Guild Wars 2

A friend and I were in PvP and we came across a single Thief. We spent an entire hr fighting this guy, dieing once or twice and running back before the other one died. A whole kittening hr. No matter what we did he was constantly invisible and not taking any dmg. If we ever did any dmg to him he was stealth and appear with full health again. We fought him under water and above ground all over the freaking map and we couldn’t do one kitten thing to him.

At one point another 3 people joined the fight and we still couldn’t kill him. He effortlessly evaded every single attack and was invisible more than he was ever visible. If one of us went down he would also be invisible for the entire time he was finishing us and there was no way we could defend against this either. Our CC did absolutely nothing and it was all that we could to do take 1/4 of his HP off before he disappeared and came back with it all healed up.

What level are you and what gear do you have?

How much do you understand Thief skills and utilities? Do you understand how stealth works in this game?

Thief has the largest learning curve to fight against and if you don’t have the gear/level they are doing as much as 50% bonus dmg to you.

I used to get owned by mesmers a lot, really badly. And while mesmers remain on of my harder challenges, I spent some time learning my class, tweaking my build, learning how the mesmer works, and now I do ok with them. I know that requires more effort than a QQ nerf thread, but if this doesnt work out for you, might want to give it a try.

I dont see how any of that matters.

Sedriel.7321:

I dont see how any of that matters.

Well then no wonder…

Traits and Armor alone at low level puts you as at severe disadvantage. Any bunker build can take on hordes of green up arrows.

If you and your friend are level 2 and he is level 80, it matters.

But we’re both lvl 80 and were holding our own against him. Like i said it was an hr long fight and there was nothing we could do to take him down and he was invisible for more time than he was visible. Anytime we did any CC or dmg to him that was significant he dissapeared for a few seconds and come back to max health.

Sedriel.7321:

But we’re both lvl 80 and were holding our own against him. Like i said it was an hr long fight and there was nothing we could do to take him down and he was invisible for more time than he was visible. Anytime we did any CC or dmg to him that was significant he dissapeared for a few seconds and come back to max health.

Are you level 80 when you are in Lion’s Arch? I feel like we aren’t getting a straight answer.

There’s a strategy you can use against a thief like that, and it works well against a heavy defense built guardian too, it’s called don’t waste your time on him.

Stiv.1820:

Sedriel.7321:

But we’re both lvl 80 and were holding our own against him. Like i said it was an hr long fight and there was nothing we could do to take him down and he was invisible for more time than he was visible. Anytime we did any CC or dmg to him that was significant he dissapeared for a few seconds and come back to max health.

Are you level 80 when you are in Lion’s Arch? I feel like we aren’t getting a straight answer.

That made me laugh.

But the fact of the matter is that being able to Perpetually Stealth and still kill people, let alone 4 or 5, is over powered. There are supposed to be CDs to keep this kind of thing to happen and u need to choose one. Atk or Stealth. Atking is supposed to get rid of your stealth. But he was attacking, stealthed, attacking, stealthed, attacking, stealthed, with less than 2 seconds in between each.

Niim.9260:

Stiv.1820:

Sedriel.7321:

But we’re both lvl 80 and were holding our own against him. Like i said it was an hr long fight and there was nothing we could do to take him down and he was invisible for more time than he was visible. Anytime we did any CC or dmg to him that was significant he dissapeared for a few seconds and come back to max health.

Are you level 80 when you are in Lion’s Arch? I feel like we aren’t getting a straight answer.

That made me laugh.

-.- yes in full exotics.

Vv W.7821:

There’s a strategy you can use against a thief like that, and it works well against a heavy defense built guardian too, it’s called don’t waste your time on him.

That’s probably the best tactic.

In an action combat game based on visual cues for targeting and damage avoidance, it’s pretty lame that anything like perma-stealth exists. It was another of the promises which were thrown around during beta and has since been thrown away entirely.

Hats off to the developers who wanted to make this game balanced and skill based, and shame on the suits who made them abandon that path.

Thieves can perma-stealth. ANet failed to address that issue in this patch.

As far as fighting a thief… Immobilize then nuke. 2 hits from my lvl 65 guard sends a thief running with his tail tucked (that’s what thieves are best at anyways) They’re stealth stomping you with shadow refuge. If someone goes down and the thief is invis, AoE the downed player and use knockbacks/knockdowns.

You can’t catch or out-run a thief. If you don’t have immobilize, you lose. Also keep in mind that they can instagib players with < 15k hp…from stealth, 900 units away. You cannot counter a thief’s burst besides wearing toughness gear.

A full defensively built guardian can kill people too if they hang around long enough. In case you haven’t read the rest of the forum there is a culling issue in WvW that is giving thieves the illusion of a longer stealth time. That is the problem, not thieves who know how to survive an attack.

One hour long fight versus three people, I would love to whatch that.

