Guild Wars 2

Niim.9260:

In my opinion the overall issue with thieves, and why we continue to see these kinds of threads, is that they are extremely good at killing bad players as the skill cap for fighting a thief is higher then that of playing the basic thief.

Nothing about WvW encourages people to play better. No incentive to learn their class or to learn other classes. The vast majority of the players in WvW spend most of their night following a taco, stacking when told, blasting and dropping combo fields when told, running gear and abilities they were told to run.

Their play is dismal and it creates an environment where even bad thieves can be successful.

Hear hear!

its not that thieves illudes themselves they are good at Killing bad players.

Its the issue everybody knows they have a free ticket to kill a random player and if they fail they have a free escape….

But obviously being thieves they just think everybodu else is bad and thievs players are all pros.

You guys really need to learn to play thieves before you come rushing to this forum screaming for nerfs. Get one to 80 and go into WvW and figure out how to play it. At the same time watch how other players counter you. What you successfully died to is what you need to do to counter thieves.

Quick hints for all you thief haters out there:
- Knockback and immobilize are a thief’s worst enemy.

Niim.9260:

In my opinion the overall issue with thieves, and why we continue to see these kinds of threads, is that they are extremely good at killing bad players as the skill cap for fighting a thief is higher then that of playing the basic thief.

Nothing about WvW encourages people to play better. No incentive to learn their class or to learn other classes. The vast majority of the players in WvW spend most of their night following a taco, stacking when told, blasting and dropping combo fields when told, running gear and abilities they were told to run.

Their play is dismal and it creates an environment where even bad thieves can be successful.

I agree with your post however I roam solo 99% of the time I would say more than 50% of the roamers are thieves. Thieves are good in the hands of a bad player and they are god like in the hands of a good player. And if you get 2-3 thieves together they work even better as a group. Add a mesmer in the mix you have a mini killing machine that’s nearly untouchable. What is comes down to is that stealth is way too oped in this game. I know cause I play both memer and thief.
I find it funny how thieves post here saying l2p, theves are not oped. The fact is you are either lying or you are a bad thief. heed your own advise if you truely belive thieves are not OP.
One last point if you think thieves have no roll in a zerg you are crazy. Take your short bow out and learn to spam cluster bomb between auto attack.

lioka qiao.8734:

You guys really need to learn to play thieves before you come rushing to this forum screaming for nerfs. Get one to 80 and go into WvW and figure out how to play it. At the same time watch how other players counter you. What you successfully died to is what you need to do to counter thieves.

Quick hints for all you thief haters out there:
- Knockback and immobilize are a thief’s worst enemy.

You know that good thieves use sword and shadow step like crazy. Knockback and immobilize only work on noobs.

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

removing mug critical hit still makes thiefs in www too strong as due to www environment they can stay perma invisible and cloak delay from 4 to3 second was a mistake as it actualy make fight against them results in certain death as well with ability to finish in stealth
conditions removal and healing in stealth with ability go to stealth and hit from stealth without any penalizations as they can cloak within second with heavy dmg makes them extremely hard to kill even with several experienced players as they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them

I`m not sure that people realize that invisible is not the same as invincible. Stealthed enemies can still be attacked, even with the auto-attack, just swinging your auto attack during their stealth can keep the damage up without even considering AoE. Also, stealth is very predictable. When a main hand dagger or sword thief stealths they will try to work behind you. Keeping in mind that with your movement it can be difficult for them to get behind you without making a pretty straight path. This means the thieves will most often move from where they stealthed to a fairly direct line to your back to get a backstab, unless they use up some dodge rolling (which is a tradeoff they need to consider). This means not only are the thieves able to take damage during stealth while dishing none, you also know the probable route to do damage, and that a dodge roll of your own towards the end of their stealth will often leave them unable to land a backstab.

While thieves can get around the short stealth by stacking stealth this is a costly endevour, and leaves them less able to stealth throughout the fight.

Lastly, I believe people are upset with thieves because of stability. All classes have some access to stability, which prevents them from being cc’ed, allowing the individual to continue dealing damage without minding their enemy’s actions. Stealth bypasses this, in that the effect is not applied to the target, but to the self, meaning that damage is interrupted simply because attacks are hard to land. This means the thief can impede your damage if you cannot predict him regardless of your buffs. However it is important to note that while a thief is stealthed they deal no damage and take normal damage, as long as you anticipate the thief properly you can actually turn stealth into a handicap.

Let me tell you a story, month or 2 old:
So, I was roaming and suddenly saw a staff ele. “Food” I thought and jumped him. The following battle was long and painful, I barely managed to down him, /bow-ed and went away, thoroughly impressed. He was predicting a lot of my moves and aoeing the right spots, zoning me out. Yeah, maybe the fact he had a “Champion Shadow” title had something to do with it.

lioka qiao.8734:

Quick hints for all you thief haters out there:
- Knockback and immobilize are a thief’s worst enemy.

