was amazing, he’d burn me from 17k hp to about 4k in 2 seconds, but I could then create distance and heal up. Took me 5+ minutes to eventually wear him down with my 1k hits.

Look at the fight club videos, there’s a d/d ele vs. guardian that’s 25 minutes long.

Bah, useless arguing on the internet.

Columba.9730:

well you didn’t address my points, but whatever. I don’t think having a 50th thief makes you objective…

u have no thief? Now u’re objective? Show me a video of what u’re talking about. I fought those “perma stealth” thieves, they couldn’t best me. Much stealth, some condition dmg, but no survivability. Maybe it’s because I apply nice dmg + much bleading + confusion + vulnerability + might stacks + daze + immobilize (with full rampager)… took me weeks to find this build and I’m loving it. Maybe it’s more like Rock, Paper, Scissors: some builds just best others.

U can’t be effective against everything and have to know what fights u should avoid…

@naleb: I am raising my own ele now. I’ll see if what u say is true. It just doesn’t fit my experience with them. I find fighting ele actually more annoying then thieves, not meaning that they are too strong. They have but a insane survivability. Yet, as a mesmer, to chase smth is a pain in the kitten

Doomdesire.9365:

Causic.3798:

Doomdesire.9365:

Columba.9730:

Samhayn.2385:

Columba.9730:

Samhayn.2385:

Columba.9730:

Other games have stealth break on damage and break upon attacking. I don’t understand why this game made stealth even more powerful than it is in other games. Even in other games stealth causes mass complaints although it’s less powerful.

Stealth lasts 4 sec (speced) unless its shadows refuge. No other game limits stealth to this short of a duration. Hence the reason it does not break on damage.
If it broke on damage it would be useless and we would be low hp/ low armor warriors with no group support.

I don’t buy it. I have a top of the line system and I rarely see a thief at all when he attacks me.

You don’t buy what? Stealth durations? Go to the wiki and look it up

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_thief_skills

If you are not seeing them its culling, it’s an Anet side problem and has nothing to do with how good you computer is.

ok, so since i can’t tab target them, and I can’t see them, how is it different than stealth again since they can stealth soon thereafter and I never can target them?

It isn’t, but why is that a reason to nerf a class, when culling is already being worked on? Opinions are nice, but yours isn’t helping. Be patient. Wait, and it will all get fixed eventually.

You don’t nerf a class because of a broken game mechanic that can be fixed. You fix that game mechanic.

BTW, you can tab target them, as it neglects culling, but tab targetting only works on targets in your line of sight, where he is not likely to be.

I think your looking at this the wrong way. If a class is broken as is don’t you think it would be fair to every other class that it is temporarily balanced to the current situation. I see no reason people cant exploit other glitches (and get banned for it) but when they exploit this (yes, it is an exploit) ANet just looks the other way :/ Seems like they have either high hopes of fixing this soon, or they are just big fans of Thieves. I personally think they’ve taken much longer than they should have to fix this and expect them to take even longer (for something that should have been fixed to start).

Edit: I would like to add that this is coming from someone who ONLY WvWs. As it stands its more frustrating than fun to play with current culling issues.

But why when culling is going to be fixed soon anyways? If you read the post, they already said a lot of the changes were being tested and going to be rolled out when ready. Anet isn’t going to ninja nerf the thief anytime soon, even if they decided it needed a nerf, it’d probably be implemented at the same time around culling.

If culling if fixed, and thieves are still “deemed OP”, then we move from there. I also don’t believe you realize what culling is and what exploiting is in relation to this. Culling will happen whether you go into stealth or not in wvw, with no choice from the thief player. Culling or not, thieves are going to utilize full stealth. Me, and many of my fellow thieves don’t go out into the field using stealth thinking (hey, I’m going to abuse culling!). It’s more like “Going to use stealth, because I have it!”. Culling itself isn’t an exploit, it’s a deliberate system put into place in order to have WvW run more smoothly, and this is the side effect. Anet is working on introducing optimizations in order to remove the culling system. They could if they wanted to right now, except WvW would be unplayable in zerg fights.

All is really explained in the link I posted earlier.

I dont think “soon” will come as soon as you think, so id atleast like a temporary solution. And to the second bold point, I understand you dont “plan” on taking advantage of it. It is much like Rangers using Guard up walls, ANet has never mentioned it being against the rules, but I still do not feel it should be done regardless.
EDIT:
I dont mean for thieves not to use stealth till its fixed, that would be absurd.
I dont blame the thieves as much as I do ANet for not having done anything about it. (Ranger Guard up walls as well, if that is indeed being exploited. Otherwise point is null.)

