Guild Wars 2

IGN: The Meridian

Playstyle: WvW and PvP

Server: Jade Quarry

Experience with thief: Have mained thief since the game was about…2 months old? I have left for 3-6 months at a time because thief has been nerfed and put at a disadvantage over and over, and because the wvw/pvp game is unchanged (besides imbalance adjustments) almost 3 years in. Currently swap between power and condi builds in sPvP depending on enemy. I never play tPvP, only sPvP. <50% win/loss ratio.

Any guild that invites me must be OK with the fact that I am no longer a consistent player and sometimes leave for months.

You mean…if I had full ascended gear I would stand a chance at beating guards and eles who were just using exotic and rares? And that’s the definition of a good thief?

BTW this forum hasn’t had useful tips since the first few months. All people post are “builds.”

Uh. You don’t mean thief. I know you don’t because the only thieves winning fights 1v1 are the ones picking on underlevels and other thieves. Therefore, you must be joking. Yes, surely you JEST!

The ability of a profession to 1-shot another profession that can’t 1-shot it back…no matter how long the telegraph, delay, etc…how is that fair again?

pve grows boring, pvp is where one tests themselves, people always want to measure themselves relative to others, it’s a natural self-challenge inclination.

If you want to ever win 1v1 battles vs decent players, reroll profession. You wasted your time.

A mastered thief still dies to decent players or has to run away to keep from dying. That’s why there are no youtube videos of any such thing. There are thieves who can kill multiple nubs at a time, but not multiple good players.

Guards don’t lose to thieves. They may not be able to kill them every time (sorry for the disappointment!) but they don’t lose to them. Any guard losing to a thief really should stop playing this game ;\

The reason I left this game wasn’t so much the economy going to bleh (with 13+gold for 100gems vs. when I started) or wvw being exactly the same for 2+ years, or even the ascended gear making the game that much more unfair for me since it takes me forever to get any of it so everyone else is ahead of me…

But what they did to thief, trashing almost all of thief’s fast defensive mechanisms (sword 2 cast delay, d/d 3 evade too short, pistol 5 now blinding q2s, stealth reveals like sic’em, vigor trait reductions, etc.), fast initiative recovery mechanisms (SA init trait with stealth, plus the crit strike +init trait, plus the acro? +init trait q10s) and nerfing thief damage without giving us any healing power increases to offset all the damage thief is inevitably going to take since it takes longer for thief to deal its own. Plus, they gave us a bunch of wonderfully useless “new GM traits” that are all wastes of trait slots.

These things are why I left the game. I still visit the forum to see if any new patches have offset all the worthlessness that is thief vs at least half the other professions (it’s impossible for any thief build to kill several professions’ builds, and IMO this shouldn’t be possible with a BALANCED profession design), but lately all they do are these stupid living world updates.

Thief is niche, very very niche. Kills nubs, kills glass enemies if they aren’t expecting it and aren’t very good, kills other thieves. Otherwise useless. People say all pro teams have one thief…it’s definitely not because they’re good at 1v1, but because of other things like SR or harass with teammate help. In most respects, thief is only 3/4 value max compared to many other profs like guardian, warrior, ele, engi, etc.

I don’t know of any other profession that has 0 builds that can counter/beat at least any build that someone else makes, like rock paper scissors. All other professions can counter any build any other profession uses with an appropriate counter build…except thief. Thief can stalemate, but not win. It has no counter builds for several professions’ builds to allow a chance of winning.

The rest of the GW2 community complained and whined until they got more dps, more ranged dps, more aoe dps, more condition spam, more condi clearance, stealth negation and more mobility than thief (though not all of you got this, a few did!). GJ community! Not sure what you can still gripe about thief regarding…

IMO thief deserves and needs fast skill activation because it has no hp or defense. It needs fast blinds because it can’t take hits. It needs good heals because it has a low HP pool and is going to take significant damage when trying to deal any from melee range.