Oh yeah, now we know your weakness, hoorraah for pewning thieves all knight every day.

gets on ranger and checks his skills

/sadface

I don’t want a thief nerf, giving mug heal was a nerf.

On a more serious note, I’d like every thief to realize and/or admit how annoyingly, ridiculously overpowered stealth is in wvw. There is no counter for it, you cannot block it, you cannot interrupt it, you cannot destealth a thief. In return the games balances that by giving stealth buffs, and traits to make it even stronger?! Are you kidding me? There is no drawback for using stealth. I did take my lvl50 thief into wvw and know its a dangereous game to play a glassy thief. I know that thieves get stealth to make up for being so squishy. But I also think that stealth should be a tool to set up an ambush and deal high damge, and a tool to get out of a fight. Noone should be allowed to be in stealth during a fight, while also being able to attack and stay stealthed. And noone should be able to deny you badges of honor (while not the most important thing in wvwm it is a pretty big part of it) by using stealth with it being available in abundance. I’m glad to see some thieves offer tips to those that are not mindlessly yelling “NERF”, “OP” or a combination of those btw.

Henrik.7560:

Hmm, thieves are overpowered in different ways:

1. Stealth finisher, what’s the point of having downed skills if you can’t use them?
2. Heartseeker, the damage on this is so overpowered, as of it can be used up to 5 times when at full initiative. How to kill someone as a Heartseeker spammer: 3k, 3k, 3k, 5k, 8k, -dead- if they are bunker, they will be less than 30% health.
3. Cloak and Dagger, let’s see; up to 7k damage, stacks vulnerability, AND stealths you! wtf?

Betting 1 million bucks a thief player will quote me and say something similar to: L2P

Im a guardian player although i have a thief and a ranger too on the shelf.

1. Im not against that because there is “some” way to defend against it to a certain extend. Like the guardian push , ranger wolf fear, mist form and move away , spawn clone and heal somewhere else. Im not saying it is efficient but the stealth is not a death sentence everytime although i can find it annoying.

1. a heartseeker spammer is easily spotted and can be avoided. Most of the HS spammer are usually glass canon so they spam and try to disconnect after when out of ini. Again there is several way to counter it, i dont think its the deadliest weapon of the thief. Dodge roll, Dodge roll , aegis , staff 5 or hammer 5. Lightning reflex , fear from wolf, sword 2 to disconnect then kite with shortbow etc. Certain thieves do spam HS but i think its a dumb tactic that only get kills on lowbie that dont know how to react to it.

1. This is still a crit from a full glass canon thief which mean he pact a deadly punch but he is frail to attack. I know its hard to survive that burst but he still need to get through you for the backstab part, its where you dodge roll back. I got killed plenty of time by that combo, still do sometime to good thief players. It hit really hard but at the same time, they made the gear choice, leaving most of the defensive attribute out. That mean that if you can catch him, hell go down fast (well .. if you can catch him).

Im not saying im an expert thief killer but i just mean that thief aint that OP right now. Lemme finish!! I know you want to go keyboard warrior on me for that statement.

I think thieves right now are mostly balanced. I cant picture a thief that would do medium damage, the thief in my head need to be fragile but deadly, move in and out, assassin style.

The thing that i would change for the thief before calling them mostly balance is buffing main hand pistol and correction the shortbow #1 issue just like scepter #1 for guardian , you cant hit a kitten thing with it.

Some people still go in WvW with mostly offensive abilities, with offensive gears but offense only get you so far, until a sneaky thief gut you open before you get time to react.

As for your bet, this is an easy win of course. Its like if you say something mean to someone and say “I bet 1 million this person will be angry at me!”. For your thief fact, its a bit of a l2 kitten ue.

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

removing mug critical hit still makes thiefs in www too strong as due to www environment they can stay perma invisible and cloak delay from 4 to3 second was a mistake as it actualy make fight against them results in certain death as well with ability to finish in stealth
conditions removal and healing in stealth with ability go to stealth and hit from stealth without any penalizations as they can cloak within second with heavy dmg makes them extremely hard to kill even with several experienced players as they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them

That “they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them” made my day.

Karolis.4261:

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

removing mug critical hit still makes thiefs in www too strong as due to www environment they can stay perma invisible and cloak delay from 4 to3 second was a mistake as it actualy make fight against them results in certain death as well with ability to finish in stealth
conditions removal and healing in stealth with ability go to stealth and hit from stealth without any penalizations as they can cloak within second with heavy dmg makes them extremely hard to kill even with several experienced players as they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them

That “they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them” made my day.

since when stealth drops agro ?

Karolis.4261:

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

snip

That “they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them” made my day.

Maybe it doesn’t drop aggro, but you can go into stealth when you’re really low on HP and become visible on full health (or close to it), don’t even deny that. I didn’t do that on my thief, but I sure as hell witnessed it more than once.

nagymbear.5280:

lioka qiao.8734:

Quick hints for all you thief haters out there:
- Knockback and immobilize are a thief’s worst enemy.

