Guild Wars 2

Good luck with this. Before specialization even came out, they released patch notes giving thieves 50% damage reduction in stealth as a grandmaster minor (resilience of shadows) and, as you guessed, EVERYBODY CRIED. The trait was nerfed before we even got a chance to try it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Resilience-of-Shadows-reduced-to-25/first#post5189213

This is a clear example of how someone who doesn’t understand thief mechanics (and their weaknesses), loses to a thief, then instead of educating himself a bit, comes to the forums and cries for a nerf. It is the exact reason why thief is in the sorry position that it has been in for the past while. He even used the usual, “I have a thief, therefore if I ever lose to one, it must be because they are op” explanation. And worst of all, the devs actually listen to this drivel.

Kadin.2356:

Shinjo.6092:

Sigmoid.7082:

Kadin.2356:

Sigmoid.7082:

Syviren.7086:

That would totally make sense. Man thats annoying. There is so much stability that, if that stops it, then that really sucks. They NEED to fix that. Makes it almost useless unless you get the drop on someone.

So you are saying someone uses stability to prevent you from stunning them and it needs to be fixed?

Name another elite ability that can be completely negated by stability?

Jade winds, Chaotic release, headbutt, gravity well, chilled to the bone, dragons maw.
Then the partials are most of rampages CC, Tornado, the stun from supply crate, 2/3 of impact strike chain, summon flesh golems charge.

Everything you mentioned does damage (some even grants boons) so the elite is not completely negated by stability.

That’s exactly why I wrote completely. Reading is fundamental.

Let’s give him another chance before he looks like a complete kitten for failing to read.

Maybe the problem was that the devs visited the thief forums too frequently. You guys remember what our forum used to look like? Anything a thief has going for them will summon an army of forum trolls and whiners that gets us nerfed to the ground. Hell, we got nerfed before the specialization patch even came out (resilience of shadows).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Resilience-of-Shadows-reduced-to-25/first#post5166408

I’m not saying 50% isn’t overpowered. But at least let us try it out first before caving in to all the people complaining at the mere mention of something good for thieves.

Sigmoid.7082:

Kadin.2356:

Sigmoid.7082:

Syviren.7086:

That would totally make sense. Man thats annoying. There is so much stability that, if that stops it, then that really sucks. They NEED to fix that. Makes it almost useless unless you get the drop on someone.

So you are saying someone uses stability to prevent you from stunning them and it needs to be fixed?

Name another elite ability that can be completely negated by stability?

Jade winds, Chaotic release, headbutt, gravity well, chilled to the bone, dragons maw.
Then the partials are most of rampages CC, Tornado, the stun from supply crate, 2/3 of impact strike chain, summon flesh golems charge.

Everything you mentioned does damage (some even grants boons) so the elite is not completely negated by stability.

Wow…looks like the thief nerfs have already started.

At least you don’t have people on your server building golems from keep supply then jumping them off a cliff…how’s that for server loyalty?

Vizardlorde.8243:

Aeolus.3615:

i can imagine guardian with more tooltip updates for a better guardian balance offcourse.

lol i think 90% of guard changes since launch have been tooltips

Wow, so lucky. 90% of the changes for the class I play since launch has been nerfs. We even get nerfed on tooltip change patches sometimes. Can you guess which class I play?

coglin.1867:

caveman.5840:

snip

There are a great deal of factually false statements here. Such as stating that you need two dodges to avoid the entire skill. That is false.

Yes you are right. Rapid Fire lasts 2.5 s whereas a dodge lasts .75 s. So really, you need 4 dodges to avoid the entire skill. But I think he realized you only get 2 consecutive dodges in the game before you run out of endurance, so that’s why he said 2.

As well, there are multiple skulls that offer 10 hits and have the exact same duration or more. I can only guess you are making statements about other professions, without having experience playing them.

Here’s a list of channeled skills in GW2.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Channeled_skill

Let me know if you find one with the range of rapid fire, offers 10 hits and have the exact same duration or more. Actually, the funny thing is there may be one other. Can you guess what it is?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Barrage

I’m not saying Rapid Fire is op, but I don’t think it’s fair to make accusations against him without first backing up your claim.

Wait…hold on…you’re a mesmer and you’re complaining about doing damage while not breaking stealth?

Kinda disappointing to see you go. I enjoyed your videos, especially the spartan warrior one where you destroyed everyone with mace/shield+gs. Your thief ones were really good too.

I love how nobody even really bothers to try and fight it anymore. Whining about thieves being able to easily get away is like whining about Eles having too much aoe, or whining about Guardians having too many heals. I know English is not the OP’s first language, but seriously, what the fvck do you think a “thief” is?

