Guild Wars 2

Pavel.8531:

I only see a lot of people that don’t know thief mechanics get trolled by 1 good s/d thief here. However, I do agree chaining cnd is imbalanced in wvw. IMO you should get revealed debuff 1.5s at the end of a stealth, even if you have not attacked anything(normal 3s, if you attack).

That’s the main issue in bold.

Thief and mesmer punish players that don’t understand those classes the most out of any other class.

New players get upset since they have no clue of what’s going on or how to counter it. Then they go on the forums and cry nerf nerf nerf instead of learning.

The other day there was a guardian on the thief forums asking for a nerf. A fricking GUARDIAN asking for a thief nerf. Guards have a VERY easy time killing thieves. They have SO many great tools against them. Dear god I still see players spamming ranged attacks at a thief doing dagger storm on a daily basis… but why should players learn when they can go cry for nerfs instead of learning to play?

Engels.8537:

KStudios.2850:

Engels.8537:

JaeKeun.5680:

Any decent player should be able to 1v1 a thief.

People who claims otherwise have never played a thief.

Lol and the two classes you have played are thief and elementalist, (D/D ele i bet my balls),

What he said was true. Want to lose the fear of thieves? Play one and learn the mechanics of it. They’re not that scary. Not to mention thief on thief fights are easily some of the most fun battles you’ll ever find in WvW. This particular thief in the vid was even pretty tanky at that. As far as thieves go anyway.

Surely you didn’t play another class otherwise you would know that fighting against a thief is boring as hell,

50% he’s invisible, the rest of the time hitting you like a truck pressing one key,

And if you start winning he just run away,

My main is a ranger actually (as per my sig), and I seldom lose to any other class short of d/d godmode eles and the occasional really well specced warrior (something I’m working on by dueling as many of them as possible, btw). Thieves especially. And what do I care if a thief runs away? A fleeing thief has accomplished nothing and is just as much if not more defeated than a dead thief. Is the issue over, “waaah, I didn’t get a badge!” ? Cause that’s just plain petty. I’ve bought two Gifts of Battle with my ranger’s badge income alone, and unlike many of you JP haunters, each of those 1000 badges was a life. So yeah, I have little need to whine over one or two thieves a day that slip away, lacking self respect because they just lost to a ranger.

Secondly, do you even thief, brah? Do you know how difficult it is to even get off a successful backstab? It takes considerable practice, and it’s much more that just a press of a single button. Unlike a Warrior who can just snare and 100-blade you. Combos to acheive BS vary, depending on the player, but it’s never just a single attack. Cloak and Dagger (a direct touch skill I might add) must be used in order for the Backstab skill to even activate. Seriously, watch the first video again, C+D is the #5 slot and when used the #1 base attack slot swaps over to BS. So not only are you looking at what at very least is a double attack to pull this off, but both attacks take roughly one second to complete. That’s two attacks and two seconds that you are standing there like an oaf, basically waiting to get shanked.

… If you’re still standing still and allowing this to happen at this point, you deserved it.

Also, there is no more perma-stealth. It’s gone. It died with the culling fix. They’ve also added Revealed now, which used to be 4 seconds, but they nerfed it back to 3 because results were utterly devastating to the class in general. The average thief stealth skill being 3 seconds in duration. That’s right, Shadow Refuge aside, all thief stealth skills are only 3 seconds long. And the one that has the shortest cooldown duration is, guess what, Cloak and Dagger. The one I mentioned earlier where we actually have to touch you.

Florgknight.1589:

15 people. The new entire zerg.

welcome to the lower tiers my friend.

Vanilla rogues pop to mind concerning OP vid.

Thieves need a nerf??? Seriously, if there had been only 1 (!!!) good player in that group/“zerg” who knew how to play this puppying game he could’ve stopped the thief.
I play thief myself and to my shame I have to admit that every once in a while I loose against several classes, especially Mesmer (wasting backstabs on illusions), Guardian (they just block my backstabs) and lately even Engineer (those who know how to fight a thief). I daresay every class has a mechanism to stop stealthy backstab thieves. It’s not the thieves’ fault that most players are too stupid to learn how to play properly. Of course if you only run in a zerg all the time spamming “1” you won’t learn how to fight off each class properly.