Oh yeah, now we know your weakness, hoorraah for pewning thieves all knight every day.

gets on ranger and checks his skills

/sadface

I don’t want a thief nerf, giving mug heal was a nerf.

On a more serious note, I’d like every thief to realize and/or admit how annoyingly, ridiculously overpowered stealth is in wvw. There is no counter for it, you cannot block it, you cannot interrupt it, you cannot destealth a thief. In return the games balances that by giving stealth buffs, and traits to make it even stronger?! Are you kidding me? There is no drawback for using stealth. I did take my lvl50 thief into wvw and know its a dangereous game to play a glassy thief. I know that thieves get stealth to make up for being so squishy. But I also think that stealth should be a tool to set up an ambush and deal high damge, and a tool to get out of a fight. Noone should be allowed to be in stealth during a fight, while also being able to attack and stay stealthed. And noone should be able to deny you badges of honor (while not the most important thing in wvwm it is a pretty big part of it) by using stealth with it being available in abundance. I’m glad to see some thieves offer tips to those that are not mindlessly yelling “NERF”, “OP” or a combination of those btw.

The thing his, they just need to put a 1second internal cooldown on smoke leap finisher.

Stealth is not that OP because you can still dps him while in stealth, you can still knockback , stun etc. You know he is there. Some people when a thief go in stealth they just stand there and look around, they stop using abilities. #1 combo for melee is the best tool to tell you where he is. Thing like mesmer greatsword push is super to keep a bit of a distance with a stealthed thief. Guardian #5 hammer is great to protect yourself while he is in stealth.

To go in stealth its cloak and dagger which cost 6 initiative or a 40sec/60sec utility. Its not free and by itself bring no DPS. It does not give him stability, it doesnt make him immune to damage. You just lose your visual clue on where he is.

Most mmo where there is a class that can stealth can usually go back to stealth and i think gw2 got the best stealthing mechanic.

If you go back to wow where i was playing a rogue. I could go from my starting point up to your starting point without you ever seeing me. You couldnt possibly know that there was a rogue around. While you were alone i was popping with massive crit, gutting you up and capping the point alone. If you were stronger then me, i would vanish + cloak to cleanse dot and walk away. Same goes for Rift, same goes for Star Wars: Tor, same goes for warhammer online.

Gw2 is one of the only mmo where the rogue cannot be perma stealthed or at least have a really low duration stealth like 3-4 sec.

Its like that in every games. Rogue = Great dps, Great mobility and disconnect, can stealth but are squishy.

I think the thief now in GW2 is close to being balance.

And no i am not playing my thief anymore since a while back that i started duo-ing with my wife since i find that thief doesnt bring much to a group in pve. I switch to my guardian but i still do encounter alot of thieves. Did i get kill? yes! Was i mad and called him a cheater? Yes.. well in my head. But fighting more and more rogue, mostly if you got a friend rogue that want to duel with you. Learn the class, learn their abilities and you will soon see that they aint unbeatable and even if they get a great opening on you, that you are seriously hurt, you can still turn it around.

But of course as a guardian i rarely get the pleasure of planting my banner in thief stomach, when they are wounded they disconnect pretty well and i cant catch them

nagymbear.5280:

Karolis.4261:

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

snip

That “they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them” made my day.

Maybe it doesn’t drop aggro, but you can go into stealth when you’re really low on HP and become visible on full health (or close to it), don’t even deny that. I didn’t do that on my thief, but I sure as hell witnessed it more than once.

Beacose glass cannon have 10.8k HP and Hide in Shadow heal Thief for 5.6k + 700 regen and Trait Shadow’s Rejuvenation 380 hp per one sec in stealth = 7440 HP = 68% Thief max health

And no stealth does not break agro

[quote=1995085;darkchicken.8692: You know he is there.[/quote]

Well I’m probably terribad at pvp, and surely need to l2p and roll a thief level it to 80, gear him up and all that based on this thread, cause I don’t know where he is. I have a ranger, and run a trap setup, sounds good against thieves right? I thought so too, but a thief can shake off conditions in stealth and I’ll need to sit in them, or get a lucky trap throw. Then I’m there waiting for him to hit me in the back, cause a trap is not that big to dance around in, and I have 3 utilities on cooldown. I agree with you that thieves are not OP if you look at them from all angles. But thieves that use stealth a lot in wvw… that’s pushing the boundaries of OPness for me at least. You get basically a lot of your skills stripped from you because of a game mechanic like stealth. I know they are not immune to damage, and can still be hit. But I do have to get into melee range with a thief, that is deadly close range and/or use my aoes guessing where he is, which will put them on cooldown.

I don’t think thieves are op at all…maybe against an upleveled lowbie they may seem op. But as a geared out 80 in exotics you should not be getting 1 shot by thieves

Not every class is supposed to be good at every style of fighting. The thief excels in small skirmish fights but is generally weak in large scale fighting. In WvW 1v1 fights between players of similar skill, the thief has a decided advantage especially since most thieves run small skirmish builds. That same thief is of marginal value in large scale fights with little AoE, very few group buffs/traits and little durability.