TyPin.9860:

Columba.9730:

well you didn’t address my points, but whatever. I don’t think having a 50th thief makes you objective…

u have no thief? Now u’re objective? Show me a video of what u’re talking about. I fought those “perma stealth” thieves, they couldn’t best me. Much stealth, some condition dmg, but no survivability. Maybe it’s because I apply nice dmg + much bleading + confusion + vulnerability + might stacks + daze + immobilize (with full rampager)… took me weeks to find this build and I’m loving it. Maybe it’s more like Rock, Paper, Scissors: some builds just best others.

U can’t be effective against everything and have to know what fights u should avoid…

@naleb: I am raising my own ele now. I’ll see if what u say is true. It just doesn’t fit my experience with them. I find fighting ele actually more annoying then thieves, not meaning that they are too strong. They have but a insane survivability. Yet, as a mesmer, to chase smth is a pain in the kitten

I am not complaining about any other class, so yes, I am more objective. Secondly, is your answer to just not fight thieves. Ok, I have my answer.

TyPin.9860:

@naleb: I am raising my own ele now. I’ll see if what u say is true. It just doesn’t fit my experience with them. I find fighting ele actually more annoying then thieves, not meaning that they are too strong. They have but a insane survivability. Yet, as a mesmer, to chase smth is a pain in the kitten

Yeah, I have a hard time with mesmers. Today I was killed quickly by one. I checked the combat log and added up all the damage it said the mesmer did to me. Came out to 2.8k total vs. my hp of 17k. After talking it over with guild mates I realized I killed myself via confusion. Mesmer probably chuckled over it.

But now I know. I used to think I just had to chase down and kill the “real” mesmer and that was it. Now I’ll watch the conditions I have on me closer.

However, that fight was probably 1-2 minutes long. I had chances to escape even. I knew the mesmer was there and I realized my mistake afterwards. I feel like this might not happen so quickly the next mesmer I meet.

With thieves it’s either 2-4 hits and I’m dead or 2 hits, I react and they run. I’d really like to see all the videos of these thief killers so I can learn.

Not speaking for every Thief out there, I don’t just take on everyone I spot. I usually observe how players attack sentries/camp before I decide to move in, usually marking those who don’t dodge much & have habit of spamming ‘1’ attacks.

Those who can down me when I’m in stealth are those who know how to use defensive skills, attack and evade appropriately. Going in circles while attacking blindly won’t help, spamming dodge button won’t get you far, and these make it easy for me to predict which direction you will be heading.

I’m not that skilled to remain permastealth, and I can get hit during 1-2 sec between stealth. The damage are not that great because most players wasted their skills while panicking when I’m in stealth, so the moment I’m visible, I assume the skill cooldown allows only ‘1’ attack to be used on me.

I’m not worried about culling issue being fixed, players who panic & can’t think straight are still easy picking even additional 1sec visibility is given to them. I second above, Learn2play.

“We currently use server-side report culling to limit the number of characters that any given game client is aware of. By limiting the number of characters that we report to any given client we also limit the bandwidth used (by the server and the client) and avoid situations where the client is overwhelmed by the number of characters that need to be processed and rendered. While this system has some obvious advantages, and it works well in PvE, the large battles that are the signature of WvW tend to highlight the deficiencies of this approach.”

Nowhere in this anet post does it indicate that server side culling has any effect on a 1v1, away from other players fight. Does anyone have a direct reference to where anet has said they expect their culling fix to address thieves ability to stay stealthed longer than they should? Does anyone have a reference to where anet has said anything about issues with thieves?

Theives are easy to beat, quit complaining. I don’t even play a theif, most of them are glass cannon #2 spamming dummies that die when touched.

nalenb.1425:

Ninya.3942:

Lol, you claim to have been raged by a thief as a D/D ele in PVT gear, you didn’t bother to dodge? Use shocking aura? Mist form? Armor of earth? Lightning flash? Back draft? So many moves to counter backstab thief, but you just let them rage you. You were either afk or something else was going on, cause if you are anything other than a glass cannon D/D and are paying attention there is plenty you can do against back stab thieves.

I was stunned after the first 2 attacks which came instantly. Of all the things you listed only mist form or lightning flash would have saved me. I said I hit Shocking Aura by mistake – mistake because I was stunned it didn’t go off. Lightning flash needs a ground target to get off so it’s hard to pull of very quickly when you don’t expect it.

So, aside from mist form, exactly what is it that I need to do against backstab thieves?

Shocking aura is able to be used as long as you are not dazed. The only thing he could do to stun you is basilisk venom, in which case all your can trips could get you away. This includes armor of earth and cleansing fire which I did not list.

Looks like lack of skill here…case closed.

nalenb.1425:

Sometimes I think people who don’t think thieves are a problem are playing a different game. I just don’t get it.