But whatever. Continue on. Whiners are going to continue whining and Anet is going to continue nerfing thieves into the ground like they did with the assassin class in GW1. I’m actually kind of curious to see what whiners come up with next…the professional balance forum doesn’t have the usual volume of thief whines since the update patch and I’m getting kinda bored.

cyyrix.6105:

Mayama.1854:

Esplen.3940:

Mesmers used to stay invis forever. Got hotfixed.

#OldTorch4

It was so OP ^^ you could basicaly spawn a phantasm, stealth, repeat. The only thing the enemy saw was the torch animation.

Just like perma-stealth thieves where the only thing you saw was their black powder field…of course there was no rush to hotfix that one.

Those thieves had to reveal themselves to do any damage. The Mesmers didn’t.

kaco.9856:

BrunoBRS.5178:

necroing a thread to ask thieves to be banned, lol.

just be happy that the people that would really benefit from stacking stealth inside keeps, mesmers, can’t really do this trick. portal bombing is a team effort!

Portal bombing is absolutely fine and fun as hell from either side but using an exploit to stay invis indefinitely inside a tower is not and it is really bad that so many think this is ok.

And why the hell not necro a thread that is only 27 days since last post since this obvious bug was not fixed and is probably exploited by half the thief community.

This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.

Non mobile devices only

Can we do this for cnd as well?

Atherakhia.4086:

Shinjo.6092:

The punishment for being chilled will never apply evenly across all classes because it works on a percentage, so skills with longer cool downs will always be hit harder than skills with little or no cool down. It just so happens that thieves have no cool downs on their weapon skills, so the effect is 66% x 0 = 0. This is just the design of the class.

Asking why chill doesn’t affect thieves is like asking why “revealed” doesn’t affect warriors. Since classes that attack from stealth get a revealed debuff, and warriors don’t use stealth, does that mean we have to apply an arbitrary penalty to warriors when they attack? Of course not, because warriors were never designed for stealth, just like thieves weren’t designed for weapon cool downs.

If you apply revealed to a Warrior and they do try to stealth, it won’t allow them. If a Warrior does attack from stealth, they receive revealed. The class not having accecss to their own form of stealth isn’t important.

Thieves were designed to have initiative control the flow of battle. Just like other classes have cooldowns imposed upon them to control the flow of battle. This is a more logical comparison to make…

Warriors (nor any other class) don’t lose their stealth attacks from being revealed because they have no stealth attacks.
Thieves don’t gain an increase in cool down from being chilled because they have no cool downs.
Initiative may share some similarities with cool downs , but it doesn’t mean they should be affected in the same way. Otherwise, we can sit here all night coming up with a list of similar things in gw2 that behave differently. For instance, why do Mesmer have access to stealth that ignores reveal? Why do warriors not lose adrenaline when they miss their burst, but thieves lose initiative when they miss their attacks? Why do engineers not have weapon swap cool downs when they switch kits while every other class has a cool down when they switch weapons? The list goes on and on…

Why do people think it’s fair to compare Backstab with Eviscerate? Backstab has a stealth requirement and a positional requirement (mêlée AND behind), whereas a warrior can literally strap on a blindfold, pull down his pants, and push F1 with his kitten to get Eviscerate off…

…and it still does more damage than Backstab.

The punishment for being chilled will never apply evenly across all classes because it works on a percentage, so skills with longer cool downs will always be hit harder than skills with little or no cool down. It just so happens that thieves have no cool downs on their weapon skills, so the effect is 66% x 0 = 0. This is just the design of the class.

Asking why chill doesn’t affect thieves is like asking why “revealed” doesn’t affect warriors. Since classes that attack from stealth get a revealed debuff, and warriors don’t use stealth, does that mean we have to apply an arbitrary penalty to warriors when they attack? Of course not, because warriors were never designed for stealth, just like thieves weren’t designed for weapon cool downs.

What most people don’t realize is that thieves are the only non-heavy class that MUST get into melee range in order to do any serious damage. This is the reason why movement impairing effects hurt us so much; unlike all the other non-heavy classes we have to get up close and at the same time we don’t have any protection, blocks, invuls, for our low hp pool and medium armor.

It also doesn’t make sense for chill to affect initiative because initiative is a global resource pool. A class who uses a skill while chilled will only have that skill affected by the cd increase, whereas a thief would have all his skills using initiative increased.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Shinjo.6092:

silentnight warrior.2714:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its a hella strong skill. Reason I question why all burst skills have a 10 second cooldown, as if they are balanced around that. cough combustive shot cough

So… What is the cooldown of backstab? or any thief skill?

It can potentially be infinity because you spent all your initiative trying to blind the warrior in a feeble attempt to avoid his 1.5k-3k autos and you weren’t able to stealth. And it still does less damage than eviscerate.