Evilek.5690:

And no stealth does not break agro

I know it doesn’t. But if they have the option to reset the fight, and do that often, I won’t shed a single tear for glass cannon thieves who only have 10k HP. If they only have 10k HP they can kill my ranger in 2 seconds who only has 1500 toughness and 18k hp.

If the thief class were overpowered (which I don’t think it is. Not even remotely close), the problem would be related to initiative regen and not stealth, or burst damage, or condi removal, etc.

If initiative regen were nerfed, thief burst damage would be dramatically reduced. Their time in stealth would be dramatically reduced. Their regen and condition removal would be dramatically reduced. All the things people are complaining about.

But can you justify changing anything for a class that currently has nothing to offer to the current WvW meta? That is one of the more difficult classes to level? Has next to no value in PvE/Dungeons? Is fighting a battle to the death with Warriors for last place in s/tPvP?

The only thing the Thief is currently good at is killing other thieves or people in berserker gear. If you’re dying to a thief and you don’t have 2500+ armor and 17k+ health, you’re to blame… not the thief.

I’d be all for toning down thief burst in favor of enormous buffs to their auto-attack damage and actual mitigation (please recognize the difference between avoidance and mitigation if you’re going to continue in this thread). But why tone down Thief burst when it’s already not that great? How much more can it be nerfed?

I’d be all for toning down thief stealth in favor of enormous buffs to their actual mitigation and battle longevity. But is stealth really an issue? Or is it the amount of times a thief can stealth? Considering the health point handicap the thief class has, you’d have to give them much more access to condition removal if you change it.

You guys are just oblivious to what it is to be a thief in this game and that’s why most people don’t take a lot of what’s being discussed here seriously. The thief is powerful (hardly overpowered) in its own little niche, but that niche has no real role to offer to WvW. If people actually played the thief class and were actually honest with themselves, they’d see just how pitiful the class really is. Saying you played a thief and all you did was camp an entrance and gank uplevels is not being honest.

Thieves are not overpowered at all, its their class traits to stealth and back stab. Not to mention i dont see HOW people just dont get this yet.. Immobilize/Cripple/Chilled= DEAD thief. I mean come on people, a thief is all about moving and kiting you to get to your back. Not to mention they are no where near as tanky as a warrior/gaurds/necro. So you get rid of their mobilty and they die. L2P the game before complaining about stupid things please.

nagymbear.5280:

I agree with you that thieves are not OP if you look at them from all angles. But thieves that use stealth a lot in wvw… that’s pushing the boundaries of OPness for me at least.

Some of you guys are banging on open doors. I didn’t say thieves are OP, nor did I say they need a nerf. I was discussing the stealth mechanic which I think is too powerful. And to be honest, I’m not that much interested in the wvw meta, or high level fractals, or high end pvp. I main a ranger which might also be good in 1v1, just like a thief, but also has problems in dungeons and zergs.

Those things don’t kill me. I either shadowstep or switch to shortbow and IA away from any damaging attacks that might be incoming. If I have D/P I just press 3 to tp right on top of him regardless of chill or cripple. I can even use 3 to shadow shot over to an innocent bunny or a random drake.

The Thief’s greatest power in WvW isn’t even being the best at 1v1. I’ve faced players who can defeat my Thief. The reason I consider it my best roaming class is because I can choose to disengage at will. There’s no inherent risk in anything I do unless I choose to take the risk. When I go invisible there’s 360 directions I can go in and multiple actions I can take. I might be setting up a lethal backstab… or I might be running to hide behind a hill.

I can do whatever I want – slower classes don’t have that choice. If a Thief is defeating you in a 1v1, most classes have to pay repairs for their loss. On my Thief, I leave without any inconvenience beyond lost time. I’ve died occasionally, but only because I chose to be risky. I’ve gotten bloodthirsty, thinking I can get that last hit in, only to get in over my head. It happens. I just recognize I made that choice. I could have used my stealth to escape, or my initiative on running away. I don’t even have to change up my build – full zerker at the moment. When I’ve run all DPS setups on my Guardian I find my capacity for risk free roaming significantly diminished.

Unless I go in over my head my opponents can at best force me to reset. I can still run around behind their supply camp until they get bored and leave. I can intercept reinforcements for a battle and harass them again and again even if I never “win”.

Such is the power of mobility and invisibility combined. There are plenty of builds that troll mine on the field. I just choose not to fight them. No amount of protection or healing will save a Guardian from 10 men wailing on him. But by stabbing an innocent frog I can avoid 100.

The ONLY thing making thieves OP right now is again…how stealth works. You fix some of how stealth works (outside of the reveal duration), and you make the class less OP without horribly gimping them.