I play WvW almost exclusively and have just gotten used to the thief tax – i.e. I’m going to pay repairs a few times an hour from being ganked. I’m mostly roam alone or scout.

Last week I got ganked for 24.1k. Steal, backstab (then I mistakenly pressed #3 instead of mist form), heart seeker, heart seeker. Total time was about 3 seconds, I literally had time to press 1 key. Never saw the thief till they spiked me. Open plains west of Bay, just the 2 of us. If culling affects large groups as anet says, then culling wasn’t an issue.

I’m a d/d ele. in full exotic pvt gear. 1622 toughness, 2542 armor. Aside from food buffs that the maximum I can have. I’ve 1v1’d a lot in duels and have about a 50% record now, so I know I’m not terrible.

The way I see it:
ele – great movement, crappy damage, no stealth
thief – great movement, great damage, stealth

On my setup under fire attunement which is “heavy damage”, fire grab is the largest damage I can do, and the tooltip is 1103 (or 1765 against burning foes). Or I can try to cast my other “big” attack – churning earth. 3 3/4 second cast time, can’t move while casting, obvious animation, and the kicker? It hits for a whopping 2049.

So I had to decided – quit WvW or live with it. I really don’t think anet will fix it – they don’t see it as a problem. So I just live with it. Yeah it stinks, yeah it’s unbalanced and unfair, but WvW is still fun on the whole.

Whilst I agree that thieves are ridiculous in WvW, possibly the last class that should be complaining are Eles, as they they present some of the same issues as thieves, in particular risk vs reward, when a fight goes bad for a D/D ele they share the same ability has a thief to decide to disengage, too much reward for too little risk, just like theives.

swilkers.5938:

So I have yet to see anything regarding the thief mechanics OR animations (anet culling) listed in the fixes as of late. I find it rather hard to digest that ANET would ignore the largest issue with WvW other than culling (self inflicted) that is apparent to me be ignored. Thieves are at this point are ruining WvW for the solo and low group contingent. Should a thief really be able to peramastealth a group of three and kill them and actually feel like they bested those players? It’s completely ridiculous that this happens.

The reason for this is they profession balance based on hard data from fair team based fights where all players know what they are doing and tend to be more skilled (tPvP mostly).

WvW is almost never that situation there are so many variables (level, gear, game knowledge, skill, culling) they would never make balance decisions based on it directly. Certainly not on anecdotal QQ posted here every day from players who are obviously lacking mechanics knowledge.

Thieves are well balanced if everyone is on an even playing field. Go to any class forum and you will find people in there who love killing thieves and hardly ever die to them. Make a post asking for advice and you will see them come out of the woodwork. This game actually requires you know everything about your profession and everything about the profession you are fighting to be truly successful.

Kaizer.7135:

I never have a problem with other thieves with my own, they actually drop faster than any other class I face. With my warrior it’s even more simple to kill thieves, dodge when they get within 1200 for their mug ( you can tell a Backstab thief when you see Basilisk go up) stun, then burst. Dead within 3 secs, if it’s a P/D thief, time their C&D, make sure you have a purge and stun or K/D. Dodge the C&D, stun, burst. So easy, yet people are just too bad to admit they never spend time trying to counter and just QQ on forums.

Cool bro, not all classes have the burst of a warrior or a thief, meaning the thief will just stealth before you kill him and then it’s time for you to run.

I like these threads.

Thieves are fine its basically people need to react faster when full GC or change up their spec to more pvt gear.

Had some fights with a thief from adrenaline junkies (actual guild name was with troll letters in it, I think) from gandarra last night and (assuming he didn’t use some sort of timing macro to autoexecute abilities) he did fight well. He was p/p and I think his main strategy in 1v1 was to blind and cripple to kite while dealing damage, coming out of stealth and getting health back when hitting people. Thinking about the fight and why I lost, I realized I had 1. no condition removal ability readied. 2. slow moving projectiles on my part which leads to 3. having to deal with respectable damage, seemingly being applied while he is in stealth; actually being applied by him while in the process of coming out of stealth for about a second or more, while I can not target (click or tab) the thief due to culling, and when I finally could target, my projectiles were easy to dodge for him and stealth it was again. Rinse and repeat.
At that time I wasn’t using the auto targeting option (look in the right direction, see to it that there are no other hostile creatures closer, apply abilities when shots come out of stealth, game should auto target), which left me with an almost non-existent window to play my profession, since my projectiles were hitting empty air once they arrived.
Bottom line, his rotation was solid (assuming it was legit) and predictable. I, although being almost the king of versatility (duh ._.), wasn’t prepared for him, tried nonetheless (why shouldn’t I) and failed.
I might have had a better chance if I would have been able to target him, but thats that.
Oh yeah, fought him as condition/elixir engi with decent gear, and being tired. ^^
Just reporting, no qq.

