Guild Wars 2

The game I previously played, implied thiefs having infinite stealth, by what I mean is if you successfully got in stealth, you could stay in it for how long you want, cure all conditions, regenerate all health, and there was absolutely no QQ in that game, although here, a thief stealth’s for a few seconds and every body looses their minds, lol.

Dying to a Heartseeker spam and then called him noob is even worse.

HS HS HS HS HS HS HS = noob
CND STEAL BS AA AA HS HS HS = fine

AA is auto attack

Viking Jorun.5413:

Amins.3710:

Thief stealth mechanics are broken.

End of story.

Anet has their head so far up it that they cannot fix the problem and it’s too rooted into the theif profession that even if they did/could, it would decimate the class w/o restructuring it completely.

Broken class for broken people who like broken ezmode things.

Only then will you learn how to counter a thief.

How to counter a thief-
Step 1: Realize how incredibly stupid your class is in terms of roaming. Accept it.
Step 2: You also need to realize that if you are a thief, you’re set. If you’re anything but a thief, continue to step 3.
Step 3: Quit to desktop OR go to character select. If you chose character select, continue to step 4.
Step 4: Click “Create New Character” button at the bottom left corner. Race/looks doesnt matter. Choose the thief as your profession.
Step 5: Level him to 80.
Step 6: Delete your old character, as Arena-net will continue to nerf your roaming capabilities due to in-experienced thief players complaining about the fact that their class met another class that did something that they do. Then when other players claim the thief is overpowered, they bash them with things like “L2P”. They are people like Zacchary. And he is right. You make a thief. And you level him to 80. And you play that thief. Learn the class, and you can realize this simple, and indisputable fact. A thief, when roaming, will either 1- Kill you. 2- troll your group of 2-8 with relative ease. 3- Realize that the group or single person they just ran across DOES know how to fight a thief. so they run away. Run away. Let that sink in your minds a little. Run away . So how about those other classes. The thief either gets a loot bag, a giggle when he trolls other groups, or no punishment at all when he makes a bad decision. While other classes are painfully punished for roaming. Thief=Extremely low risk, relatively great rewards. Warriors, and thats about it, are the only class that comes close to doing what the thief does. Only without stealth . That’s why they bring up warriors so much. So go ahead. Tell me to learn to play. I am only going to refer you to this post. Especially that part where I mentioned low risk/high reward.

I play a ranger 99.9% and feel I should defend thieves. For quite a while I also thought “**** thieves, those no-skill, heart-seeker spamming, trolling nubs!” Then I rolled a thief, got him to 80 and did some WvW. It is not as easy as it looks. But I learned some of their mechanics and now I have no fear of solo thieves. Even a GC thief cannot down me ever, unless I make a terrible mistake.

My favorite fights are against really talented thieves. When played well, it is a class that is really fun to watch. When played poorly they are walking loot bags, just like any other class.

That said, when a thief is part of a duo or small group, they are devastating. An experienced player can track a thief in 1v1 and counter their moves (assuming you have high toughness). But in the chaos of a skirmish, a GC thief especially can be a powerhouse, picking off wounded targets, dropping the unaware, and stealth stomping/rezing.

Sure it can be annoying, but it is no more annoying or unbalanced than my ranger who can shrug off burst attacks and passively heal so much that I’m sure my opponents sometimes feel like they are beating against a rock.

At least in WvW and for roaming/havoc, thieves are not OP. It really is a L2p issue, as well as having the right build to roam. If a GC thief can kill you in their initial burst and you have no defensive tools to fall back on, then you should consider a different build for roaming.

Major Kaldash.3542:

I never said they should or would just that people hate Thieves because they have many active defenses and high damage. Not saying Thief is Overpowered or anything just saying people just want to hate class that can’t be killed easily but kill fast.

Well after typing that I think it’s also people hate quick and short fights which is what the thief will give you even if you win or lose.

i dont think ppl have huge problems on getting ganked by 2hits from thief. that’s simply their gearing problem. if you wear full set of zerker, you expect to be killed by 2 big hits. if your stunned, a PVE warrior can HB you down. the dmg output is way over than thief’s backstab. i haven’t seen any ppl complained warrior HB is OP in wvw or pvp. have you?

Thief are absolutely not OP and itself doesnt deserved a nerf but requires a buff at some aspects. the balance between Stealth and Anti-stealth needs to be introduced.

Every class has a pretty steep learning curve once you get a hold of the basics. For a thief all you really need to get by is the basics. However they have a very steep curve after that.

Tip one
Manage your initiative
keep, count in your head over time it just becomes second nature to know you can do this move this move and this move and in one second I can use this move. Don’t burn it recklessly you never know when a fight’s going to go sour. IE getting knocked down is pretty much game over. Have some form of stun breaker JUST in case you get knocked down. Some classes are fine, a thief will not be.

