Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

I’m all about there being counterplay. If there was a way to have Thief have telegraphs for everything like the Warrior does … but still retain a similar level of survivability and uniqueness, then I would say that was the perfect direction to go.

I’ve said this so many times, but Thief stealth is telegraphed – heavily. In the case of D/P Thieves it is one of the easiest telegraphs to recognize in the entire game and the BP+HS combo takes 1.25 seconds to complete (same time as Kill Shot) with a down payment of 9 non-refundable initiative if your HS gets interrupted, or you get CCed, knocked back, etc.

Backstab has no telegraph, but its prerequisite does. If we give Backstab a telegraph, are Thieves going to get the ability to instantly stealth at will?

Edit: And even better, in the case of something like Kill Shot or Earthshaker, if the opponent fails to respond to the telegraph – they get hit with the skill. If the opponent fails to respond to a stealth skill, there is still counter play to stop a backstab and Thieves often get no backstab after gaining stealth.

vespers.1759:

it’s not really that there’s no counterplay but that there’s no way to do anything to stop the initial burst that comes from stealth when you can’t see them coming… because they are invisible.

Thieves are rarely invisible before they engage. Thieves cannot remain stealthed indefinitely – and only D/P thieves can even have stealth up without being in combat. Sources of stealth last 3 seconds, dude.

LB rangers and kill shot warriors have the same effect in WvW. You can’t keep track of everyone so one of these guys cheese-balls you from 1200-1500 range. You only hate thieves because you can see them kill you and know what happened.

In wvw you often don’t see them coming or you see them go into stealth and then have to guess when they attack while they have all the time in the world to sit in stealth while you dodge around and waste skills trying to mitigate the coming burst. And then if you do get a lucky dodge you are punished because the thief just stays stealthed… lol wat.

it really is kittened.

Complaining about losing to a Thief in WvW is usually ridiculous. If you’re zerging, you’re probably using horribad spec that relies on 20 other people as its main form of defense. You can’t complain about dying to a Thief if you’re specced to do nothing but AoE burst zergs. If you’re actually using a spec that good for skirmishing/roaming/dueling then you can beat any thief 1v1 as almost any class.

You sound like another one of those guys who loses to thieves before they even attack you. You instantly panic. You try to run away instead of fight back. You have no idea what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. You have exactly one line of strategy when a Thief gets on you and it is to immediately hit Signet of Stone/Mist Form/Endure Pain/Death Shroud and run to your allies.

The idea that stealth has no counter play is ridiculous. It’s like saying the only counter play to Warrior stuns is a long cooldown stun breaker. How about you dodge, blind, block, or interrupt him? Same exact stuff works on Thief stealth skills. Once the Thief achieves stealth, he is in the same spot he was when he wasn’t in stealth. Just press 1 and you get to deal free damage on the Thief. There are counters to stop stealth in the first place and to punish stealth when it works. If you think stealth has no counter play you’re simply ignorant to how it works.

Quadox.7834:

Stop bringing up backstab, it has no relevance in this conversation. This is for all skills in stealth. sb auto is one good example.. ranger stealth auto is another.

Backstab has no relevance in a thread about Thieves attacking in stealth…

Is this real life?

Daishi.6027:

Lol morbid still salty about getting spawn camped by me? How did that dishonor taste?

If I’m trash and should uninstall I wonder what you should do instead of feeding my team?

Yeah, nice try dude. I have no idea who you are – if we actual have met in-game the only person that’s salty is you, because you know my user name by heart, apparently.

Sorry you’re so incredibly bad and wrong.

Daishi.6027:

Few things…

I am inherently for this due to the lack of counter play against stealth.

Maybe for a trash-level player like yourself it seems as if there is no counter-play to stealth. But D/P stealth is highly telegraphed and easily interruptable and CnD stealth is reasonably dodge-able and melee range so you get guaranteed DPS on the Thief (also almost never used because random dodge/blind/block essentially kills you). You would know this if you spent a few hours playing Thief in order to gain knowledge to beat them instead of just crying incessantly like an infant.

The last thing I want to point out and has been pointed out on these topics before is that other games with fair PvP usually has the exact mechanic we are discussing. And works out fine.

I’ve never played a game that had a stealth mechanic like Thief stealth. What game are you talking about?

A change like this would also affect the mesmer vs thief matchup and might make them viable for the slot by not just being food

The reason you’re less viable than a Thief:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Arrow

Edit below, bonus response:

Daishi.6027:

And in short bursts initiative is a problem yes, but at it’s rather frequent refresh rate it’s not long before you can attempt an attack again.

Yes there are a lot of doges but this just raised the skill cap, because if it’s not a gaurd, s/d thief, or s/d ranger, there’s still the standard 2 doges + one defensive c/d most builds run (on a weapon set that provides sometimes depending). Also if you bait out 2 doges whiff the attack on the third escape and retaliate with a proper amount of ini: on point 1v1 you can still outplay wear out force and bait those c/ds

It takes a D/P Thief 8.18 – 9.0 seconds to recoup the initiative he used to stealth. Assuming he uses no weapon skills for any reason (i.e. fights with nothing but auto attack and the almighty backstab (36% less damage than eviscerate)). It takes 10 seconds to recoup 50% endurance. It takes 10 seconds to recoup 100% endurance if you have vigor. This isn’t counting if you have any class-specific endurance regen or energy sigils on weapons.

So basically, in your world, the Thief needs to spend 4 seconds in revealed, running for his life, using zero initiative to stay alive or fight back in order to gain a 1-1.8 second advantage on his opponent’s next dodge roll.

Uninstall.

wouldnt be even surprised if a “pro” player would get killed easily just by making 1 very very small mistake while some ranger is just shootin him from 1500 range while playin with 1 finger.

This happens all the time in WvW. Thieves get actual one-shot by kill shot warriors and die to like 4-5 crit auto-attacks from a Ranger. Thieves are in that classic broken MMO class state where we all realize our best chance of getting a kill is to target each other.

I recently came back to GW2 and my Thief. The sPvP in this game basically feels just like WoW Arena – where the world revolves around the healers who are mathematically outmatching the DPS. Here, we revolve around the cele bunker builds who can’t die and kill DPSers 1 on 1 while they are stacking might.

As a Thief, you die as collateral damage when you try to +1 onto fights while the celestial builds brawl it out. If this game did PvP like WoW Arena (no respawn, on capture points) instead of like Call of Duty, Thieves would actually never be played in any capacity.

Thieves continue to be nerfed and people are still complaining about stealth like it’s beta. The Thief specialization will likely have some sort of replacement for stealth and ANet will focus on the stealth-less spec in hopes of driving everyone away from playing a Thief. This class is dead to them.

nightblood.7910:

1. It affects my weapon skills, some of them being just as important as yours. Why exactly do I not have immunity to chill in my weapon sets?