The reason you see so many complaints about thieves (and to a lesser extent mesmers), is because fighting every other class can be learned through observation. “I see this movement, I evade…I hear x sound, I do y…etc.” With thieves there is no learning from observation, only very large numbers that pop up in the combat log and a player wondering why his opponent disappeared. He can’t observe what his opponent was doing to try and exploit him/ gain an edge, and he can’t just run away b/c thieves should also be the fastest class apparently as well. The thief’s response here is: “Play a thief, learn the ins and outs of the class, then you can fight against it!” However, that is a rediculously imbalanced perspective. I don’t need to master or play a warrior or guardian to learn how they work. I can watch. A thief doesn’t have to play all 7 other classes just to learn how to fight them. If I wanted to be a thief, I would have chosen that class.

So why should a thief beat anyone who hasn’t mastered the thief class, or at least good thief themselves? Why is part of the learning to pvp: learn to dodge, learn the other classes skills, learn your class, play a thief so you stand a chance. And if that is the case, why doesn’t Anet just highly suggest everyone play thief first, because then they won’t have any unreasonably unbalanced matchups for their ability to learn?

Pavel.8531:

I only see a lot of people that don’t know thief mechanics get trolled by 1 good s/d thief here. However, I do agree chaining cnd is imbalanced in wvw. IMO you should get revealed debuff 1.5s at the end of a stealth, even if you have not attacked anything(normal 3s, if you attack).

I almost agree with you. But for those classes that don’t aoe with each auto attack 1.5s is enough to press tab, press a skill, and say the F word. And chained cnd is truly imbalanced. One of these updates ANet will have the huevos to implement what was in plan, to get revealed if you’re out of stealth no matter what the reason. Thieves will still have evades, shadowstep, and blind to defend.

Nah, let me try to explain what is wrong with the thief. People have been going around with stealth and dmg being the biggest problem with the thief, but its really not, all of their skills make sense. theyre a squishy class that delivers alot of dmg, and their defence is not dmg mitigation, but avoiding the dmg. So what is wrong with them? their core mechanic.
Thiefs have no cooldowns on their abilities, they operate in the initiative system, that is suposed to work allowing them to spam the same ability several times, so all their abilities would have a “shared cooldown” which would be the initiative refill… but it goes up too fast. If you deplete your whole initiative bar, you can potentially have it back up in 3-5 seconds, so expending half your initiative bar on your powerful CnD cloak is not as big of a sacrifice as say, using your fear on Staff 5 on the necro, because you will have it back up in 3 seconds, by the time the effect runs out you can already use it again… the necro has to really consider if using his fear staff 5, because he wont have it back up again for almost 30 secs; same for every other class in this game. The only sacrifice a thief is doing is being squishy, which any other dmg class has to do anyways, and since their big dmg, in the case of Backstab, costs no initiative at all you can spam other abilities that can be as powerful while costing initiative.
How would i fix this? well, im no dev, but if they really want the thief to stay with this class mechanic, there are specific weapon skills that should have some sort of cooldown.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

I can 1v1 a thief… until the point where they are losing and begin to endlessly stealth. They then run away, return 12 seconds later with full health, and have effectively reset the fight at their convenience.

Nevermind all the mobility they have over certain professions (Heartseeker, Infiltrator’s Arrow and +Movement Speed, for example).

Exactly,also have no real prob with thiefs,but they can be so heavily abused in the sense of being stealthed 99% of the time regaining constant hp while doing so.Its just a bad class/mechanic wich anet tries to deal with by adding traps in wvwvw to remove stealth from players…Since they probably have no real clue to make stealth balanced.

nagymbear.5280:

Pavel.8531:

I only see a lot of people that don’t know thief mechanics get trolled by 1 good s/d thief here. However, I do agree chaining cnd is imbalanced in wvw. IMO you should get revealed debuff 1.5s at the end of a stealth, even if you have not attacked anything(normal 3s, if you attack).