I personally feel the BP+HS combo needs to be toned down in WvW. It gives the thief unlimited invisibility with no counter-play for it. CnD, you can try to dodge. The heal or blinding powder – ok, they wasted a long cooldown utility. But BP+HS is a free get-out-of-jail free card (in WvW) that is right on the skill-bar. The same combo is used offensively (hit with the HS, then stealth), defensively (the bp now blinded them), and utility. Combine that with the high mobility, and high damage, it makes that thief build VERY powerful. Personally, if a thief wants to disengage (and they should be able to choose to according to Anet philosophy), make them burn a utility skill with a long cooldown. Its fine if a thief gets to choose the start of the fight, and the end of the fight, but it gets stupid when they can continually choose the re-start of every fight ad nauseum.

I personally feel as though the thief shouldn’t get to have it all of the high-damage, speed, and stealth combo. If you want to be fast and able to stealth constantly in a battle, your damage should be pitiful. If you want to have high-damage and be fast, you shouldn’t have access to stealth on-demand. Finally, if you want to to have high-damage and stealth, you shouldn’t be able to out-run everyone. It just makes you an OP roaming class in WvW.

PvE, theives need help, and are getting close to a decent place in conquest. If there is ever death-match style fighting, they will be superb.

Every time I spend the 30 minutes necessary to kill one of these super “skilled” thieves in WvW they always come back with 8 – 20 other people as back up.

I always just assume that once they finally get killed, they have to get up, dry off all the tears, change their diaper, have a baby bottle, then hit their Pukitteno-Talk button and scream in the most Melvin voice possible “I GOT KILLED NEAR X, HURRY I NEED BACK UP HURRY”.

jesterscript.7493:

Every time I spend the 30 minutes necessary to kill one of these super “skilled” thieves in WvW they always come back with 8 – 20 other people as back up.

Basically doing their “job”. Many thieves build to harass and tie up players keeping them distracted. If one thief keeps a half dozen players running around chasing their shadow, that is helping the server overall and generally does require skill.

Thieves are fine the way they are, if one kills you it means you have zero to no armor and or skill.

Thf should hit hard it should be the biggest burst dmg in the game they just should not be able to stealth forever.

Straegen.2938:

jesterscript.7493:

Every time I spend the 30 minutes necessary to kill one of these super “skilled” thieves in WvW they always come back with 8 – 20 other people as back up.

Basically doing their “job”. Many thieves build to harass and tie up players keeping them distracted. If one thief keeps a half dozen players running around chasing their shadow, that is helping the server overall and generally does require skill.

You keep telling yourself that while my buddy and I keep running around killing your dolyaks and taking your camps – strangling your supplies – while our zerg takes your towers and keeps that just can’t seem to get upgraded or repaired. That silence is your siege not having the supply to get built and that depression is the >1 number next to your Tier.

BlackBeard.2873:

snip

I’m glad to see not all are using blinding powder, or are under the effect of it.

CC does not work. CC is a just an auto response by someone who is straight up ignorant to the cc capabilities of the other professions.

The only things that can prevent active stealth is daze and stun. Daze still lets the thief stay mobile. Neither one of these will stop passive stealthing nor will it stop 0 cast time skills (at least one of which puts the thief in stealth). The thief gets a utility skill that is an evade that removes immobilize, cripple and chill. It also restores half their inititive. They also get a healing skill that has the bonus of being an evade and removes immobilize, cripple and chill (this is all three and is not a ‘one out of three’). This doesn’t include their other ways such as 1 condition removed upon entering stealth and another every three seconds.

Let’s not forget that most CC’s require you to have a target. The few ground targetable cc there are, require you (due to cast times on most) to lead your target even when they crippled or chilled and, well, without knowing which direction the thief decided to run in after stealthing, you can’t properly lead them.

This also doesn’t include the gap openers and closers that are available (as part of the build) that allow the thief to reposition without the other person knowing where. Openers and closers that work even when immobalized, cripple and chilled. If they don’t have a cast time, daze and stun won’t stop them either.

Stuns are too few, with too long a CD to prevent a thief from entering stealth, and escaping, long enough to take them down. Not to mention them packing stun breakers.

The survivability that a thief gets from their stealth is comparable to a tank spec. This makes them the only class that can spec for dps (glass cannon) and still have the survivability of another class’ tank spec.

Now, that people do that, they are under the misconception that thieve’s are squishy and without stealth and couldn’t survive anything other than a 1v1 encounter.

Umm, no glass cannon can survive anything other than a 1v1 encounter, why should thieves?

What’s funny are people saying “thieves are fine, l2p”, are also saying that thieves are strong or even OP in 1v1.

Umm, if they are OP in 1v1, THEY ARE OP!

Equally skilled players, with equally geared and lvled characters should have 50/50 odds regardless of professions involved. That’s balance. That means that the only way for the odds to shift, is if one player to be more skilled than the other. The more skilled player having better odds at winning, what a concept.

