Guild Wars 2

I really wish they’d have taken a different approach to stealth counters though. Anyone who thinks 2000 range instant cast unavoidable hard counters promotes skillful counterplay is just joking himself. Doesn’t matter whether people actually end up slotting it or not, the idea is very poorly executed at its roots.

The issue isn’t really with whether people will be slotting these anti stealth abilities or not. I’m actually assuming a fair few who roam in WvW will do so. I come across plenty of rangers who are already running Sic ’Em. But the issue is how poorly implemented these stealth counters are.

In the case of the ranger, an instant cast 2000 range stealth hard counter which is completely unavoidable is just a bad joke of counterplay. There’s literally nothing a thief can do to try avoid this hard counter unless they’re literally sitting in stealth all day. Which is my next issue with this way of approaching counterplay to stealth.

Thieves that don’t stealth too much and save it for when they really need to avoid incoming damage are far more susceptible to this counter than thieves who perma stealth all day. Because you can’t use an ability like Sic ‘Em on something you can’t see. It would have made far more sense to have changed various AoE abilities across classes to have an additional effect by dropping thieves out of stealth. Provides more options for counterplay on both sides.

But instead we get these poorly thought out hard counters which makes me think the balancing team doesn’t know what it’s doing. There’s also 5 other classes (not counting thief) that haven’t been previewed yet and could possibly have some fancy new stealth hard counters too.

Sure, thieves could be getting some nice changes themselves as well, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Even better would be is to change revealed back to 3 seconds. The current longer reveal in PvP hurts D/D more than anything.

The main problem I have with AI builds is the passive play it encourages. It needs so little player input to be effective and the pressure on the enemy is so great, it’s far too rewarding. I spectated a MM necro the other day and he literally didn’t use his dodge key a single time, yet he was still able to perform really well and ended with a high score in the pvp match. Something is wrong if just a build can carry you that far.

And ironically people are citing SA as a reason stealth is unbalanced, a traitline almost no thief in PvP invests into anymore because it’s hardly any good there.

phaeris.7604:

If a thief hits/gets evaded/gets blocked stealth should break. It raises the skillcap without breaking the profession.

Nah, that wouldn’t break the profession at all. I mean, a single evade to waste 9 of the thief’s iniative (BP + HS) sounds perfectly balanced. Or a block, blind or anything of the sort. And it’s not like you can AoE at the same time when having aegis up or after having blinded the thief, meaning you’ll be doing good damage while the thief’s burst is reduced to literally zero.

Need more suggestions to properly nerf this broken profession, please.

ShakeyStorm.7180:

Ignoring self praise and unrelated comment…

What Anet needs to do is to add “a button they (players) can press to instantly drop a thief out of stealth and reveal him.” – Okaishi

Self praise? Understanding thief mechanics and being able to deal with the class doesn’t require you to be an amazing player, and I don’t see myself as one anyway. Or perhaps I should have ignored your pointless reply.

If Anet does end up giving in to all the whine about stealth counters they’d better implement some serious buffs to the class at the same time. 90% of the thieves are already laughably easy to down on pretty much any other class I play. I guess the players who can’t be bothered learning how to counterplay thieves themselves need a button they can press to instantly drop a thief out of stealth and reveal him.

No thanks, I really don’t want another kind of build similar to MM necro or spirit ranger where you can basically stand idle and still do well. Rather than buffing spirit weapons, I’d rather have them deleted altogether and have a new and interesting set of utility skills that may actually be viable. And while they do this for the guardian, they can do this for every single other profession as well because all of them have a vast amount of skills that are completely useless.

andy.7813:

People who claim that war/thief is not op simply cling to I win button Anets favorite classes. If you don’t consider those classes op than yeah try play ranger for egz.
Thief does have perma stealth, farts blindness all the time , burst damage no Cds on weapon skills more free teleports than in any given star trek episode. Steal is on low cd and does have 1500 range hehhe no its not op class at all. One thief can easy go vs 8 players and get kills or troll and run away , that’s not op at all. ( try and do it with ur ranger) There is also this stupid notion that people who play thief class are pros and the rest of us is just a group of mindless morons who don’t know how to play gw2. Claiming that in www thief does have only limited uses is also false, and it probably comes from people who love easy kills and don’t bother with group effort.
Warrior is basically best class at everything in game.

