Traverse, I think you over-simplify a lot of stuff in for the sake of being concise.
The reason why Thieves are OP is that there are no player-induced (Read: skill) counters to a well played thief.
Consider:
- they can ALWAYS escape to heal.
- they have on demand, 100% damage mitigation in the form of stealth. Even block/invuls/shields pale in comparison, as stealth forces the other player to retarget (exceeding difficult considering how absurdly many classes have pets, including thieves), while other class’s abilities don’t force retargetting. Either way, every fight a thief enjoys many extra seconds of no incoming damage, and there is NO COUNTER.
- they get an upper hand at the start of most fights, all if played properly. Stealth combined with “backstab-like” abilities is not something that can really be countered in a skilled match. You can’t counter what you can’t see – and even if you get lucky dodge/AoE guessing, 5 seconds later you’d have to do it again. NO REAL COUNTER.
- stealth executes are priceless, and better than stability (ie. no dmg taken from downed opponent). There is NO COUNTER to stealth execute.
- thieves are impossible to kite. If they are ever crippled, they go stealth – completely eradicating any hope of doing damage while kiting – which is a ranged class’s only hope. They have multiple teleports/leaps, and only an elementalist burning cooldowns can really get away. Otherwise, NO COUNTER.
- downed teleport is an incredible skill – and saves more thieves (and mezmers) than any other downed ability. It always takes longer to finish them (even for ranged classes). This pays off huge when defending points, waiting for backup, etc. Again, there is NO COUNTER to this.
On a spreadsheet, thief abilities don’t seem over-powered. But it is the one class that has NO COUNTERS when played properly.
Defending thieves by saying “groups can target and burst them at the start of fights” is not a counter, or balance. Any class, regardless of being OP, can be group bursted at the start of fights. That’s really not the point, but identifying that as an option really suggests there they have no gameplay-based COUNTER.
RE: “AoE mitigates thief ownage” – some classes don’t have consistent AoE, for example rangers. If you take traps, you’re useless against everything else.
RE: “build your specs to counter thieves” – NO other class demands that, and is NOT the definition of balanced.
RE: “game balanced for tPvP” – it shouldn’t be. Balance shouldn’t only be attained by a well-skilled group on Ventrillo shouting out thieves and mass-targeting them. That’s not balance, that’s insane.
Balance is balance – when 1 class has so many unique abilities with so few counters, you can’t say its balanced.
(edited by NaZ.1457)