I almost agree with you. But for those classes that don’t aoe with each auto attack 1.5s is enough to press tab, press a skill, and say the F word. And chained cnd is truly imbalanced. One of these updates ANet will have the huevos to implement what was in plan, to get revealed if you’re out of stealth no matter what the reason. Thieves will still have evades, shadowstep, and blind to defend.

I am a fully time wvw thief player and my reasoning behind a 1.5s reveal is just so the target of the cnd can evade/block/whatever, making the chaining much harder vs good players. As it now stands, all you need is to practice 1 min cnd chaining vs random npc and you have the timing, so you can stay visible for 0.1s, if your goal is to just troll with cnd in a zerg. As a thief, you know that missing 1 cnd is trouble, miss 2 in a row and you are almost for sure dead.

The real fix will be making the 5th skill to have higher consumption of initiative. Right now it is spammable making chaining CnD is easy even without the trait. Oh yes, same goes for pistol 5.

Apparently the OP has to post this numerous times throughout the forums.

Love the face cam, skills AND good looks. Call me!

As long as a thief can hit my full def guardian for 10 k in three strikes I don´t want to hear the words balanced an thiefes in the same sentence

“I need stealth, anyone can give me stealth?” ;D ;D

Nice video, your movement is good and makes you excellent at zerg surfing. :P

Athaulf.1530:

As long as a thief can hit my full def guardian for 10 k in three strikes I don´t want to hear the words balanced an thiefes in the same sentence

Really ? Full def guardian is guardian with Berserker gear ?

A thief stealthing, using infiltrators strike and accomplishing kitten all. How OP.

Athaulf.1530:

As long as a thief can hit my full def guardian for 10 k in three strikes I don´t want to hear the words balanced an thiefes in the same sentence

I can combo kill a thief with my warrior with the entire combo duration having him in stun, whether hes in stealth or not at the start of the combo. So he breaks stun. No problem, reset your combo. Most thiefs only pack 1-2 stun breaks. Also if your having problems with fighting a thief with a guardian there is a problem at your end, either your build or your skill and knowledge of how to play a thief. I admit, its sometimes difficult to finish a thief with a guardian as being able to do it comes down to getting the timing right and thats not alway easy with server lag, but a thief should never kill a guardian otherwise the thief was just a better player.

Yeah really and no i don´t wear Zerker. Don´t believe nerevrmind I took the screens.
Thief is op as hell and nothing else

And here another screen

And this was not about me beeing abel to kill a thief.. if athief can hit that hard on a guardian how hard will it hit others? So just leave your kittens in your pants. I have potred the proof for three strikes 10 k so come again

Athaulf.1530:

Yeah really and no i don´t wear Zerker. Don´t believe nerevrmind I took the screens.
Thief is op as hell and nothing else

enjoy

Pavel.8531:

nagymbear.5280:

Pavel.8531:

I only see a lot of people that don’t know thief mechanics get trolled by 1 good s/d thief here. However, I do agree chaining cnd is imbalanced in wvw. IMO you should get revealed debuff 1.5s at the end of a stealth, even if you have not attacked anything(normal 3s, if you attack).

I almost agree with you. But for those classes that don’t aoe with each auto attack 1.5s is enough to press tab, press a skill, and say the F word. And chained cnd is truly imbalanced. One of these updates ANet will have the huevos to implement what was in plan, to get revealed if you’re out of stealth no matter what the reason. Thieves will still have evades, shadowstep, and blind to defend.

I am a fully time wvw thief player and my reasoning behind a 1.5s reveal is just so the target of the cnd can evade/block/whatever, making the chaining much harder vs good players. As it now stands, all you need is to practice 1 min cnd chaining vs random npc and you have the timing, so you can stay visible for 0.1s, if your goal is to just troll with cnd in a zerg. As a thief, you know that missing 1 cnd is trouble, miss 2 in a row and you are almost for sure dead.