Lanthrudar.1437:

Heh, it’s amusing that the vast majority of people defending the current thief as-is, play one.. Surprising? Not really..

and they know the profession, and know how to counter it, unlike complainers that can only write bs on this board.

OmniPotentes.4817:

Funny I come across this thread just having logged off right after a thief that was standing what seamed like a mile away suddenly killed me in 3 seconds never to be seen again. Broken is broken. I’m out of WvW untill this gets fixed. Yes I know I need to learn to play my class or stay out of WvW or roll a thief.

Shadow trap, works all the time.

Columba.9730:

Doomdesire.9365:

Columba.9730:

Samhayn.2385:

Columba.9730:

Other games have stealth break on damage and break upon attacking. I don’t understand why this game made stealth even more powerful than it is in other games. Even in other games stealth causes mass complaints although it’s less powerful.

Stealth lasts 4 sec (speced) unless its shadows refuge. No other game limits stealth to this short of a duration. Hence the reason it does not break on damage.
If it broke on damage it would be useless and we would be low hp/ low armor warriors with no group support.

I don’t buy it. I have a top of the line system and I rarely see a thief at all when he attacks me.

Going to attempt to clear things up.

Attacks break stealth(well most, there are some bugs and attacks that don’t, such as caldrops and choking gas. Any direct attacks break stealth immediately, the ones you are experiencing). The reason why he still seems to be invisible is because of culling, which is being worked on and hopefully fixed in the future. If as system’s worked as intended, as soon as the thief strikes you should see him. Unfortunately do to the nature of running hundreds of players on a server, culling has to be put in place to prevent performance drops across the board.

No, they don’t break stealth. Maybe they are supposed to, but they don’t.

Oh yea, they dont. You serious ?

Daendur.2357:

Lanthrudar.1437:

Heh, it’s amusing that the vast majority of people defending the current thief as-is, play one.. Surprising? Not really..

and they know the profession, and know hot to counter it, unlike complainers that can only write bs on this board.

Also at this point in the game many people have multiple characters. I know I have a full account at least. The idea that you are tied to a single profession in this game doesn’t really hold water. It’s so easy to get to cap and get full exotics. Every profession is also highly accessible via sPvP if you want to try them out with different builds.

Saying Thieves are protecting Thieves isn’t that great of an argument. People who have Thieves tend to not have a major problem with them on any of their other professions either because they fully understand them.

The people who complain about culling and all that are playing the zerg game. I understand the frustration as I have seen it too. It just doesn’t exist anywhere else but massive zerg fights. Hopefully they fix it soon but changing stealth to compensate for culling screws over every thief who doesn’t zerg it up. Try fighting away from the commanders and crossed swords and culling doesn’t exist.

Daendur.2357:

Lanthrudar.1437:

Heh, it’s amusing that the vast majority of people defending the current thief as-is, play one.. Surprising? Not really..

and they know the profession, and know hot to counter it, unlike complainers that can only write bs on this board.

I counter hot usually with some cold and refreshing beverage. But isn’t that a bit offtopic?

Boomstin.3460:

Daendur.2357:

Lanthrudar.1437:

Heh, it’s amusing that the vast majority of people defending the current thief as-is, play one.. Surprising? Not really..

and they know the profession, and know hot to counter it, unlike complainers that can only write bs on this board.

I counter hot usually with some cold and refreshing beverage. But isn’t that a bit offtopic?

omg, really ?

Sixpax.8360:

Ninya.3942:

Josh P.1296:

I don’t normally complain about thieves, but since I saw this thread I’ll comment. Thieves don’t normally bother me in a 1v1 situation because you are aware and their moves become easy to read with good timing and me being a mesmer makes it easier too. But I do sort of have a problem with them in skirmishes. If you’re not aware thieves can burst you in less than 2 seconds. They can pop in and out of the battle near unnoticeable and then just burst people down again, rinse and repeat etc.

-This ss: took over 20k damage in less than 2 secs and im not even glass cannon (2.5k armor)

What’s your toughness? :P

To me it’s irrelevant how much armor, hp, or thoughness they have, they shouldn’t be going from 100% to 0 in less than 2 seconds (assuming they are lvl 80 with full exotics). That’s not even enough time to react once they’re on you. 11K damage in one hit… trebs don’t even do that much damage.

I have a glass cannon Mesmer build and I certainly can’t do that kind of damage to anyone even in triple the amount of time. Can you imagine if all glass cannon builds could do the same amount of burst damage that thieves can?