Instead we have average players with 50/50 odds against good players so long as the average player is using a thief and the good player isn’t.

The best part is, we have the thief community saying to roll a thief, people are doing exactly that but because they are playing without the bias, they are only getting their initial points confirmed.

Now when they post, it is a more compelling argument. Not to mention, ANet views the data. People roll a thief, find out what they were missing all this time and stick with it. On ANet’s side, they see a major disproportionate representation of the classes within the game. That is something that will speak louder than any person’s posts on the forums.

I say these thief only people should roll a necro, ranger, or eng and see how well they do with their wvw roam.

jesterscript.7493:

Every time I spend the 30 minutes necessary to kill one of these super “skilled” thieves in WvW they always come back with 8 – 20 other people as back up.

jesterscript.7493:

You keep telling yourself that while my buddy and I keep running around killing your dolyaks and taking your camps – strangling your supplies – while our zerg takes your towers and keeps that just can’t seem to get upgraded or repaired. That silence is your siege not having the supply to get built and that depression is the >1 number next to your Tier.

Most of the time a thief like that is probably killing dolyaks, destroying siege, popping weak players, locking up way points, harassing guards and getting players to chase them all along the way.

If they did stop to get players to chase them the only time one player keeping 6 or more busy isn’t a good thing, is when the other server has a big population advantage. If pops are equal, players chasing a thief is wasting resources.

dodge on every third second, problem solved.

I know everyone seems to have a biased for or against thieves, but here is the latest WvW breakdown:

Zerg warfare: This is the current meta. The best classes are warrior, ele, and guard.
1v1: Mesmers and eles
Yak killing/Ganking out of place people: Thieves
Defend the circle until help arrives: Necros and Engi
Gank the top of the JP: Rangers

Every class has its place and does something well. No one except maybe eles are op right now.

I agree. Go look at how the burglar works in LOTRO or the Shadow works in SWTOR. The class should not be based entirely around doing damage to people while people can’t see them. Stealthing from an in combat state should not happen as often as it does.

Straegen.2938:

jesterscript.7493:

Every time I spend the 30 minutes necessary to kill one of these super “skilled” thieves in WvW they always come back with 8 – 20 other people as back up.

Basically doing their “job”. Many thieves build to harass and tie up players keeping them distracted. If one thief keeps a half dozen players running around chasing their shadow, that is helping the server overall and generally does require skill.

Firstly, that’s not even his point.

Secondly, if hitting ‘5’ every 3 seconds without attacking anything else is what many thieves would consider ‘skill’ then no wonder the forum trolls are upset with the nerfs to the class.

No, staying stealthed in GW2 does not take skill. Sorry. Especially not when you can get it from a target that doesn’t fight back (wall).

Jinks.2057:

Lots of lying and misinformation in this thread

Thieves are fine, and quite frankly a lil underpowered in a lot of areas. Yes thieves get stealth, and yes its a PIA to kill a GOOD thief

Problem is no one really wants to take the time to learn how to play/play against thieves….everyone wants to come and scream nerf. Take the time learn the mechanics, and then crush any thief afterwards…..

Its not hard people

The problem there is that the level at which a player is considered ‘good’ is alot lower for thieves due to the inherent gameplay mechanics for them. So many of your regular attacks have move toward or away from target built right into them its stupid.

rchu.8945:

Atherakhia.4086:

You guys are just oblivious to what it is to be a thief in this game and that’s why most people don’t take a lot of what’s being discussed here seriously. The thief is powerful (hardly overpowered) in its own little niche, but that niche has no real role to offer to WvW. If people actually played the thief class and were actually honest with themselves, they’d see just how pitiful the class really is. Saying you played a thief and all you did was camp an entrance and gank uplevels is not being honest.

please stop playing the “we dont have a defined role in wvw” card, it’s really getting old. Most thieves didnt play the class to be a zerg support, most play for the ease of roaming, ganging, and high damage. Those three qualities offer many benefits for the thief class in WvW. To say thief is a pitiful class is a blatant lie, and you know it.

weeee lets play an mmo where I want to offer nothing to a group and play by myself all day! wweeeee1!!

This is a group game… each class should have a defined role. If you’re satisfied with your role being that of roaming in a game without any roamers and bringing nothing but blast finishers to a group, grats to you. Every modern mmo has had thieves in them and none of the others I’ve seen has had that class provide nothing in them.

The niche this class falls into no longer exists in this game. A new niche needs to be found. Too bad the class wasn’t given the tools to find/do it.

Play in T1? Thieves are almost useless.

Play in T8? Thieves are OP.

Thieves will probably get buffed because ANET doesn’t care about T8 and balances with only T1 in mind.

LordByron.8369:

KStudios.2850:

No! No more thief nerfs. We’ve had enough!

You make a thief, invest the time to play it to 80, get him/her good gear, take them into WvW, actually learn how difficult it is to even perform a successful backstab (seriously, it takes practice cause it’s more than a single button press)

cool…
What could your opponent do to prevent BS?
Now i know that the usual answer from thief players is they had to see/expect/mind read/predict and stuff.

