Guild Wars 2

The problem with Thief is that it’s a little too good against other Glass cannons, hence pushing them out of the meta (Elementalist, Mesmer), whilst being only middling or outright inferior against tougher builds like Condi-bunkers or just Bunkers in general.

• Part, but not _all of the problem can be traced back to Critical Damage. Most GC builds run little to no toughness, so getting hit by a Thief hurts. A lot. You can easily start a fight at 50% HP as a GC against a Thief, and then you’ve got small windows of opportunity to turn the fight around. Against D/P, you have to interrupt/CC the re-Stealth. Against S/D, you have to hit a clutch CC, or wait for when they try to burst, then counter.

• Outside of these windows of vulnerability; there is little opportunity for other Glass Cannons to counter-engage. Stealth remains difficult to counterplay for some classes, laughably easy for others. The solution is to build tanky DPS so you live longer to see more windows. But that leads to the original problem – other glass cannons are out-competed.

The solution is not going to be easy, but it’s going to involve the following:

• Moving some of the utility Thieves get from Stealth into other areas. Condition cleanse, Crit chance, that sort of thing.
• Making Stealth a Boon; thus giving skills with Boon Hate additional utility against Stealth. Mesmers in particular would have their matchups improved markedly by this one change.
  • Most importantly removing Stealth as a Boon should not inflict Revealed. With counterplay must come counter-counterplay – the Thief should be able to re-stealth after hitting Boon Hate. Obviously things like hitting people while Stealthed should still inflict Revealed.

• As for things like Backstab, the whole Stealth Opener thing should be revised to be just that: an Opener. Damage should not be frontloaded into Backstab. Instead, large (I’m talking 5, 10, 15 stacks) of Vulnerability should be inflicted. Snares like Cripple or Immobilise optional. (maybe through Traits)
  • Thief weapon sets should then be rebalanced to put more damage into the other skills. Overall damage output over time should be increased. Thief shouldn’t be a one-shot wonder, but something that hits harder and harder the more you can’t get them off your back.
  • This has the effect of making Thief less effective against other Glass Cannons as the window of counter-engagement has now increased. This also makes Thief more effective against Tanky DPS builds (assuming damage output over time is also increased)

Too many weapon sets rely on only 2-3 out of the 5 possible attacks because too much has been loaded into 1 skill whilst others are left weak because buffing them would make the weapon set OP.

• Underutilised skills should be reworked to provide Thief with more sustain i.e. Life Steal is an underlooked mechanic on Thief, but as a Protection/Toughness ignoring source of damage, Life Steal on Thief can be looked at as a way for Thief to counter bunkers.
• The aim is to enable Thief to stay engaged with an enemy for longer while being less dependant on, but no less assisted by, clutch Blinds/Dodges

TL:DR: The aim should be to:

• Make Thieves less time-starved, or “one shot wonders”. Thieves should be dealing damage, but it should not be all frontloaded from Stealth.
• Make Thieves less dependant on Stealth overall to deal their damage. Thieves should deal their damage just like everyone else – Revealed. They just require the tools to be able to do so like everyone else instead of using Stealth as a crutch.
• Clutch Blinds and Evades should still be an outstanding feature of the class, but must promote a skill floor like being conditional on dodging actual attacks, or actually hitting, or dealing bonus damage to target after target misses attack due to Blind.
• Squishy GCs should have their window of counter-engagement against Thieves extended, whilst Tanky DPS or Bunkers have theirs decreased i.e. through Vulnerability stacking or Toughness ignoring damage i.e. Life Steal.

INTRODUCTION
First of all I know there is a thread on the sPvP forums that is discussing this problem however people are confused by the term “decap” and the thread has become pointless. In order to prevent confusion I’ll give a general definition of what is currently meant with decap engineer.

DEFENITION: An engineer running with infused bombs and automated response combined with rifle and two more cc utility’s. This engineer will be pushing the enemy home point throughout the entire match.

Most Common Trait lines:
10/0/30/30/0
0/0/30/30/10
Adept and Master traits can be different but it always has 30 in alchemy and inventions.

It should be clear that the Nodefighter and Static Discharge builds are not part of the problem.

I hope everyone has a clear image of what is meant with a decap engineer now.