1. Know when to back out

The best thief’s I ever fought never gave me a chance to fight back. I was dead before I even knew I was getting thief’ed by some dirty thief. Get in, get out don’t hang out. Clean and quick.
As of now your comfort zone is one to two mob types (that’s how I started out as well), mine now is about 10-15.
Knowing the type of monster you’re fighting helps A LOT they have skills that have cool downs also. IE a risen brute ALWAYS leads with his knockdown skill and it’s about a 10 second cooldown give or take. Wasps do a TON of damage if you just stand there they have a huge rapid attack but can’t move, it’s channeled.
I read earlier about ranged enemies. This is true your biggest asset as a thief is being mobile. Move around the fight, don’t wait till you get hit to dodge do it preemptively better safe than knocked down. DO NOT just stand there and auto attack and trade blows. you are not a guardian you are not a warrior you are a thief you have to hit without being hit etc 90% of the time I don’t even get off my full auto attack combo before backing off. Learn how to melee kite with dagger 5 and dagger 3. NEVER NEVER heart seeker spam unless they are under 25% health and YOU KNOW you have enough initiative to kill them. Also never heart seeker spam if there is more than one enemy. This goes back to rule number 2. You burn it, you’re out of options.

Steal, and steal often

this move is a free shadow step and sometimes a get out of free jail card.
Here is an advanced tactic I use when dealing with very large mobs
Steal Kiting
Keep at least one enemy perm crippled (dagger 4 works best)
While kitting the mob if things to bad you can shadow step to him with steal since he is separated from the group due to the speed difference. Giving you a few seconds to kitten your next move (or you can use sword 2 and sword two again when mob catch up.) I prefer steal cause If i’m trouble I’d rather not waste initiative if I don’t have to.

Rally Abuse
Sometimes I make mistakes, get caught on terrain did a heart seeker one to many times or just got gibbed from knockdown before I could react.

Just because an enemy is low health doesn’t mean you should kill it. worst case scenario where you would not kill the low hp enemy.
Heal is cd, stealths CD, initiative burnt, less then 10% hp danger of getting spiked by mob. few enemies low hp. Get one enemy as close to death as you can WITHOUT killing him. Rally on down. Rinse and repeat as needed just don’t do it 4 times in a row.
This can even work in some pvp wvw situations as long as you drop some stealth’s before you go down and you’re team can finish them off.

Bleed out/mixed mobs

If the mobs creatures are of a different type they will fight each other especially neutral monsters and aggressive ones. Pull aggressive monsters to the neutrals and attack the neutrals, pop stealth once they are in mob. They take argo to each other and kill each other for you. Spam dagger 3 and collect your loot. I do this when farming certain areas. Makes fighting mobs larger than 10 a snap.

My last tip is don’t get caught up in the which gear is best which traits are best this player is amazing I’ll use his build crap. Theory crafting is fun and I personally really enjoy it hooowever if you get into this is the best build crap you’ll never really learn the character. Dump 30 points into an entire tree line get a feel for that tree line mix and match them. Don’t stress if it’s “good” or not. Find what works for you. Cause some elitist build that’s been speced for years may not fit your play style. Maybe going perm stealth isn’t your thing, maybe it is. Figure that out through trial and error and LEARN the class. This is what i’ve learned from playing the game, there are alot more advanced techniques like managing conditions on you and the enemy, boon’s and boon theft combo fields etc. But just knowing the basics will give you a solid stepping stone for when you learn more about the class and game.

ronpierce.2760:

Differences:
Wow-
Stealth was generally only at the beginning of a fight except a 3 min cd to vanish.
Rogues had massive stun locks
Rogues (at least eventually) were not as squishy as thieves.
Aoe knocked them out of stealth.

GW2-
Thieves can stealth over and over.
Are squishy
Can teleport all over the place and back again.
Can spam moves with little regards to a cool down.
Aoe doesn’t effect stealth.
A large amount of skills passively evade attacks for no good reason (worst thing in the game)
Can spam blinds.
Of course not all at once but, I can see why people get upset with a zerker class in this game who has access to these kind of tools. They have much lower risk for their reward as a zerker compared to many other zerkers who can die much easier if not careful, and can spam abilities if they miss rather than accepting a long cool down for the mistake made.

Vs other classes though, we don’t get initiative when we swap weapons. A warrior can switch weapons and get a whole new set of skills not on cooldown. Thieves have a set amount of initiative no matter what weapon they use. As for paying for their mistakes, thieves pay more. If a thief is stunned after black powder they are basically screwed. We just wasted 5 initiative and will most likely take heavy dmg. If this was any other class it wouldn’t be a big deal cuz they could just swap weapon sets.