Because you don’t have initiative. Why can’t Thieves have two separate initiative bars for each weapon set and have the first weapon set recharge while they use the other one? What do you not understand about this?

Stealth cant be read.

Wrong. D/P stealth is the most telegraphed and interruptable action in GW2. Cloak and Dagger is a lot faster but it also requires melee range, has a 0.5 second cast, and is rarely used to gain stealth since any random blind, evade, teleport, etc will leave the Thief so drained of initiative that they have to immediately focus on leaving and resetting the fight.

While that is an advantage to you, I dont think it should be completely taken away. I said light fields should reveal stealth, can you imagine the problem of catching a thief in a light field while in stealth. It wouldnt be easy. Its a very minor change to stealth.

Listen dude, you clearly have no idea how Thieves work, because the two most common light fields in the game would each be a perfect hard counter to the two common forms of gaining stealth. If a Thief CnDs a guard, the guard GS 4’s instantly and reveals the thief. If a Thief drops black powder, a staff 3 would negate the stealth attempt.

Here’s a video of a (to my knowledge) non-pro Meditation Guardian fighting that same Thief that plays for one of the best GW2 teams.

Thieves are not the problem. You are the problem.

nightblood.7910:

Why should thieves not have to deal with chill like the rest?

Chill effects Thief utilities, heals, elites and movement speed the same as any other class. It doesn’t effect weapon skills because of the initiative system. Why should Thieves not have a fresh set of initiative on weapon swap like every other class has fresh cooldowns? There are gives and takes that you are completely oblivious to because you spend all of your time trying to get thieves nerfed on the forums instead of getting a clue.

There are a ton of people complaining about thieves and the only response that anyone has been able to give to that is “there is something wrong you, you dont know how to play.”

This is a youtube video of Caed, thief for The Abjured, arguably the best in the game and certainly better than any casual player. He somehow defeats the ranger 2-1 and against the engineer it’s a joke. He relies heavily on LOS-porting with sword which is often not an option. Watching him lose almost all of his health in seconds and having to constantly reset if he gets hit by any condi skills while he needs to literally stick to the ranger for 20+ seconds of unmitigated melee in order to kill him is the perfect example of the mathematical disadvantage that Thieves face.

Thieves are annoying for noobs. Not overpowered.

Why should their be no counter to stealth amongst player skills?

Press 1.

Why cant you bring anything but personal attacks to a conversation?

Why can’t you stop trying to nerf a class that you don’t play and have no idea how to play? I’m pretty sure I saw you in the guardian forums (I also play guardian) and surmised that you play/main a guardian. If you are honestly complaining about Thieves from the perspective of a guardian you really need to get a clue. You are actively choosing to be bad at this game and lose to Thieves by refusing to spend any amount of time understanding what allows a Thief to stealth, port, etc.

Sinbold.8723:

Great ideas, nightblood.7910!!! It never occurred to me about chill and interrupts, but you have a point.

Have to say I hate the idea that we need to carry a “trap” that costs 15 silver and some badges of honor if we want to reveal a thief. What kind of poo is that? Light fields revealing stealth would be an excellent addition to the game.

Just gonna go ahead and call out nightblood.7910 for being the guy who whined about thieves for a couple days in the thief forums. Then someone told him to make a video of him playing thief in PvP and he posted this less than one day later:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/So-I-kinda-Rescind/first#post4881370

This guy’s posts are pure comedy. You should be embarrassed to agree with him.

If you are losing to Thieves 1v1 and you’re not a mesmer, it’s because you’re bad.

That’s because the Thief only has a part-time combat role in sPvP. Thieves only exist in the meta because of shortbow 5 and the amount of influence they have on score/points because of decaps. Thieves annoy people in WvW and annoy exceptionally bad players in sPvP so they aren’t allowed to win.

The recent stability changes might be the most blatant ghost nerf ever. Assassin’s Equilibrium, Consume Plasma, and stolen Stability all nerfed down to a single stack. The Necro trait that was already better than AE got a massive buff today, yet AE remains untouched, even though Acrobatics is one of the only trait lines with zero viable GM traits and AE is arguably the worst trait in the game.

It’s intentional, it’s here to stay.

Vornollo.5182:

Source for this constructive criticism?

The game constantly generates stacks of boons and conditions on players. Stealing boons is no more resource intensive than generating new boons on the “boon stealer” as if they used abilities that grant boons.

Bountiful Theft has always only stolen a single application of a boon, most likely for balance reasons. It’s good enough to rip 25 might off a target, gaining 25 might with a backstab 0.1 seconds away from landing would be incredible.

With the new stability changes, thieves have had every sources of stability they can gain nerfed down to 1 stack. I doubt this wasn’t intentional.

Vornollo.5182:

Besides, I think it might be due to engine limitations, it’s quite a process to calculate x-stacks from player A converted to x-stacks to player B, not to think of the timer variables that come into play and all that…

Nope.

Ithilwen.1529:

The funny thing is that some people assume that it is intended to not work on Thieves. There is nothing deliberate about it but most Thieves are too scared they might have a harder time facing certain Mesmer builds if ANet actually looked into it.

First, ANet quite certainly didn’t intend it not to work against Thieves. It just happened to turn out that way after they changed it not to affect rezzes and stomps (which is totally fine by most Mesmers) and they didn’t care to invest any more time into it. Of course, they probably won’t every publicly say so.

Sorry man, but you’re completely wrong.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3957343

• Power Block: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to set skills with zero recharge on 10 second recharge; namely auto-attacks from creatures and players, as well as thief initiative abilities. This trait will no longer trigger through stun immunity effects such as Stability and Defiance.
  —-

ANet actually has stated that Power Block is working as intended on thieves. This thread is not a bug-fix request, this is a Power Block rework/buff request.

With that said I would like to once again re-iterate what I have posted, a page or two back in this thread:

Thief weapon skills are, essentially, immune to skill interruptions of every kind. They can be interrupted, but there is no penalty for it: no loss of initiative, no cooldown of any kind. There are exceptions, but for all practical purposes the only exception to this rule is Heartseeker (aka 222222).

For years, ANet has nerfed thieves in many different ways but never introduced a punishment for their skills being interrupted. I believe the Thief initiative system is easily misunderstood by other classes and it seems as if the thief simply uses whatever skills he wants when he wants to use them, but this isn’t the case – and ANet clearly has concern for the balance of Thieves when it comes to initiative, cooldowns, and interrupts.

The proposal to change Power Block to make Thief skills go on a 5 second cooldown when interrupted would create the precise situation for thieves that the developers intentionally disallowed since the beginning of the game. The fact that Thief skills didn’t go on the 5 second cooldown for any reason (before Power Block was even in the game to be complained about) is testament to the fact that the developers believed the situation where a Thief’s weapon skills were locked out for 5 seconds (or any amount of time) after being interrupted to be unfair for the Thief.