Sound interesting. Never thought of it that way.

BobbyT.7192:

Zephyrus.9680:

The funny part is how many people think the thread was serious because a thief can CnD on a semi afk zerker build in the middle of 10 players.

I don’t think even half of the responses here realize he couldn’t do a single attack except for CnD or else 3s reveal would get him instantly killed.

Yeah, if the ele was paying attention or knew what she was doing (kinda giving TC some credit), i’m sure they could have dealt with that thief.

If you look his stream, he has a video of him on his engineer beating two thieves 1v2, what is he doing that a group can’t do?

The difference is he was just trolling with CnD. If he actually attacked from stealth he would have been down in seconds. CnD alone can’t kill someone unless they’re afk and not moving, as happened for half that video. Zerker build too of course.

But then there’s responses wondering how he didn’t get reveal debuff while “backstabbing” (s/d doesn’t even have backstab), or about 10k burst being a lot…

Athaulf.1530:

And here another screen

Man you are paper. Here is mine screen. Thief Medium armor with berserker gear.Toughness is 1657 and armor 2721.

Next time use defensive gear and not your Berserker pony outfit
BTW 1917 power and 16% crit with food ? This Food must be lifestealt,MF or + toughness

Engels.8537:

JaeKeun.5680:

Any decent player should be able to 1v1 a thief.

People who claims otherwise have never played a thief.

Lol and the two classes you have played are thief and elementalist, (D/D ele i bet my balls),

I actually have 14 level 80 characters across all my accounts.

And I play staff. Ouch.

modDW.4187:

Athaulf.1530:

Yeah really and no i don´t wear Zerker. Don´t believe nerevrmind I took the screens.
Thief is op as hell and nothing else

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgAgqcgdZ5A

enjoy

lol nice video, I did enjoy :p

When I still played guardian in wvw, I had no fear of 2 thieves at once, you are doing something wrong. Also, I thought how to kill my guardian with my thief… and the answer always was “I will need help, impossible 1v1”.

modDW.4187:

Athaulf.1530:

Yeah really and no i don´t wear Zerker. Don´t believe nerevrmind I took the screens.
Thief is op as hell and nothing else

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgAgqcgdZ5A

enjoy

I did enjoy. Great vid and music.

modDW.4187:

Athaulf.1530:

Yeah really and no i don´t wear Zerker. Don´t believe nerevrmind I took the screens.
Thief is op as hell and nothing else

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgAgqcgdZ5A

enjoy

God those thiefs can take damage. You swing like crazy and they just won’t die.

Haha…I can’t really comment on thieves. I can’t fight them too well unless I’m in my shatter spec (they make me sad in phantasm spec) but ‘’Hello Commander’’ made me laugh.

I loved that vid, good thief, meh players, not aware enough.

Give hs a 5 second cd if it hits a player over 50% health or misses, make stealth a removable buff, thats all the “nerfing” that needs to go down.

Buzzcrave.6197:

The real fix will be making the 5th skill to have higher consumption of initiative. Right now it is spammable making chaining CnD is easy even without the trait. Oh yes, same goes for pistol 5.

Don’t raise the initiative cost. Just make it cost 1-2 more initiative for each subsequent use within 10 seconds or some such. This leaves it useable as it’s original intent without letting people just chain it for days on clones, pets, elementals, NPC’s, siege, people, etc. This would display as a buff on your character.

They could use the same philosophy with permastealth builds. Stealth moves build points, attacking removes them. 3 points and you become revealed when stealth ends. 4 attacks to remove a point. Shadow Refuge adds 2 points over it’s duration, blinding powder actually removes 1 to keep it usable and not screw over the trait.

I used to think thieves were kind of imbalanced. Then I played around with them. Now I am sure that the popular specs of thieves are imbalanced. Stealth is far too easy to troll with and requires good players with specific skills and specs to counter. I do not consider the thief roflcoptering away countering him.

The fact that a great number of thieves do not even use shadow step or infiltrator’s strike shows exactly how powerful stealth is, and those moves can make a thief able to do his job without even needing stealth quite easily.