FYI AOE DOES AFFECT STEALTH. Thieves take damage while in stealth.
We can tele up to 600 with SB and 1200 with a slot. Otherwise this is nothing compared to a mesmers. Even with the steal buff, I’m still outrun by other classes with my SB. I know this is common around the thief forum but it’s a LTP issue here. Stealth and the initiative system isn’t as grand as everyone paints it to be.

SAKRAY.3690:

Think you don’t realize that most of the people/pugs in WvW are terrible players that don’t know other classes besides their own and have no idea how to fight certain classes and either don’t ress at all or have no idea person get’s stealth stomped etc

So the mechanics that thieves have had since beta are an exploit, and the class should be nerfed, because wvw is full of terrible players? Did i really just read that?

In a fantasy game where magic exists and you are talking about how stealth is “unrealistic.”

Stealth isn’t a realm in this game, its a distraction. At best, the only thing I believe stealth needs adjusting in is increased stealth duration, increased revealed time by a couple seconds. I don’t think 20 seconds of stealth or only allowing ooc stealth would work, because soooo many traits are centered on entering stealth.

Salt.4621:

I play with myself mainly on weekends.

We don’t need to know when you play with yourself.

nice tips.

Infiltrator signet – not only does it have a nice passive – it also teleports you toward your target without interrupting your current channel. EVEN if it is out of range. This means it can be chained with steals to increase gap closings.

Infiltrator’s strike will also tp you toward your target (though it does interrupt channels). So it can be chained with infiltrator signet as well.

Steal will only tp you if your target is in range, so it should always be the last in a group of gap closers. If your target isn’t in range, steal gets a 4 second cooldown

With the new 15k steal range trait, you can gap close around 3k in a second or so: infiltrator signet – 900, infiltrator strike 600, steal 1500. Ere on the side of caution here, as you do not want to underestimate the distance.

god i hate when my party ignores my shadow refuge. I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU, STOP ATTACKING WHILE DOWNED. YOU WON’T KILL THE BOSS WITH THROW DIRT.

Currently all shadow steps can easily be interrupted by simple things such as rocks or higher/lower elevation. You can fix this easily by simply changing the mechanic as if it acts like a mesmer portal.

Understand that what I ask is not a buff, but a fix. This has been a problem since launch, I hope this gets looked at.

Seetoo.9316:

…You ask “CnD is useful, but 6 initiative?”, I (as someone who also plays non thieves) would ask “CnD is useful, but why only an 8 sec cd?”

It’s a cool down that is shared by all weaponskills (except #1)

This is how I view us thieves:

Warrior = Able to do as much as or more damage than thieves (which is ok, I am not whining). They have significantly more armor than thieves do, thus are more survivable. They have quite a few more weapons at their disposal thus making them more versatile.

Thief = Everything I said above, but cut in half. (except for the damage) Thieves can dish out a nice pretty amount of damage but thats as long as our initiative is up. Once we blow that, we have to jump OOC and stealth ourselves so we dont die until we can jump back Into combat.

Now I dont think warriors should be nerfed. But why would ANYONE want a thief over a warrior (which, to me, is the most comparable class as they are both highly melee based). We just seem worthless….yea we can turn invisible and all but that doesnt last long enough for it to be really much worth.

OMG! Highest burst class has highest burst! NERF IT!
OMG! Highest combat mobility class has highest combat mobility! NERF IT!
Thief isn’t letting me faceroll him down! NERF IT!
Thief not staying still! NERF IT!

Hi,

I did some serious theorycrafting and just wanted to let you know about my results and like to know whats your experiences with the damage from thief compared to warrior is.

Thief build: here
Warrior build: here

Result:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlOXvenKdNo2dEZXWEpmUXNuMEhTUWI3LWQ2UG40VVE#

Tested with:

• full berserker equip
• ascended equip with power infusions
• 25 might stacks
• 25 bloodlust charges
• Buff food: Superior sharpening stone and +100 power food
• CnD + Backstab every 6 seconds (4 initiative need 5,32 seconds to recharge and 6 seconds for 2 dagger 1 chains)

To get the times for the attack chains i recorded around 1 minute with 60 fps for each chain to see how many chains i can do in this time. I worked very accurate to count every single frame.

For the damage values i used the ingame tooltop description and added modifiers that werent applied in the tooltip by myself (i.e. the +5% dmg when wielding an axe in offhand).