Those two classes are Anet baby pets that will never get balanced. This game was advertised as a skill based game, what it looks like that skill starts and ends at character creation screen. Its been already almost 2 years of this unbalance garbage, one can only hope that new mmos will deliver better www experience , sadly Black desert Online is still years away.

I’m pretty sure you will find things to complain about in other games as well. A thief going up against 8 players and managing to troll them or even kill a player says mostly something about the ability of those people involved. I’m saying this because I went roaming with a party of 4 the other day and groups of thieves were getting wrecked so fast it was funny. It almost made me feel bad for them.

If some people would invest even half the time they spend complaining on the forums into making a thief/warrior and learning their mechanics and weaknesses they would do a lot better. But yeah, big effort. People assume x or y class takes no skill to play, yet don’t realize it’s a simple matter of them getting outplayed and it’s up to them to step up their game. It’s funny you mention rangers as well because there’s a ranger build out there that’s an absolute menace to thieves, just saying.

I can only imagine how meditation guardians would be near impossible to defeat with a dagger mainhand thief. Good ones are incredibly hard as it is already.

I wouldn’t mind SR being changed to pulsing every second for 5 seconds, providing 1 second stealth and about 400~ healing per pulse. What I’d want in exchange though, with the plenty of counterplays refuge already has in mind, is that you don’t get revealed the instant you get knocked out of it.

Maybe add some condition removal to allies to further stimulate it’s defensive use for yourself and other players. It’ll surely be less frustrating to deal with than a 16 second stealth.

Stealthing off of walls is ridiculous and was removed at some point, only for it to return for no apparent reason.

I find the complains about condis and thieves very similar as people are frustrated by overwhelming condi pressure and stealth (and backstabs) respectively. People are annoyed, so people complain. Even though anyone can do well against condi specs or thieves if they put in some effort.

I don’t see spamming backstabs in stealth really as much of a problem. The animation and aftercast for backstab lasts about 1 second, so you generally have about 3 attempts to successfully land a backstab after stealthing, unless you used utilities to extend your stealth duration. If you just spam the #1 button without trying to look for a window of opportunity, you’re far more likely to land a frontstab and deal only half the damage, which in most cases isn’t enough to pressure opponents at all. You’re also far more likely to have taken a considerable amount of damage before having done any damage yourself because a good opponent will have punished you for staying in melee range for that long. For example, I’ve had situations where I overcommited trying to backstab an elementalist and I had taken far too many air autos by the time I had landed my backstab. As I exited stealth he had already dealt more damage to me than I had done to him, and he immediately had the upper hand while I was revealed.

So yeah, in my opinion the risk for spamming backstabs is already there. Leaving stealth for having your backstab dodged is not a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s really neccessary either.

Samis.1750:

I would guess that 50% of roamers in wvw are thieves – so something must be wrong.

I would guess 50% of the zergers are guardians, with another 30% being warriors. So yeah, something must be wrong.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Stealth is much more powerful in WvWvW than in spvp/tpvp. It is nowhere balanced there. Perma stealthed opponents contesting enemy keeps are extremely common and thieves (many of them the perma stealth variety e.g. D/P) are also by far the most common roaming profession.

They should limit the maximum duration of stealth to 8 seconds and make revealed 4 seconds, just like in pvp. Then nobody could stealth more than 2/3 of the time, which is still a lot of stealth in combat and would allow reasonable time for thieves to heal and cleanse conditions during stealth. Also any attack – missing or blocked or attacks done by clones or illusions or turrets or pets – should cause revealed. Currently there is no risk of trying to spam backstab etc. from stealth. Even if it misses or is blocked you still get no revealed. Currently PU mesmers can stay stealthed, while their illusions deal damage. This does not promote skillful play. And doesn’t make the fights fun at all.

Note: this is NOT a thief or mesmer rage comment. My suggestions should affect all professions. Currently engineers can also stealth for more than 8 seconds using smoke field + blast finishers. Limit this to max 8 seconds, please.

I wonder how people can suggest such changes and not realize how this would nerf the thief profession into oblivion. Getting revealed when your backtstab gets evaded? Holy crap, it’ll be a walk in the park to defeat any dagger mainhand thief. I find them quite easy as it is already.

And I’m actually hoping revealed will be pushed back to 3 seconds in PvP because the only thing 4 second reveal does is completely kill D/D thief builds. It messes up their rotation, and they lack the defensive mechanisms to get through this longer period of reveal, whereas D/P has Black Powder and additional blinds with Shadow Shot, and also the daze on Headshot. Introduce the same increased reveal in WvW and the D/D builds will cease to exist, and they’re rare as it is already.