Aberrant.6749:

Pavel.8531:

I only see a lot of people that don’t know thief mechanics get trolled by 1 good s/d thief here. However, I do agree chaining cnd is imbalanced in wvw. IMO you should get revealed debuff 1.5s at the end of a stealth, even if you have not attacked anything(normal 3s, if you attack).

That’s the main issue in bold.

Thief and mesmer punish players that don’t understand those classes the most out of any other class.

“l2p” is not the issue. I play both a mesmer and a thief (mesmer is my ‘main’ since GW1) and I understand both professions very well. This is the only reason I can survive against a thief.

This does not address the problem of thief’s capability to reset a fight at will, which is especially maddening in Wv3 where position on the map matters most.

You can have your mobility, thieves. Stealth is the problem. Stealth should either be 1) removable via boon stripping skills, 2) limited-availability, or 3) severely punished by core game mechanics for repeated use… kind of like how being downed and rallied several times in a row reduces your downed health to virtually nothing.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Aberrant.6749:

Pavel.8531:

I only see a lot of people that don’t know thief mechanics get trolled by 1 good s/d thief here. However, I do agree chaining cnd is imbalanced in wvw. IMO you should get revealed debuff 1.5s at the end of a stealth, even if you have not attacked anything(normal 3s, if you attack).

That’s the main issue in bold.

Thief and mesmer punish players that don’t understand those classes the most out of any other class.

“l2p” is not the issue. I play both a mesmer and a thief (mesmer is my ‘main’ since GW1) and I understand both professions very well. This is the only reason I can survive against a thief.

This does not address the problem of thief’s capability to reset a fight at will, which is especially maddening in Wv3 where position on the map matters most.

You can have your mobility, thieves. Stealth is the problem. Stealth should either be 1) removable via boon stripping skills, 2) limited-availability, or 3) severely punished by core game mechanics for repeated use… kind of like how being downed and rallied several times in a row reduces your downed health to virtually nothing.

So basically you want to completely kill thieves as a viable profession anywhere?

JaeKeun.5680:

So basically you want to completely kill thieves as a viable profession anywhere?

So basically you couldn’t be a viable profession if stealth were removable? Welcome to every other profession. You already have the highest burst and mobility. What exactly would be so harsh about limiting the availability of stealth?

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

JaeKeun.5680:

So basically you want to completely kill thieves as a viable profession anywhere?

So basically you couldn’t be a viable profession if stealth were removable? Welcome to every other profession. You already have the highest burst and mobility. What exactly would be so harsh about limiting the availability of stealth?

If you nerf stealth you also nerf damage and mobility. Do you not understand this? If so you haven’t played a thief, and your opinion is largely invalid.

I do play (level 80) and understand (in SPvP, Wv3 and PvE) thief… I would then argue that you have not dealt with a thief while playing a different profession… but, please, enlighten me.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

I do play (level 80) and understand (in SPvP, Wv3 and PvE) thief… but, please, enlighten me.

How about you enlighten me since you make such bold claims? What you are proposing is that stealth should be very limited, be easily removable, or suffer from harsh diminishing returns.

How would this NOT nerf the damage and mobility of a thief?

This would nerf the damage and mobility of a thief

This is the bold claim (to explain: I never ‘made a claim.’ I proposed an idea and you ‘made a claim’ in response).

Commence the enlightenment.

…and do remember that certain traits can be adjusted such that they are not dependent on the duration of stealth.

…oh, and also remember that — with or without stealth — thief has both the highest burst and the fastest attack speed (with daggers) which affects certain sigils in a pretty fun way.

I am very interested in what you’ll have to say as I’m 100% confident that I can play thief well without stealth. I always have.

(Thief was the third alt I made. I’ve been using this build since its creation (it doesn’t have ascended gear, of course.)

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

This would nerf the damage and mobility of a thief

This is the bold claim (to explain: I never ‘made a claim.’ I proposed an idea and you ‘made a claim’ in response).

Commence the enlightenment.