Just thought I would comment, both mesmer and warrior in glass cannon can do comparable damage to thief (though not nearly as safely). If you are running a zerker build with mesmer and you cannot deal that much damage in 3 seconds, its spec/playstyle issue.

A shatter build 4 clone shatter can hit around 3k per clone, which is 10-12k PBAOE, which you can cast while channelling sword two for 3-4k while invulnerable. Ignoring any additional burst that is a pretty close comparison, and all the mesmer damage is AOE, while the thief damage is single target. It seems reasonable they can do a little more burst because of that reason. Mesmer also gets a full invulerability skill just for being a mesmer.

Not defending stealth and how amazingly overpowered it is in controlling fights, coupled with the fact the revealed debuff does nothing in the current state of rendering. My primary issue is that the revealed debuff is just to short for how many stealth skills a thief has available and how short they are actually visible.

I think if you re-acquire target and you could see if you hit them while stealthed, thieves in their current state would be balanced. I really don’t see why I wouldn’t know if I was hitting something in the dark.

Just a note to thieves, , a lot of spells require a target to be activated. Running around swinging 500dmg auto attacks is ok, but when you have a button next to it that does 6k but you can’t press it because of culling it’s meh.

really get sick of hearing, you don’t need targets to use your spells

Ljiona.9142:

I think if you re-acquire target and you could see if you hit them while stealthed, thieves in their current state would be balanced. I really don’t see why I wouldn’t know if I was hitting something in the dark.

If you are a melee class that has a auto attack chain, you will continue to the next attack in the chain if you hit. My auto is a 3 part chain. I know I’m putting the hurt on and tracking a stealth thief when I see/hear all 3 animations go off.

Stiv.1820:

Ljiona.9142:

I think if you re-acquire target and you could see if you hit them while stealthed, thieves in their current state would be balanced. I really don’t see why I wouldn’t know if I was hitting something in the dark.

If you are a melee class that has a auto attack chain, you will continue to the next attack in the chain if you hit. My auto is a 3 part chain. I know I’m putting the hurt on and tracking a stealth thief when I see/hear all 3 animations go off.

I see a lot of people talking about this and it is something I want to get better at. I’m well aware that you can still attack invisible people and the chain will trigger as I use it all the time when I see a downed thief turn invisible. But for the tracking part maybe you can give me some tips. When a thief stealths do you just keep running forward in a straight line and attacking with the assumption that the thief will continue running in the same direction they were before they stealthed? Do you ever decide to turn left or right when tracking a stealthed thief, and if so how do you arrive at that decision? How do you account for thieves that dodge roll and do a 180 to go the complete opposite direction that they were going? I figure I must be missing something here with how often people mention that you can kill stealthed thieves with auto-attacks.

Stiv.1820:

Daendur.2357:

Lanthrudar.1437:

Heh, it’s amusing that the vast majority of people defending the current thief as-is, play one.. Surprising? Not really..

and they know the profession, and know hot to counter it, unlike complainers that can only write bs on this board.

Also at this point in the game many people have multiple characters.

Exactly. Some of us play various archetypes. I’ve recently geared my Thief in full Berserkers exotics (RainyThief backstab combo variant). However, since release I’ve dealt with Thieves from two perspectives: 1) Knight’s shout-heal Warrior defensively traited and 2) glassiest glass cannon staff Ele possible. I have also played every class to 80, with about half of the time spent leveling in WvW.

My Ele gets bursted by Thieves frequently. It takes situational awareness and fast reaction times (Lightning Flash and/or Mist Form) to escape, but that is reasonable given she is pure glass. On the flip side, my Warrior shrugs off Thief attacks like they’re rain drops. He can straight-up tank Daggerstorm and just auto-attack them down with Axe or Eviscerate them. This is all because he is geared and traited appropriately for dealing with Thieves.

Thief damage is perfectly fine as it stands today. If rendering/culling is resolved soon, then even the issues from Stealth will be mostly balanced out.

tldr: trait/gear a little more defensively if you have problems with Thieves. It would really be a shame for their damage to get nerfed because people don’t understand how to beat them.

Waffler.1257:

Stiv.1820:

Ljiona.9142:

I think if you re-acquire target and you could see if you hit them while stealthed, thieves in their current state would be balanced. I really don’t see why I wouldn’t know if I was hitting something in the dark.

If you are a melee class that has a auto attack chain, you will continue to the next attack in the chain if you hit. My auto is a 3 part chain. I know I’m putting the hurt on and tracking a stealth thief when I see/hear all 3 animations go off.