Mean while you are attaking with your auto that also does very nice damage and is quicker that warrior one and also can aply poison (d/p), you ckittene (are able to use) a leap that deals damage AND gives you stealth if you are inside the smoke field and backstab again. Repeat. The iniciative mechanic give thiefs that possibility.

The thing is against bad players eviscerate is strong, Its the same with backstab thiefs. As soon as people learn how to deal with those classes it turn way easier to fight.

I still dont get why people whine when they have very good / op skills on their side.

Do you really think it’s fair to compare a thief who has to use multiple skills AND has a positional requirement in order to produce that damage to a warrior who can strap on a blindfold and press f1 with his ckitten and still output more damage?

Clownmug.8357:

Inb4 someone claims it’s balanced because of the “telegraphed animation.” I’m just a bad player who should’ve exploited its weakness to dodging!

When a warrior up close, the only “telegraphed animation” you’re going to see from a 12k eviscerate is your character going instantly into down state.

silentnight warrior.2714:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its a hella strong skill. Reason I question why all burst skills have a 10 second cooldown, as if they are balanced around that. cough combustive shot cough

So… What is the cooldown of backstab? or any thief skill?

It can potentially be infinity because you spent all your initiative trying to blind the warrior in a feeble attempt to avoid his 1.5k-3k autos and you weren’t able to stealth. And it still does less damage than eviscerate.

zapv.8051:

Shinjo.6092:

You are missing invulnerabilities that negates damage to your hp which every class except thieves has access to. Also, thieves are not the only class with evades. Thief evades on weapon sets are also limited by the amount of initiative they have to prevent excess spamming, just like how endurance works for dodge. Lastly, there is an opportunity cost to active defenses. What you lose out by engaging in active defense is opportunity to do something else like interrupting your opponent or healing for example, something that passive defenses hardly ever have to worry about.

Necros don’t have any kind of invulnerabilty, vigor or blocks. Rangers don’t have an invuln either they can just redirect damage to their pet, which is 30% of their damage. Also, your acting like other classes have evades similar to what theives have. That isn’t even remotely true. Thieves have far and away the most evades, and no other class is close. That and stealth, initiative, and stealing and you can understand why their is so much thief hating. The class is designed to be cheap.

Death Shroud shields your hp from being damaged, and rangers have Signet of Stone combined with Signet of the Beastmaster in addition to “Protect Me”. I never said that other classes have evades similar to what thieves have; only that they exists for other classes as well (although one can probably make a case that the amount of evades Blurred Frenzy and Whirlwind attack provide over time is comparable to some of the evades on thieves’ weapon sets, there’s too many other things to consider to make this comparison legitimate).

As far as the other comments go, I will simply ask this. If thief is so underpowered and has been nerfed so much, why is it still way more viable then other classes in this game? Thieves are viable in pvp, pve, and roaming in wvw. Even in zergs they can pick people off. When I see people complaining like this, I just hope you realize that Mesmers are barely viable in any game mode, Rangers are only viable in pvp with spirits, and necros are only viable in WvW. I can understand a people complaining about nerfs their class has received, but thieves are still very strong overall.

Your comment above is highly subjective; I don’t think thieves are any more viable than a warrior or an engineer in any aspect of the game. PU Mesmers are almost unbeatable in WvW, and regen rangers are fairly strong as well.

PopeUrban.2578:

Shinjo.6092:

Removing the smoke field in d/p will essentially turn d/p into a weak melee version of p/p. you lose your main source of damage because you can’t stealth for backstabs, and you have no evades on that weapon set. So basically the only thing you can do is gap close and maybe hope that your opponent is stupid enough to stand in black powder while you try to auto attack them to death. Is this what you guys are proposing?

Expecting every thief set to be a full burst DPS set is critically flawed thinking. D/D is that set. D/P is, looking purely at the skills, a harassment and survivability spec built for chasing and finishing targets. It’s got two gap closers, a spammable interrupt, and what should be a powerful defensive field that is in reality a really horrible defensive field.

We’re suggesting making that defensive field in to something worth a kitten so that P/D actually has a unique purpose that doesn’t rely on abuse of unintuitive and broken crap like “look at the floor and hit 5>2 to stealth, then make sure not to use your two gap closers and in stead run to your target to backstab”

The change that I proposed gives D/P the ability to actually effectively fulfill its role as the king of all stompers. in fact, adding more damage to D/P 3 would be a great idea to go along with said change, making it a more effective DPS source to get the target in to the sweet spot for heartseekers.

Does that make more sense?

I never mentioned bursting at all. I only pointed out the fact that your proposed change will reduce the weapon set to auto attack being the only source of outgoing damage. Without stealth or evade, you cannot possible hope to stay in melee range long enough to cause any damage before being dropped yourself.