I also tested:

• sword auto attack
• pistol whip
• warrior greatsword auto attack
• warrior hundred blades
• engineer bomb kit auto attacks

Top dps:

• 1. Thief CnD + Backstab – over 2 seconds
• 2. Warrior Hundred Blades – over 3.6 seconds
• 3. Warrior Axe chain – over 3.6 seconds
• 4. Thief Pistol Whip – over 2.68 seconds
• 5. Thief sword chain – over 2.49 seconds
• 6. Thief dagger chain – over 2.06 seconds
• 7. Engi bomb skill 1 – over 0.93 seconds
• 8. Warrior great sword chain – over 2.49 seconds

“Thieves are insanly OP. Trust me, my main is a Thief.”

My favorite is;

I have a level 80 thief…

Demon.5082:

Veritas.6071:

Can you explain why you give so much weight to what percentage of the health pool is healed?

Its simple really. Warriors have a large healthpool but terrible mitigation. Toughness is a very minor part of mitigation in this game. (and that is how it should be)
Most of the mitigation in this game comes from ACTIVE defense (protection boon, aegis boon, damage reduction traits/skills etc).

Warriors have non existant active defense so A-net compensated with a large hp pool which is good but not enough. We need our heals scaled with our hp or increased in their base values. Reducing cooldowns off heals (that too a flat amount lol) is a very lazy bandaid at best.

Traited signet can be used every 12seconds now. Does that make it good? NO

PvP is all about skills that make a difference every 20-30 sec and not skills that have to be spammed every 5-10 sec (unless they are instant or cant be interrupted).

What really matters is HPS not % healed. There are no attacks that deal damage based on your max health pool (although there are traits that give static damage increases when a target drops below a certain % but that isn’t the same). Therefore, how does it make sense to scale heals that way?

If you want more warrior healing, fine. But stop discrediting heals because they only heal “a small % of the pool”. The argument makes no sense.

Here is an exaggerated illustration to demonstrate the argument I’m hearing:

Toon 1: 10k hp, 8k heal on 30 sec CD
Toon 2: 5k hp, 5k heal on 30 sec CD

Toon 1 sucks because his heal only replenishes 80% of his health pool!

An argument which we can all see makes no sense.

Your heart is in the right place, but if you want to prove your point to the devs, Daecollo, mathematically compare Healing Per Second capabilities of the classes, not % hp recovered. Next, include Protection and the other forms of tremendously effective damage avoidance that the warrior has limited access to.

I also agree with you that the passive needs to be > than or = to the active on Healing Signet. If these notes are true, there will be no reason to use the passive and therefore, you’ll be forced into spamming heals every 12-15 seconds. Having to use your heal every 12-15 seconds takes you out of the fight (not dpsing), a lot… and gives the opportunity to be interrupted… a lot. Additionally, it is a tad weaker than our other heals. I run it for 2 reasons: 1) When I’m lazy and don’t want to manage my heal or 2) To combo it with runes that have an on-heal effect.

In closing, the devs aren’t stupid. I promise you they see this stuff (except for the bit about Healing Signet… I think they aren’t sure what they want it to be), but look what the warrior could do in the BWEs. We didn’t need defense because players hadn’t adapted to 100b/Eviscerate and our damage was still insane. But the community hated getting insta-gibbed. Fast forward 1 year and they’ve reduced our skill coefficients, destroyed our class specific stat, drastically redesigned a CERTAINNN utility, and the competitive player-base has had time to push the limits of each class; which has left us, a snapping turtle designed without a shell and debeaked with a nerf bat, to fight a bunch of jackrabbits with obnoxious amounts of in-combat stealth or magical skin that reduces incoming damage by 33%. lol. They’re totally redesigning the class, and just like with any kind of adjustment, it’s way easier to start from scratch with a fresh idea than it is to tweak tweak tweak something as complicated as a class post-release. Unfortunately, now they don’t have that luxury. On top of all that, the game wasn’t even close to ready for release. I bugged almost 1/3rd of the Guardian traits AND Virtue of Resolve which had a bug that totally stopped the incoming heals… on the last day of BWE3!… 3 days before release!… For that reason, I didn’t go Guard… I kick myself to this day.

Anyway, I agree with you that warrior needs more sustain.

move 100blades to the f1 skill, make the greatsword f1 skill the #2 skill for greatsword

done :P

I don’t understand OP. Would you please clarify?

1- You want warr doing more burst than thief (or at least the same), since warrior already has more DPS than thief.

2- You want a glass cannon warr to have more toughness/armor than defensive specced thief (untraited and with the same prefix/socket armor warr already has more armor)

Are those correct? Then, why would ANYONE play thief? Warr has god tier life (vs bottom tier on thief), has more DPS, more party utility, and more life. You ALSO want even more armor and more burst?

Bacon Please.8407:

i spam laugh after all fights because so many people spam it already. Join the bandwagon already

no. I’m not going to do what all the other scrubs are doing… I’m going to sleep.