Let me get this traight you are complaining for a thief which is def specced i.e. uses stealth to gain health and remove conditions?
Would you complain if the did the backstab combo on you and you died in less then 3 seconds?

Even if you managed to get him below 50% health, a good thief can easily escape. They’re always a pain to deal with.. which is why you shouldn’t waste your time unless they are actually contesting a capture point.

2 people is rarely enough to take-down a thief geared toward survivability. If you get more than 2 people, stand on top of eachother and spam attacks. He has to hit you to maintain invisibility.

Player culling is still a problem in WvW, and is part of the reason why you had so much trouble with this particular character being invisible all the time. But based on the information given, even if player culling was fixed you still couldn’t have beat him in open combat.

I run this particular build. It’s a bleed build that doesn’t kill fast and has a ton of stealth and healing.

There are counters. You need to knock them out of Shadow refuge and put pressure/conditiosn on them after they use Hide in shadows. Identify and dodge/block Cloak and Dagger (most important). Time roots when they are at 50% health (MoA = wins of course if you are a mesmer) and swing at the area they were rooted when they stealth. Learn to identify stealth “swirls” so you know where they are appearing or chaining stealth. Learn to ID shadowstep and where the return location will be. Roots 20-39 seconds after shadowstep are wins.

It goes on and on, the key is identifying the abilities your enemies are using and knowing what they do and how they work.

buki.3108:

Thieves can perma-stealth. ANet failed to address that issue in this patch.

As far as fighting a thief… Immobilize then nuke. 2 hits from my lvl 65 guard sends a thief running with his tail tucked (that’s what thieves are best at anyways) They’re stealth stomping you with shadow refuge. If someone goes down and the thief is invis, AoE the downed player and use knockbacks/knockdowns.

You can’t catch or out-run a thief. If you don’t have immobilize, you lose. Also keep in mind that they can instagib players with < 15k hp…from stealth, 900 units away. You cannot counter a thief’s burst besides wearing toughness gear.

There were us 2 eles on him the whole time and we were trying to root/daze him together. We were on vent synchronizing our attacks and everything but we couldn’t do a kitten thing to him while he stealthed and whittled us down. We tried the CC route and it did nothing to him at all. He even effortlessly avoided all dmg the other 3 or 4 pple that showed up to try to take him down as well.

Can a mod move this thread to the thief forum please?

Thief seems to have super-normal ability beyond stealth.

A group of us (4 members) engages a solo thief in WvW Danelon supply camp. (Ok, he is actually the one who initiated the fight with a group of us. Obviously, he is confident to fight us solo.) He is good at stealthing and downed a number of us, but we always res our downed member before he can finished them. So, his hp is diminishing with each second of fight until finally he decide to run.

We chased him and cc him with all that we have got and we managed to downed him. In his downed state, he just disappeared. Ok, we thought to ourselve this fellow is just another alt-F4 losers who quit game before the finisher is planted on him.

2 second later, I saw in the mini-map a enemy downed icon beyond the gate of Quentin. I went after the downed icon intending to assist whoever has downed the enemy. To my surprise, I saw it is the same thief whom we are fighting at Danelon who is in the downed state beyond Quentin gate.

HOW THE HELL he travel in downed state from Danelon to beyond Quentin gate? Someone can offers a possible explanation?

Sedriel.7321:

buki.3108:

Thieves can perma-stealth. ANet failed to address that issue in this patch.

As far as fighting a thief… Immobilize then nuke. 2 hits from my lvl 65 guard sends a thief running with his tail tucked (that’s what thieves are best at anyways) They’re stealth stomping you with shadow refuge. If someone goes down and the thief is invis, AoE the downed player and use knockbacks/knockdowns.

You can’t catch or out-run a thief. If you don’t have immobilize, you lose. Also keep in mind that they can instagib players with < 15k hp…from stealth, 900 units away. You cannot counter a thief’s burst besides wearing toughness gear.

There were us 2 eles on him the whole time and we were trying to root/daze him together. We were on vent synchronizing our attacks and everything but we couldn’t do a kitten thing to him while he stealthed and whittled us down. We tried the CC route and it did nothing to him at all. He even effortlessly avoided all dmg the other 3 or 4 pple that showed up to try to take him down as well.

The answer is you didn’t understand what you were fighting so you lost. I have done this 1 on 5 stuff daily with this build but I can tell you that each and every profession I have come across (besides Ranger, sorry guys) I have run into solos who stand toe to toe. Sometimes you are in a 1vN fight and just one of those guys shows up and you can feel the pressure of their arrival. GW is a skill based game.

SmokeyNYY.7841:

Can a mod move this thread to the thief forum please?

I hope not, I would rather it stay in the PvP forums. Its Pvp issue to me not Thiefs in General. PvE i dont care what their abilities are.

