Guild Wars 2

Tribio.8531:

I think you miss the point here..
It’s not about how hard it can/will be to find certain bugs, it’s just that apparently they can find the time to indulge us with stuff we don’t need (also additional coding, btw) instead of fixing the bugs that are ruining (certain aspects of) the game..

That’s them making sure they progress while they working on bugs. If they spent 100% of their resources on bugs, this game wouldn’t get any new content or balance changes for at least a year. What they do is have some work on the bugs and some work on the content.

Conan.8046:

Dual.8953:

Conan.8046:

In other mmo’s thieves don’t have to actively avoid all damage, and don’t have most of their strongest moves tied to stealth. In those games, stealth is designed to be purely as an openner. In guild wars, stealth is designed as mindgame trick at the core of thief’s combat style, not unlike Mesmer clones. Stealth is to be used to reposition and flank your opponent, but it is also warning that a powerful hit is coming. Clever opponents win the mindgame, those that refuse to awknowledge it get punished for thier ignorance.

Stealth isn’t designed for openers? so your saying back stab isn’t one of the biggest hits in the game?
In other games your right they don’t have to dodge damage or use evades..oh wait they don’t in guild wars 2 either because its easier just to stealth again, which removes conditions and heals you. You can’t be attacked because they enemy can’t target you…now if you get caught in an AOE how is that NOT your fault.
Its nothing to do with a mind game, mesmer has clones, ignore them and kill the player.

In other games thieves don’t have to evade because the coding says that attack missed because evade statistics. In GW2 a hit is a hit, and stealth does absolutely nothing to cushion that hit. A thief facetanking 100blades while visible will take just as much damage as a thief facetanking 100blades while invisible. The condi-removal on stealth is decent but can be overwhelmed easily by any class that can stack more then one condition (see engie and necro). If you haven’t figured out how to fight without a target you’re hopeless. All melee weapons in this game do not require a target. (If you’re skilled enough you’d also notice that projectiles don’t require a target either)
And you’ve just described the solution to the mind game of the mesmer. /facepalm
Identifying the real mesmer and attacking him/her.
The mind game for stealth is being ready to react. Protip, don’t blow your cooldowns when a dodge will do.

Backstab isn’t the biggest hit in the game, there are other skills that hit harder, especially if backstab is improperly aimed. Also being a single hit which has can only hit once, it’s able to be recovered from by anyone who knows what they’re doing.

/sigh
It’s like people these days have no idea how to identify and analyse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnvn0swfviw

= Just like thieves in GW2.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Dodge

Thieves in this game don’t have that.

I’m Dual, and I’m here to ask you one question, and one question only: Explosions?

Rainbow Unicorns that explode into more Rainbow Unicorns that also explode.
Think about it.

Conan.8046:

In other mmo’s thieves don’t have to actively avoid all damage, and don’t have most of their strongest moves tied to stealth. In those games, stealth is designed to be purely as an openner. In guild wars, stealth is designed as mindgame trick at the core of thief’s combat style, not unlike Mesmer clones. Stealth is to be used to reposition and flank your opponent, but it is also warning that a powerful hit is coming. Clever opponents win the mindgame, those that refuse to awknowledge it get punished for thier ignorance.

Stealth isn’t designed for openers? so your saying back stab isn’t one of the biggest hits in the game?
In other games your right they don’t have to dodge damage or use evades..oh wait they don’t in guild wars 2 either because its easier just to stealth again, which removes conditions and heals you. You can’t be attacked because they enemy can’t target you…now if you get caught in an AOE how is that NOT your fault.
Its nothing to do with a mind game, mesmer has clones, ignore them and kill the player.

In other games thieves don’t have to evade because the coding says that attack missed because evade statistics. In GW2 a hit is a hit, and stealth does absolutely nothing to cushion that hit. A thief facetanking 100blades while visible will take just as much damage as a thief facetanking 100blades while invisible. The condi-removal on stealth is decent but can be overwhelmed easily by any class that can stack more then one condition (see engie and necro). If you haven’t figured out how to fight without a target you’re hopeless. All melee weapons in this game do not require a target. (If you’re skilled enough you’d also notice that projectiles don’t require a target either)
And you’ve just described the solution to the mind game of the mesmer. /facepalm
Identifying the real mesmer and attacking him/her.
The mind game for stealth is being ready to react. Protip, don’t blow your cooldowns when a dodge will do.

Backstab isn’t the biggest hit in the game, there are other skills that hit harder, especially if backstab is improperly aimed. Also being a single hit which has can only hit once, it’s able to be recovered from by anyone who knows what they’re doing.

/sigh
It’s like people these days have no idea how to identify and analyse.

Sorry, but as someone with knowledge of multiple programming languages, I find this really ignorant.
GW2 is a friggan huge program. 16GB on the client side, and who knows how big on the server side. That’s an insane amount of code to look through, and bugs can arise from things as small as period in the wrong place. Not to mention, a program like this would be spread over hundreds of files. This doesn’t even get into the modelling end. Maps are huge and intricate. It’s not like debugging is twisting some knob. Large programs are riddled with bugs, and it can take months of man hours to single out and fix a single one. Some bugs can even be created in fixing other bugs. Debugging everything is a pipedream.