He just couldn’t handle the fact he lost and decided to gank you afterwards. It’s very sad to be honest, and it’s not the way people do duels. Do not hesitate to kill him next time.

You have such pathetic people on all classes by the way, and it’s not a reason to stomp all the thieves you duel. Most thieves who duel are not actually like that, people just like to generalize.

Usually pressing tab works for me to re-target a thief after he leaves stealth.

BurrTheKing.8571:

From the perspective of a Mace Warrior, I hate this trait. So often I’ll stun the Thief, this will proc and I’ll down them. They’ll then shadow step and immediately use the downed state stealth.

I’m not sure how this works. First of all, there’s a 7 second cooldown on the #3 skill (the stealth) when going down. The blinding powder passive provides the thief with 4 seconds of stealth (if he has atleast 15 points in SA), so there’s atleast 3 seconds he should be visible in his downed state. Moreover, the downed skill only provides 2 seconds of stealth (1 untraited). In no way should the thief have enough time to be able to revive by himself. It’s different if he managed to drop a refuge on himself before going down though.

To be honest, last refuge has killed me more often than it has saved me. Furthermore, it’s quite buggy. I’ve had moments where I was brought down to 1k HP, and the trait only activated a few seconds later as I took the damage that downed me. It’s quite worthless in my opinion.

Kyon.9735:

I’m still wondering why Thieves get a Chill applying skill when they use Steal on an Elementalist. Isn’t it common knowledge that Thieves would usually cheese out Elementalists yet Anet still gave them access to Chill which is an Elementalists greatest bane in terms of conditions?

A good d/d elementalist is actually a tough opponent for a thief, and it’s a pretty even fight if they are of the same skill level. People keep acting like elementalists need pity and are weak, but if played properly they are actually quite strong. Strength runes work really well on them.

Shockwave.1230:

• Blackpowder + Heartseeker x 3 = 15 second recharge = 9 seconds of stealth/12 seconds traited **Note all initiative is used for this

Traited stealth doesn’t actually increase the stealth duration of leaping through or blasting a smoke field. Black Powder + Heartseeker always provides 3 second stealth regardless of traits.

I’d rather have more viable runes than this getting nerfed. Most of the runes are just so underwhelming they might as well not exist. There should be more variety.

Fortus.6175:

nobody is denying that, however, toxic things has to go away, and backstab is toxic. Still, if you think GC thieves are the squishiest and least survivable builds out there then you need to revise your build and spell rotations, because they are by far one of the hardest things to kill, and thats including bunkers. How you ask? Stealth. On top of that, teleports that have no CD, dodges and blinds. An ele would give a limb for such survival rate that thieves enjoy.

Personally I’m not against a thief rework of some sorts, but please be factual with your posts. In no way do thieves that hit backstabs for 13k+ enjoy the survivability you described. That survivability actually comes with different builds that hit glassy targets for 6k with backstab, maybe 7k at the very most. Teleports that have no CD only come with using a sword in your main hand, shadowsteps of a d/d or d/p thief actually have considerable cooldowns.

Counters to stealth that do not apply revealed sound interesting. This way it comes down to the thief’s reaction speed to try stealth again and it also comes down to the enemy to properly time their stealth counter and land their burst/CCs. Depending on the amount of stealth counters thieves may need some buffing/compensation in other areas though, because they have very little going for them outside of stealth.

Backstab doesn’t need its damage reduced even further. These high numbers are only possible if you run 30/30/0/0/10 with 3 or 4 signets and scholar runes. This doesn’t come with any survivability whatsoever, thieves specced this way generally can’t stealth much more than 2 times and missing their one major burst will leave them like a sitting duck.

I’m not sure if it’s okay for high numbers like that to be achievable. However, rather than reducing damage on backstab itself it might be more useful to look into all the options that amplify this damage. The new 200 power trait, might on signets, scholar runes, flanking strikes, lead attacks, and I may be forgetting a few. Those things are the reason why backstab hits so high in that particular build, it’s just so much damage amplification. It’s not because of the backstab damage itself.

Personally I don’t have a problem with a build sacrificing everything to achieve such high numbers, but I can imagine why others would. However, keep in mind that just lowering the backstab damage will probably hurt the other thief builds more than it would the “instagib” builds, and a nerf like that wouldn’t be healthy for the class or the game.