I see a lot of people talking about this and it is something I want to get better at. I’m well aware that you can still attack invisible people and the chain will trigger as I use it all the time when I see a downed thief turn invisible. But for the tracking part maybe you can give me some tips. When a thief stealths do you just keep running forward in a straight line and attacking with the assumption that the thief will continue running in the same direction they were before they stealthed? Do you ever decide to turn left or right when tracking a stealthed thief, and if so how do you arrive at that decision? How do you account for thieves that dodge roll and do a 180 to go the complete opposite direction that they were going? I figure I must be missing something here with how often people mention that you can kill stealthed thieves with auto-attacks.

I usually go for the immediate area where they stealth if I’m hitting I usually do a ~120 degree turn one way or the other, most will try to double back. It’s 50/50 if there are no indications at that point.

There are things to look for. Some use Caltrops on dodge. You can see where they originated from and know where they were when they dodged. If they actually evade your attack you will see “evade” so you know they are within evade distance of you. At this point it’s best guess as to what direction they evaded.

Also look for white circles. Many will shadowstep right after stealth. If you see the circle, you know they are likely ~1K units out so zoom out and start scanning so you can start the pursuit. You can take a guess at what way they would have gone based on what is safe for them nearby or where you would go if you want to chance a head start (Most times it’s the directional arch they were facing). Keep in the back of your mind that a common juke here is to make you chase for 10 seconds or so, re-stealth then return back towards the original white circle behind you.

For dagger main hand thieves who just stealthed you also want to listen for heartseeker. You can hear it when it’s close. If you hear that sound, similar to shadowstep, you know they will be ~1K out when they come out of stealth.

Same with short-bow ports, they will make a black swirl each time. You can see the swirl and track where they go and you can hear it.

Just being aware of the heartseekers, shadwosteps and short-bows happening will save you a lot of time flailing around the area. If you are instantly aware they aren’t there and know to start looking 1K out you are many times more likely to be able to re-engage them before they get out of combat. Granted, if you don’t have any sort of mobility or it’s down then they probably are going to at least get out of combat.

I’ll say it again, I think CnD needs a damage reduction. As cannons, a skill that allows us to go invisible, shouldn’t be doing 3-5k damage. And those crits happen on pretty beefy characters too; I’d think a fair Thief would acknowledge that.

I also think Mug does slightly too much damage for what it provides. A gap closer, which can be traited for more distance, stealth, initiative, conditions and/or providing good ally-wide buffs. Not to forget the various skills we can steal from the different professions.

I believe there’s adjustments they can do, when it comes to our damage. But on a personal opinion of Stealth; I don’t think that part of the Thief is as broken as many makes it out to be. As another Thief-player saying this, I rarely have issues with fighting against a Thief. On Thief or on an alt.

Things I did/do to learn how to counter other professions:

• Learn rotations. Most players adapt a habit of skills used in sequence and around certain health. Take D/D Thief as an example; They will likely use “Mug”, CnD, Backstab, Heartseeker. Variations will occur, but a lot of the glass-Thieves will use this rotation.

• If you die, use the Combat Log. Check the /wiki to learn what a skill does and think of ways you could have avoided it, even if you didn’t see the enemy. What punished you the most in that fight, when did it occur, can you do something about it? Analyze your data, try things out and in doing so, learn to predict some rotations, as well as counters.

• Consider playing the profession you struggle with the most. Alternatively use an alt in the Mists to check skills with. Learn the sounds, learn the animations. This will help you to react based on visual cues and more importantly, sound.

A couple pointers on Thieves:

• Stealth does not mean immunity to damage. It doesn’t last a long time. Keep this in mind when facing a Thief. Consider a melee set if you want to more “easily” counter a Thief. More specifically you’ll want a weapon that you can spam the first attack with (tapping the 1-key), that doesn’t need a target and has a sequence of attacks (e.g., Sword, Greatsword). By noticing when you go from the first skill animation to the follow-up, you’ll in many cases be able to locate the hidden Thief and unleash on them at that location (AoE, continued 1-key spam). Engineer and Elementalist do not have these melee follow-up attacks, but throw down AoE/aim range attacks into a location and around yourself by looking more towards the ground with the camera.

• You can predict where the invisible Thief is. Obviously not at a 100% success rate, but at a fair one. It really helps if you’ve used a build yourself; Most players, will behave and move similar to how you would in order to approach the next attack/escape.

• Stealth lasts 3-4s (for the Thief), depending on Trait setup, but it can be stacked while in stealth using Utility. Glass cannons typically has 3s, and will not stack up stealth unless they wish to escape from you. They need to attack before their timer runs out, so expect attacks after 1-2s. If they do not attack you, and let it time out, they can re-stealth instantly, as Revealed is triggered by attacking while in stealth. Keep this in mind for whatever you make of it. Creating some distance using skills or general movement, may also deny them from using the attacks they wanted.

