Guild Wars 2

Sorry but I can’t support this. It heavily favours the burst sets, but throws S/D Control under the bus.

@aelflune: Honestly the reason most thieves are the way they on the forums it’s a mexican stand off. Thieves don’t trust people that demand stealth nerfs, and I can’t blame them. The suggestions are almost always horrible suggestions that would completely ruin the builds that aren’t even complained about, or the entire class as a whole. Couple that with bunch of vocal players with strong senses of self entitlement, and zero desire to consider improving themselves; and a game community that generally frowns on thieves no matter where they are, Its quite understandable why most thief players on the forums are cynical, irritable and defensive.

If change is to happen, the can either down then up or up then down. Either way people will angry, and likely many won’t be pleased when it levels off.

The best those that want thief to be nerfed can do is put some time into understanding what makes thief tick and what makes them unique before making suggestion, and not complaining without a clear aim, or having assessed your own flaws.
The best thieves can do is try to be patient and openminded.

I’d love if they were merged into DA. I’d go 30/0/20/20/0

I’d say swap to another set. S/P isn’t very mobile and is easily kited. Maybe switch to Sb.

Burnfall.9573:

Waffler

You missed what kishter said which is the main Porblem with Stealth Theif.

Once and for all- to All Thieves

" if im winning you will stealth and return back until im dead",

Your advice or any anyone advices does not apply here.

How is this Justified?

Example’ 2 boxers in a boxing match.

Boxer A- Any class
Boxer B- THief

Boxer A is winning with knockdowns than all of sudden Boxer B pull out a gun and shoots Boxer A and hide.. than return and finsih killing off. Boxer A.

Seriously,

You find this Justified or Fair?

Well that’s the Advantage thief have that no other class do.

That’s the Problem

What’s so hard to comprehend?

Even a child can get it..

You’re looking at it way too narrowly.
What is the goal of WvW?
Not to kill the enemy team, that’s the main point where you’re off base.

The aim of WvW is to rack up points by controlling areas of land, and nothing more then that.
Killing enemy players is only sometimes necessary to achieve this end, and usually necessary because enemy players defend their lands, but still it isn’t an absolute necessity.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at the assassin class archetype, in context to objective based PvP.
Assassin’s are above all else, about getting kills on other players. Particularly ones that aren’t prepared for their attack. To achieve this end they are also skilled at escaping enemies. If they weren’t they wouldn’t be assassins. They’d be Suicide bombers.
Now why have a class that’s good at sudden quick kills in an objective based fight?
To disrupt the enemy team.
In the objective based PvP, it’s the assassin’s job upset the enemy ranks by suddenly disrupting their operations.
And that’s just what thieves do here in WvW. It’s why most people say to ignore the thieves, if they can’t disrupt your ranks, they’ve failed their goal.

Stop trying to make the game play by “your” rules.

DeWolfe.2174:

This endless debate is why I have no clue what Anet is thinking. Thieves should have been altered 6 months ago already. Anyone who’s been playing since launch knows the endless threads there were on the subject in the fall.

The problem is, most WvW players are not built for 1v1. Thus, we actually are just cattle to Thieves. Like my Staff Ele, good luck taking on a thief with a Staff Ele. If a thief stealth’s in behind you and initiates with a backstab, which is easy to do by the camps, you are done for.

I think the core conversation is that, the Dev’s need to learn, grieving DOES NOT create a better gaming experience. That MOST players do not enjoy so much adversity and “challenge”. This is what happens when the main sPvP Dev, who loves dueling and creating tears (as he put it) has too much control over the entire game.

If a thief continues to bother you, just put in map chat that an area requires a Wash n’ Roll by the nearest Zerg

So you’re saying every set should have the same focus and aptitude? A staff ele should be able to perform in melee range just as well as a D/D Ele, and the D/D Ele to perform just as well at 1200 range? Why would the have different weapon sets if they all were reskins of each other?
Also, if you don’t want adversity or challenge, stay the heck away from PvP environments. PvP is about challenging each other and pushing each other to the limit. If you don’t want to fight seriously then don’t expect to win. In short, in PvP, high challenge comes with the territory.

Thief is assassin class of this game, and just like every assassin in every game before it, it’s their job to get quick kills on the weak and unaware. If you aren’t going to respect that, don’t expect to do well against them.