- More backstab damage (10k isn’t enough) – VS glass and when dps-specced a thief can do this in wvw. 10k bs doesn’t happen in PvP without extreme might from another source, no matter how you spec

- More regen (330/seconds in stealth isn’t enough) – requiring you to spec 6 points into stealth arts so you can have a few seconds of regen while not being able to do any damage, and Everyone in PvP 1v1 complains about this skill because it can actually give the thief a fighting chance

- More stealth (perma stealth isn’t enough) – and doesn’t do any damage to the enemy except the c/d every 4 seconds, which has to be landed every time to be successful

- More TPs (5-6 TPs aren’t enough) – sword tps that don’t work when stunned/disabled/etc., and cost significant init to use, and two utilities, one with long cd (shadowstep) and one that basically sacrifices an escape mechanism (signet)

- More blinds (perma blind isn’t enough) – permablind was a lie before, and it’s REALLY a lie now that pistol 5 blinds q2s instead of q1s

- More dodges (perma vigor and Feline Grace aren’t enough) – Permavigor? Really? They nerfed thief vigor stats so this is impossible (except maybe with huge food boosters), and yes a prof with no access to non-stolen protection, no resistance to damage except when thief can’t deal any itself and has to spend 6 points to get an inferior GM trait, does need to have plenty of dodges…a shade less than 3 vs your 2? How unfair that is

- More presence in PvP (1 thief in every top team isn’t enough) – This isn’t true either, but good try

Looks like another stealth thiefnerf to me (reduced str runes effectiveness compensation for losing 30% of our damage).

Yeah they basically did what was necessary to make the game no longer fun for me. The imbalances are left untouched for 2 months, and wvw/pvp haven’t become more interesting or different. I haven’t played in a few weeks now, only logging in occasionally for socializing and to see if anything has changed.

No, several professions can make a bunker won’t die to TWO people for a very long time (minutes).

Bunkers are OP in PvP and need to be removed. They serve no purpose except to make complete imbalance and require NO skill whatsoever to autowin. If I were to use a bunk engineer and squat on a single point, I would win at least 7 out of every 10 games without doing ANYTHING else.

Defense and healing in combination should never be so high that it negates damage by so much that a bunker can never die 1v1.

This is the most imbalanced option available to any profession that can build it in PvP. Why? Because several classes have a completely 1v1 unkillable bunker build that can sit on a point indefinitely, and if a single team has TWO of them sitting on two cap points then it is an autowin for that team. There is simply NO public sPvP team who will have enough brains to be able to uproot them. It’s autowin and therefore massively imbalanced.

Engineer is probably the worst.

Bunkers are the #1 imbalance in PvP.

It takes no skill to be a bunker sitting on a point forever. Just pick a good bunker build and sit indefinitely.

How do you eliminate them? Nerf their defense OR increase damage.

It happened with the last patch and the lack up any updates since April 15 for me.

I still feel pvp/wvw are both very imbalanced.

Some professions are just better for PvP than others, and some professions have no effective counter to certain builds of other professions.

WvW is literally a pair of servers preplanning to gang up on another server EVERY SINGLE WEEK. It’s not challenging or fun, the plans are made before the week even begins. Also, WvW hasn’t had any real change in actual gameplay in a very long time. The goals and methods of accomplishing them have always been quite shallow and basic, and they are still the same way. The maps are pretty much the same with a few minor additions, and the same main maps have gotten extremely old…

Ascended equipment (at least the stuff you want) is still a PITA to acquire for the marginal improvements. Dropping is extremely rare and even more rare to get a drop you actually want. Legendary gear is an even bigger PITA to acquire unless you buy it. At two years in, it doesn’t feel worth it.

There’s nothing really left to explore or try that would be interesting to bother with or hold my interest anymore.

I played thief mostly for the latter 2/3 of my gw2 time. I toyed around with other professions (including getting them all to LV80 and doing some pvp/wvw with each), but thief was still the most fun and challenging and dynamic. Thief had more potential versatility, but it has been constantly nerfed and it has grown less and less fun to play with each nerf.

The latest update nerfing crit damage output has been another nail in the thief coffin for me. It has literally forced me – just to try to keep the profession worthwhile/entertaining – to go with a 99% glass cannon build (6/6/2/0/0) for pvp and wvw because anything else just doesn’t do enough damage to counter the healing abilities of most professions (including ele, guardian, warrior, ranger, engineer) if they decide to do a bunker or semi-bunker build. People will say pvp wasn’t affected by the crit damage nerf, but it was affected by traits giving less crit damage AFAIK.

I previously ran many builds including 2/6/0/6/0, 2/6/6/0/0, 2/0/6/6/0, 4/0/6/4/0, 2/0/0/6/6, 2/0/2/6/4, etc…though 2/6/6/0/0 was probably my most consistent for wvw before the patch. Now, that build doesn’t do enough damage to anybody anymore to get the job done before they kill me or I have to run away. I didn’t have the problem nearly as often before april 15. The damage nerf has been huge.