Xsorus.2507:

Dual.8953:

Fishbait.6723:

Direwind.8409:

if you take a direct hit (not aoe) you should have stealth removed.

tbh Ao£ should get them out of stealth too.

i agree though, stealth is stupid in this game, more so then any other I`ve played by a long shot.

Then explain how a thieves are supposed to sustain combat? Damage breaking stealth would break thieves. All that would remain are a few stubborn backstabs in wvw. No one with a brain would take them in any mode, pvp or pve.

Strangely it didn’t break stealthers in most of the other MMO’s with Stealth Breaking on Damage, and they didn’t have the option of instantly restealthing.

In other mmo’s thieves don’t have to actively avoid all damage, and don’t have most of their strongest moves tied to stealth. In those games, stealth is designed to be purely as an openner. In guild wars, stealth is designed as mindgame trick at the core of thief’s combat style, not unlike Mesmer clones. Stealth is to be used to reposition and flank your opponent, but it is also warning that a powerful hit is coming. Clever opponents win the mindgame, those that refuse to awknowledge it get punished for thier ignorance.

Zacchary.6183:

Rezzet.3614:

Zacchary.6183:

Player Character.9467:

Black Teagan.9215:

Rezzet.3614:

simple

1.Stealthed players take double damage

2.stealthed players lose stealth upon attacking (at least when they hit a “Blocking” or “Invulnerable” or “Evade” player.

3.become unable to instantly restealth afterwards.

4. get focused as target once they lose stealth

5.20-30% movement speed Decrease while stealthed

OKAY and where is the balance now?

Besides the taking increased damage, all of those except 4 are mechanics that exist in basically every other game that has stealthing in pvp and most of those also have methods of detecting stealthed characters too. 3 already exists, 4 makes perfect sense if you had them targeted before, they didn’t break line of sight, and you didn’t target anything else. 2 is something that shoulda been fixed about revealing yourself from stealth a long time ago, there’s no risk in spamming backstab on somebody until it lands as it has 0 cost and currently you remain stealthed until it ACTUALLY lands. The current mechanic makes it impossible for somebody to take advantage of blinding you, guessing when you’re going to strike, using an aegis or any other block (which are on much higher cooldowns than reveal). Currently as far as I can tell the only real defense against a backstab is endure pain as the hit actually lands but the damage is converted to 0.

Its called moving.

^this is called not having a reasonable explanation nor excuse for a broken mechanic

^This is called refusing to improve yourself by relying on nerfs to get over obstacles.

Pretty much this. Those changes (1 and 5 in particular) would hamstring thieves to the point of uselessness across all modes. What good is a class that can only hit stationary targets due to slowness and has the constitution of tissue paper?

XII.9401:

DrWhom.3105:

XII.9401:

How come every other class in the game can’t do what a thief does with stomping/reviving?

Because every class is not the same and they have differing roles? By your line of thinking every class should be able to do everything every other class can do with the same degree of capability. The thief is a rogue/assassin archetype that excels at picking off single targets, it only makes sense that they should have the best options when it comes to finishing wounded opponents. Your post is just as misguided as those in the thief forum complaining that they suck in zergs and die constantly when they try to mindlessly stack on the commander at the front of the hammer train.

Every other class has a different role yet the thief has access to cheap mechanics that are unstoppable?

Shadowstep stomping

Zero reveal on stealthing, dmg, cc etc does not reveal stealth

PERMANENT stealth with d/p thieves..None of the other classes has that

Unlimited access to a weapon skill with zero cool down to bypass cc and immobilize..NONE of the other classes has that.

Stealth stomping=completely nullifies some down states

Access to the ability to Always initiate combat on the thieve’s terms over and over again

Ability to reset the fight unlimited times till they win or run away with zero consequence

Zero cool down on weapon skills. Why is the thief the ONLY class that has zero cool down on weapon skills and can spam the same weapon skill repeatedly?

Do any of the classes have access to all of the above? No..

It’s a funny excusesaying every class is unique bordering on the usual ‘L2P’ spouted by baddy thieves.

No worries..ppl will roll more thieves and thus others will quit the game thus affecting Anet/NcSoft’s cash flow and then they will act. By then, ESO is out.

Great decision by the bad devs -who came up with the most broken stealth mechanic in the history of the world- to continue to support this broken system against mass protests. Or maybe they can’t deal with it..I favor the latter.

Thieves need to be fixed or people not willing to play a cheap class did, are and will keep quitting.

You say all this, exaduration or not, and yet, thieves are competing with Ranger for worst class in PvE and Dungeons, are far from top in Spvp, pretty much only getting in on one gimmick build that doesn’t even focus on it’s stealth, and they’re only seen as a mobile blast finisher in WvW zerg battles (the ones that determine which server is the winner).

Also you’ve been riding on thief longer then anyone on the forums. What does that say about your credibility, when so many have overcome them?