That is one of the issues….

and then not cry when any Warrior insta-kills you with a hold followed by 100-blades that takes like 14k health (which guess what, is usually well more than your entire 10k-14k average thief health depending on just how glass you are).

You can see the warrior coming and you can at least play.

Something you cnnot do against a profession that has:
BURST
STEALTH
SPEED

That is really too much.

P.S. i find somehow fun how now that all thef posts asking for nerfs destroyed any counterbuild you see so many thief saying “hey no more nerfs!!!!”

Seems in order to match other nerfs they need more instead….

Do you even thief, brah? You take any one of those things away, and the class is dead… DEAD… Do you know how difficult it is to even get off a successful backstab? As stated, it takes considerable practice, and it’s much more that just a press of a single button. Also as stated, 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. 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 a oaf, basically waiting to get shanked.

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

Also, going off what I’ve seen in other posts. 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.

My name is solid logic, and your argument is invalid.

Thieves are “the Golden Child” of the game. Just making an observation, look at the Dev’s themselves in the video’s. Most of them appear to have a preference for metal, goth, or biker. Just look at how much more dark tones and themes are in the artwork of the game. How many items have skulls on them alone. It should be obvious that there’s a tendency toward the dark. That’s why thieves are OP. This game is all about the anti-hero.

Pavel.8531:

Let me tell you a story, month or 2 old:
So, I was roaming and suddenly saw a staff ele. “Food” I thought and jumped him. The following battle was long and painful, I barely managed to down him, /bow-ed and went away, thoroughly impressed. He was predicting a lot of my moves and aoeing the right spots, zoning me out. Yeah, maybe the fact he had a “Champion Shadow” title had something to do with it.

So the conclusion of your story is that, as a thief, you couldnt beat him, and he couldn’t beat you, so you stealthed and ran away.

Something people have said many many times as part of why they think thieves are OP?

Deniara Devious.3948:

Thieves are not all powerful in WvWvW, but there is no denying the latest patch made them overly popular. And there has always been lots of thieves in WvWvW. When the culling was broken, I often called it Thief Wars 2, because sometimes I could e.g. see 5 people on our side, each and every one being thieves. How is that for a game balance?

Of course you can beat thieves in combat, but most people agree: fighting against them is no fun. But can you kill a really good thief? Fighting them is extremely annoying as they remain visible very short amount of time and dodge while visible or keep teleporting short range. Many duo thief teams can achieve almost permanent invisibility, which in my honest opinion should be fixed.

Thieves still enjoy the advantage of being the best roaming profession and best professions to prey upon the flanks of a fleeing enemy group. They can snipe dolyaks, venture deep behind enemy lines, snipe the tail of an fleeing zerg and initiate combat against solo roamers without much any risk at all. In worst scenario they can always enter stealth, shadowstep and then heartseeker spam/infiltrator’s arrow teleport away. This allows thieves to run glass cannon builds, which would not be that viable with other professions. Low risk, high reward <— a clear sign some balancing should be done.

Few things should be changed:
- Revert the revealed back to 4 seconds in WvWvW. 3 seconds is too short considering the size of the map and chaotic nature of the combat. Besides thieves in WvWvW have much easier time entering stealth than in pvp setting. They rarely ever get knocked out of shadow refuge and they can use whatever forest animal etc. to grant stealth with cloak & dagger (it is much easier to land C&D on an animal or NPC than a human player who tries to avoid that).
- Currently sword #2 (infiltrator’s strike/shadow return) allows unlimited range teleport. This basically can give the thief a superbly powerful way to get out of combat or do the supply runs faster than any other profession. This should be reduced to max 1200 range.
- Reduce the amount of stealth you can get from combo fields. Thieves have the best blast finishers in the game: clusterbomb. Black powder + clustercomb = area stealth. Combine that with right mix of traits e.g. patience —> perma stealth. Fix: reduce the amount of how many seconds of stealth you can get from smoke field into half.
- Larcenous strike is a bit too good at the moment. Either increase its initiative cost or make is steal only 1 boon.
- Stealth stomp should not work. This should of course affect all professions e.g. mesmers and engineers also denied of doing stealth stomps.

Note that I am NOT suggesting these game balancing changes to other forms of the game, only WvWvW.

If they took out stealth stomps they should also remove invulnerability stomps as well as stability stomps/haste stomps.

KStudios.2850:

No! No more thief nerfs. We’ve had enough!

You make a thief, invest the time to play it to 80, get him/her good gear, take them into WvW, actually learn how difficult it is to even perform a successful backstab (seriously, it takes practice cause it’s more than a single button press), and then not cry when any Warrior insta-kills you with a hold followed by 100-blades that takes like 14k health (which guess what, is usually well more than your entire 10k-14k average thief health depending on just how glass you are).