LilMcGinley.3890:

TheGuy.3568:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

TheGuy.3568:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

My Mesmer isnt in Knights gear and you DO have buffs thats why some of your stats are green. as shown in your 2nd pics you dropped damage, i am guessing its the sigil for added power on kill.

i am not a power Mes, i am a Condition Mesmer with added Stealth Utility

I meant food buffs. If your condi damage that is an entirely different story. That puts you in Rabid gear. You can not compare a condi build and a power build apples and oranges and the wrong classes to compare in the first place.

“A relatively tanky toon” was his statement. I am not a Tank build so that was the point i am making, he thinks he is a “tanky” spec when its not. Having a bit of toughness and health doesnt make you a tank spec.

Learn the definition of relatively. Do you understand what word means now? It’s not a tank spec. Never said it was (if you knew what the word relatively means you would never have posted). Now you can argue about interpretation but I do not see the point. Your’e trying set up absolute values on tankiness without understanding the class. Yes you can go bunker but I never said bunker I said tanky ie I can take a hit. It is not glass cannon or is all this way too hard to understand? Right now you are arguing over my use of the word tanky in a build with 2,700 armor and 22k HP and it doesn’t have a kittening thing to do with the subject matter of the thread. But please continue you intellectual and informative analysis is amazing.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Not gonna quote ya since it’s huge…

Yes, my build is for front line tank in Tier 1 NA WvW, pure 30 man team so items you listed in your response don’t really apply to me. I die maybe once a night, if at all. Sadly this topic isn’t about warrior builds, we have a separate forum for that.

I don’t really believe in the “2700 sweetspot” in the topics you linked. You need more than that for WvW, that’s for sure and your post here proves that. If you want to do DPS, you have to out DPS your target, if you go Tank you have to out last your target, by working in both, you do neither and become an easy kill.

There are good roaming builds for warrior – but a slightly tanky slightly power build isn’t one of them.

PS: What dyes are those?

And you are basing this on what? You are discussing roaming while being a 30 man zerger. I never said I have an issue roaming. Even one get killed from time to time roaming. Of course not you because you do not roam. You said this discussion is not about warrior builds yet you brought it up. You no idea how well I roam or do not roam. I never mentioned. Also if you did roam. You would know the main element to roaming is flipping. Not engaging in duels. Its not always about winning rights. The idea is to stay mobile and take smaller points while the main force engages bigger targets. Do you understand? I could run a dueling spec with unsuspecting foe most valk and knight armor and win most 3 v 1 but that would cause me to sacrifice dps on guards nodes and camps where speed is key. I do not really like having to explain this as most experienced WvW players already know this.

Also without knowing the full details of my build how would you possibility know what defenses. I have? You do not because as you said this isn’t a place for warrior build discussion. You saw some numbers and felt like posting. I get that. However, clearly you are not informed and making many assumption. Now if you want to discuss builds we can on the warrior forums. If you understand what a lyssa build is you would realize it is one of the more common ones for roaming. In fact my build 0 0 30 30 10 is one of the most common builds for roaming (I take a camp in about 1min to 1:30min). I would suggest you brush up on your warrior builds. Because simply by you listing your stats I figured out your builds and its purpose. You could not do the same with mine.

I honestly do not know why we are discussing this?

You posted a screenshot of just your stats and cry about dying to a thief.. and you expect us to know what you are running?? We can only go off information you provide…

I know how to roam, I spent 3 months in T8 with 4-5 man teams, I know how to roam. I just don’t sit on forums and complain about it when I die.

More importantly you didn’t answer my very important question: what dyes are those?

All his accessories are Zerker which is a major problem. He probably slapped on some Knight’s armour and called it a day. I consider my builds balanced and they run either 1.8k+ toughness or 16k toughness with extra vitality. My Guardian is all Knights and has 2k+ toughness.

Colly.4073:

Same intentions they have about “Skill Delay” ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!

No seriously. They put well over a year into thieves. This makes it quite obvious what they intended. They wanted an assassin class; an illusive class that can easily punish unwary players and easily confound players who don’t know how to think in a PvP situation.
If you aren’t trying to guess your opponent’s intentions in a fight you’ll only win by luck. You aren’t much better then a button masher in a fighting game.

Straegen.2938:

Dual.8953:

You could have blocked CnD. Then he can’t Sneak Attack and all his other skills are weak as all heck. CnD’s a melee skill so it should be obvious when a ranged set is trying to use it. Also he can only CnD twice from full initiative. Maybe try kiting.

Except there are plenty of other ways to stealth such as smoke fields (D/P creates them at will), other creatures, blinding powder, shadows refuge, doors, siege, etc. It is also pretty easy to just wait out dodges then CnD. Going stealth is ridiculously easy for a thief and not much another player can do about it.