You also ignore many other classes capable of thiefish feats (such as engie).

You don’t give a rip about balance, all you care about is seeing thieves stomped from existance.

They already patched it so you can’t stack off it. Guess they don’t see it as a problem.

What’s with all the thief stuff lately. Next I’ll hear them complaining that P/P is spamming ppl to death.

Bailey.6892:

I have to agree that it is time to nerf stealth or thief’s damage. Most likely both, having heavy armor high toughness and an armor rating over 3500 while still getting hit for 6k back stabs is not right.

I agree with the ideas the original poster made, would also be fine with a new mechanic being introduced to nerf thief’s. Make it so when they are stealthed it exhausts them giving them a %60 damage reduction for 15 seconds after coming out of stealth.

Or the original posters ideas would work as well.

Stealth should not remove target lock, you should regain lock once they appear.
stealth should not be stackable.
stealth should be removed when they attack and are blocked.
any and all action from stealth should remove stealth.
if you take a direct hit (not aoe) you should have stealth removed.

(And yes I have a lvl 80 thief)

60% damage reduction out of stealth is extremely heavy handed. If you have an 80 thief, you obviously have never done anything with it but run D/x in WvW. This’d destroy thief in PvE and be a major hit in PvP.
(One again, the direct damage is extreme too)

FindAndSeek.6728:

They should totally add rainbow Horse shoe prints as a particle foot effect, anyone else agree? lol xD

The more rediculous the better!

Master of Timespace.2548:

Dual.8953:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Dual.8953:

Those sound closer to the traditional Tank and Healer, sorry. Support is things like AoE Aegis and Time Warp, control is things like Banish and Head Shot. If you want them to be brought into usefulness, you need enemies to be able to pressure parties so that they can’t go full zerker and expect to win, and you need to severely tone down defiant on bosses.

No, you should be able to win with full zerger*, but only if your team packs a good amount of coordinated support and control. Currently you need just damage.

*Otherwise it’s just a gear check and you might just as well not let full zerger parties even try the dungeon in the firstplace.

Better then the current Zerk or gtfo meta.

Why? Is PVT or gtfo better? Gear check is a gear check, it’s all the same wheter it is armor or dps check.

Balanced comps should be the norm. Comps that lean towards an extreme should be reserved for those willing to compensate for their blatant flaws. Risk vs reward and what not.
Basically, throwing zerker warriors with greatswords should not be the optimal strategy for every dungeon. (I know I’m exagurating, but dps > all shouldn’t be the meta)

Master of Timespace.2548:

Dual.8953:

Those sound closer to the traditional Tank and Healer, sorry. Support is things like AoE Aegis and Time Warp, control is things like Banish and Head Shot. If you want them to be brought into usefulness, you need enemies to be able to pressure parties so that they can’t go full zerker and expect to win, and you need to severely tone down defiant on bosses.

No, you should be able to win with full zerger*, but only if your team packs a good amount of coordinated support and control. Currently you need just damage.

*Otherwise it’s just a gear check and you might just as well not let full zerger parties even try the dungeon in the firstplace.

Better then the current Zerk or gtfo meta.

Those sound closer to the traditional Tank and Healer, sorry. Support is things like AoE Aegis and Time Warp, control is things like Banish and Head Shot. If you want them to be brought into usefulness, you need enemies to be able to pressure parties so that they can’t go full zerker and expect to win, and you need to severely tone down defiant on bosses.

I always get a snicker when I bring up these boards to my guild. The picture I get is, these forums are incredibly negative and full of whiner and the other forums are more positive and civil. Not saying that’s the case but it seems to be the perception of this place.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

It’s a shame they made the legendary shortbow so… ridiculous. I mean, it has My Little Pony written all over it.

Really?

Seven words. Unicorn that explodes into more exploding unicorns.

Fishbait.6723:

Direwind.8409:

if you take a direct hit (not aoe) you should have stealth removed.

tbh Ao£ should get them out of stealth too.

i agree though, stealth is stupid in this game, more so then any other I`ve played by a long shot.

Then explain how a thieves are supposed to sustain combat? Damage breaking stealth would break thieves. All that would remain are a few stubborn backstabs in wvw. No one with a brain would take them in any mode, pvp or pve.

Xillllix.3485:

Make a thief and learn to play with it. You will realize they are not over powered at all. Stealth and 1-target burst is pretty much all they have.

Um. You may want to re-read what he posted.

I’d be able to live with all those but the last one, unless cleaves also aren’t allowed. Otherwise all one would have to do is spam auto attacks and render all stealth sets but P/D useless.

Scrambles.2604:

Kal Spiro.9745:

But the game does exist and I do play it. If they want to continue to be successful in this market they do, in fact, need to update it. There are plenty of suggestions that are universally beneficial, or for things that should have been fixed or implemented forever ago. There are things that need to exist but don’t. This just isn’t one of those things.

But I will concede, you are right. You could go to just about any thread here and say “This is something you want, not something you need.” What you should take away, though, is most of them don’t claim otherwise.