Even though I think thieves are a OP in some ways, I hate warrior’s hundred blades, the damage should be HALVED, also they have WAY too many disables.
Lets see, Mace #3, Mace #5, Hammer #4, Hammer #5, Rifle #5, Bulls charge, Stomp, Fear me, and kick…

bleach.9074:

Play in T1? Thieves are almost useless.

Play in T8? Thieves are OP.

Thieves will probably get buffed because ANET doesn’t care about T8 and balances with only T1 in mind.

not really …
thief are VITAL in T1.
They are the only to be able to escape with impunity from zergs with no effort or keeping contested stuff forever etc etc.

About the player sayng that without the best burst/speed/stealth the thief die i really suggest him

Try any other normal class
try other builds in his subforum
Finally understand that anet whak-a-mole balancing should not be taken in account they may do that but its not to be expected 100% expecially with what it seems one of their 2 Golden classes to many players.

Well… I hate thief class. Thieves were known to exploit some not intended mechanisms in order to get some benefits.
Remember when they could have perma stealth AND unable 50 people to capture a camp?? that was weird…
Remember the C&D exploit on walls to perma stealth inside a lost tower/keep in order to revive a mesmer or solo the keeper?? that was weird…
There is some more stories… but thieves reputation has grown on these stories.
Anet fixed many of these exploit and stated it was some not intended way of playing, exploiting and sometime could be consider as griefing.
People enjoying this way of playing… I don’t like them specially. They believe in their skills when the truth is that they became the masters in finding any way that their class could give them to exploit…
Thanks Anet for fixing thieves regulary at least now we can fight truly skilled thieves and not some bad ones (strangely this picture of thieves works also with mesmer :p)
After all I wrote I can tell you that actually thieves are much moire balanced and I truly doubt they need to be nerf further. If you have some problem with thieves it’s mainly because you are not set up in survivability nor are you a class that can last long on such encounter, about their damages may be a reduction could occur soon but I am not relly convinced it’s required.

Titan.3472:

If you have some problem with thieves it’s mainly because you are not set up in survivability nor are you a class that can last long on such encounter…

Sooo… you’re saying that my options are:
a) Get moar armor ’n healz,
b) Roll another class,
c) Stop getting problems with thieves.

Interesting.

nagymbear.5280:

Sooo… you’re saying that my options are:
a) Get moar armor ’n healz,

The best way to counter a thief stops at ‘a’. thieves make short work of glass cannons because they start the fight when they are ready but you are not, you spend the first 3 seconds recovering and preparing your response while they spend it killing you, and when two glass cannons collide 3 seconds is all the fight needs.

(note: don’t nitpick the 3 seconds, exactly how long the thief has up on you is irrelevant, the point is the thief is killing you while you’re getting your pants up, and glass cannons don’t have time for that)

wish.1027:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Stealth stomp should not work. This should of course affect all professions e.g. mesmers and engineers also denied of doing stealth stomps.

Are you going to take away mist form stomp from eles, tiny stomp from engineers, stability stomps from guardian, warrior, mesmer, elementalist, and ranger as well? Or are you just hating on thieves, who can be stopped from stomping you while theyre invisible, meanwhile all these other classes cant be stopped.

I see the invulnerability stomps from any profession a potential problem, but since invulnerability which allow stomp e.g. mist form and elixir S have a long cool down, this seems to be a very rare issue in WvWvW indeed. In fact I don’t ever remember anybody performing an invulnerability stomp on me. Usually smart players save their long cool down invulnerability for something else and use e.g. ranged attacks to just keep you downed.

Stealth stomps are very common on the other hand. Happening in pretty much every zerg fight. When I see a team mate downed and enemy team member vanish in stealth I know that team mate is soon going to be stealth stomped. I can do very little to do stop that, especially if I am too far to revive him instantly. I can spam AoE over the downed person, but usually that just damages the thief, doesn’t kill him. My best option is supply crate (area stun), but I have to time it correct and that skill has 180 s cooldown, so usually it is not available. So in other words the thief has very little risk in performing the stealth stomp.

High reward + low risk is almost always a sure sign there is a problem with game balance. A good game design is: low risk & low reward, high risk & high reward.

If thieves are as bad as some people say in this thread, then why they are so common WvWvW? Half of the roamers are thieves. In every group fight (even just 5vs5) I usually see multiple thieves. Thief commanders are common, despite the thief defenders here claim “thief is too squishy”.

bleach.9074:

Play in T1? Thieves are almost useless.

Play in T8? Thieves are OP.

Thieves will probably get buffed because ANET doesn’t care about T8 and balances with only T1 in mind.

I cannot comment for NA tier 1, but I play EU tier 1. I can tell you that thieves are very common there. You see them in almost every single fight. Probably around 50% of roamers are thieves, but every zerg fight has many thieves as well. Thief commanders are also common. Are you implying all of them are totally useless? Why do you think so many people enjoy playing a useless profession?

Or is it maybe that thief offers easy high reward with low risk?