The issue with conditions is not really about the fact that cleanses can’t keep up. Cleanses are not supposed to keep you free from conditions at all times. The issue though is that conditions are so easily applied and re-applied cleansing hardly helps anymore. And it’s not just the damage that’s a concern, because all the bleeds/burns often will be paired with chill, weakness, cripple which will greatly impact the chances of a power build to properly land their attacks and deal any significant damage to you. That paired with condi specs generally being more survivable than their zerker counterparts does lead me to believe that the nerf to crit damage (some builds see a decrease of 40% crit damage or even more) tilts the balance in favour of condi specs a bit too much.

It’s amazing how people think this would be a good change that would balance out the thief. It will do nothing less than destroy any dagger based builds, mainly D/D which already has so many counters.

With this change, every time the thief manages to stealth you just have to do 1 thing: pop aegis or a blind and you can just sit back and wait while the thief either reveals himself or waits out the duration of the stealth and does no damage at all, while any of your AoE/cleave can still hurt him significantly. Counterplay to the thief will be so laughably easy because a good player can punish a revealed thief really fast. Basically you’ll be locking the thief out of its burst, and without it they might as well not exist.

Suggesting this idea or even agreeing to it just shows how many people have absolutely no clue about thief mechanics or have the insight to see how destructive these proposed changes would be to the thief class.

Something that could use some changes is the easy access on stealth on D/P. If anything needs more counters then that’s the weaponset to look at.

It’s ironic how people argue stealth is completely OP but also say they beat thieves easily 1v1. Makes me wonder how useless thieves can become with some ‘proper’ stealth nerfs.

Flea Exercise.5098:

Finally someone who knows the math. I’ve almost lost the faith in humanity.

As far as I know, they were talking about an overall 10% damage decrease for berserker, not a 10% decrease to critical damage.

Brb, leveling my condi engineer.

dylan.5409:

Did we not watch the video?

Like has been pointed out, you have to build in a specific way to get backstabs that high, and you’re left quite helpless after the initial burst. There’s no survivability, and the guy in the video dies a lot too but you don’t see that ofcourse. Not many thieves play this build because of these facts, there’s little variety to the build (it’s basically a one-trick pony), you die from a gust of wind and messing up your combo means death against any competent player. The usual thief build does maybe a little over half the backstab damage. So yes, the numbers the OP gave are greatly inflated. It’s not a regular occurence, and building for that damage comes with sacrificing everything else.

Don’t bother with Sanduskel, he doesn’t actually play a thief. He’s very good at making up scenarios and portraying how he owns everything, and claiming it’s the easiest thing in the world.

KDXX.9520:

That said, traveling in a group of 3-5 might not save you, actually if you’re a mid or back liner it probably won’t. I have stood in the middle of some of the most gruesome zerg clashes of Blackgate, JQ, and SOR and survived like a champion, and I’m an Engie so that’s saying a little something.

But thieves? Nope. I’ve maybe killed three thieves 1v1. One in particular comes to mind. I used my rifle to net him, ran up, hit him in the face with a wrench (confusion), switched back to my rifle used the power shot to knock him and me back. You’d rocket boots to promptly stomp him into the dirt and get back to right next to him, and then went psycho with the flame thrower till condition damage just overwhelmed him.

So why did he die? Because I saw him first and gave him 0 opportunity to stealth. Because if he’d stealthed, it was game over for me. That’s just wrong. It’s wrong to have a single class mechanic that’s so powerful you KNOW you’re going to lose to it.

Oh and returning to the travelling in groups thing. I see thieves 1 v 3-5 all the time, and win.

Also, unless something’s changed, Engies do not get a stealth skill. Thieves and Rangers only. If that’s wrong, and something has changed, let me know.

It’s ironic that someone who doesn’t even know his own class is complaining about thieves and thinks his argument is valid just because he can’t beat them. Yes, engineers have some access to stealth, they can combo their own field and you get a 5 second stealth with Toss Elixir S.

Surviving a zerg fight does not make you a skilled 1v1 player. The fact you’re a rifle engineer, which is something I find quite weak, doesn’t help you against thieves either. Maybe a stealthing thief means death to you, but your engineer colleagues that specialize in roaming are actually very strong against thieves, whether those thieves manage to stealth or not.