One also has to look at why anyone would bother choosing dagger main hand over a sword or pistol alternative. With Sword, you will get a stronger aa chain, cleave, a gap closer, and an evade. With pistol, you get an immobilize, a burst skill, and the safety of being able to attack from range. What do you get with dagger if you can’t stealth? 2 gap closers with 0 offensive or defensive capabilities to do anything against your opponent?

I think the community can agree that P/P is a poorly designed weapon set for thieves. If your proposed change reduces D/P to a level that can be outdone by P/P, something is definitely wrong.

Aza.2105:

Thief lacks passive defense i.e passive regen, consistent access to regen boon and no access to protect boon. They also have medium armor and a low tier health pool.

From one perspective what Sagat is saying is true, but from another it looks like this:

Passive defenses:

• High armor rating can be combated with vulnerability. It only shaves off damage, lich form with 3400 armor still hits for 5k.

• Block has unblockable skills in place to counter balance it

• Passive regens can be combated with poison, like wise the regen boon

• Defensive boons such as protection, aegis, regen can be stolen or corrupted

Every passive defense has a counter measure set in place so it does not become too powerful.

Here is a look at active defenses:

Active Defenses

• Dodge has a endurance meter in place to prevent excess spamming, like wise weakness is in place to counter act endurance.

• Evade has no counter

The difference is huge between passive defense and active defense. To avoid damage entirely is the highest form of mitigation any class can have. So technically thief has the highest achievable mitigation in the game, its greater than high armor rating, greater than block, greater than passive regens.

The only problem it has is that you have to actively do it, which means if you don’t you go splat quickly. But as it stands thief has a very high and controllable rate of which they ckittene their active defense. Due to the initiative system not being bound to static cooldowns like the other seven classes.

Even with the highest armor, a guardian will become squishy if they go zerk. A thief on the other hand will not become squishy because of active defenses. Passive defensives scale with stats, active defenses do not and evade has no counter balance like the rest of the defenses in game.

I feel the solution is to simply introduce skills that bypass evade. This is my opinion, I’m sure others will differ.

You are missing invulnerabilities that negates damage to your hp which every class except thieves has access to. Also, thieves are not the only class with evades. Thief evades on weapon sets are also limited by the amount of initiative they have to prevent excess spamming, just like how endurance works for dodge. Lastly, there is an opportunity cost to active defenses. What you lose out by engaging in active defense is opportunity to do something else like interrupting your opponent or healing for example, something that passive defenses hardly ever have to worry about.

Removing the smoke field in d/p will essentially turn d/p into a weak melee version of p/p. you lose your main source of damage because you can’t stealth for backstabs, and you have no evades on that weapon set. So basically the only thing you can do is gap close and maybe hope that your opponent is stupid enough to stand in black powder while you try to auto attack them to death. Is this what you guys are proposing?

Otaur.9268:

My point stands.

Actually, no it doesn’t. I’m not sure how many times I have to prove you wrong for you to realize this but you are free to scroll up.

The patch notes thing you mentioned was a learn 2 read issue and the comment on necro/mesmer was an outright lie.

Otaur.9268:

A necro cannot LIFEDRAIN a wall to heal himself.

Yes they can.

A Mesmer cannot create clones off a wall.

Yes they can.

No one can damage a wall without siege.

Nor can thieves.

Thus, why should a thief using a skill meant to deal damage to gain Stealth, be able to hit something that is not meant to be used to gain stealth.

As explained to the previous poster, since they changed the stacking part without it affecting the thief’s ability to gain stealth off a wall, it probably meant they intended it to work that way.

Blix.8021:

Doesn’t matter how much skill it takes if it’s not supposed to work that way.

Since they changed the stacking part without it affecting the thief’s ability to gain stealth off a wall, it probably means they intended it to work that way.

Otaur.9268:

This has got to stop… FEBRUARY 26, 2013 Patch notes:::
Cloak and Dagger: The player can no longer use this ability stack stealth by attacking WvW walls.

This is still a problem as thieves are CONSTANTLY using Keep walls to stealth. Especially SMC. Please for the good of the game, fix this no skill crap. A thief spamming CnD versus a wall as they run away from a group is not skill, it is annoying.

ANet claims to have fixed this back in February of 2013, but has yet to be fixed. It is still an issue, as thieves can still hit walls with CnD to stealth.

Actually, this has been fixed. The description says “The player can no longer use this ability stack stealth by attacking WvW walls.” Before, thieves used to be able to stack stealth by continuously using CnD off walls while still in stealth since they do 0 damage to them.