The few “viable” pvp builds nowadays for thief depend on them NOT actually delivering enough damage to kill anybody, but simply being able to squat on points and be harder to kill (though still easier than bunk engineers, warriors, guardians, etc.). The thief no longer is really good for anything in pvp except mobility.

I feel pigeonholed more than ever playing the only profession I really enjoyed for a long time.

WvW still has no endgame purpose or meaningful satisfaction, and with the pre-rigging of every game it now doesn’t even seem like there’s a reason to bother getting on since the results are predetermined.

People have told me that the game isn’t balanced around 1v1, and I get that – however, it would be nice if a single person had more potential influence on the outcome of WvW or PvP…right now WvW is just about who makes a deal with who, and PvP is about just having a few good bunkers squat on two points and be virtually impossible to kill. This is the meta. It’s no fun, it’s predictable, it’s consistent and it’s the same old thing over and over.

I’ve just grown tired of this same thing over and over.

I don’t know how Dota2 has managed it, but despite having a much simpler design and being basically a graphically-updated version of a game that is over 10+ years old now, it retains some kind of appeal and interest each time that GW2 has lost.

I suspect it has something to do with the lack of ending with gw2 – it just goes on and on. And on……

So I’ve finally reached the point where I just don’t come on anymore because there’s nothing worth doing anymore. Over the last few weeks I’ve only been coming on for a few hours once every several days or so, and then I leave again and play dota2 when I remember gw2 doesn’t have anything interesting or new to offer or to keep my interest any longer.

I know I’ll get trolled, but I posted because I want to share my honest feelings in the hope that perhaps the mods will see my honest feelings, objective or subjective, and maybe improve the game someday. Maybe I’ll come back then.

Room for error is the biggest differentiator in this game between fair and unfair/OP skills/debuffs/etc.

Any build that focuses on direct damage sacrifices room for error by having less HP, less toughness, less CC/condi removal, etc. They also tend to have smaller AOEs or have other differentiators making it harder to do damage consistently and successfully. Many CC/condi skills also have a longer range, and ranged direct damage is generally much weaker than melee damage, so condi easily does more damage than direct damage at range for most classes. Most builds that focus on condition damage can maintain a higher room for error because the skills have larger AOE, the builds can have higher hp/toughness because fewer stats need to be devoted to damage (1 [condition damage] vs 3 [power precition ferocity]) and a LOT more flexibility.

Condition damage melts an enemy at long range while the melee attacker or weaker direct damage ranged attacks can be kept out of range or their damage greatly limited by range. Condition removal is not plentiful enough to offset condition application, and any condition spammer always stacks far more than one condition. Confusion, bleeding, torment, poison, burning, chilling all do some amount of damage, and then they are buried under disables that often prevent removal of the damaging conditions unless the condi removal skill purges all (usually 40-60 second cooldown so once you use it, you’re screwed when the enemy pours on the same conditions 5-10 seconds later). Some jobs have no skills that remove all conditions and have only one or two skills on long CDs that remove up to 3 conditions (thief etc.). There is no guarantee that damaging conditions will be removed by these skills, and often the same conditions get reapplied as soon as they are removed.

Professions with limited access to regeneration or condition removal are always at a disadvantage against anyone who spams conditions. All dps builds that can actually do much direct damage at all require sacrificing a lot of survivability.

Condition builds have lots of room for error. DPS builds do not. This is why condition builds are the meta (just like warriors have been a dominant prof for a long time). Less skill required = easier to get results = more people play the same things = less diversity. The only ones who go against this are diehards who would rather be punished constantly just to get some gratification by beating the system on rare occasion (direct damage beating condi spammers, a rare thing since direct damage builds have so little room for error and condi spammers have so MUCH room for error).

I am not a guildie or a group player who likes to join a mob, I am a person who wants to test my skill against someone else. I prefer 1v1/2v2 fights. Every argument I make about fixes/changes is based on their use/efficacy in small fights. I don’t care about huge mobs that autocleanse, autoheal, etc., in wvw. It’s a boring playstyle and has been boring since it began. The only interest games hold for me is when they challenge my skill solo or as part of a very small group where each person actually matters.