It’s just the mindset of people that annoys me. I can’t beat this, it must be OP. If some people would invest as much time learning how to play against thieves as they do complaining about them they’d probably do quite well. But hey, I guess complaining is the easier way to deal with your issues.

I’m not saying stealth is without its problems. I would embrace some well though out changes to thieves and stealth that wouldn’t actually be a straight up nerf, but all that’s going on here is mindless complaining. Thieves are dependant on stealth for a reason.

Wow, it seems people really are still complaining about backstab. So I take it you stand still so that thief can land a clear hit? Only thieves that spec 100% glass gear and traitwise (no survivability, condi removal, healing, etc) can achieve such high backstabs, and they die incredibly fast. 90-95% of the thieves won’t be hitting you for even near that amount. There’s plenty of counterplay to punish a thief for trying to backstab you, but I guess it involves too much effort for players like you that rather just whine on the forums.

There are so many problems in this game, and backstab isn’t one of them. And what you fail to mention that even if your post was upvoted, the first reply that explains backstab isn’t a problem is upvoted by atleast as many people, by players who are actually half decent at playing this game.

LordByron.8369:

1st thing thieves say is stealth is the only defensive mechanic…..

If you can choose 2 from 3 surviving mechanics that justs makes the point invalid…not even considering how some other professions have 1 or none.

you can build with evasion AND mobility….or with stealth and mobility

Being virtually immortal and the top burst is not a “perk”….

How useful is mobility, the ability to run away from a fight, for winning against your opponent? The answer would be: not useful at all. Sure, you may be able to survive some losing battles. But in combat it’s not helping you in any way whatsoever, only if you want to chicken out.

Does it really frustrate you that much that a thief is able to run away? I personally couldn’t care less, I know I’ve won. I’m not going to cry over that lootbag I just missed. I can continue on my own business and that thief isn’t going to do anything if he can be forced to run away easily.

So many people are hung up over the fact that thieves are slippery and able to disengage.

Stealth doesn’t prevent any cast from finishing. Killshot, rapid fire, all of that will keep channeling/hitting after you’ve gone into stealth. The same applies to bosses and mobs in dungeons.

It’s silly they changed deathshroud because of Skyhammer, I wonder if there wasn’t a different solution to fix that. Apart for the pvp map it wasn’t something that required any changes. And Skyhammer is a crappy map anyway.

The problem with nerfing the offensive potential of stealth is that dagger mainhand builds heavily rely on backstab for their damage. Currently it can already be hard enough to land it against skilled players. What I’m talking about is players anticipating your backstab, moving around a lot, evading, spamming AoE around them while also using blocks/blinds. The difference between skilled and lesser skilled warriors for example is that the latter will wait around for you to exit stealth, while the former will spam his attacks, suddenly use their hammer stun or knockback, which can easily turn the momentum of the fight in their favour when you get CCed and exit stealth without having landed a backstab, while having taken a good amount of damage.

Such players will be near impossible to fight if you put instant reveal when your backstab misses/gets blocked. Not to mention that thieves can’t really do much damage at all if their backstab doesn’t land.

Well, personally I’ve died plenty of times due to Last Refuge kicking in. Mostly because I don’t immediately flee when I’m a bit pressured, and when you suddenly get bursted down to 20% HP while you’re in the process of landing that cloak and dagger you’re basically screwed. It’s very frustrating when it happens.

What about changing Last Refuge so it refreshes your Blinding Powder utility skill? Though in that case the health percentage it triggers at currently is too low in my opinion (because it probably takes a moment before you realize your Blinding Powder is available again), and I would suggest increasing the trigger to be about 40% of your HP.

The trait would only be useful if you actually have Blinding Powder slotted, so it would make more sense as a major adept trait instead of a minor one then. Perhaps turning a trait like Infusion of Shadow into the new minor adept trait instead of Last Refuge would be a good option.

Bunda.2691:

It comes down to fun. And for all non thieves, getting ganked from out of nowhere by an enemy you didn’t/can’t see just isn’t fun. This should be the baseline of this discussion.

This corresponds with a general issue of fairness. The most fun games are not necessarily the most balanced, but the ones in which you always believe that you have an equal chance to win. The stealth-opening gameplay of the thief unfortunately runs counter to this principle.

It’s not a l2p or “try playing a thief” issue either. I accept that playing one isn’t easy, and that other classes have counters. The issue is that in WvW all other classes allow for you to enter combat on a more agreed-upon playing field, whereas thieves’ mechanics are all about starting off with the advantage. Again, this just isn’t fun.