• Shadow Refuge will stack stealth on the Thief, as long as they stay within the circle. Their movement within the circle is somewhat predictable, as pretty much any Thief that use it, wishes to maintain it for the full duration as a escape/recovery mechanic. It will generally be used when the Thief feels threatened and wish to avoid you (low health, cooldowns). When entering the circle, if you can, do a AoE knockback to deny their stealth, otherwise attack (1-key, etc.). A Thief is likely to follow a general pattern of staying near the edge of the circle, opposite of where you are coming from and where you move inside it, trying to avoid your attacks. By entering and attacking on the “right side” of the circle, then abruptly turning left and focusing your attacks there, you are likely to be hitting the Thief. In most cases, you will find the Thief pop out of their invisibility, either downed, or dead. Also note that if you see it used near a “wall”, the Thief is likely to be standing up against it to prevent getting knocked out, try position yourself to knock them out of it sideways.
______________

Also, if a Thief players state they don’t think they are as broken as you think; That may be because they know how to counter themselves, playing the profession and all. You may be far better at countering your played profession than they are, if they haven’t played that for an extended period of time. Like with most things, I’d say it’s about practice and learning through trial and error.

I’m sorry, but due to culling, stealth lasts a lot longer than 4 seconds, and tab targeting doesn’t work.

Columba.9730:

I’m sorry, but due to culling, stealth lasts a lot longer than 4 seconds, and tab targeting doesn’t work.

This is only true in a zerg situation though. Outside zergs Thieves & Mesmers render about a second after their stealth is up. The un-stealth swirl is visible and happens instantly and they are tab target-able at that point. In zergs I could see why that’s not reasonable.

Fixing culling and instant rendering are reasonable changes.

Columba.9730:

I am not complaining about any other class, so yes, I am more objective. Secondly, is your answer to just not fight thieves. Ok, I have my answer.

You have weird criteria for objectivity… so complaining only about one thing seems to be an objectivity trait… interesting.

You seem to be lot more biased than u admit to. When I say u can not expect to be effective against everything with a certain build, then this doesn’t mean, that u should avoid thief all around. Maybe ur built is rly not suited to fight’em. Or u lack the skill. And we’re talking ‘bout perma stealth thieves, aren’t we? So u may take on any other thief. And when u now say, u can not best the back-stab-burst-from-stealth-thieves, then I can not take u serious any more.

With my mesmer for example I can take on thieves and have a win lose ration of aprox. 50% (I guess). But camping a not upgraded camp alone is painfully hard with my build. And this one day I saw an engineer. I tried fighting him several times, but could not best him. I decided that I’ll avoid him. And I was a rly happy mesmer

Columba.9730:

I’m sorry, but due to culling, stealth lasts a lot longer than 4 seconds, and tab targeting doesn’t work.

Tabbing works, with one exception. You can’t be in a zerg. Then again if you aren’t in a zerg, culling doesn’t exist.
(Before you try to argue this, look up the definition of culling in relation to video games. You will see that “culling” is merely the result of a “cap” put on how many sprites can be displayed on screen at any point in time. If you are not trying to render more than that “cap” nothing is culled.)

So, if someone is experiencing culling in relation to thieves, they are in a large group, ie. not alone. This means that no solo thief is a threat to them unless they, and all their allies much weaker players than the thief. In this case it’s quite purely a l2p issue.

Adaneshade.2409:

Columba.9730:

I’m sorry, but due to culling, stealth lasts a lot longer than 4 seconds, and tab targeting doesn’t work.

Tabbing works, with one exception. You can’t be in a zerg. Then again if you aren’t in a zerg, culling doesn’t exist.
(Before you try to argue this, look up the definition of culling in relation to video games. You will see that “culling” is merely the result of a “cap” put on how many sprites can be displayed on screen at any point in time. If you are not trying to render more than that “cap” nothing is culled.)

So, if someone is experiencing culling in relation to thieves, they are in a large group, ie. not alone. This means that no solo thief is a threat to them unless they, and all their allies much weaker players than the thief. In this case it’s quite purely a l2p issue.

Many of us experience in non Zerg or group situations, and the tab targetting doesn’t work. 16 gig of ram, 2 gig video ram gtx 670, etc etc.

Adaneshade.2409:

Columba.9730:

I’m sorry, but due to culling, stealth lasts a lot longer than 4 seconds, and tab targeting doesn’t work.

So, if someone is experiencing culling in relation to thieves, they are in a large group, ie. not alone. This means that no solo thief is a threat to them unless they, and all their allies much weaker players than the thief. In this case it’s quite purely a l2p issue.