The next step others have taken is to propose a penalty to initiative instead of a cooldown – but the fairness of this can also be inferred from the way Thieves already work. There are no penalties to initiative, either (again with the exception of Heartseeker). So it was also deemed unfair for a thief to lose initiative when his abilities are interrupted.

Finally, some say that the whole point of Power Block is to exacerbate the penalty for being interrupted. True – but we see, that with the exception of Heartseeker, there is no penalty to exacerbate, leaving the only potential option being inventing a new kind of penalty.

There probably is an option for how power block might effect Thief weapon skill in a balanced way, but the initiative system has already been sensitively balanced. It’s complicated, hard to quantify, and for right now it works. There’s really no reason for ANet to try mess with that balance for the sake of Power Block.

Many traits are poor choices against certain builds / professions or simply poor choices in general. Power Block is a poor choice against Thieves in the current meta. Back when people used Hide in Shadows more often, it would have been a decent choice – probably never a great choice. But, compared to some other Grandmaster traits Power Block is in relatively great shape in that it has any use whatsoever.

I mostly played S/D and couldn’t get the hang of D/P for a while but I’ve been learning. In general, thief is a lot harder to have success on than other classes and will require a good amount of practice.

I think the biggest change in my game has been to stop actively trying to use backstab. Despite what every non-thief denizen of the forums would have you believe, backstab is not that great. You stop DPS to use one and it costs a massive amount of initiative to get into stealth, which can be totally wasted if they use a block skill. The combo is also highly interruptable.

The power of shadow shot can be easily under estimated. It hits hard, applies a long blind, and teleports you to target to keep the pressure from your auto-attack up. If you’re not using shadow shot often, consider using it more.

To touch on Shadow Arts: the main reason to not use shadow arts is that the tree actually awful. Last Refuge is can get you killed. Meld with shadows has no effect on stealth combos, and Hidden Assassin is underwhelming as far as five-point traits go. Shadow’s Rejuvenation makes you regenerate slower than Warriors except you can’t do any damage while doing so. Infusion of Shadow is potentially justifiable to change the initiative deficit from 4 to 2 after using BP + Heartseeker x 3 if you are going deep behind an enemy zerg and need a lot of stealth uptime to stay close.

However, Shadow’s Embrace is actually amazing (2-points in SA req.) and in WvW I would highly recommend it. You can’t break combat with conditions on you and 30-sec combat lock because you got hit with a cow is annoying and dangerous for a thief.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You realize that swapping out of combat functions very differently while in combat, right? This is the steamiest pile of “i know all about cooldown and why it exist” bs I’ve ever read.

In that it has a cooldown while in combat for balance reasons? I can see players use their abilities when they are out of combat, so the information is still getting sent to the server. Clearly there is no “packet issue” that is kicking players for using abilities quickly on weapon swap because players can already kittening do it.

You literally made that kitten up and now you’re trying to defend it. You are the worst kind of human. Your best option was to just say you were drunk and don’t know why you posted that.

StickerHappy.8052:

Since pb does not affect initiative, as a thief what would you suggest to compensate?

On the basis of: “PB isn’t good against Thieves”? Nothing
On the basis of: “Lockdown mesmers need a buff vs. Thieves.”? No Idea, I wouldn’t even get involved in the conversation.

Mak.2657:

Dude, I’m talking about specific mesmer GM trait called Power Block in topic called “Power Block and Thieves”.
I show my politeness by explaining to you your gaps in thief and mesmer classes knowledge. Would you mind to explain me why I should stop to write about PB in this topic instead of “Go back, and try again.”

The preceding sentences to the one you quoted stated that the only valid reason to change PB in a thief specific way is to improve the matchup against thieves, since there are already many build choices players can make that are weak against certain matchups. Your response totally ignores this and responds to the sentence fragment as if it stands on its own.

Edit: almost all thief weapon skills with cast time have a chance to be interrupted -> loose iniative -> should be punished more with PB (imo).

Not sure if this is a language barrier problem or what, but:

Black Powder
Dancing Dagger
Cluster Bomb
Choking Gas
Infiltrator’s Return
Cloak and Dagger
Body Shot

Do NOT use initiative when interrupted.

The rest of the abilities are:

• Evasions
• Instant, non-interruptable
• Heartseeker
• Unload

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kurow.3076:

Thieves really should have no c/d on their weapon swap.

Short Answer: The game cannot handle it.

Long Answer: The server will get bombarded by packet requests that your game play as a Thief will not be satisfactory due to lag and packet loss. Besides, there is no real benefit in swapping other than combining skills across two sets — which you can already do.

You realize you can swap weapons without cooldown when out of combat right? I do it constantly to BP+Clusterbomb. This is the steamiest pile of “trust me, my dad is a computer-maker” bs I’ve ever read.

Mak.2657:

morbidillusion.2759:

so if you think lock down mesmer is unfairly matched against Thieves, then make a thread about that.

Emm? This thread about PB and I’m talking about PB.

Yeah, that’s why I write my sentences in order. Go back, and try again.

Edit:

If you interrupt thief weapons skill – thief is loosing initiative spent for this skill

Only for heartseeker and unload. (and apparently Flanking Strike according to you). I explained earlier in the thread that for all practical purposes, Thieves are not punished for being interrupted unless they are using heartseeker. So there is actually no “punishment” to “aggravate”.

Mak.2657:

It doesn’t evade for entire activation time. There are non-evade frames right before hit. Very small window though.

Evade duration = activation time in the tooltip, so this is a bug I guess.

Harder? PB doesn’t hit thieves at all. Even if it would – still underwhelming trait.

Yes it does. It just doesn’t hit any of the meta thief builds. Some people actually use HiS. Against a Thief with HiS, PB interrupt could be a death sentence.

Point being, the devs have already stated PB and interrupts are working as intended with Thieves, and to ask for compensation because a trait is bad against a certain class/build combination is basically nonsense. Many GM traits are total rubbish (Diamond Skin, Assassin’s Equilibrium) and other tiers have an abundance of useless traits.

Edit: I mean, before Power Block was added – Mesmers were still playing Kanye West builds and Thieves were still terrible targets for interrupt builds. No one is/was asking for regular interrupts to be valid against thieves; just this particular trait? Why? The trait still serves its purpose. It’s niche, like almost all traits.

The only real reason to ask for a power block specific buff against thieves is to improve the matchup against thieves. No one is running lock down mesmer to fight thieves in the first place – so if you think lock down mesmer is unfairly matched against Thieves, then make a thread about that.

Mak.2657:

OK, stop joking. Sw\d really very hard to interrupt tbh (but have chance with some flanking strike interrupt practice) .