The design of this game around groups instead of solos is prone to making the single person feel insignificant and useless on their own. I don’t like that concept, and I don’t think it makes for good game longevity.

Either you preach to the choir (supporters who already know and agree) or you preach to the devil (who will never agree). Debate and forum threads are basically useless for all except venting, no matter how obviously correct you might be. People either disagree or agree before they even start reading, and no forum post has EVER changed someone’s mind if they had a strong opinion to begin with.

Have fun condi wars 2 players, that’s all you’ll have as long as you keep saying condi is fine. That’s all anyone is playing in pvp/wvw now, a bunch of condi stackers and a constant counterattempt to try to purge all the condis constantly placed. It’s no small wonder engi is king of the hill with necro not far behind.

Try avoiding all of the massive condition spam weapon skills and condispam utilities(think engineer, necro, etc.) and condispam runes and traits (think Mesmer, thief, engineer, etc.) and passives (guardian etc.). Try avoiding every single one of those skills, many with short cooldowns. Try avoiding all the Mesmer phantasms that autoconfuse/cripple, or the guardian autoattacks that autoburn, or various other attacks that automatically apply poison/bleed/torment/confusion/etc, while they also do direct damage at the same time. Then try avoiding all of the conditions that are applied to you when you happen to be in a certain AREA of effect or whenever you try to hit the enemy. Then try purging all of the conditions when the only skill you have that can purge all your damaging conditions is on a 30-60second cooldown but the enemy can reapply them every 5-20 seconds or faster.

Then try to avoid all the 1+ second castingtime direct damage burst skills that have huge telegraphs and can be evaded, dodged, blocked, invincibility-prevented, BLIND-prevented (something not so effective vs condition skills), etc. Which one is easier to not get hit by?

It’s easier to avoid direct damage by dodging blocking invincibility evadeskills etc. than to dodge aoe/unblockable conditions that take skill activations (if not already on cooldown) to remove.

It’s also easier to get toughness than to get any kind of meaningful condition resistance. Seeing as how all condition resistance is currently a duration reducer, there is no resistance to raw condition damage. There is plenty of resistance to direct damage, including toughness and the skills/abilities mentioned above.

All the while your life is ticking away from conditions and you are trying desperately to survive while your limited condition removal skills are on CD, at the same time you are also getting hit by direct damage from the same source.

This funny difference about condi damage…it’s a constant that doesn’t require you to be attacking once cast/inflicted, nor does it require that you continue to hit the enemy – which said hits are added to the effect of condi damage by being secondary physical damage. It’s basically guaranteed tick damage until removed, whereas melee/range/etc. can be dodged by being out of range or evades.

So why are people still defending undodgable per-second stacking damage?

Every 2 weeks or 2 months a new balancing results in further destruction of all things skill-related about gameplay.

That’s what this game should be called now. WvW is 99% condition spam, PvP is probably 80% condition spam. Even the thieves (since they’ve lost about 30% of their effectiveness when ferocity came into being) have moved on to condition spam thanks to the new trickery trait and dirt cheap krait runes.

Most fights are stalemates now unless someone lacks enough condition removal. It’s all about the conditions now…completely and totally.

Except warriors. They continue to just laugh off virtually ALL 1v1 damage thanks to absurd passive healing of which HS is only a part.

How about skills that do damage based on your/the enemy’s toughness/healing power/vitality/etc.?

Some professions have NO effective counter for condition spam, including thief and, to some degree, Mesmer. They have limited useful condition removal and just can’t clear conditions nearly as fast as they get them. Thief is worst off because of a tiny health pool.

What I see in MOST cases in pvp now are bunkers, condi spammers, and some combination of those two things. A power/crit player is rare (besides thieves), and they are ALWAYS the easiest to kill. Always. They can’t clear condis fast enough and melt if I use an engi, and they can’t take the damage if I use thief. That’s why hardly anyone plays them.

This is not build diversity. Conditions ARE the meta, with bunkers/tanks being the main presentation of this since some kind of increased durability inevitably comes with condition damage stats.

What? You mean any profession can counter/kill a thief? That’s nonsense! Surely thief can do the same to every other profession (bunkers of any kind, engineers of most kinds, etc.)…oh wait, they can’t? Surely someone must be mistaken here.