Just reporting, I had pistol abilities damaging me for at least a second last night before the thief was visible on my screen, and I wasn’t running in a big group/zerg at that time.
I also often saw the black swirl and no thief appearing on my screen until at least a second later, if at all. I have to add to my report, that there were some strange things going on.
Thief suddenly just stands there, afk, I take a third of his health and suddenly he disappears not reappearing anywhere else (open field). Or disappearing in downed state (not using the small range ‘teleport’) and not reappearing and noone staked him, this might have been alt+f4, but I couldn’t tell, since in these situations I didn’t hit him to get XP or bags in the end. Again: just reporting not complaining.
Also it should be stated how far away from other sprites one must be to be considered ‘alone’, i.e. for no culling to occur.

Here is something to add to the fire.

The Chill condition that lengthens the cooldown on those 30sec/40sec recast abilities the other classes have, does not effect us Thieves thanks to the way initiative works. We’re given for free, and immunity to the second half of Chill.

With love, from a local Thief near you.

Adaneshade.2409:

Columba.9730:

I’m sorry, but due to culling, stealth lasts a lot longer than 4 seconds, and tab targeting doesn’t work.

Tabbing works, with one exception. You can’t be in a zerg. Then again if you aren’t in a zerg, culling doesn’t exist.
(Before you try to argue this, look up the definition of culling in relation to video games. You will see that “culling” is merely the result of a “cap” put on how many sprites can be displayed on screen at any point in time. If you are not trying to render more than that “cap” nothing is culled.)

So, if someone is experiencing culling in relation to thieves, they are in a large group, ie. not alone. This means that no solo thief is a threat to them unless they, and all their allies much weaker players than the thief. In this case it’s quite purely a l2p issue.

With all due respect friend, culling will happen in small scale fights if there are more people on the map. As a Thief myself, I’ve tested this with other thieves, and there is in fact culling even in one on one situations.

Anet messed something up majorly in their coding, so quit busting peoples chops.

Stiv.1820:

Waffler.1257:

Stiv.1820:

Ljiona.9142:

I think if you re-acquire target and you could see if you hit them while stealthed, thieves in their current state would be balanced. I really don’t see why I wouldn’t know if I was hitting something in the dark.

If you are a melee class that has a auto attack chain, you will continue to the next attack in the chain if you hit. My auto is a 3 part chain. I know I’m putting the hurt on and tracking a stealth thief when I see/hear all 3 animations go off.

I see a lot of people talking about this and it is something I want to get better at. I’m well aware that you can still attack invisible people and the chain will trigger as I use it all the time when I see a downed thief turn invisible. But for the tracking part maybe you can give me some tips. When a thief stealths do you just keep running forward in a straight line and attacking with the assumption that the thief will continue running in the same direction they were before they stealthed? Do you ever decide to turn left or right when tracking a stealthed thief, and if so how do you arrive at that decision? How do you account for thieves that dodge roll and do a 180 to go the complete opposite direction that they were going? I figure I must be missing something here with how often people mention that you can kill stealthed thieves with auto-attacks.

I usually go for the immediate area where they stealth if I’m hitting I usually do a ~120 degree turn one way or the other, most will try to double back. It’s 50/50 if there are no indications at that point.

There are things to look for. Some use Caltrops on dodge. You can see where they originated from and know where they were when they dodged. If they actually evade your attack you will see “evade” so you know they are within evade distance of you. At this point it’s best guess as to what direction they evaded.

Also look for white circles. Many will shadowstep right after stealth. If you see the circle, you know they are likely ~1K units out so zoom out and start scanning so you can start the pursuit. You can take a guess at what way they would have gone based on what is safe for them nearby or where you would go if you want to chance a head start (Most times it’s the directional arch they were facing). Keep in the back of your mind that a common juke here is to make you chase for 10 seconds or so, re-stealth then return back towards the original white circle behind you.

For dagger main hand thieves who just stealthed you also want to listen for heartseeker. You can hear it when it’s close. If you hear that sound, similar to shadowstep, you know they will be ~1K out when they come out of stealth.

Same with short-bow ports, they will make a black swirl each time. You can see the swirl and track where they go and you can hear it.

Just being aware of the heartseekers, shadwosteps and short-bows happening will save you a lot of time flailing around the area. If you are instantly aware they aren’t there and know to start looking 1K out you are many times more likely to be able to re-engage them before they get out of combat. Granted, if you don’t have any sort of mobility or it’s down then they probably are going to at least get out of combat.

Cool, can you maybe make a video of you tracking and killing stealth thieves and post here so I can see?

Edit: Oh ya, and if you do please do it with a class besides d/d or s/d ele.

Hello,

As this thread has derailed with off-topic posting and inflammatory comments, it is now closed.

Also remember that we have a dedicated thread about the thief here : The thief and its gameplay – Your feedback