Can you hit MoD while a target evades or something? Flanking strike evades for the entire activation time.

PB is underwhelming. Abundance of weak traits (of mesmer and other classes) doesn’t make it legit. It needs rework.

Yeah, it is and it probably does. Engineering a way for it to hit thieves harder isn’t going to suddenly bring it into the meta.

cyyrix.6105:

• First of all, BP+HS is definitely not the most telegraphed ability in the game.
• It doesn’t take an experienced thief to press 2 again after being dazed by MoD
• The second charge of MoD won’t be off CD before the thief can use HS again (it’s a 1s daze with a 5 second recharge)
• You talk about the thief losing 9s of cooldowns, but completely ignore what the mesmer loses. That number is 50% of a 30s CD skill, so effectively a 15s CD. Adding the GS5 you mentioned, the comparison becomes 12s for thief vs 45 seconds for mesmer

Most thieves (like you) are quick to point out mesmers’ ability to prevent a single stealth attempt, but ignore the CD race over the course of an engagement. If 1 denied stealth killed the thief, it wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately that’s not the case (as you correctly point out, only inexperienced thieves “wtf and die”).

1. Dude BP/HS combo is the one ability that no one has any excuse for missing a ‘rupt on. Animations can be hard to recognize, especially when not in ranked PvP and races look different and stuff. BP puts an obvious circle on the Thief’s feet. It’s a huge telegraph.
2. Opinion. Most thieves are HSing and their next move is run in for backstab, or they are popping a teleport to hit with the HS and won’t be able to double-back on the powder. I’d say you need an above average thief to be ready for/anticipate the interrupt.
3. Fair enough. I don’t play mesmer and didn’t know. Thanks.

4. There’s no fair comparison here. The thief loses 9 seconds of cooldowns on every ability on every weapon set. If we want to multiply it out its 90 seconds but that’s not really a legit number is it?

The fact is that a thief who just lost 9 initiative, ate a knockdown/daze, and failed to gain stealth when he needed it is using SR (60s) or SS (50s) to gtfo or dying. It’s an extremely effective interrupt.

StickerHappy.8052:

Yes exactly, 1v1 a thief? you said no. I agree, but in conquest you can never really avoid a 1v1 forever, soon enough that time will come. So you are saying too that PB is a worthless trait against thieves?

Yeah. Unless the meta shifts to using Hide in Shadows or traps or Thieves Guild. Mesmer’s aren’t in good shape, but it’s a pretty much excepted fact that a thief cannot solo anything but thieves or mesmers in sPvP so you’re preaching to the choir about 1v1s. No sympathy here.

You said PB has no exceptions? It has, The thief weapon set is immune to PB for that matter, wouldnt you call that an exception? The meta does not dictate it, whatever the meta is, you will be still be immune to PB considering its Trait description and the Initiative mechanic as of now

The thief weapon set is immune, but the thief is not. The thief weapon set is also (mostly) immune to all interrupts of any kind and there is no argument about that. Thieves gain advantages and disadvantages from the initiative system. Immunity to interrupt cooldown is one of them. This has nothing to do with Power Block.

For the S/D one, AA is still interruptable, but not affected by PB, so case in point it STILL has interruptable sources.

But no class’s AA is affected by PB.

For D/P argument, VERY GOOD POINT, but then again it works the other way around too. A decent thief will know that. How? The MoD icon charge is visible on the “Real Mesmer”, would you Combo BP for stealth if he had that?

In a duel, no. But in any other situation the thief has to attempt to restealth, SS out, or die. D/P thieves cannot brawl for any extend period of time with more than one enemy on the field.

Jasher.6580:

What did they change about revealed when they fixed the perma stealth thing with CnD? When did that change happen?

I remember chaining stealth like crazy after release then they changed something.

They didn’t change anything, people got a clue. As long as you don’t attack in stealth you can CnD 0.5s before stealth falls of and as long as it hits you will be in stealth again.

StickerHappy.8052:

DISCLAIMER: I do not want thieves to be nerfed, I just want a complete working GM trait with no class exceptions.

The trait doesn’t have any class exceptions though. There’s no complaint about power block vs. other class auto-attacks. Why? Every ability with no cooldown reacts the same way to power block and every valid power block target a thief uses goes on the 10 second cooldown. The simple fact is that it’s not a good trait choice versus the current thief meta. If hide in shadows was meta, it would be great against them, because PB is awesome against anyone that uses a casted heal.

@morbid

Building my own PB? how?

Withdraw – Instant
Infil signet – Instant
Shadowstep – Instant
SR – 1/4 cast, very hard to interrupt
BP – Instant

Are you dense? Half of my post, which you quoted, explains how you can get many thieves to lose 9 initiative and their attempt at stealthing with a single use of mantra of distraction and guarantee it with with two uses of mantra or GS 5.

So is there any real reason to trait PB if this is the situation?

A 1v1 against a thief? No. There’s also no reason to play a thief in a 1v1 against any class but a thief or mesmer. This game is full of traits that are less potent / almost useless against certain builds and classes. Seriously, how good is PB against a meditation guardian? Their entire heal/utility/elite kit is immune to it and they have way too much offense that even a perfectly interrupted med guard is pumping out tons of DPS. He probably doesn’t even notice you ’rupted him because he made an instant corpse out of you.

What’s your point? Because that’s mine. The effectiveness of PB builds has nothing to do with how it effects thieves and if anyone is acting spoiled it’s the mesmers who think the trait should be buffed because it isn’t strong against meta thief builds. It’s also a trash trait against a lot of other builds.

What about the warrior stun break trait against builds that don’t use stuns? What about the thief 10% damage against targets with condi’s against a D/D ele? What about Assassin’s Equilibrium for every reason imaginable?

and we have S/D which is VERY HARD to land an interrupt if its evaded all time.

Interrupt what, bud? S/D literally has no interruptable abilities. 2 (return) and 4 are both 0.25 seconds and not reasonably interruptable by a human being and CnD is 0.5 seconds and never used. This statement itself shows how little you know about your opponent, something that simply does not work as a lock-down mesmer. Your interrupt got evaded? Guess what, it wasn’t going to interrupt something anyway. You missed.

I am talking about semi-above average thieves here, pls do not tell L2P or give generic advice against bad thieves.

Yeah. And I’m talking about semi-competent mesmers. If you have mantra of distraction and have any decent knowledge of D/P thieves you have a really strong opportunity to shut the class down whenever they lay Black Powder, and it’s also one of the easiest abilities things react to and ’rupt.

I actually think Power Block is working as intended, since all skills with no cooldown are immune to power block and general interrupt cooldowns. Not only that, but thieves are not penalized by interrupts by design. The only two abilities that carry any penalty for being interrupted, other than lost casting time, are Heartseeker and Unload.

