To start out this constructive post in order to help the balance of this game, there should be an overall understanding: The player who plays better should win.
Now, this sounds very obvious, almost as if you wouldn’t have to think about it, however, within this game (thieves specifically), this is almost never the case. The main culprit for this imbalance? Steal.
Just moving ones mouse over a standard trickery thief’s steal skill, one can see that it:
- Does decent damage
- Steals two boons (Prioritizing stability)
- Heals self (around 2k)
- Poisons for 11s
- Dazes for 1s
- Grants 10s of fury, might, swiftness, AND vigor
- Gives 2 initiative
- Is instant cast an unavoidable
- Only a 21.5s cooldown
However, even after that unnaturally long list of an instant unavoidable un-counter-playable skill, that isnt the part that ruins matchups and balance in the game, its the profession skills that come afterwards.
Warrior: To start off, stealing from a warrior gives a whirling blades skill, which does around 10k damage to most targets, and can reflect projectiles, while still being able to blind spam the warrior, who honestly cant do much, no matter how good of a player they are. In the end, warrior loses. If this matchup isn’t fixed by the blind field spin combo, then perhaps reducing the damage of the skill would help.
Ranger: Another example is the ranger steal, a healing pod that lasts for 8 seconds, and clears conditions. This is extremely strong versus rangers since they have very few conditions, and all of their damage will get instantly removed with a 21.5s cooldown. However, if this wasnt enough, they can spam cluster bombs into the field and heal themselves to full, meanwhile the ranger can’t do anything, as their damage, in the form of conditions, gets removed instantly, and they take aoe damage from the clusters, which also kill their pets and spirits. Now, spam is a funny word, as it implies no skill or thought occurring, i dont feel as if thats something wanted in the game. Overall, in this matchup, the ranger cannot counterplay the thief spam, no matter how skilled they are, or how unskilled the thief is. An easy fix? Nerf the duration of the healing tree to 4s.
Mesmer: To add on to this, perhaps the most famous of unbalanced matchups, thief versus mesmer. This matchup can’t be fixed as easily, as there are many things that need to be fixed, which will hopefully resolve themselves with mesmer buffs, and thief nerfs.
Overall, theres a reason many pvpers see thieves push far almost every game. They can 1v1 most classes because the other person cannot counterplay, regardless of skill level. And as stated in the beginning of this post, the player who plays better should win.
Sorry for not covering the other matchups, such as necros, who can only hit a lucky fear when the thief has no ports to win, or ele, who just gets 1shot.
Tl;dr: Thief steal abilities need to be reduced in effectiveness. It will help with the matchups
PS: Referring to the generally played builds to represent the classes in this post, warrior being hambow, ranger being spirit ranger, mesmer being shatter, thief being zerker with trickery traits. Please refrain from telling me how your cleric banner warrior does not get decapped from a thief.
Ranger