I think that, more than anything, is what keeps bringing me back here. Nobody needs this. I mean hell, look at it. Nobody is willing to leave this game if they didn’t get this, but people are if it was implemented. Based on that, while nobody needs this to exist, there are actually people who apparently do need it not to in order to continue playing.

But your reasons for wanting to leave are based on a superstition that “elitists” will take over. If that’s the case, i’m surprised you haven’t already left.

Every invasion i’ve been in, the map chat has been overwhelmed with people yelling at each other “you noobs realize the farm here sucks, right?” What we’re seeing is the elitists you fear so much calling out people because…why? They aren’t farming the best way possible? Sure, they might not be wrong, but the only reason you would be calling out people in map chat is to get a rise out of people.

There is always going to be a percentage of the population that sucks, and get their kicks off the misery of others. They thrive in dungeons by belittling others for not having “the most optimal gear” and they thrive in the open world by belittling others for “not farming the absolute best way possible” Heck, i’ve even seen people get called out in WvW for not having enough Vita/Toughness.

You believe that /inspect will give these players the ability judge you based on your gear. That may be the case, but it wont increase the frequency of your encounters with these types of people any more than you already tolerate. And it’s been said a million times already, if someone is going to use gear as criteria for joining their group, then find another group with other people that don’t care about gear.

The problem is, in dungeons you’re forced to party. True or not, the general perception is when you add inspect, the elitist take over. I’ve heard countless horror stories about how in WoW, when they released gear scores, lots of people got stranded in their gear grind, disallowed from every run tey wanted to join, just because they didn’t have the gear. (Even when they needed that dungeon to get said gear)

I’d be fine with an inspect that’s regulated to skin names. No mention of Knight’s or Zerker’s.

The problems I see with a stat inspect are:
1) They promote elitism, what the elitist in this thread don’t seem to understand is most people prefer optimal to viable, if the option is made available, elitism could become the norm, which makes for a horrible entry barrier for new dungeoneers.
2) Likewise it also promotes the community running meta builds, which can lead to be players being unable to experiment and find new more powerful setups.

The guild facilities, Glasses skins, a lot of emotes, signet of capture.

Personally I love downed. I’ve never heard anyone in game complain about it. Like it or hate it, I doubt it’s going anywhere. Best way to handle it is accept it, and plan for it.

Darius Glazkov.9750:

Burnfall.9573:

A Real Man will show himself in Honor in Killing you.

i’m sorry, but – please correct me if i’m mistaken – did you just bring up honor in a video game? your entire post … just … wat?

People haven’t been sharing his views on balance, so I surmise he’s trying make himself feel better by walking some selfmade moral highground.

DeadlySynz.3471:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

DeadlySynz.3471:

The difference however with stealth stomp and the others is.. you guessed it, you can’t touch them when their stealthed, and no can your teammates.

This is completely wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

I can and have saved my team when they were about to be stealth stomped because I can and do use skills that allow me to knock the stomper away from stomping because there are plenty of skills that can and do effect the stealthed person.

Hammer #4. Fear Me. Warrior Stomp Skill. Earthshaker. That is just warrior.

Stealth does not grant invulnerability.

Stealth does not grant stability.

You are completely wrong and misinformation like this needs to stop. If I could report for such, I would because this is getting ridiculous with this kind of false information.

I suggest then you grab someone from another server and test it out. Already tried it and it doesn’t work (with warrior). Sorry to break it to you.

Some advice for future posts.. just don’t post.

Dunno what you’re smoking. Unless you’ve got blinded status you, there’s nothing stopping you from hitting a stealth stomping thief with an untargetted skill. Two things that make the thief bail are untargetted CC’s or high untargetted damage. And most attacks in this game are untargetted.

Sorry but this sounds a bit selfish. Like, “if I can’t have all the achievement points of the day, then no one can” kinda thing.

I don’t think anyone mentioned Temporal Curtain.

The lag isn’t a rendering issue. It’s processing issue. The server has to process the inputs of up to 100s of players and spamming skills at the same time, calulating who hits who, for how much, what combos were procced, what stats at the attacker, what stats are the target?

An ideal meta is when there is no meta. Meta’s exist because certain things are percived as superior to others, in a game without a meta, everyone can play how they want and be considered valid.

MartyPartys.9187:

XII.9401:

Gotta be truly bad to complain about the most OP class in the game and the most essential one in organized zerging.

Try playing a warrior. Maye then you’ll see how hard not to rely on a handicap: 8 second teleports/stealth/access to immunity to anything at any time/ clones attacking while you are running or dodging/ 10 sec invulnerability for 2secs on a weapon skill.

Yep..mesmers are truly in bad shape.

They actually are, at least group play mesmers. I totally agree with you that mesmers are strong in duels and even in 5v5 but for world vs world they are close to useless.

- A mesmer that rerolled to warrior.

High dps or not, Mesmers bring utility to ZvZs that no other class can come close to achieving. Portal and Viel can influence a battle unlike and other class in the game. They also have skills like Feedback, Chaos Storm, Timewarp. They’re far from useless on the support end of things.