Thieves are not immune to power block, they are just very poor targets because they only use 1 skill that has a decent cast time and a cooldown and it’s basilisk venom. But if we leave meta-land, a power block on Hide in Shadows would probably kill a Thief every time it lands, and there would be many opportunities to interrupt a trap thief. This complaint seems pretty bogus because power block is a really strong GM trait compared to some others (Assassin’s Equilibrium, please bro), and it’s mostly a complaint about how the current thief meta doesn’t have a target for it.

BTW, you can already build your own power block on thieves (D/P, you can’t interrupt S/D anyway) and you don’t even need the trait.

BP + HS is a 9 initiative combo and it takes a total of 1.25 seconds to complete and it is the most telegraphed ability in the game. Interrupt the heartseeker and the thief doesn’t gain stealth and loses 3 initiative for certain. If the thief is very experienced he can double back on the powder and still gain stealth with a second HS but most will “wtf” and die. This is assuming you didn’t use GS 5 to interrupt him and you don’t follow up with GS 5 or any kind of immob, stun, etc. or simply the second charge of mantra of distraction.

With that done, the thief incurs a total of 9 seconds in cooldowns for all of his weapon skills. Mesmers running mantra of distraction are actually well suited to shut down a D/P thief from stealth without any help from Power Block.

Scoobaniec.9561:

^By that logic we should revert adrenaline change. You can blind/dodge/block/interrupt it and you see it coming from miles away unlike stealth attacks which is nothing else but a guess minigame same as dodging steal.

In this case revert the change to balance this stuff out as it stands now its completely unfair for warrior to lose all his adrenaline on a failed burst while thief is still babysitted by mechanic “oh he blocked/evaded/blinded me? i dont give a f and spam it until eventually it land” I want babysit mechanics to carry me like a princess too ya know?

One of the most obvious differences is that a Warrior can strip blind and aegis before he uses his bursts. Using blocks/blinds in reaction relates to your point about them being seen from “miles away” which I will address later.

Second, this argument varies so greatly depending on build. The meta shoutbow warrior cures 3 conditions on burst, and is beefy and his burst skill is mainly sword for the 4 second immob on a target while his team destroys the target. It’s not even comparable to backstab in anyway.

The closest comparison between burst skills and backstab thieves is an eviscerate warrior. A furious/sharpened axes/burst mastery warrior is literally always full adrenaline. At full tactics, burst skills take 7.75 seconds to recharge and I can always use BOTH bursts in this time period suggesting the burst frequency is one every 3.88 seconds – i.e. twice as often as a thief can backstab assuming that’s all the thief spends initiative on.

Then of course, you have the fact that eviscerate hits for 36% more damage than backstab (14% more on targets below 50% health) and doesn’t require any positioning. And the fact that by definition, warriors have to do DPS in order to ready a burst skill and thieves have to not do DPS in order to set up a backstab.

In regards to their interrupt-ability, eviscerate has a .75 activation time, so does earthshaker. Mace and greatsword bursts are at 0.5 seconds. This is not abnormally long. Also, the warrior forums irony is literally killing me right now because the one burst skill that everyone says has a uselessly long activation time when someone complains about getting hit for 14,000 at 1200 range is kill shot, with a 1.25 second cast. The exact amount of time it takes for thief to use his stealth combo (which is often interrupted and countered as well).

TLDR; Get good, princess. Warriors are so far ahead of thieves on paper that it’s not even close. And honestly, losing your adrenaline on an axe warrior means literally nothing – the cooldown stops it, not the adrenaline.

Sorel.4870:

Ok guys, consider this. In pvp, it is well known that a thief’s role is to decap points and to +1 team fights, and to avoid 1v1s as much as possible. It means that thief is probably not OP war machine you think it is. Don’t you think you’re doing something wrong?

Quoted for truth. Horrible players are going to destroy the thief class if the devs listen to them.

Now for OP….

A thief getting revealed on accident is either blowing his CDs to get out of the fight and fully drop combat or dying on the spot. Do people seriously think that a random guardian aegis boon or blind debuff is worthy of inflicting this fate? Furthermore random aegis procs or any sort of blind would totally negate stealth attacks – the thief can literally do nothing (reasonable) to remove the aegis/blind without revealing himself.

Block skills are already good counters to backstab; OP is just too horrible to realize it.

Block skills do exactly what you want them to when the thief is using stealth in a combat situation. When the thief is on the fringe of battle stacking his stealth up to longer durations, you have less control. The thief dictates the opener, but when he drops powder and heartseekers at your face and goes for the follow up backstab, block skills stop it dead. Here’s how:

First, consider that in order for a D/P Thief to stealth it costs 9 initiative if they are not SA spec, 7 if they are. Since these are the PvP forums and not the WvW forums, most thieves in PvP are not using SA. In other words, stealth has a 8.18 second cooldown for your average D/P thief assuming he uses ZERO initiative for any other reason whatsoever. Additionally, the combo takes 1.25 seconds to perform and is very easy for many classes to interrupt and abuse to prevent stealth from happening in the first place. If this happens, add 5.45 seconds to that stealth cooldown.

Not only that, but stealth also only last 3 seconds, which is at most 1 second longer than any block ability in the game. Let’s take a look at a few blocks

Gear Shield: 3 sec. 20 sec cd
Shield Stance: 3 sec. 30 sec cd
Shelter: 2 sec. 30 sec cd

If we look at these numbers, warriors can use shield stance to completely negate the chance of a backstab for 1 in every 3.66 times a thief enters stealth, again under the ludicrous assumption that the thief uses zero initiate for anything but entering stealth.

Engineers, 1 in every 2.44. Also, don’t forget these abilities do more than block a backstab it also stops every other player in existence from hitting you for the duration.

Guardians have to buy 3/4 of a second for movement time for the thief and they can negate the backstab chance at the same rate as a Warrior. Similarly, mesmers, rangers, and warriors can force a thief to eat a counter-attack with their counter-block skills as long as the thief can’t backstab within half of a second of entering stealth which is almost impossible anyway. Also you can dodge to guarantee the effect and against a thief there actually aren’t many better opportunities for dodges.

TL:DR What’s the point? If you haven’t figured it out by now (I’m sure you haven’t) – using blocking skills when a thief goes stealth basically says “not today” to a thief trying to backstab you in almost all situations and forces him to use an entirely new stealth to try again (after being “revealed” for, on average, 5 SECONDS).

BlackBeard.2873:

You do understand that thieves already have an overwhelming advantage vs. zerker rangers. Channeled skills are literally the only defense that ranged weapons have vs. stealth. Otherwise, stealth is just invulnerability against ranged damage.

You can always dodge, or have more situational awareness. Rapid fire is literally the only chance something like a zerker ranger has against a thief.