THE PROBLEM
Mechanical Problem: In general engineers require a decent mechanical skill level in order to perform well (that is not a problem). However, this build allows bad players to be incredibly effective because of a combination of mechanical elements that are easy to execute for an incredible high reward. The combined mechanical elements that cause this problem:

• Access to allot of regeneration with minor traits and healing turret
• Access to allot of protection with projection injection and protective shield
• Access to Condition Immunity with automated response
• Access to a second layer of regeneration with backpack regenerator
• Access to manual health regulation with infused bombs.

What this combination of elements does is that neither a power class or a condition class can kill this build reliably in a 1v1. If you want to kill this effectively without your home point being contested to long then your require both a condition build and a power build to bring it down. This brings us to the next aspect of the problem.

Strategical/Tactical Problem: When a team implements a decap engineer in their composition they decide to play for three points. Playing for three points is generally speaking a more risky way to play then when you would otherwise play for two points. A decap engineer removes a big part of the risk that is playing for three points by being practically unkillable by one player. This means that either you will have to send one person to assist your home point defender every ~30seconds (Death 15sec – run back to your point 15sec). Or you’ll have to decap their point consistently in order to prevent them from gaining points while the engineer is on your point holding it neutral. However doing either of these two moves means that if there is a 4v4 team fight going on you’ll leave your team in a disadvantage for about ~20-30 sec’s (run home point – kill engineer – run back) (run enemy home point – decap – run back). In that time the enemy team has one more player to damage/heal/rez/stomp then your team does, as you may understand that is a huge disadvantage.

SOLUTION
All problems with this build come from not being able to kill it reliably with one person. The reason for this is that it has PERMA condition immunity under 25% HP. Because of this I would like to propose one of the following changes to Automated Response:

• Change it to ~Xseconds every ~Xseconds with a clear tooltip that shows the engineer has condition immunity.
• Change it to ~X% condition damage decreased below Xhealth
• Change it to ~X% condition duration decreased below Xhealth
• Remove the trait entirely

DISCLAIMER
My main profession is Engineer, I’ve played decap engineer 20ish games both with premade and in soloq. For someone that has played engineer for over 2000 games this is an incredibly easy build whit a very boring role that makes me feel dumb and abusive. I hope people understand that this is a build based on a broken trait that should be changed as soon as possible. I also hope Arenanent understands that builds like this cannont be allowed to excist in order for fun and competitive play to be viable.

oh plz, we already have tons of flame threads about “OP” thief….
l2p means, you have to learn your enemy, too
at last, your sweety “mesmers”(or other classes) get nerfed by ANET and not by Thiefs ….. we also get nerfed by every patch …..

alamore.1974:

Thedenofsin.7340:

Kargath.6598:

Ostricheggs.3742:

I’ve come to the conclusion that arena-net just doesn’t give a kitten anymore. There isn’t any excuse. Something should have been done over a month ago. Instead we have red posts talking about buffing the active on healing signet before nerfing the passive. There are so many reasons why heal sig is the best heal in the game by far and there’s talk of a buff before a nerf can happen?

Guys, your game is dying. Players are quitting left and right. People are kittening sick of this and you need to get it through your head that we’ve been dealing with healing signet and it’s meta-destroying effects for months. Further inactivity only makes us lose more faith in this game.

I’m at my wits end

No. whats happening is people got used to warrior being a giant pinata that they nuked from 1200-1500 range or loaded up with conditions to get a player kill and win easy matches. Now you have to DRUM ROLL PLEASE!!! – PLAY AND USE ALL OF YOUR SKILLS AND UTILITIES TO WIN AGAINST SOME ONE!!!

This response is expected from a typical warrior player. They don’t realize how incredibly ez-mode that class is. Playing warrior requires perhaps 20% the skill required to play anything else in this game. You literally need to be like 5x better than the person playing warrior in order to down him/her.

Yeah, Ostricheggs! You need to lrn2play! What do you think you are, one of the best engies in the game!?!?

…owait -

Coming from some.one who plays a mesmer lol. Talk about easy mode. He is right what it comes down to is people are not use to having to actualy use skill to defeat warriors. Here try this exercise. Wright down all the classes and how much % they beat u and why
Ill give u a example.

Warriors – 50% – stunns
Thieves- 65% – stealth
Ele – 45% – steady dps
Gaurd – 55% – boons
Mesmer – 60% – clones
Ranger – 50% – kite (65% to spirit rangers
Necro – 50% – fear/hvy condi pressure
Engi – 60% – boons

Answer the truth and u will realize that warriors are not as elite as you think.