Currently, any profession can kill any kind of thief with any kind of build, but a thief can’t kill every other profession. This is the gw2 meta. It’s unbalanced, but it’s true. If you give thief a bunker option so we can cheat like all the other bunkers (being unkillable and still dishing out fair damage), then that would even the playing field a bit.

Engi and Ranger have both had unkillable 1v1 bunker builds available, except engi has more access to condispam now.

Warrior still has OP healing.

Here’s the deal:

If you want power, you sacrifice survivability.
If you want condi or bunker, you can basically have both of them at the same time. This is not at all balanced.

What’s even more imbalanced is that they reduced the damage output of power builds across the board (by reducing crit damage), while condition skills are both extremely easy to stack and always have tankier builds available than power builds do.

What’s the worst thing, however, is that there are many professions that can make an unbeatable 1v1 bunker now. That means there is no counter to them and no amount of fair play will beat them. This is an imbalanced build in any profession. In PVP, even if the bunker can’t kill you, they still hold the point indefinitely. This is an unfair advantage for anyone using bunker builds.

This is why thief is lower and lower on the sPVP ladder: it can’t kill any bunker builds and it has no good bunker builds of its own.

Ele has received a new anti-power/crit (basically anti-thief) skill and it is loving it. Ele can now bunker as good as everyone else, never having to do anything meaningful to avoid damage and simply tanking 1v1 without ever dying.

Here’s another problem: Those bunkers outheal all 1v1 damage because heals are TOO STRONG for those bunkers. They should not be able to outheal all damage in a 1v1, even vs a high dps build/profession. This is a broken mechanic and needs to be fixed.

Most people who play pvp play bunkers/condi builds. Anet claims that their goal is to expand diversity, but every time power/dps gets nerfed and bunkers become easier and stronger, the meta becomes even MORE polarized…towards bunkers/condition builds. Any profession that doesn’t have any good ones (e.g. thief) is left out.

I spent a few hours learning engi and basically copied someone else’s build, and it just doesn’t ever DIE in 1v1. I’m not a good engi player, it’s just a broken build. So are other bunker condi builds for other professions. The new ele trait allowing no crits has similar potential, rangers have had and continue to have builds that are virtually unkillable in 1v1, warriors continue to outheal all 1v1 damage (partly because damage was decreased more than hs was nerfed), mesmers seemingly have access to more confusion than ever before (as well as easier access to a bigger variety of conditions thanks to the krait runes) and the whole result is that the game has NEVER been more unbalanced.

Condition damage, as one person said, scales far too strongly against any kind of lower HP profession or build, and now it’s easier than ever to stack a huge number of different conditions on an enemy. Why would anyone bother playing a power build anymore, unless they want to be at a huge disadvantage?

I do not understand why power/crit damage is the target of nerfing when conditions and their constant association with high vit/toughness builds (now easier and more available than in any previous patches) are already stronger. It’s like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Of course, thief gets the worst of it, and they got three nerfs this time besides a huge dps nerf. Not that any of them were deserved, but that has never mattered. What really matters is that people who complain about thief being OP (because they are bad players) get satisfaction.

…. and?

Engi has been OP for months now. Ranger has been able to make unkillable 1v1 tanks for months now. Warrior has been unkillable for months now.

Is something different?

Oh right, they nerfed thief because it was too OP vs those professions (except that all those professions were autowin or stalemate vs thief before, now they are autowin guaranteed).

I’ve just realized how absolutely correct everyone is about the new update to trait point systems and how points are given making leveling a much more boring, unrewarding and difficult chore. Why can’t the devs change the system back to the way it was?

Believe it or not, spending 5 trait points “feels” different and better than spending 1 point.

If I was a dev, I never would’ve let this update go through. Now I’m not even going to TRY to level any other characters up ever again because the update has completely deterred me. It used to be challenging and somewhat slow, but at least there were significant bump-ups for my character all the way along the road from lv10-80. Now, it feels completely unrewarding and much slower/more difficult than ever before.

Reading through the first part…I think lv30 is kind of a long time to wait for traits, but what I really DO NOT LIKE is the part about people being able to change traits on the fly. This is part of what made diablo 3 so BAD BAD BAD, that ability to change traits/skills at any time.

Can you imagine how WvW play will be totally ruined by being able to retrait while out of combat? I can: people will be constantly running away to change traits, and thief will be at the forefront of the whinefest that will be “Wah it’s so easy for thief to get OOC and retrait, easier than any other profession wahh”

However, at the same time, all the players out there will see a thief and adjust to an anti-thief traitline they found on the forum.