Rapid fire is fine but you need to learn how to press 4 and keep your mouth shut about thieves. LB ranger complaining about stealth is a joke. Your whole team should be complaining about you because all you need to do is press 4 and you wreck the thief.

D/D can abuse stealth against a ranger’s pet, but lucky for your 100% of all classes and specs will dumpster a D/D thief, which is why they don’t exist.

IIRC, at one point thieves had separate initiative pools for each weapon set. Can anyone confirm?

Ario.8964:

Now I’d actually like to say something in response to your post:
Thieves can 1v1 ANY of the meta builds BUT they have to massively outplay the person using the other build which is definitely possible but can be very difficult to pull off.
(trimmed)

It’s interesting that this is your response because I actually trimmed an entire section about this from my post because the original post was so long. Here’s what it said:

The claim that thieves can 1v1 other classes as long as they significantly outplay them is a meaningless, and nearly tautological, statement that applies to all classes. You could nerf thieves (or any class) forever and you would always have a skill gap threshold where an extremely good player could appear to be god-like.

Skill-based balance does not work, has never worked, and will never work. I.e., making one class “balanced” in the sense that they are mathematically underpowered but versatile enough that transcendent amounts of skill allow them to still win. Moreover, it is a myth. You are simply witnessing the difference of good player vs. bad player on a class that happens to be worse.

However, this is a two way street that Thieves and Mesmers are doomed to drive on by design. While it’s not fair (and imbalanced) to have one class require inordinate gaps in skill to win, it’s also unfair for the class to require inordinate gaps in skill to lose.
Because of the play-style of thief and mesmer, without knowledge of what causes the class to stealth, teleport, make clones, burst hard and fast, etc. and what that means when you are fighting one, inexperienced players are doomed to lose a very frustrating battle with thieves and mesmers.

I’d like to give my perspective as someone who played actively up until ascended items were added and recently decided to return to the game.

One thing I’ve noticed is that mesmers have the opinion that their class is broken and weak. I personally, feel as you do that thief is in a similar situation. Many of the learning resources for thieves that are shared by this forum specifically state that thieves cannot 1v1 against almost all meta builds. The advice I believe, is that if it is not a mesmer or a thief, you run away and try to decap or +1. This is not my idea of a powerful, or well designed, or fun to play class.

It is therefore shocking to see that when one suggests that the thief is not a strong 1v1 class, members of other classes think the claim is wholly ridiculous.

The average player still seems to think that thieves are massively overpowered.

I think that thieves and mesmers have been over-nerfed to compensate for the fact that they destroy new/bad players more than any other class, cause a lot of frustration, and have potentially infinite health bars if their opponent is clueless enough.

It’s a serious problem because ANet can’t fix thieves (or mesmers) if the whole population perceives them as being way-too-strong. After witnessing the release of GW2, it doesn’t surprised me that after a few years, thieves and mesmers are both wearing the same kitten suit.

However, there is a limit to all of this – and I believe ANet is about a mile passed it. Thieves are so squishy that they die as collateral damage to bunker builds’ AoE while they duke it out.

I believe the heart of the problem right now lies in the balance between stats and builds more than in the individual capabilities of a class. All of these cele bunkers who thieves can barely tickle should be able to barely tickle a thief. There’s just a straight up imbalance right now and it’s really ruining everything that GW2 got right by removing dedicated healers (healers have a long standing tradition of being statistically superior to damage dealers and it makes the game revolve around them).

TLDR: It’s a problem of perception. Thieves are annoying so they can’t be allowed to win. Also the celestial amulet needs to be deleted.

YuiRS.8129:

Some of the replies are weird. Thief’s Shortbow is one of the best weapons in the game.

no.1 hits hard and AoEs well, making it strong in team fights and in 1v1s against Rangers and especially Mesmers.

no.2 is the best Blast finisher in the game that hits extremely hard.

no.3 is a spammable evade that cripples. It’s a great tool for dueling and surviving when getting pinned down.

no.4 is a poison field. Poison is one of the best conditions in the game that directly counters the current healing meta. Not only that, but you can blast it with #2 for AoE weakness, which is incredibly powerful.

no.5 is the absolute best mobility tool in the game. This is what gives Thief his place in the current meta and makes a well played Thief uncatchable.

The SB is an amazing utility weapon but it doesn’t fit what the OP wants at all and there is no build that is based around using the SB as a main weapon.

phokus.8934:

A “new weapon” would constitute what the class cannot use. I think it’s still in the air if that includes not being able to use the weapon in your off-hand or main-hand but I’m leaning towards no.

One of the things that made me think of unarmed combat was that the thief actually has skills that are only available when his offhand is empty. Also, if there was going to be a monk spec, at any point in the future, I can’t see anyone but thief getting it.

The problem with Cloak and Dagger is that it is extremely unreliable. And, additionally, if you run D/D, you have absolutely no answer for the 3(4) seconds of revealed time on your weapon set (which is more than enough time for most classes to kill you).

S/D is a good build, but rarely uses CnD and mostly equips dagger because of the dual skill. As far as 1v1 builds go, it’s the best. Thief is a poor 1v1 class however, and you should be running away unless you’re fighting a thief or mesmer (inc noobs from other classes who play horrible specs and think thief can 1v1 every class at the same time, stomp 7 people at once, and one-shot keep lords).

With that said, if you like CnD you probably like on-demand stealth and not dodge spam, which is what S/D is all about. You have the option of going D/P and you get the benefit of having on-demand stealth without needing something to hit, but the trade off is that your stealth is now the most telegraphed move in the game and you are going to eat a lot off CC trying to do it.

And get unarmed combat instead? Discuss.

Morazz.9371:

Im a new started player and i have some difficulty understanding some mechanics of this game.

First of, could someone explain what S/D, S/P, D/D, D/P specs is and what it means for my playstyle? What should i use while leveling?

When you hit (I think it’s level 22 now), you will be able to join the sPvP lobby where your character will be level 80 with (almost) all traits and skills available. This is the best way to try out different weapon sets and specs.

I will also mention this: if you don’t like leveling and you don’t mind spending some money you can follow crafting guides and just buy all the mats. Ever prof. you get to level 400 is worth 10 levels (unless they changed this).

Lastly, how “kittened” are thiefs in PvP and WvW? They are quite hard to play efficiently i heard, how come? They are fragile i guess but is that it?

Thieves are hard to play because they lose to most classes 1v1 and because almost all effective builds use low (read non-existant) defensive stats so that their mistakes are met with almost instant death.