Malpractice.7850:

Aeolus.3615:

Tribio.8531:

Ranger > rest

But I might be a little prejudiced here..

Got to admit ranger are amazing even for solo altough is so rare to find good rangers.

Rangers are top tier for roaming. Decent in a zerg (at that point, it really doesnt matter what u have :p). Not so good in GvG.
I main a ranger, and they just dont bring a lot to the table, you know?

I do wish mesmers had more “punch” to their damage/aoe in large fights

They do bring a bit more then they used to though. Especially now that they have a useable blast finisher.

Burnfall.9573:

Meglobob.8620:

Zerg

Guardian
Ele
Necro
Warrior
Mesmer
Engineer
Thief

Ranger (your actually dragging your server down and should switch to a ‘proper’ class)

Solo Roaming

Thief

*They are so good, all other classes need not apply.

*

You “hit it dead on”

I’m glad and Relieved that you; a thief class Confirms what i’ve been saying for far too long.

In other words, The Ultimate Class Award goes to Thief; and only to The Thief.

This ‘put the nail on the coffin’ that I’m Not a “Troll or Making stuff up”

Again

Thank You for Confirming this.

Uh, no. The fact he put thief at the bottom zerging shows they’re a class good at picking off loners, but become a ignorable in a group situation. In any case, the main entry requirement for roaming is movement speed, on that note, and class with perma-swiftness, or a speed signet is good to go roaming.
If you want classes that can change the outcome of WvW matchups, look no farther then Mesmer and Guardian. Other classes provide the dps and in the broad scheme of things, since thieves can’t stay engaged in a fight long enough to contribute like all the other classes, and wide spread damage isn’t their strong suit, they’re simply left behind all the hardier classes.

I agree. Would be awsome for venom builds.

I have a few cosmetic suggestions I’d like to see added to the game.

1) Give chest armour a visiblity toggle. I’m sure a lot of Norn and Sylvari heavy players can agree with me on this one. You like the cool tattoos or glow effects you chose, but you can’t show them off while fighting without handicapping yourself.

2) Customizable underwear. Not just colours and patterns either. I’d like to see other designs, bandage wrappings or tank tops for example. It’s another layer of customization that people would be willing to even shell out gems for, to create work in tandem with the above suggestion, creating looks that haven’t been seen before in GW2.

3) Glasses armour skins. Some people like the look of glasses. People wemt crazy for them in GW1. Please bring them back.

4) Starter skin vendors. For all those players that sold thier starter helms.

5) Champion themed armour to go with champion themed weapons.

6) Make the npc townclothes available. Ideally via standard vendor in most cases.

Feel free to comment or add more suggestions.

I disagree. It makes a unique challenge for destroyers. Much like Dredge provide a unique challenge to thieves.

Translucent makes stealth useless. You know you don’t need to target something in this game to attack it right?

JETWING.2759:

The boss will become inactive without defiant.
The players will chain CC all time and the boss do not will be able to even fight, move or react.

An example are am (one single) stunlock warrior spamming stun every 7s and raizing adrenaline with Axe5 or HB. He will able to solo the boss with 0 dificulty. And i am talking about one single warrior, now increase more 5 or 10 players CC boss all time.
:/

I don’t like easy and idiot NPC :/

Yeah. That’s why you change the bosses up so they can survive without defiant. Glass Cannoning bosses shouldn’t be our best defense, control and support should.

People have been complaining that Asurans are too small for their skill tells to be read in PvP. What if they added a togglable feature to the UI that would make the icon of skills being used appear over the user’s head? It could level the playingfield imo, without ruining the asthetics of the battle.

Any thoughts on this?

I know the devs don’t want mounts in gw2, but they reference horses on numerous occasions, from the Dreamer, to Iron Horse Mines. Can we get some npc horses around to correct this plot hole? They don’t need to be ridable.

cesmode.4257:

Where does dulfy get her armor skins? Me thinks she just gets special perks from anet.

Player Support and chat preview codes. For instance, I let her take screens of my Guild Quickshot for the Guild Weapons index.

Gutts.8791:

Dual.8953:

That old D/D combo is older then dirt. Any player worth his or her salt will use the Bas Venom as a cue to stunbreak, then you have to wait for your Bas Venom and Assassin’s Signet to come off cooldown. If you fumble and get yourself revealed, they’ll just CC you when they see you try to cast Hide in Shadow.
There’s a reason D/D’s been dropped for D/P
(Also Warrior also has stab on 40 seconds as well, you’re making it sound worse then it is to boost your point)

I’ve personally switched over to to D/P myself, and it’s just child’s play. Unlimited stealth whenever, I’ve even dropped Hide In Shadows for Withdraw because I just don’t need any more stealth.

Sorry Dual, I don’t quite understand what you mean about “Warrior also has stab on 40 seconds”. Please can you clarify? What do you mean and what skill are you talking about?