Elementalist- 5%- Burst
Engineer- 50%- Area Control and Conditions
Guardian- 10%- Good High-Damage Guards
Necro- 30%- That kittening Signet of Spite
Mesmer- 40%- High Damage
Ranger- 5%- They’re those annoying as kitten Spirit Rangers.
Thieves- 20%- they get the drop on me and I can’t recover quickly enough for whatever reason
Warrior- 50%- insane lengths/numbers of stuns, immobilize/bleed from LB 5, and heavy tankiness from HealSig, heavy armor, and the high base health of warriors

The only reason why Warrior isn’t higher up is because most of the people that play it are just downright awful in general, mostly because Warrior is the easiest class in the game to play and get into.

Also, I doubt the above numbers are entirely correct, but I certainly don’t think that I have a loss rate of above 50% against any of those classes. I based this off of XvX fights where both sides had equal numbers. I can certainly say that some of those classes, like Guard, Ele, and Ranger, are probably extremely close to the listed percentages as a result of class design being faulty (though guardian less so than the other two; it’s only so low because there aren’t a ton of people that run DPS guards).

So all that aside, not sure what your point is, except that you’re clearly a godawful player at worst and a mediocre one at best if all of your percentages are that high.

They’ll moan and insult you for being a thief unless you just stand there and let them kill you. Then, once they’ve killed you, they’ll lecture you on how terrible you are.

I know i had similar post from a while ago but since we have new forums here~ Can stun portion from tow line be removed, please. It makes absolutely non sense that the caster gets stunned by own cast while target isn’t affected at all.

Right now what happens is following: thief uses tow line -> thief (yes, thief) gets stunned while his target is only crippled -> thief is pulled to target while being still stunned and unable to do anything and target can cast at will. Tow line costs 4 ini on top of it.

Thanks.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

warriors on the other hand, allows the warrior player to make a lot of mistakes and still survive, provided if the enemy are equally not that skilled.

The fact that you think this is an example of “working as intended” is why nobody takes your posts seriously on the forums.

Why are we comparing dodge-caltrops, a PBAE ground field applying per second, with Deceptive Evasion, a clone-generator on dodge.

I mean, why again?

We’re comparing apples to coffee cups.

Hard counters are a big no-no. Ele’s already got a hard counter to the Conditions meta (diamond skin) we don’t need even more rock-paper-scissors gameplay like that atrocity.

Aberrant.6749:

Harper.4173:

Xenon.4537:

coglin.1867:

It has bothered me for a long time that I spend traits or utilities for mobility just to see some other profession create a gap while running away by using skills designed for gap closing.

I am okay with the skills that require ground targeting of some kind. But skills like rush should require a target that is in range to function.

In before they nerf such skills the same way they nerfed Ride the Lightning. Gonna be a tear-filled day…

And what if you’re wrong and they don’t? Keep hatin’.
RTL had 1500 range – GS 5 has a range of 900. There’s a bit of a difference.

1,200 http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rush

Please learn your own class’s skills.

1500 with swiftness or 25% speedbuff.

or just take Greatsword for Rush…
The ONLY people that think Warrior is balanced is those that play them. This includes the Devs who several/most of them actually Main Warriors…

i really dont like warrior playstyle…i prefer to play my thief and be weaker but at least have some fun

Only time anet played a thief (at least from what i recall) was new fractal preview and all they did was spamming unload and being dead 90% of the time so go figure… don’t believe me? Check their stream.

As far as complains go, majority do pve, pve spoils players, they expect you to stand still and fight toe to toe which thieves can’t do due to survival mechanics… stealth requires you to use brain and predict what thief will do next… most people just wanna press 1 2 3 4 5 and win.

I think the low-access, long-duration stealth of other games has worked out much better than the frequent-access, short-duration model used in this game.

Viking Jorun.5413:

I’m awaiting Burnfall and Sanduskel’s responses to this. Haha.

I believe they are same person with split personality but same beliefs.

This thread is not about nerfing the current stealth mechanik of the thief.