In WvW you will be at a significant gear disadvantage for a very long time and you will need to zerg (very boring for a thief) for a few months to be able to get buff stacks from killing guards. This will compound against the fact that most specs are simply better than you. I would suggest not rolling a thief as a first class if you are interested in WvW.

xDudisx.5914:

Completely false statement. Celestial is only good for 3 classes, ele, engi and war. If you try to use celestial on guardian, mesmer, thief, ranger or necro it will be just reducing your build potential.

How many celestial thieves, mesmers, guardians, or necros did you see on tourneys?

If you consider sub optimal builds “viable” then the same can be said about every other amulet.

First, I’m going to mention that the very first statement I made is “Depends on what you mean by viable” and the very last was that you’d always be better off with an engi or ele.

I’d be surprised, honestly, if you read any of the words after the bolded statement. You just seemed eager to go into l2p-elitist-rage-mode. Which class did you play “on tourneys”, by the way?

In terms of “viable”, it is obvious that I chose to make the assumption that OP was not a tournament level sPvPer coming to the thief forums to ask if a build was viable for his high-level team play but instead a casual player concerned with whether or not he could use the celestial amulet on a thief to any effect. I then explain the basics of making use of the celestial amulet on any class.

Please feel free to PM me in the future if you would like personal tutoring on how to derive meaning from written words.

mompen.7952:

Hey!

I’m just dabbling with the idea, since cele engi and ele is a “thing” nowadays.

I know AikijinX once had a build which focused on life steals

Link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Aikijinx-s-Life-Absorb-Build-Pictures/first

build link: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAqYVlsMp7plOxoJ8PRRw9wpQtpeKK7Y1KQzuCRF-zUCBIgBCXEkiIQEFgJqFRjtMsIasKZCp6aYaYROAACghO0he0je0IFg5CjA-w

Has celestial been boosted since that build was first showed?

Depends on what you mean by viable and where you want to use the build.
As far as sPvP is concerned the truth is that celestial anything is viable because the celestial amulet is mathematically imbalanced. Since almost every attack that applies a condition also has some sort of power based hit associated with it, condi attacks basically get 1752 stats that benefit their attacks (zerker gets 2033). If the build uses any healing, it gets 1314 stats that benefit survivability (zerker gets 331).

The key is to use condition based attacks. Even if your build uses no healing whatsoever, you still get more relevant stats than using any other amulet.

I tried 2 random celestial thief builds and they both performed…decently. Both probably allowed me to do leagues more total damage in a fight since I had to run away far less. Neither used leeching venoms so I don’t know about that build in particular.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVl0MpypdPx8J0PNBTRwdRwgXndHW1B-TpgPgAA7PYWGAA

Celestial Unicorn build you can try.

With that said, as far as using this build to hold points solo, you will always be better off using the classes that truly abuse celestial amulet like engi and elementalist.

Warpinator.9860:

I mean … since August 28, 2012. Stealth didn’t got nerf, basically you can be able to go out combat, regain full hp and go back on killing.

High dps , no counter since it is extremely easy to dodge CC.

Who should I fear ? I got no idea.

GG

Please roll a thief and run some sPvP. Even if you come back to lie and say you always win and thief has no counter we will all have the satisfaction of knowing you’re full of it and that if you did play thief you learned you are getting owned because you’re horrible and not because thief is even close to OP.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Um no. Read it again. The topic is not about the Thief but those who complains about the Thief. Those who single out the Thief (like you) for no valid reason.

Reading comprehension 101.

The rest of your so-called-arguments are moot.

So, the guy you’re talking to thinks Thieves are OP in WvW and plays a glass cannon staff elementalist which is the worst glass cannon build I can think of. The sad part is that this guy is playing a class that has one of the most popular and powerful WvW roaming builds around right now in the form of D/D ele and basically chooses to lose on purpose with his horrible spec that has no place in any form of PvP.

With that said, it is absolutely 1,000,000% more ridiculous for you, in a topic about why people think thieves are still OP, to tell a guy giving a reason for why he thinks thieves are OP that his comments are misplaced or off-topic. This is exactly where his horribly misinformed and out-right incorrect opinions belong.

Cronicle.5691:

Im not letting LR dictate when i disengage. I’m letting my knowledge of my health pool that it WILL trigger if i hit 3,876 health which is practically 1 hit away, (1 critical auto attack) from killing you. IF you have condition on you, you are most likely going down. Yes i have won with a low health pool before, ive had close encounters. I have died to getting revealed to last refuge before. Nobody can play perfect and everybody makes mistakes eventually. But to put blame on an ability which is an Anti burst defence trait for 1 minor point that will give you free stealth and blind is a win.
Had last refuge triggered if you hit 90% health pool… then yes i dont see its purpose. But as it stands right now i see it being a more positive trait for its minor point than it being negative.

1: Serious question, given that your screenshot is of you in some abhorrent PvE section of the game, do you PvP? And you understand that people do not give a kitten about how useful / not useful LR (or anything) is in PvE?

2: How exactly is Last Refuge an anti-burst trait when it doesn’t stop you from taking damage? If they removed the stealth and just had it release the blind it would be a buff.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Did you bother looking at those skills’ cooldown at all? Once those stability falls off, they have nothing left for the duration of the CD.

It was addressed. Those classes have far more options for surviving short of a single stun breaker. You’re a joke dude – they have nothing while their stab is on cooldown? Are you kidding me? What about the rest of the class?

You want it buffed or changed, yet you failed to justify why.

Except I did, it’s undeniably awful and the stealth attack mechanic is 6 points deep in the polar opposite tree.

Now picture this, a P/D Dire set with 00266 build and Trapper Runes using AE.

Do you really want to buff that build?

If that build is broken its not because of AE, bro. Condi builds in general are extremely good because of the bunker meta and condis are good against the most popular point humper, cele rifle engi.

Ok, fine, let’s assume for a minte you’re right.

Assume that 80% of 90 is 72? Do you even care if you make sense?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I disagree. Think about it for a minute and look at the patch as a whole. Most, if not all, stability buffs has 3s duration then it falls off. Now ask youself, how often can you strike from stealth? That’s right, every 3s (4s in PvP but who in PvP uses AE?).

Now take a look at how often each skill can apply stability? Some of them has a cooldown that is longer than 30s. I mean sure Dolyak Sig gets 10 stacks, but that signet has a base CD of 60s. A Thief can theoretically cancel a CC approx. every kitten now after considering all these, do you still believe that AE needs a buff?

EDIT: By the way, Indomitable Courage has a base of 90s CD.

This is a really bad case of apples to oranges and a fair amount of straight up wrong. The only sources of stability that last 3 seconds or less are: rock solid, foot in the grave, and mesmer mantra. The mesmer mantra can be activated twice with no traits, breaks stun, gives 3 stacks TO ALL ALLIES NEARBY. Rock solid also effects nearby allies.

The only comparable source of stability is foot in the grave and even that lasts a full second longer and is, at the very, least placed in the proper tree for using death shroud.