Thief will get completely trashed by both parts. Also, WvW gameplay in general will get very messy.

Do NOT allow free trait alteration anytime you are out of combat in WvW. DO NOT! It’s fine in PvE, absolutely and totally fine there…but NOT WvW! If you allow this to happen in the WvW environment, there will be so much abuse of it and the lack of semi-permenancy (having to go to home base and buy a retrait) will really kill the feeling AND fun. It’s hard to describe, but if things are so free to be remade all the time it seems to make games less fun and feel more like a casual thing.

To prevent a game from feeling too casual, you MUST force things like trait adjustment to require a visit to the shop or something else.

I repeat: do NOT do this part of the trait system adjustment!

Yay for another person complaining about thief. Let’s ignore all the other professions out there who can outheal thief WITHOUT need for stealth to do it. Let’s ignore that SR is one of only TWO skills thief has access to (steal with mug trait being the other) besides their main heal skill that can actually HEAL them…and let’s ignore that the only other access to healing they have is a completely WORTHLESS set of utility skills called venoms that nobody uses because thief simply needs every single utility skill to be a protective one in some way, or else they will have no chance to beat any slightly decent player of any other profession.

While you’re at it, you should probably complain about ranger’s various autoheals, guardian’s huge full-life heals (plus heavy armor), warrior’s excellent, completely PASSIVE heals via HS and traits, ele’s access to multiple healing and regen combos and skills, necro’s life leeching and double an already high life pool with instant access, engineer’s what, 5+ heal skills besides main heal, etc etc etc…

L2P?…please? Stop complaining because some semi-decent thief took you out because you are no good at this game.

Persons who insult dungeon/boss designs forget a few key facts:

1. Humans ALWAYS look for the easiest possible way to do things. Maybe not every single individual, but as a whole they do. The result of this is…they figure out the path of least resistance.

As long as dungeons/bosses/etc. remain consistent and static in their function, people will always figure out a singular method of either doing it as easily as possible…or avoiding the dungeon/boss altogether if the risk/reward ratio is subjectively not worth it. HOTW recently got a huge troll buff…and instantly nobody is playing that path anymore (at least far less people are). That’s the avoidance side. It’s because it’s NOT WORTH IT anymore.

As for making bosses more interesting…Anet would have to reduce the damage or figure out some way to force people to get protection/regen/etc. on in order to survive certain parts if anet wants a support person to be part of the “new trinity.” Then, you would need to make CC/stuns/etc. more effective AND make the threat/danger of not using them greater if a CC person was supposed to be necessary. Then, you would need to increase the reward for the increased risk. Don’t increase the number of people necessary to do it, just increase the reward and challenge.

2. Humans ALWAYS try to find ways to bypass certain things that we consider uninteresting, unrewarding, etc. In fact, any game that lacks any way to “cheat” or “bypass” becomes less fun because you are stuck never being able to figure out some way to “outsmart the system” (a very satisfying feeling for many people).

3. I continue to say, increase the risk AND the reward, not just one or the other. So many big meta events don’t get completed on many servers even once a day – despite being active 10-12 times a day or possibly more – because they are not worth it or require more people than want to bother/are available at the time.

I continue to advocate making major events doable with fewer people. I believe it would make the game feel more “playable” to those people who either can’t play on prime times, don’t have a lot of friends to play with, etc.

How dare someone make longer posts than I do….

I THOUGHT march was the big balance patch month…

Really I think that devs should always post the upcoming balance patch plans a week before its release and then REQUEST SUGGESTIONS FROM THE COMMUNITY in extremely simple language…like “reduce/increase etc/etc from/to because x reason”

I mean…IMO I wish we had some improvements like reverting previously useful pvp skills back away from the current state of making the weapon set virtually useless…sword inf return etc…

But everybody knows that thief never gets buffs unless they come with massive nerfs too…

So obviously I should be grateful there were no balance fixes, except to nerf a thief buff bug…which is probably the smallest nerf thief has gotten in any balance-altering patch since GW2 was released.