I want to suggest some capibilities by simply not adding more dmg traits or nerfing a traitline to be complete useless for thiefs who want still playing with stealth.
I watched over the shadow arts traitline, having 10 traits with stealth , so …
acrobatic Needs a Change to get a Little compensation for non stealth thiefs but makes it also be viable to trait for stealth based builds.
Im not talking about DA, CS, T -traitlines because i want suggest to improve the survivability of a non stealthed thief.
The current problem with thief class is, who wants to play without stealth has to take high risk of engage fighting and getting no real reward by playing with high effort as a medium armor wearing class with low hp, low armor, average dmg, and a single-one-way-class-skill, Surviablility is needed here.

To speak about the fact;
evading is the only Mechanik by avoiding incoming dmg, since thiefs having no immunity skills as all other classes have, to prevent incoming burst dmg.
So, I would Change 1 trait to be fit with a new evade-based gameplay for thiefs and changing some else traits but which can also be used by thiefs with stealth but NOT with getting high rewards because of using stealth.
Also, not rly shure about where to place them intro acrobatic line at last (Adept/master/grandmaster), but to get a first look about changes.

[Power of Inertia]
Gain might whenever you dodge and also gain 6 sec Reveal.
Also gain 1 of following boon for each direction you were dodging.

6s Reavel on dodge
dodging forward- gain Retaliation 4 sec
dodging backwards- gain protection 4sec
dodging right/left-gain regeneration 4 sec Healing: 520
ICD of 1 sec
(there could be also a variant boon of dodging left or right)

or

Gain might whenever you dodge and also gain 6 sec Reveal.
Also gain 1 of the following boons as random.
6s Reveal on dodge

4s Retaliation
4s Regeneration Healing: 520
4s Protections
ICD of 1 sec

This should be the “reward trait” for playing without stealth, because putting 30points into SA will also give you might for using your stealth Mechanik as well.
But to not simple brainless spam your evades into a chain-defense, there should be an ICD which dont allows to stack boons into infinity but making it 1 second longer as Expeditious Dodger for a patent reward trait.

THis is the deal, stealth thiefs can no longer use this trait, but lemme go further, i will not suggest “loss” without any rewards.

[Hard to Catch]
Refill you endurance bar when you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knockdown, launch, knockback, sink, or fear). o ICD 30 sec

or

Recharge all of your shadowstep skills when you are disabled (stun, daze, float, knockdown, launch, knockback, sink, or fear). ICD 60 sec

Simply, to get a real deal.

I tend to counter Black Powder by not stepping in it. =P

Let it give us protection while in stealth

Atherakhia.4086:

Both the Guardian and Elementalist bunker down better than the Warrior imo but we don’t see any complaints about their passive healing, protection spam, etc.

thats because if we bunker, our damage is kitten poor. Warriors can run this as well as insane cc/damage with weapons such as hambow and condi (s/s lb)

it has to be super weak because of Venomous Aura
which is really stupid. If venoms have to be underpowered because of that trait, the trait should be removed.

Pointless since thief entire survival is based on stealth. Add some other way of survival and thieves will stop going into stealth so much.

It’s me. My thief is so good at hiding, it doesn’t show up on my character selection page.

Viking Jorun.5413:

The Game Slayer.7632:

Arrow.4619:

Sanduskel.1850:

Yes, of course this class can survive more nerfs. It remains the best roaming wvw class, bar none, already.

Its already the least played class.

Least played? lol Go to wvw and roam a bit. 50% of solo-ers are still thieves. (bs’ed numbers, but its not that far off from 50%)

Because thieves aren’t good at zerging, so they’re forced into roaming whether they like it or not. Every other class has some place inside of a zerg other than “blast finisher dump”.

Too bad he couldn’t be bothered to read the entire post. I believe I wrote something along the lines of:

Very good players will continue to play it but at some point even most of them will only play it in more limited ways and use it in only limited roles. As someone mention it makes a great harvesting character which deserves a “lol” in that the statement is so sad but true its not funny. Modestly skilled to good players will walk away from it in mass – in fact they already have.

First Point: Congratulations on having discovered the one thing the thief class is apparently good for as pretty much everything kittened up. The fact that solo roamers are often thieves doesn’t mean the class is played by a significantly large portion of the player base – rather that it is in fact played by a tiny minority of the player base at this point. Congratulations for making my point for me.

Second Point: So what if they are? What is it exactly the solo roamers do that is so terribly important or effective in the larger WvW scheme? I’ve done it and I know its fun but so what? I’d really like to understand why anyone thinks this important – to me its a lot like saying: Well there are 3 or 4 dungeons that the thief is really good in! Yeah, too bad the game is a little bigger than that . . .