The Primary.6371:

Wyrden.4713:

The Primary.6371:

Wyrden.4713:

one word (eviscerate ) ^

One word “dodge”.

he said one shouldnt be able to kill someone w 1 skil

well i said warrior has veiscerate wich is beeing used frequently, and even if it misses , adrenaline should be spent but it is not, then there still are killshots, 100 b, and few other stuff.

edit : and no i am not a thief player, i mainly play a glassy s/d ele and a shatter mes, but in all situations, if the thief fails i win, if i fail thief wins, pretty simple. thiefs r as glassy as a zerker ele.

GG landing it on a s/d evade thief….just keep it up like a good little boy. You maybe….hopefully….in the end….ok even if you don’t or never get to land it, at least you tried. That is all that matters….right?

What the heck are you talking about? If you bothered to read the guy’s post, you’ll realize that he was responding to the person who said you should never be able to take someone to near death with a single move. Yes, you can dodge eviscerate, but you can dodge Whirling Axe too. In fact, you don’t even need to dodge Whirling Axe; you can literally out walk it. On top of that, eviscerate has an 8 second cool down whereas Whirling Axe has 21, almost triple the amount. But all this has absolutely nothing to do with s/d thieves.

It’s not just scrapping the entire SA trait line. Your suggestion will also remove stealth attacks from being used in combat.

Awesome…another warrior complaining about whirling axe….

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirling_Axe_

When facerolling with a warrior, you can actually lean your nose against the WASD keys to avoid all damage from Whirling Axe.

People love to cry and whine about thieves to take attention away from the OP’ness of their own class. Since thieves have been nerfed every single patch, even for stuff that no one ever cried about like shortbow range and dancing dagger, people are starting to have a tough time finding things to nerf. Consume Ectoplasm needs a nerf?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Nerf-the-theif-steal-skill-consume-ectoplasm/first#post1440115

Stolen Whirling Axe?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-stolen-Whirling-Axe-is-OP/page/3#post3695265

How about P/P, our joke weaponset?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/p-p-thief-insane-burst/first#post3636798

I guess now, the whining has whittled down to our core mechanics like initiative and stealth. After all, what else is there left to nerf?

LostBalloon.6423:

I doubt stealth bothers anyone in PvE and people should be able to play their thief how they enjoy.
When it comes to sPvP, the few changes made a stealth thief’s life a lot harder than it used to be. But that is simply because you either want to take down somebody that actually gains from every second the ring stay’s his teams color or knows that the thief’s final objective is the capture of the ring which does put some pressure on the thief.
In WvW, it is far from being the case, they come try to kill you, run away, reset & re-engage until they wear you out or that you get somewhere safe as a keep, because you have no chance of killing them alone.
The other day a mesmer was waiting dead in lord’s room and it took 30 ppl way too long to find and kill the thief waiting to res that player. And anet, that was far from “fun”.

Edit: we finally only got him using a stupid stealth trap, for 30 ppl to kill 1 player requiring a stealth trap = broken

I wonder if anyone ever understands that perhaps being slippery and sneaky was probably part of the thief’s design? Maybe that’s the reason they’re called thieves? Here’s the main description from the gw2 site:

“Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”

Johje Holan.4607:

Aberrant.6749:

Zacchary.6183:

Johje Holan.4607:

7. Remove all traits and skills and anything else that increases damage when attacking from stealth.

SUGGESTION IMPLIMENTED!

There never was any.

100% crit from stealth does increase your damage (unless you have 100% crit naturally). But yea… it’s still not much.

Lol Sir was right I was talking about thieves.

Hidden Killer
Revealed Training
Backstab

to name a few.

In fact I would say it should be impossible to crit when attacking from stealth. Or at least have your natural crit chance halved.

He’s saying that there is nothing that increases damage when attacking from stealth. Hidden Killer only guarantees a critical. If you were going to crit anyways, you would have done the same damage. Revealed Training is applied when you’re revealed, not when you’re in stealth. Backstab doesn’t increase in damage when you’re in stealth since you can’t normally perform it outside of stealth.

ReesesPBC.4603:

Yes, that’s what I’m advocating which is; when people want to knowingly counter play stealth with blocks, or worse aegis, that they shouldn’t be punished for doing so.

They’re not punished. You still negated the attack that was blocked. On top of that, you now know exactly where the thief is, which is an added bonus. You have to decide what play to make after that.

ReesesPBC.4603:

And for when the thief is already in stealth I do support the suggestion that it should cost at least 1 initiative per backstab. This can be altered to occur only when they are blocked or missed but if there is no aegis or block up then the BS can be free as usual. The suggestion is to prevent spam and encourage more skillful play as others have mentioned. If a thief knows there’s aegis or blocks up they can wait and regen their initiative (1 per 3/4s if i’m not mistaken) before initiating again as compared to the person who is blocking or put up aegis will be coming out much more behind in terms of skill CD. For example: engineer gear shield block is a 20s (untraited AFAIK) CD vs a thief who CnD’d would have a net loss of 2-3 initiative if they just wait it out. So still the person blocking comes out behind in that situation.