Stealth should be used to drop targeting and allow for brief repositioning. It should not be allowed to give one player a massive leg up at the start of a fight.

You’re misunderstanding one thing though. Thieves generally aren’t in stealth before ganking an enemy player. I almost always see thieves coming just by keeping an eye on my surroundings. Unlike what certain people believe, thieves don’t roam around on the map permanently in stealth. I believe that many people mistake getting ganked from behind/the sides with getting ganked from stealth.

Tibstrike.2974:

I know. It’s almost as if I play thief in WvW and know its AoE limits. Not everyone plays dagger thieves.

True, but the OP is specifically complaining about D/D, so I was referring to that. I just find the comparison to siege ironic. God forbid a thief hits a single player harder than a piece of siege hits 50 players.

Thief daggers hit 1 target, while a piece of siege will hit 50. I feel silly for explaining this, even though I know you’re just pointing out some technicality.

There’s a slight difference between thieves and siege though. Thieves have an “AoE” cap of 1.

LordByron.8369:

warrior and mesmer are about sustained…..except shatter mesmers..
And yes its how burst profession are supposed to work in ANY game.

You bring your opponent in a weak state then you have to finish him before it recovers or can fight back or just die.

Otherwyse you are covering 2 roles rather than only the burst one.

Bursts in GW2 are too easily avoided to make it work like any game. The ability to dodge plays an important factor.

LordByron.8369:

you don t play ele….we d lose time discussing a profession you don t know…
FYI its called BUNKER D/D……

I’ve played D/D ele, I admit not as much but I know how the class works. I’ve got a few really good D/D eles in the guild and let me tell you that a well played ele is very hard to take down while they’re dealing very good amounts of AoE damage. Burning Speed into Lightning Flash + Ring of Fire and if you manage to land the Fire Grab as well it’s a lot of damage. Especially if they manage to keep up 20+ stacks of might all the time. Which is why I find dueling a good D/D ele a difficult challenge.

I’m not saying D/D ele is OP, because they really aren’t, but it was just an example of something that can deal a lot of damage, but missing their burst won’t make them a free kill afterwards.

PU mesmers can actually have great burst too. Especially because it allows you to build glass and still have good survivability. I’ve dueled a GD PU mesmer that was insanely difficult to fight, and had very good burst. It’s very much about the player as well.

I have lost in duels, I have died in WvW and I’m not exactly the worst thief around. It’s about committing to the fight, but I can’t be bothered to repeat myself anymore at this point.

Stealth rework, fine. Just thoughless nerfs, no please.

LordByron.8369:

Okaishi once again….

The issue with many thieves is they think they deserve to do everything.

Now BURST build is not supposed to stay alive in a fight…
Like any other BURST profession SHOULD be based on hitting first, hitting hard and then if failing, pay for the failure.

The best part is that is not even the only build thief has.

You just want to being able o burst from stealth, be able to follow any damaged opponent surviving the opener, reset the fight at will and just flee if you can t win…

If this isn t god mode i wonder what it is…. (note we are speaking of WWW), and that without even mentioning the evades….

So what you want to say is that they should make it so you’re a free kill after failing a burst? Please say the same to mesmers and warriors then. D/D eles have very good amounts of burst too with plenty of healing, and in no way are they are free kill if they miss that burning speed/fire grab. Mesmers can easily get away with failing a burst or two. Actually almost all the professions can get as much burst as thieves while still having some mechanics they can rely on for survivability. Taking away stealth is taking away the d/d and d/p thief’s offensive and defensive capabilities. I’m okay if you can find us some other reliable mechanics, but you need to understand that drastic changes to stealth will break the class if they’re not compensated significantly in some other way.

You don’t have a lot stealth and constant evades. It’s two different builds you’re talking about, you don’t get to have them both.

Personally I see thieves die all the time. They can disengage easily, but most classes can if they want to. There’s quite a few classes/builds that are very hard for a thief to take down 1v1, and their chance of dying is atleast as high (if not higher) as their opponent if they properly commit to the fight. Fighting a good player only with the intent of running away when things don’t go as planned will never win a thief the fight.

In the end most of it still comes down to understanding your enemies. Making and trying out a thief yourself will significantly improve your chances against one. I did the same with mesmers, which I used to have far more problems with than I have now. I don’t mean offense, but your posts didn’t give me the impression you have tried a thief yourself.