“He even effortlessly avoided all dmg the other 3 or 4 pple that showed up to try to take him down as well.”

If it was effortless, that would be amazing. I wonder if he had the SB to get away.

Anyways, a thief that doesn’t stealth is going to die rather quickly. It just sounds like you were a victim of the culling issue. Don’t think that thieves are invincible with stealth. Many of us tend to avoid Warriors & Guardians due to their knockbacks & knockdowns. Necros and Mesmers also give us a tough time. Engineers and Eles are little easier to deal with, imo.

Suralin.3947:

“He even effortlessly avoided all dmg the other 3 or 4 pple that showed up to try to take him down as well.”

If it was effortless, that would be amazing. I wonder if he had the SB to get away.

Anyways, a thief that doesn’t stealth is going to die rather quickly. It just sounds like you were a victim of the culling issue. Don’t think that thieves are invincible with stealth. Many of us tend to avoid Warriors & Guardians due to their knockbacks & knockdowns. Necros and Mesmers also give us a tough time. Engineers and Eles are little easier to deal with, imo.

Any profession that has some bunker is hard for this build. It’s a counter to glass cannons which 90% of WvW players run.

Rofl…. i’m sorry but the player is just flat out better than you then. If you and your mate and lvl 80 full exotic wearers and you can’t kill someone in a hour, you shouldn’t be asking for nerfs but asking what you can do to improve. Seriously, ask what you can do before you ask what developers can nerf.

The reality is that if they can’t get culling under control, they may have to balance around it.

One way would be to make thieves slightly more sturdy, but reduce the amount of time they can be in stealth. This needn’t affect sPVP if they didn’t want it to, as they have a fix for culling there.

Skilled thieves would still win all the same small scale fights they do now, but would perhaps lose some ability to frustrate entire groups, or do things like delay capturing camps for long periods. These would be improvements to gameplay and balance anyway.

Thieves don’t need a nerf! The culling issue needs tone fixed. If that cannot be done, then stealth needs to be toned down to compensate for the extra stealth time they get due to culling.

Problem is people who know how tab target the un-stealth swirl and attack no problem, especially ranged attackers. I do it the thieves and Mesmers all the time.

was running around with my guardian the other day. saw a group running and discussing stuff like “man that was awkward.” “I think, he is gone now” etc.
Next I saw was a thief popping up in the midst of said group again only to vanish shortly after.
So I took my Hammer and went thief hunting.
Thief vanished into stealth… Just blindly used the barrier circle. A black animation verified, I did indeed catch the thief and he shadowstepped out.
As he was in no position to C&D from there(kinda stupid, if it was me, I’d shadowstep to the next target…), he also burned his shelter there and I just blindly swung my knockback into it, fishing for invis thieves :P
Well, didn’t quite get him there and so the hunt continued. Thief C&d me, so I scroll out and pan the camera to a top view, while seperating from the group. kittenhead took the bait, I dodgerolled away from his C&D and threw immobilize at him. He came at me in a straight line, desperately trying to cloak again, only to get smacked into the nuts with a huge hammer and ragdoll against the next wall.
Allies ran in, spamming some kinda AoE all over the place, his auto-blinding powder kicks in…
…Only to reveal a downed thief a few seconds later.
And once you are downed in front of an angry mob, the story doesn’t need to be told. Everyone knows, what came next.

Learn to deal with it. if it’s a C&D build, just use friggin dodge rolls…
If it’s d/p smoke combo, well… That’s the kind of build you don’t bother trying to kill anyway unless he’s in the very circle you try to conquer.
He doesn’t go for massive damage and that’s all you need to know. If you can’t kill him, ignore him, if you can kill him, use your brain and bait him into a situation where you can outsmart him, then crack his skull open. It’s surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it.

@OP, it also helps if you tell us your class and specs.

As a warrior, and considered the least desired next to rangers ( I feel bad you guys didn’t get a buff this patch.) Stuns, interupts, and KD’s make a thief a very sad panda when in 3 hits they melt on the ground without having to use frenzy.

Also just because they’re in stealth doesn’t mean they don’t take damage. If you had a warrior in group he can tell he’s hitting the thief in stealth via the adren bar going up per hit.

He is not meant to be invisible for so long. Anet really needs to evaluate the theif skills that grant inv as they are not working as intended.

Stiv.1820:

Problem is people who know how tab target the un-stealth swirl and attack no problem, especially ranged attackers. I do it the thieves and Mesmers all the time.

That doesn’t always work well, though. I can sometimes actually see them before tab target gets them on target.

Relentliss.2170:

He is not meant to be invisible for so long. Anet really needs to evaluate the theif skills that grant inv as they are not working as intended.

If this was a small scale fight (it sounds like it was) it’s working as intended aside from ~1 sec of lag between unstelath and when your client registers. They have to physically attack you to chain stealth with this build and as the poster above said, dodge, block, immune all burn their init and force them to burn cool-downs. Once you get everything down, and especially if you have a counter to Shadow Refuge (area knockback/pull) you can get the kill.