But cmon, still so many OP wars…etc. etc…

Here’s a great counter to thief (works every time):

Damage that doesn’t require a target lock to activate, e.g. every CC, every condition AOE, every damage AOE that exists. Stealth isn’t invincibility like what Warrior has tons of and Guardian has lots of and Ele has some of and Mes has some of and Engi has some of…

Why people still complain about stealth. There is no permastealth, the d/p nerf removed that. Stealth is never permanent, as soon as a thief damages someone its revealed for at LEAST three seconds, and during that time thief is extremely vulnerable.

The only thief builds with more endurance-related evades than any warrior/etc. are the ones that have some focus on acrobatics. The utility evade (roll for init) has a 60 sec cd, the heal evade is q15 seconds (and it doesn’t heal any damaging conditions, and it can’t be procced when stunned or disabled), shortbow evade can only be used 3x before you’re broke on init (and it doesn’t do much damage), and s/d skill-3 is a very short-duration evade that requires extremely good timing.

All those evades…less than 11k base HP, very bad armor. The ONLY viable thief builds are zerk, valk and possibly dire. Zerk is downed in one shot by two different warrior skills, OR 4 melee autoattacks from MANY classes, Valk takes about 6-7 hits to kill instead of 4. Only dire has any survivability, but a dire build (and any thief condi build) is completely, utterly worthless against a tank like engi condi/healwar/necro condi builds. They laugh off all the damage and condis without ticking down in life.

Thief doesn’t do enough damage to NOT be glassy and ever down anyone. Their base damage is way too low to actually down anybody who doesn’t suck before the opponent downs them first. Thief HAS to be played smart. Stealth and evades are absolutely key to thief design. If thief was visible at all times, it would never, EVER be played in wvw (or pvp since the s/d nerf) because it would be the most useless profession – outdoing ele in that regard.

Thief only good for killing underlevels, noobs, and running away from everything else.

That’s the reality of it since…I dunno…they’ve nerfed every weapon set thief ever had available…and nerfed our damage…and nerfed our vigor…and nerfed our stunbreaks so we have less than half as many as some other professions…etc.

I have three words for you………………..FOR THE OVERMIND.

…………..If you don’t get it, move on.

In case people are still completely ignorant of thief d/p: Back in the day, it USED to give long stealth and keep regenerating initiative with each jump (you could do up to 4 in one BP). Well, they nerfed that completely. Now thief doesn’t get initiative for each jump, only the first one. The result is, nobody using d/p can/does spam more than 1-2 HS for stealth because the init cost is too high.

It required skill to do it in the first place. They have nerfed our dynamic initiative boosters a TON, making thief less dynamic and more static, less random and more easy to predict.

Why do people constantly complain because a melee profession with no armor or HP can use the same WEAPON skill (not utility) multiple times until initiative runs out – which results in NO weapon skills being usable until initiative recovers, whereas you can always rotate through all your skills as any other profession – ???

It’s absolutely AMAZING how ignorant so many people are about thief. It’s not an easy class. Anyone who dies to HS spam is really, really BAD at pvp/wvw. Anyone who dies to PW spam is really, REALLY BAD at pvp/wvw. Anyone who dies to something they can clearly see is being spammed and has a .75+ second cast time is REALLY BAD at pvp/wvw. The majority of decent players don’t die to anything spammable by thief. Most professions have really good hard counters to thief.

It’s always great to see people constantly attack thief as a profession.

I love how people gang up on thief, a melee class with no armor or HP, which absolutely HAS to evade 80% of all damage from all other classes in order to just keep from being downed in 2-4 seconds, which cannot stand to to toe with ANY other classes except maybe ele, which has NO protect, only ONE stability, 3 stunbreaks (compared to warrior’s 6+), NO condition immunity, very few condition removal traits and only three utilities (including heal) that actually remove ANY damaging conditions at all (and no utilities/skills that remove ALL conditions, unlike warrior/engi/necro/etc.)….

And yet you complain because you suck and die to thief. Only bad players lose to thief. Stop, stop whining about thief. Thief has no invulns, only evades. Warrior, Guardian, Ele, Mesmer, Engi have invulns…

Every time they nerf thief damage (under the guise of nerfing all crit damage) without also nerfing all the regens, protections and heals the enemy has puts thief farther and farther behind the pack and makes them less and less able to actually down anybody EVER in 1v1.

It’s already a “must play perfectly to have any chance at all” profession…

As far as I’m concerned, devs need to stop doing all of this crap behind closed doors and not listening to – or usually even considering – what all the playerbase says unless they say “nerf thief” like so many people always do (because they suck).