Go ahead and look through the abilities for stability. They all grant stability to multiple people or break stuns some do both. AE gives 2 seconds of stability on stealth hit to a class that is pretty much dead without a stun breaker if they ever get CCed after they invest 6 points in a tree focused on surviving without relying on stealth.

Also, if you are able to CnD instantly after every revealed ends, you already win because you’re fighting the target dummies in the lobby. Your on paper example is ludicrous.

So to answer your question, yes, I believe one of the worst and least used grandmaster traits in the game (even though 30 in its tree is meta right now) needs to be buffed (but really changed all together).

Edit: And Indominable courage has a base CD of 72 seconds for the same reason AE lasts 2 seconds.

Edit 2: I’m just realizing that your post is perhaps only talking about PvE? If this is the case I have been trolololo-ed and I have no interest in anything you say. Go zerker and smash buttons and dodge. PvE. Yay.

I know we’re all breathing a sigh of relief that blinks didn’t get hosed but I find it to be essentially a slap in the face that after ANet said that all of the stability abilities and traits were being retuned to fit their role in the new stability changes, Assassin’s Equilibrium was, most likely, ignored but in the worst case… intentionally nerfed into the ground?

Assassin’s Equilibrium gives 1 stack of stability for 1.5 seconds. Other traits, such as Indomitable Courage (Guardian), actually received a duration boost in response to the stack changes even though it was also changed to grant multiple stacks of stability (3 in this case).

The fact that they didn’t even bother giving AE more stacks of stability is honestly insulting and I don’t think ANet spent a second of their time thinking about AE this patch.

The trait is still terribly misplaced but I believe there was an opportunity to mend the issue of 2 seconds of stability being very short and rarely useful in a build that dodges so often by keeping it at a single stack but boosting the duration so that when a 30 Acro thief does actually attack from stealth they carry around a little CC insurance for a brief time. The trait is bogus either way but kitten it should at least be 3 stacks for 1.5 seconds.

TheMurkMuffin.8213:

Does anyone have any input to what is best to pair with a sword? Can you please elaborate a bit too. I like to WvW mostly, but I do PvE. Hopefully that helps a bit.

Do you mean in the off hand or second weapon set? There are only two options for your offhand, pistol and dagger, and dagger is really the only one you want for PvP because of stealth and the dual skill is good. For PvE you probably want pistol for the dual skill but I have no idea.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

They aren’t the best in that setting even if they do have their strength. They excel at putting a lot of pressure on the squishy…

In a zerg? This is the only place a thief can’t put a lot of pressure on a squishy. You walk into the enemy backline’s wells in zerker gear (esp. as thief with the lowest native health pool) and you will literally die before you can dagger 1. Thieves do not play a melee role in zergs. Ever. Period.

Wait, what?!!! I think it’s more a case of l2p here… that or the troll-o-meter just exploded…

Wait for it…

Or, maybe it’s you who sux at it. If it’s me who ins’t good as a staff using ele, I can tell you that a boatload of ppl are sucking hard by your standards… Ask people who know me, or better yet, duel me…

Yes, I’m zerker geared, but most all other professions are perfectly fine for me to fight and hope to win. I do defeat thieve with my staff (beginner or an occasional good one who stopped being cautious and made a mistake) but I can assure you they don’t tell anyone about it because it’s quite hard to loose to a zerker staff ele when you are a d/d or p/d thief. It’s your fight to loose seriously…

staff using ele…

zerker geared

So you’re roaming as a staff ele with zerker gear.

Let me explain something to you, when GW2 launched thieves were unstoppably dominant because everyone was wearing zerker gear, and in a meta where everyone is designed to kill fast and die fast the thief always wins because they are FASTER. They don’t burst harder, they burst first.

Steal with mug is not dodgeable, it’s instant, has no animation and with b. venom prepped your backstab can’t be stopped and neither can the hasted dagger chain. This isn’t a problem any more because thief burst has been nerfed and also the classes that are still running glass power builds are the ones that can beat thieves. zerker staff elementalist is not one of them.

I would expect you to lose 100% of all fights against thieves as a zerker staff ele and my guess is that you don’t have a problem in sPvP because they don’t even let you kittenhouse your gear as hard as you want to because the zerker ammy has vitality on it.

The real imbalance that thieves pose towards squishies could have been solved by bringing stats more in-line for all amulets and raising the ttk across the board instead of trying to lower thief ttk because what we have at this point is a thief that was nerfed to be balanced with everyone wearing zerk ammys and everyone running cele bunkers, condi bunkers, etc. and the thief is mathematically outmatched.

Edit: And just to clarify, steal is dodgeable in the sense that it can be evaded but it’s not dodgeable in the sense that you can see it coming and react and dodge it. If you dodge it, it was pure guess work.

vespers.1759:

morbidillusion.2759:

Thief is really bad at 1v1 duels so solo roaming is a serious chore for a thief.

el oh el what the hell did i jsut read

Lol, please post your class and spec for WvW roaming so we can crucify you for losing to thieves or roaming as a rifle warrior.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I have sympathy for Thief in pvp, truly, but absolutely none at all in WvW. It’s day and night.

Thief is awful in WvW. In zergs, all they can do is sit in the back and cast venoms every 30 seconds and hit nothing because they are the only class in the entire game with no 12,000 range attack options.

Thief is really bad at 1v1 duels so solo roaming is a serious chore for a thief. In small gang roaming, thief is ok, but only because it turns into sPvP and they can jump in to outnumber a fight and disengage quickly.

If you’re getting owned by thieves you must be specced wrong or just plain bad. The only thing a thief can solo in this meta are zerker builds. The only zerker builds people are roaming with is guard, ranger, and maybe like power necro in groups. Ranger is the only one that stands a chance of dying if they are at keyboard. To most other builds, thieves literally die as collateral damage when they go into melee range and the bunker is healing, AOEing, etc.

The OPs “Serious Question” has been answered a thousand times by the very nerf-criers in these forums. People think thieves are OP because they can run away and not die and drop free loot.

Monoman.2068:

I didn’t think about the fear being cleansed either. I’ve seen some rangers use that as a solution so I just threw it out there.

The fear being cleansed is actually quite unlikely as long as you don’t cripple him first. He cleanses a condi every 3 seconds and it probably only takes 2 seconds to walk the diameter of SR. If your wolf is in bad position when he SRd don’t bother and just look to do damage to him.

The real advice here, is that you just shouldn’t fight this class if you cannot kill him in under 1 minute. There no good reason you should be able to counter SR. Its a 60 second cooldown and when the thief fails to SR he gets revealed and is at a massive disadvantage.

You guys are two bunker slow builds brawling it out and when you make a mistake after 2-3 refuges you die. This is how every condi bunker fight goes.