I was talking about the kind of survivability that keeps you alive in a fight. The ability to run away is convenient, but I rather be able to have a good shot at defeating my opponent without them having an instant counter that is likely to screw me over immediately.

Good luck landing a backstab with 50% mobility in stealth. Please make more suggestions that would make the thief class complete garbage, I haven’t seen enough of them.

Six seconds is already a long reveal for a thief. But you might as well make it 10, or even 20 seconds at that point. Because the thief’s reaction will be the same in every case, shadowstep away and run as fast as possible. Hard counters like that will just cause thieves to immediately flee because stealth is their core mechanic for damage and survivability and they are useless without it. Add other hard counters to stealth and the same thing will happen, and at some point there won’t be a reason to play d/d or d/p anymore.

Instead of suggesting things that will cripple the class, looking for ways to rework d/d and d/p to be less reliable on stealth (and have less access to it) would be better. But I guess thinking any of you would do that is naïve, because I’m fairly sure most of the players who came to the forums to complain don’t play thieves themselves and haven’t made much effort to understand the class’ mechanics.

There’s also killshots and eviscerates that easily hit 17k+. About as easy to avoid as the mug+c&d+bs combo if you see it coming. It’s really not that hard to predict what a thief is going to do that’s running towards you with basilisk venom activated and about 15 stacks of might. If you see that, and still can’t manage breaking the stun before the backstab lands you just need more practice, and that’s putting it very nicely. It’s like saying wells shouldn’t be in the game because people stand still inside them and take the full damage over its duration and it can kill multiple players all at once. It’s like saying killshot shouldn’t be in the game because you have people looking at a killshot channel and still fail to dodge it. I feel the same way about people failing to stun break something as painfully obvious as a signet thief, and atleast that killshot warrior isn’t completely helpless even if his burst misses. Same goes for the power necro.

Sanduskel.1850:

many of us thieves think stealth is ridiculously broken in this game. the vocal few who want to preserve the status quo are who you mostly see on the forums.

Many of us thieves think you’re a silly troll who only pretends to play a thief. As a thief, I can tell you this much. Let me just say this last thing to you: people are starting to pay increasingly less attention to you, you might as well stop posting.

Terravos.4059:

Anything less then full on tank though, Its pretty much instant kill from 1500 range

Not exactly what you want for a game like this.

Yet you’re completely useless in anything that doesn’t involve ganking a single person, or when someone actually has the reaction time to stun break and retaliate. It’s just unfortunate most WvW players seem to have the reaction time of turtles. But yeah, I wouldn’t call that stuff overpowered, it’s extremely easy to counter. And on top of it, that build is one of the most boring things to play.

Sanduskel.1850:

I can survive any small man fight I wish and frankly any zerg fight. With on-demand perma stealth, it’s quite easy on my thief. You just need to watch where the enemy aoes.

You’re surviving zerg fights, while having contributed absolutely nothing. Congratulations.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Something i find very odd:

Some thieves WANT stealth nerfed to need more skill involved, some DON’T want it nerfed…for what reason i wonder…

If you think stealth doesn’t involve skill and there’s no difference between a skilled d/d or d/p player and an unskilled one you’re badly mistaken. It actually has one of the higher skill ceilings in the game. There’s only one thief player I can think of who’d argue stealth needs a nerf because there’s no skill involved, and that would be Sanduskel. And he doesn’t even play a thief.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Yeah, shame that mobility helps them to much defensively as well, They can simply use this broken mechanic to burst some one down, force them to use cool downs, jump into stealth reset the fight easily and do it all over again. every other class has to deal with it, why should a class be allowed not to?

Lol, as if it really takes any skill to stealth up to someone who doesnt even know you are there and BS them, then use that same mechanic to run when/if they are at threat of dying. This sort of mechanic is nothing but high reward, with VERY little risk.

As a thief, my suggestion to you is to make a thief yourself. There’s only no risk involved if you don’t engage at all. If you don’t commit to the fight and only stealth to run away every time, you might as well not play at all. Sure, you might annoy a player every now and then, and during the timeframe you’re achieving absolutely nothing, other players are actually doing useful stuff. Most thieves actually choose to not play the way you’re describing.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

assuming that you see the thief coming…

Hardly ever are thieves stealthed before they engage the enemy. You can see a thief coming the same way you see a warrior coming, just by keeping an eye on your surroundings.