Initiative regens 1 per second, and the passive aegis on a guardian lasts 10 hours. Also, don’t forget that a thief cannot do any damage in stealth without coming out of stealth, while the other class gets to do whatever they want. It’s not as easy as you think trying to stick behind a person within that 4 second window of stealth while they’re wailing away and you’re waiting for their block/aegis to end. And if you attack, you have to wait the 3-4 seconds of revealed before you can go back into stealth again.

ReesesPBC.4603:

For the receiving end, it’s no fun playing as a guardian/etc to have put aegis up (72-90s CD) to prevent a BS when it can be stripped without consequence in stealth from that one attack, repeatedly.

Look at it this way. If thieves had an auto attack to strip the aegis, they would have done so. But bs takes the spot of their autoattack in stealth. It’s a free way to strip aegis, just like every single other class has.

Gorni.1764:

dat logic… this is the most hilarious argument I’ve ever read

Thief attacks: gets out of stealth, because attacking and staying in stealth would be “kinda” OP. Stealth is temporary and can be broken
Ele attacks: why the heck should he leave his attunement? It’s a permanent state that can’t be removed by anything

just imagine the scenario in real life a thief sneaks up from the shadows an leaps at the guardian. He manages to block the attack but still can’t see the thief … lulz

making attacks out of stealth unblockable for example would be logical design, even balanced I guess. But not revealing a thief when his attack is avoided by blocks or whatever is just stupid

When it comes to the hilarity of an argument, I think yours tops mine for trying to make the comparison between a thief in the game and a thief in real life.

Blocks were designed to negate the damage that was blocked, and it does that for backstab. It shouldn’t force the thief into another mode, just like it doesn’t force an ele into another mode, or a necro out of ds/lich.

ReesesPBC.4603:

I would agree with that except from the opposite perspective not all classes can attack from stealth so easily, outside of having help from a thief/mesmer. And to add to that their attacks aren’t specialized in stealth either. And even further that thieves don’t have to be in stealth to remove aegis just like other classes.

As with your discussion with shinigamith.7120, I think the point you’re missing is what happens when a thief is already in stealth. Stealth doesn’t come for free; you either have to blow half your initiative pool or a utility on long cd. And continuing Shockwave.1230’s point, do you think it’s fair to have to continue to spend initiative in order to remove blind/aegis when every other class gets it for free, after making that sacrifice? You’re right, other classes don’t have specialized attacks in stealth. But that only makes his point stronger because you end up losing a lot more than the other classes for coming out of stealth.

I will never understand why people think blocking/evading should have the added benefit of taking a thief out of stealth. Blocking/evading doesn’t take a necro out of DS or Lich Mode. It doesn’t take Eles out of fire mode, and it doesn’t cause Engineers to drop their kits. So why should it take a thief out of stealth mode?

You pressed the block button. You don’t have to do it in a special mode, and you don’t even have to go be facing your opponent. You pressed block, and basically you’ve become immune to almost everything a thief can throw at you. And yet people don’t think this is enough? You want the block to take the thief out of stealth as well?

Just let this thread die. You guys are arguing with someone who thinks withdraw gives back initiative and Pistol Whip thieves has “vast amount of teleports and stealth” to use when trying to recover initiative. He just wants his imaginary 6/6/6/6/6 thief nerfed.

Kukchi.6173:

Kukchi.6173:

I am sorry but you seem to be forgetting the vast amount of teleports and stealth, if you use the evade heal you recover enough initiative.

frans.8092:

Uhm, nope. Withdraw does not regenrate initiative.

….

You need to read up, wiki is linked on the top of the page.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Roll_for_Initiative as stated i have acknowledge i made a mistake about that. All the responses to this thread are thieves upset about the issues of their classes being braught up. Initiative needs a rework.

If you can’t even get something so simple correct, do you think that you could be mistaken with all your other assumptions about thieves as well? For instance, how do you figure a PW thief has “vast amount of teleports and stealth” to use in order to recover initiative and prevent you from wailing on him? A PW thief using withdraw has ZERO stealth on that weapon set, and if you use any weapon skills other than auto attack, you’re not recovering initiative to use for PW anymore. So that leave you with essentially 2 utilities: Blinding Powder (40s cd) and Shadow Refuge (60s cd). As for teleports, you’re basically stuck with Shadowstep (50s cd) since Infiltrator signet requires a target and gets you wailed on some more. I would hardly call 3 utilities on long cooldowns “vast amount of teleports and stealth”. On top of that, you don’t even have room to bring Roll for Initiative anymore.