Balanced Stance. It’s a stunbreak which grants Stability and Swiftness for 8 seconds and has a 40 second cooldown. I know that doesn’t match CnD or BP+HS, or even just BP in in and of itself, but it’s there.
Personally I’m confused as to how one can evade an attack during a stealth stomp without blowing Shadow Step or cancelling the stomp.
I’m also unsure how removing BS would effect Thieves in all metas. The burst of BS is how D/x thieves make themselves useful in PvP as roaming bunker busters. Maybe if they decreased the damage, but made it ignore Protection and Aegis, while applying Poison. Thieves’d still be the bane of bunkers, but be a mite weaker against the other balanced sets.
Bare in mind I can count on my hand how many times I’ve run burst on my thief, prefering control.

Gutts.8791:

Ghostwolf, you are completely incompetent aren’t you and you have no idea what balance is in a game.

“What would you have us do? Cloak And Dagger people to death ?”

No, you’d use CnD to go invisible and then launch sustained DPS attacks from stealth, maybe a mixture of flat dps and conditions, and then use the thieves almost perma evades from 15 points into acrobatics to duck in and out of the fight, go stealth again when in trouble, actually have to use skill.

“There is a cost of these backstabs, utilities or initiative, and it requires careful positioning or it simply deals half damage.”

Shut up. Activate bas venom, press dagger 5, press steal before the animation ends to be automatically teleported to the target, hit them with CnD AND turn them into stone, go behind them and backstab for massive damage. Something goes wrong, oh just roll out of the way and Hide In Shadoes. That requires a toddler’s skill level which is obviously the level a fanboy like yourself is at.
“Other classes have invulnerability and stability stomps, ofc they are at a greater expense but are fully uncounterable by your teammates unlike stealth stomps,
4 ppl swinging over a player getting stealth stomped by a thief will usually down
the thief long before the stomp lands.”

You even admit that the invuln stomps are at a greater expense. Seriously, a warrior for example has his skill on a 60 second cooldown as oppose to the thief’s 4 second CD on stealth, that doesn’t allow for killing multiple people in succession, it allows for killing 2 people.

So in in a small scale 5 v 5 fight, if one person is downed, then the rest of the 4 people on that team should just stand above auto-attacking their downed friend in the hope that the theif MIGHT be there.

“you can also channel that silly throw hammer knockdown skill and it will hit the thief
while he is stealthed.”

You are seriously braindead aren’t you. That or you just haven’t actually played as a thief yourself. If you can’t stealth stomp someone and avoid their knockdown then you don’t deserve to post on any forum about a thief becuase you clearly lack the knowledge and understand of the class to have progressed anywhere further than the starter quests.

That old D/D combo is older then dirt. Any player worth his or her salt will use the Bas Venom as a cue to stunbreak, then you have to wait for your Bas Venom and Assassin’s Signet to come off cooldown. If you fumble and get yourself revealed, they’ll just CC you when they see you try to cast Hide in Shadow.
There’s a reason D/D’s been dropped for D/P
(Also Warrior also has stab on 40 seconds as well, you’re making it sound worse then it is to boost your point)

Zenith.7301:

Juan Ignacio.8903:

u can only put 2 blind fields with full init and 3 after a few sec, the only way to have perma blind some1 is that they are dumb enough to stay on the blind field forever.

If they don’t stand on the blind field, you can spam heart seeker to stack stealth and gain 16-25 stacks of might on a signet backstab spec and crit high toughness builds for 6k backstabs.

So it’s a loss either way. You need to be permablinded to keep the thief from stacking stealth and might, but being in the field keeps you blinded.

Dual.8953:

Defektive.7283:

evilapprentice.6379:

Defektive.7283:

Fenrir.5493:

As someone stated before, on paper we can say a lot of things but the reality is that thieves DO spam blinds.

Either that or spam evade frames.

Either way it’s pretty cheesy. But it begs the question of why does it exist? Possibly because the class is weak without it? IDK, won’t really know unless we took it away.

You’re the defektive everyone talks about/to when they’re talking warrior strats/TPvP, right? If not, you can ignore this next part.

Assuming you are, don’t you think “Won’t really know unless we take it away” is a bit disingenuous? Is it really that hard to envision what you could do to a thief if they couldn’t evade alot or blind you? You’ve certainly fought some while TPvPing, you honestly can’t imagine what a free kill they’d be without those defensive tools? Come on.

When people were crying endlessly about stealth, Anet finally gave thieves another way to survive with usable, effective evades. Turns out people think those are broken too!

I think conceptually a Thief was supposed to be a get-in and out quick class. Something that can move quickly, dispense damage, and get out with out a scratch.

That comes down to intelligent teleports, stealth, and being ‘slippery’ to a target.

In-game however, it’s taken a bit further when abused by Blinds and Evades. You’re looking at a class that can teleport (on a weapon skill), teleport as a stun break, teleport to defend (or attack) a point. Then they become amplified by consistent evade frames in-combat and AoE blinds they can apply to a large portion of the enemy.

The problem then comes to light. Is a thief a sustained DPS, or a strategically placed missile that’s difficult to pin down? Warriors were supposed to be the sustained DPS, but it sometimes feels with all of a thiefs Blinds and Evades like Warriors are etched out.