…and do remember that certain traits can be adjusted such that they are not dependent on the duration of stealth.

…oh, and also remember that — with or without stealth — thief has both the highest burst and the fastest attack speed (with daggers) which affects certain sigils in a pretty fun way.

I am very interested in what you’ll have to say as I’m 100% confident that I can play thief well without stealth. I always have.

You made a claim that thieves have the highest burst and the highest mobility on top of stealth, seemingly without realizing that they are both dependent on the latter. Thus your claim that we “can have the burst and the mobility, just not the stealth”, is not valid. If you are running another build that doesn’t rely on stealth, fine (I know people who do so too), but why would you want to pigeon hole every thief into running a much smaller array of builds?

It’s also funny that you should make claims about thief burst being the highest, and use it to argue in favor of a thief nerf. I can also make claims. For example: Thieves are the squishiest profession. Therefore they need a buff.

However, I don’t pass judgement on professions based on one aspect of them, so I will refrain from making such statements. Maybe you should too.

You didn’t really address your own claims.

And saying that thief has the highest burst and mobility is not a claim, it’s a mathematical fact… and something ArenaNet has also said, of course.

Do try again. I did say I’m legitimately curious, and I still am… and sorry about repeatedly editing my post while you were replying. ;D I have a habit, you see…

Oh! “Thieves are the squishiest profession. Therefore they need a buff.”

Medium armor. Apply some toughness and/or vitality equipment instead of being a glass cannon. Always my advice from one thief to any other thief (or any player who complains about being squishy). ;p

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

You didn’t really address your own claims.

And saying that thief has the highest burst and mobility is not a claim, it’s a mathematical fact… and something ArenaNet has also said, of course.

Do try again. I did say I’m legitimately curious, and I still am… and sorry about repeatedly editing my post while you were replying. ;D I have a habit, you see…

Not gonna take the obvious bait. Enjoy playing your mesmer.

Noone likes to debate anymore. That’s probably why we’re all so ignorant. I’ll miss you, 1990’s era forums and IRC chat. :|

…do know that I wasn’t ‘baiting’ you into anything. There’s no data to suggest that any other profession has a higher burst than thief or anything better than equal mobility (warriors and elementalists can be annoying in that department, too).

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

Noone likes to debate anymore. That’s probably why we’re all so ignorant. I’ll miss you, 1990’s era forums and IRC chat. :|

You are not debating. You are purposefully utilizing straw men and other logical fallacies to misrepresent my opinion and to avoid having to debate the actual subject.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

…do know that I wasn’t ‘baiting’ you into anything. There’s no data to suggest that any other profession has a higher burst than thief or anything better than equal mobility (warriors and elementalists can be annoying in that department, too).

Oh look, here is one!

I never claimed that there was any such data. I actually reinforced this data, but with the clause that both the burst and the mobility depended on stealth, and that thieves have less favorable traits that make up for these two favorable ones.

Yet you choose to misrepresent my opinion by saying exactly what you did in the above quote in an attempt to lead me around in circles. I simply said I chose to not take the obvious bait, and walk around in that circle.

Have a good day.

I thought you were done. Now I need to test something.

Dear readers,

I concede the final statement/last word to JaeKeun and that all of his statements are infallibly correct based upon the premise that they cannot be logically argued.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

I thought you were done. Now I need to test something.

Dear readers,

I concede the final statement/last word to JaeKeun and that all of his statements are infallibly correct based upon the premise that they cannot be logically argued.

I never said I was done, I said I wouldn’t respond to your obvious troll post.

Oh, and you can definitely argue with my points. You just choose not to (isn’t it lovely how you prove this with the above post)

If people would just quit whining about how op all other classes are compared to their favorite class and instead just accepted the challenge and rise to it, visiting this forum would be much less annoying.

I fail to see the point really in this at all…looks like all this is, is 1 thief who decided to be a pest to a small little group by just spamming c/d and refuge while not even attempting to kill anyone lol

Yeah, nerf the elementist more… An invisible thief guy dealing twice as more damage, No Problem!

/sarcasm