Before whining for a nerf, maybe you can try and learn a little bit more about the class first so people don’t get the wrong idea based on your mistakes.

EvilSardine.9635:

If a thief tries to backstab me and I use an actual smart tactic and BLOCK their backstab then they should be revealed.

Why can a thief spam a super hard hitting ability like backstab on my warrior who is using shield block until it eventually lands? That requires zero skill on the thief’s part. Just spam until it lands and they have 4 seconds in stealth to spam it.

When you block, backstab does ZERO damage to you. That is your reward for blocking. Why do you feel that you should get the added benefit of taking the thief out of stealth and putting him in revealed state? That’s like saying, “When I block a necro, I want it to take him out of DS and lich form”. Or, “When I block an ele, I want it to automatically put him in water attunement”. Or, “When I block an engineer, I want him to drop all his kits and his turrets should explode”. Sounds silly? So then why do you feel that just because you blocked, the thief should come out of stealth and be revealed?

You blocked the backstab and it did 0 damage to you. That’s it. It’s no different than blocking a Deathly Claws, which does 5k-7k damage and doesn’t take the necro out of lich form.

So you pressed the block button. Big whoop. It’s not like you had to be in a special state, go behind the person all within a 4 second window to block it. Heck, you don’t even have to be facing the person to block. You just hit the block button, and suddenly you’re almost completely immune to everything the thief can throw at you. You don’t think that’s enough?

Aberrant.6749:

@ shinjo

If you time the cluster bomb it doesn’t matter what range you are. It does mean you can’t just sit there and mindlessly spam it and it takes a small amount of skill… but seeing as I don’t have a problem doing skillshots…

When you cluster bomb from range, you have to wait for them to arc towards your target which decreases your dps tremendously. On top of that, the bombs spread to the point where they’re not all hitting your target anymore. You can’t control that. It’s just the way cluster bombs work, no matter how skilled your shots are, unless there was a Read the Wind for thieves that I missed in the last patch notes.

Aberrant.6749:

No I don’t force myself to just 1 weapon set. That’s silly and bad gameplay. I have many times used the shortbow to do a bit of damage then popped in with a burst though, it’s very effective.

Which is my point EXACTLY – in order to do damage, sooner or later a thief has to be in mêlée range. So then based on your own logic, you agree with me right?

Aberrant.6749:

Pistol whip + the new increased ini regen =‘s lawl @ it costing a lot. You can’t spam the other invulns like you can PW’s evade etc. You have options for staying alive in mele range. If you want the things the other classes have or find them superior, then play those classes. I personally have no problems using a spammable blurred frenzy.

Your math doesn’t add up. At a regen of 1 init per second, you can “spam” PW once every 5 seconds, and that’s if you do nothing else, including your idea of using infiltrator’s return to get away. That’s hardly comparable to other classes, who can have near permanent protection uptime, and they don’t even have to be in mêlée.

For the record, I have a level 80 on every classes and I do play them.

If you’re in a position where you can’t get behind your enemy because you’re chilled, you have a ton of options… like stealthing to remove the cond… or one of the many escape skills that thieves have, then using teleports to quickly back re-engage when it’s better for you. As a thief you get to choose when you strike and when the combat ends.

So your brilliant idea of dealing with chill is to remove the chill? Well then, I guess no classes should have any problems with chill whatsoever since they can just…. remove it.

No offense but you don’t sound very experienced based off of your comments in other posts asking for help learning P/D (one of the easier thief weapon sets) etc.

I was asking about how other thieves deal with diamond skin on a condition base build, not asking about how to learn P/D. But lets stay off the personal attacks, especially once that have NOTHING to do with the topic, shall we? People only do that when they know they’re wrong and have nothing else to contribute. It could be my first day playing thief today for all you know; it doesn’t make my argument any less valid.

Anomaly.7612:

attrail.8613:

Idkkkkk man. Stealth is pretty weak in pvp already

Except when a Thief uses Last Refuge and gets up to 20 seconds of stealth, swaps to a shortbow and just spams bombs and poison which doesn’t unstealth them.

Yeah, pretty weak man.

What game are you playing? Because in Guild Wars 2, Last Refuge is a 4 second stealth and gets “used” when an abusing thief brings their own health down to 25%, which usually ends up killing the thief from reveal. Also in that same game, cluster bombs unstealth the thief.

Lightsbane.9012:

the latter part simply isn’t true. i don’t know about you but i’ve certainly been sniped by unload.