I don’t understand what people don’t understand about thief not being able to do enough damage to KILL anybody at all if they don’t go full zerk in PVP and mostly zerk/valk/etc. crit% in WvW. We don’t have high enough base damage to NOT go damage builds. PVT thief is as impotent as healthief is as impotent as any other combination that does not have crit buffs.

We are a CRIT profession, because our base damage is no better than any others and maybe worse than a few, and because everyone else is so much more survivable one way or another than us (more HP or more defense or more defensive buffs/heals/etc.) by default…and all of our survivability skills require active skill/effort and good timing that the others don’t need (they just spam through the skill list over and over with each CD).

The systems that the other professions have all allow them to fully heal from all the damage a non-crit-based thief can do, meaning the only way a thief can win is if the enemy forgets to heal at all for the entire fight…which, plain and simple, doesn’t happen with any decent player. Thief has to use so many evades/etc. for survival and its own active heals that it can’t be applying pressure 100% of the time. Anytime there’s a lull is an easy time for others to heal/regen/etc.

Therefore, until heals get nerfed for other professions, thief will never be able to do enough damage without crit % to kill ANYBODY who isn’t a total nub.

People who advocate for thief having increased HP and/or defense don’t comprehend that the world would not be a better place if EVERYBODY was brown.

The concept of Thief is a low hp, low defense, HIGH BURST DAMAGE, high mobility character.

The concept of Ele is a low hp, low defense (but with lots of BUFFS), good burst damage character with very good AOE.

The concept of Mesmer is a fairly high HP, low defense (again with buffs) more rounded caster with tricks and good sustain plus good burst.

The concept of Engi is a more mechanized variation of Mes with good sustain/condi and fairly good hp and defense.

The concept of Necro is high survivability with lots of AOEs and conditions and some good burst skills.

The concept of Guardian is very high survivability through defense and defensive skills and heals with good sustain, good aoe, very good overall support.

The concept of Warrior is a do-anything-well power or support with very high defense and hp combination and lots of damage, sustain and support…but it also has top mobility and passive regen.

Don’t homogenize them.

As a long-time thief who has gotten so tired of being nerfed to death that he eventually went to work primarily on getting a lv80 warrior…

Are there going to be any balance fixes for the next patch, such as…I dunno…making thief less inferior to warrior in every conceivable way, and making engi condition spam a little easier for thief to deal with?…

Actually…the BEST….

1. warrior, many builds
2. engi, condi builds
3. fearnecro
4. everything else

Now, for builds that can survive 1v1 forever….
1. warrior, many builds
2. engi, condi builds
3. ranger, various bunk builds
4. guardian, various bunk builds
5. ele, certain bunk builds
6. everyone else

The ignorant will inherit the earth and they will complain that everyone else is OP because they lose all the time.

Actually you can DODGE hs with its huge jumping animation too, and you can predict backstab extremely easily since a thief has to go into stealth to be able to do it.

Ignorance is bliss. You can’t SPAM 2 as thief with s/d, and each combo takes 5 init so you will be out within 2-3 back and forth efforts. Spamming 2 with HS may be repeatable 5-6 times but if it misses most times or only does a tiny bit of damage then you’ve wasted ALL your init and are a sitting duck.

You have NO idea. NONE. Go play thief and lose because it’s not a great profession for 1v1 anymore (nerfed to death).

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Black Teagan.9215:

If you want to summary the thiefclass in one sentence: “Kill them immediately or stealth and repeat your button spamming once they have used there defensive cool downs to stop your first batch of burst.”

Fixed it for you. The sort of damage Thief can do is simply broken. What other class has an attack that can do up to 16k damage in ONE hit that has NO punishment if the skill is dodged, blocked or immuned? Which allows them to continue to spam it until it hits and then for them to spam #2 until the target is dead…

Lets not forget that this burst can ONLY be “avoided” if you actually SEE them. You stand NO chance if they see you first and instantly use one of MANY ways to get cheap and easy Stealth. Sure having advantage is fine, that advantage leading to near 1hit kills is NOT fine.

Warrior does several skills actually, including one that works at 1500 range. Incidentally, thief damage has been nerfed to the point where they cannot actually get 16k in a single hit no matter whether they have 25 stacks of bloodlust and might plus applied whatever wvwskill plus a full glass power/crit build…UNLESS they’re attacking a superglassy/underlevel enemy.