So do thiefs NEED these skills? I’d arguably say yes to the evades, but no to the Blinds (atleast, the sheer amount of them right now).

---

Overall, I think a lot of people have gotten used to a very specific playstyle for each class. To consider or adopt a strategy that is different than norm to them comes as an insult. This drives people to new classes instead of innovating their current one.

I think this emerged because they made S/D, P/D and Sb as non-burst sets. They need the sustain to function, and unfortuately D/D and D/P have some access to thier sustain options. If they hadn’t made LS so good, S/D would have stayed in relative obscurity. S/D’s tricky to buff, buff the wrong skills and S/P would overtake it.

Except 3.5-4k crits on larcenous strike that can be chained 3-4 times isn’t sustained. It’s sheer burst with ridiculous sustained on top of it all.

The sword auto 3rd part of the chain hits nearly as hard as larcenous, costs nothing, and applies cripple and weakness.

Re-read what I wrote. “If they hadn’t made LS so good…”

Defektive.7283:

evilapprentice.6379:

Defektive.7283:

Fenrir.5493:

As someone stated before, on paper we can say a lot of things but the reality is that thieves DO spam blinds.

Either that or spam evade frames.

Either way it’s pretty cheesy. But it begs the question of why does it exist? Possibly because the class is weak without it? IDK, won’t really know unless we took it away.

You’re the defektive everyone talks about/to when they’re talking warrior strats/TPvP, right? If not, you can ignore this next part.

Assuming you are, don’t you think “Won’t really know unless we take it away” is a bit disingenuous? Is it really that hard to envision what you could do to a thief if they couldn’t evade alot or blind you? You’ve certainly fought some while TPvPing, you honestly can’t imagine what a free kill they’d be without those defensive tools? Come on.

When people were crying endlessly about stealth, Anet finally gave thieves another way to survive with usable, effective evades. Turns out people think those are broken too!

I think conceptually a Thief was supposed to be a get-in and out quick class. Something that can move quickly, dispense damage, and get out with out a scratch.

That comes down to intelligent teleports, stealth, and being ‘slippery’ to a target.

In-game however, it’s taken a bit further when abused by Blinds and Evades. You’re looking at a class that can teleport (on a weapon skill), teleport as a stun break, teleport to defend (or attack) a point. Then they become amplified by consistent evade frames in-combat and AoE blinds they can apply to a large portion of the enemy.

The problem then comes to light. Is a thief a sustained DPS, or a strategically placed missile that’s difficult to pin down? Warriors were supposed to be the sustained DPS, but it sometimes feels with all of a thiefs Blinds and Evades like Warriors are etched out.

So do thiefs NEED these skills? I’d arguably say yes to the evades, but no to the Blinds (atleast, the sheer amount of them right now).

---

Overall, I think a lot of people have gotten used to a very specific playstyle for each class. To consider or adopt a strategy that is different than norm to them comes as an insult. This drives people to new classes instead of innovating their current one.

I think this emerged because they made S/D, P/D and Sb as non-burst sets. They need the sustain to function, and unfortuately D/D and D/P have some access to thier sustain options. If they hadn’t made LS so good, S/D would have stayed in relative obscurity. S/D’s tricky to buff, buff the wrong skills and S/P would overtake it.

Nikkinella.8254:

selan.8354:

Mordecai.6318:

Never have I seen a community complain about something so much. My god, this combo has an infinite amount of counters that multiple people have listed throughout this thread. Clearly this is everyone’s first MMO and first experience with a stealth mechanic because thieves are easily countered by every class.

Shut up and learn from your mistakes. The combat in this game is so simplistic compared to basically every MMO ever, yet people want their hands held because being a brainless ham is too easy.

says the thief that cried a couple of months ago about confusion, because he couldnt spam 2222222212222221 yeah sure an entire community needs to learn to play, because u are so awesome and so godlike that u can play any other class and kill any other class with no problems whatsoever.

This always bothered me. Thieves cried and cried over retaliation and confusion, which I never had a problem with even before they were nerfed. Retal and Confusion were never OP. You just had to pay attention and not mindlessly spam skills like the majority of thieves do all the time. But they cried and cried until it was nerfed despite the fact that there were plenty of ways to deal with both. Yeah confusion mesmers and retal guardians were annoying, but killable on any class if you didn’t just mindlessly spam and kill yourself. Yet thieves refuse to accept the fact that stealth, despite having no counters like confusion and retal have, is incredibly op. I wouldn’t care if they permastealthed if there was an active way to counter it that all non stealth classes had access to. And no, other classes shouldn’t have to carry around a trap to remove stealth. Do thieves have to carry around traps to strip boons off of people? Other classes should have traits or utility or weapon skills that can cause reveal.

You’re thinking of Retal and Confusion on way too small of a scale. In most cases Theives can only stealth themselves and the ability to stealth others are both on cooldowns. Retal on the other hand could be applied to entire zerges and maintained. Things would happen like classes killing themselves just because they casted a multihitting AoE. Not sure about confusion, but I do know I’ve seen people insta-downed when ganging up on a confusion mesmer.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised the reveal isn’t for 9 seconds.