The tradeoff for being able to do damage out of melee range with P/P is that there is absolutely no defensive mechanisms on that weapons set: no stealth, no evade, no protection, no invul, no block, no nothing. So basically you’re performing more or less the same functions as a mesmer’s iDuelist, except a mesmer has 3 of them. Anyways, I think most people can agree that P/P is such a broken weapon set that it’s really not worth bringing into this discussion. If it’s already broken without chill affecting it, how broken will it be if it does?

mesmer seems to do just fine with their sword setup, and those cooldowns are quite high.

Mesmers also get protection, invul, blocks, evades, etc. while being in melee range. But most mesmers don’t even do that. 99% of the ones I see hide in stealth somewhere far away while their phantasms do all the work. But most importantly, they can choose to fight in melee or range and still do damage. Thieves have to be melee while being squishy at the same time.

also, almost all power necromancer builds require a distance of less than 600 to be effective, which in wvw is more or less melee.

If I can do backstabs at 600 range, I would totally agree with you. But until then, 600 range is not melee range.

like i said, if thieves could stealth a lot less, the chill factor would be fair. however, since they can cleanse it every three seconds, i’d say that’s a bit broken.

They can cleanse 1 condition every 3 seconds, so if they have any other conditions on them, it’s not getting cleansed every 3 seconds. And anyways, this is part of their traits, so they would get this regardless of whether chill affected their weapons cooldown or not.

Aberrant.6749:

The auto isn’t the only feature on the shortbow. Cluster bomb hurts. Pois field to reduce healing. It’s by my fav weapon on thief. Damage + utility.

As I said in the previous post, Cluster bomb hurts in melee range. Look at it this way. I’ve seen people killed exclusively with all other weapon sets. Have you ever seen anyone killed exclusively with Shortbow at range? Have you tried using Cluster bomb at range? This is why chill hurts thieves, because they have to be in melee range in order to do most of their damage.

Aberrant.6749:

Evades only last a short period? How about the entire pistol whip attack… and then you can teleport out immediately after (and lol @ los).

Pistol whip lasts for a little over 1 second and costs 5 initiative. On at 12 init pool, if you’re going to teleport out immediately, you’re using 5 initiative for infiltrator strike/return. That means you get 1 pistol whip at a little over 1 second of evade. Compare that to how long boons/invuls/etc lasts.

Aberrant.6749:

I started as a thief @ early release… so I’ve tried it all. You have so many ways of sticking on your opponent it’s not even funny. D/P teleports, S/P teleports & roots.

It sounds more like you’re using D/D for PvP which is a mistake imo.

You can teleport with D/P but are you able get behind your opponent while slowed? Or are you trying to convince me that we should just be running around using only shadowshot?

Aberrant.6749:

Thieves can do ok damage with P/P (although I admit the weapon set sucks overall) and vs multiple targets or those with a pet, a shortbow is no joke.

Yes you are right, but since P/P blows chunks, you’re already gimping yourself far beyond what being chilled could have ever done to you. And as for shortbow, you can kill AI with autoattacks pretty well I agree, but that’s about it. I can kill AI with any other class while I’m chilled too. In order to do any real damage with shortbow, you have to shotgun clusterbomb……in melee range.

Aberrant.6749:

Instead of prot etc. thieves get stealth and tons of evades. It’s a tradeoff.

My point was that you are forced to expose yourself in melee range without any passive damage mitigation if you want to do damage. You have to come out of stealth if you want to do damage, and evades only lasts a short period.

Aberrant.6749:

As far as movement being important, I agree, but my thief has plenty of teleports that don’t give a kitten about being slowed.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried getting behind a person while you’re slowed but unless you’re really lucky, it’s not going to happen since they are usually facing you when they slowed you in the first place.

Fade.7658:

Shinjo.6092:

Has anyone ran into a Diamond Skin ele with this build? I’ve ran into a few and usually it’s almost impossible to get enough damage into them to bring them below the 90% threshold.

There are some things you can do to punch through that diamond skin. Let’s assume that the Ele has 20K health, for an even number. (I haven’t really run into many with this much health though).

1. Sigil of Leeching – weapon swap for 975 damage and healing.
2. Mug – Even as a cond. user, this does ~400-600 damage.
3. Thieves Guild
4. Leeching Venoms – I’m not sure if this will work. It does ~400 per venom chanrge used. The condition might not apply, but the damage and health leech might still punch through.

If you have enough crit chance (via rabid gear etc.), consider Sigil of Air or some other damaging proc.

A steal —> Shadow Strike combo (with mug) deals around 1200 total for me for my condi build. Combine that with something else, then apply your bleeds and such fast. They will stay if they go above 90%, and help with the next push to get them below 90%.

My problem was that they usually had regen to keep their health topped up. On top of that, Diamond Skin means they maxed out on Earth which is their toughness traitline, making it that much harder to get them below 90%. However, If I get lucky and somehow get them below 90%, they usually drop within the next 10 seconds with this build.