Not commenting on their raw survivability & stealth as a mechanic in general.

But I too have seen several Thieves now who appear immune to all Crowd Controls.
That absolutely has to go. You never, NEVER give a spike-damage stealth class the ability to constantly get out of CC’s and then return to stealth or spiking, seconds later. You just don’t. I don’t even think MTG ever allowed overkill on that Element; and they’ve allowed some pretty questionable stuff over the years.

This is absolutely something that can be changed without hurting their Performance in PVE

No. Dev’s said previously there would be no permastealth in this game.

There is currently such a state of stealth that it is pretty much permanent. Unlike other games you can stealth, attack and restealth repeatedly. AND you can damage people without being seen. It is absurd.

While individual skills may indeed be working as intended, combined groups of skills are not. The dev’s need to reevaluate each stealth skill and look at tneir cumulative effect.

Stealth was intended for hit and run tactics. What I currently see is stealth, restealth and grief tactics that are too powerful.

Oh, this thread again.

Relentliss.2170:

No. Dev’s said previously there would be no permastealth in this game.

There is currently such a state of stealth that it is pretty much permanent. Unlike other games you can stealth, attack and restealth repeatedly. AND you can damage people without being seen. It is absurd.

While individual skills may indeed be working as intended, combined groups of skills are not. The dev’s need to reevaluate each stealth skill and look at tneir cumulative effect.

Stealth was intended for hit and run tactics. What I currently see is stealth, restealth and grief tactics that are too powerful.

It’ s not intended for hit and run. That would be traditional toggle stealth. In this game Thief stealth is designed to be part of the combat flow.

Semantics aside

They have become absurdly op and need to have their stealth looked at.

Let them fix culling first…

Grit.9061:

He has to hit you to maintain invisibility.

That’s where you’re wrong. Thieves have other skills (which do not require him to hit you) with relatively short cooldowns they can rely on to stay invisible.

Those skills don’t have a cooldown short enough for maintaining stealth… you literally need all of your stealth abilities including weapon skills to maintain it. There will be gaps even culling can’t hide.

for a d/p thief, there are no gaps!

devs don’t consider wvw as pvp so there won’t be any balancing for it. Which is sad because it forces everyone to zerg. Which is also bad for the thief who wants small scale fights.

This thread is not completely without merit. I rolled a thief to better understand them and I agree that they will receive more nerfing and that stealth will be one of those thing.

My toughness/vitality thief is far more survivable than any other profession built for survival, can rez allies in the middle of hordes of people, can keep people indefinitely in combat with poison cloud, etc. I can also ditch pretty much every condition and juke ridiculous distances with Infiltrators strike. I’m also more mobile than any other profession. This is all at level 23.

I can’t do permastealth without relying on CND, uptime is only like 60% without it. However I could easily switch offhand dagger for offhand pistol and remedy that.

Yet another one of these threads. I play a thief, I play other classes. By knowing their weaknesses, you simply destroy them.

Ill give you this, yes they can escape if they use their tools that way. But they will not get you down and stomp you unless the people around you are stupid.

Sorry if that is harsh, but two aoe dmg skills on a downed person will kill the glass cannon thief. Period..

Not true with the culling bugs, sorry.

Puz.8529:

Yet another one of these threads. I play a thief, I play other classes. By knowing their weaknesses, you simply destroy them.

Ill give you this, yes they can escape if they use their tools that way. But they will not get you down and stomp you unless the people around you are stupid.

Sorry if that is harsh, but two aoe dmg skills on a downed person will kill the glass cannon thief. Period..

It’s funny to read people like you. Just because you play a thief doesn’t make you a good thief. I fight a lot of thieves in wvw and pvp. 90% of them are not problem at all. But once in a while I bump into one that’s just insane. Now I’m not saying the thief isn’t a better player than me. I bump into other class that’s played very well and just wtfpwns my face as well. But the difference is that with other classes I feel like I had a way to win if I just get better. Vs a well played and better geared thief in wvw you are left feeling “well there is no pt, I just don’t see any way I could have won that fight”.

Stiv.1820:

Sedriel.7321:

I dont see how any of that matters.

Well then no wonder…

Traits and Armor alone at low level puts you as at severe disadvantage. Any bunker build can take on hordes of green up arrows.

Doens’t really matter though, since most other classes can be killed pretty easily, especially 2 to 1.

If Anet fixes the rendering issue then I think thieves will be fine (won’t know until we can see how they function with proper stealth) so I’m going to disagree with nerfing them. Even if they try to avoid exploiting the bug they have no choice it just happens, they only way to avoid it is not use any stealth abilities and I’m pretty sure you won’t find a single thief that will agree to that.

No I don’t play a thief.