The thing I find most annoying about a thief fight isn’t that they’ll beat me, but that it isn’t a “fight”. Their combat strategy is the following:

1: hide in stealth
2: ambush someone from behind, hit them with everything you have
3: dodge a few times to avoid their counter attack
4: pop back in stealth

repeat. There is no hard counters to stealth, and most of what is done while fighting a thief (an extremely mobile class with multiple teleports on the same build) is just guessing. Heck, the only way you can be sure anything is accomplished is if you use Necromancer Marks and see them triggering it.

I do wish that stealth in the game had more diversity to it. I think that if a player in stealth gets hit 0.5 seconds after entering stealth, it should immediately drop them out of stealth. I’m pretty sure a warrior knows when he has buried his axe into someone instead of just flinging wildly into thin air. This makes stealth tactical: instead of being an omni shield that lets you lay down offense, it functions as an escape or an offensive tactic that can be countered if the opponent guesses where you are and attacks there. The approach to backstab will take skill, instead of relying on one of many gap closing abilities.

It’s not 9 seconds because Sword/Dagger and Pistol/Dagger exist. They made half the stealth sets need to use their stealth skill a lot to be dangerous (ignoring LS, it wasn’t in the original design) while the other two hit so hard that they can lean more toward long stealths.

natsos.3692:

I don’t only play WvW so I can’t say I suggested this to balance the game around WvW as the second poster said one person doesn’t do anything to WvW.

I am an PvPer myself(SPvP) and still I find perma stealth thieves awfuly annoying and unbalanced there, not because they can kill you, but because if they know how to do it, they won’t die.

I don’t really see how a longer Revealed would harm the other thieves, I suggested a 5-8 cooldown on stealth, while you can’t stealth you can still dodge/blind/cc, but right now ontop of that you can also stealth w/e you want.

Thief damage looks balanced right now(after lots of nerfs) and unless they build for a full zerk they won’t make crazy damage, but if they do they are just too squishy. I believe damage is not the problem.
The combination of all the tricks a thief has and how they synergize ,this is what is crossing the balance line, and I can give you examples for both WvW and SPvP on that.

The problem is only half the stealth builds work the way you understand. D/D and D/P benefit from long stealths, they’re all about landing that one big hit. On the other hand S/D and P/D use stealth in completely the opposite way. Neither has a burst, but their stealth attack is thier strongest skill. Tactical Strike, is a control skill with which S/D attempts to stunlock (technically impossible) the opponent. Sneak Attack stacks bleeds and allows P/D to maintain passable condi pressure. Both these sets thrive off of using their stealth attacks as often as possible, so increasing revealed really hurts them. In otherwords, nerfing revealed, crippled S/D and P/D, and is little more then a slap on the wrist to D/D and D/P.
(On a side note: true S/D has Larcenous Strike now, but it’s still losing its control role.)

shimmerless.4560:

Dual.8953:

shimmerless.4560:

Dual.8953:

shimmerless.4560:

Kavia.8249:

Oh, and another idea for a stealth reveal mechanic would be to make light fields reveal opponents. Has counterplay because enemy could always run around the field, but if you had good game sense and placed the light field effectively you could reveal whole teams. Light fields are available to a good spread of classes, about half of them, and the guardian has plentiful light fields which addresses the guardian stealth gank in particular.

Could also make it so it doesn’t reveal opponents completely but maybe just they become visible while in the light field (returning to stealth when they leave it).

this is a really cool idea however i wonder if this wouldn’t make guards ubiquitous again for high-level play.

on a somewhat-related subject i have never understood why you can stack SR with blast finishers and BP and whatever else you have in your pockets but you cannot stack veil or mass invis. doesn’t make much sense to me.

I know the Veil reason is Viel has no AoE limit.

i am not sure what this means i figure you’re referring to the cap on the number of players who can benefit from a combo field?

Yeah. Veil can stealth an infinite number of players, while smoke blast caps at 5. It’s the same reason Temporal Curtain doesn’t stack swiftness.

on the other hand though surely this only has ramifications for WvW and not sPvP where teams are capped to 5 anyway. (i do not include 8v8 hotjoins in this case)

Yeah. I gather Spvp isn’t where 100% of the balance is decided. WvW is probably how Mesmer got 90% of it’s nerfs. Mesmer’s may complain, but it’s undeniable the impact one mesmer can have on a large group fight.

The torment is very synergenic with the skill. It makes it so you can take a more defensive approach with 3 and 4, of a more offensive approach with 1 and 5. The defensive approach is kind of like Dhalsim in street fighter.

bhagwad.4281:

Being able to irritate two or more people with a single character is the definition of op. Two people should never have a problem with one person regardless of build and assuming equal skill levels.

You realize, every class in the game is capable of that, right? You’re way oversimplifying.

To answer the main question, overpowered is when the effectiveness of a skill or tactic is doesn’t match the level of skill required to employ it. It is a rather abstract concept, and can easily be mixed up with strong newbie tactics. The difference is the newbie strat usually has a counter that becomes glaringly obvious to experienced players.