We’re talking Pistol/Dagger. Not the omni thief that has all builds at once.

JaNordy.6149:

Renxian.6982:

JaNordy.6149:

Haltair.3062:

Great. Another stealth thread.
Could any moderator take a look on these repeated threads?

Best,

Haltair, one of the Twelve shadows

Ever stop and think, that there are so many thief threads because anet refuses to do anything about them? I recently dueled a condition thief, something you rarely see. When he would stealth he would do his rapid sneak attack stack ton of bleed move. I was able to block it several times. What was my reward for perfectly timing it? Him still being stealth to do it all over again instantly everytime with no revealed or initiative lost. Clearly working as intended…

Regards,

JaNordy – One of the 6 CAMP

Just throwing it out there, but a P/D condi thief has to cloak and dagger you to stealth, unless he blows utils. So unless your “Perfect Timing” involves you allowing him to poke you in the kitten with his dagger every 3-4 seconds, you probably aren’t being particularly honest with us.

So rather than argue about a design flaw I pointed out in game, you blindly resort to the “its you” post. My timing was indeed perfect for what I stated. You have no clue how long duel I had with this thief was. He did CnD me many times as we fought, he also missed many times as well. You have completely failed to make a point in what I stated about block and sneak attack. You can tell when someone has no argument when they state “you are not being honest” as their argument.

One love,

JaNordy- One of the 6 CAMP

You could have blocked CnD. Then he can’t Sneak Attack and all his other skills are weak as all heck. CnD’s a melee skill so it should be obvious when a ranged set is trying to use it. Also he can only CnD twice from full initiative. Maybe try kiting.

Renxian.6982:

Straegen.2938:

. IMO the same should apply to blindness. Basically any attack successful or not should trigger the reveal. .

Hell no. Block would be tolerable, blind would be kittened. Any attack animation cast would destroy the class because any lag scenario would cause reveal getting you killed.

HOWEVER, this would require some changes to the availability of Aegis.

Or just give Guardian a custom Aegis or make is so Aegis has a “block” effect that doesn’t register the same as a shield stance block.

As cool as advanced classes can be, I don’t think they really fit Gw2’s aim, to have all classes unique but versatile. It’d also probably have poor effects on PvP

rogerwilko.6895:

TheAmpca.1753:

Don’t come complaining to the forums when a thief destroys you.
Stealth is not OP.
Stealth/ (decent)regeneration is the only survivability thiefs have.

Why would you need regen singe your oppenent(s) are already dead in seconds?

I doubt there are many who complain “OH MAN, I fought a Thief for 4 minutes but at the end he killed me! QQ”.

There are two burst sets and five non-burst sets, so already that makes it not an “always” scenario. CC and Condi need sustain. Also, any WvW player worth his or her salt, knows how to survive a thief burst. It’s the the those that are new or are too stubborn to learn that have trouble. And it’s usually them that are loud about it. (But thankfully some of them learn eventually)

Lul. This made my night.

kishter.9578:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Time-to-bring-Thiefs-to-a-normal-level/first

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/If-You-Are-Squishy-Running-Solo

Straegen.2938:

A decent necro that isn’t in full zerg mode, is a bear to take down melee. I usually strafe them and see what they are made of. Good ones force the fight into range since marks/wells are thief bane. Once it gets to range the fight is tricky because the health point pool on a necro is fantastic. By the time I whittle one down, usually someone else has joined the fight one way or another.

Marks are no spamable maybe you using too much you thief and forget other classes have CD.
What use is a good health pool when i get down 10k in a burst attack before i can cast DS? look at the picture and tell and compare my attacks Vs the thief attack in a mere sec.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/General-Discussion-Thief-2nd-place-worst/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Warriors-Perspective-on-Thief/first

kishter.9578:

Dual.8953:

Did you just stand there for the 3+ seconds it took to do the three heartseekers? You have, fears, deathshroud, wide access to AoE, marks, and a high health pool, is it so hard to actually use some of them?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Basilisk_Venom

-deathshroud
-fear
-Life Blast
-thief stealh
-and the battle start over just that i dont have more force life. and all my marks are in CD. Lest remember thief have no cooldown, and the initiative just regenerate as fast as a korean buy a MMORPG whit naked womens.

Why are you not running a stun break? Not even Basilisk can stand up to it. Why do you not have something you’re good with on swap? Necros are strong against thieves.

Did you just stand there for the 3+ seconds it took to do the three heartseekers? You have, fears, deathshroud, wide access to AoE, marks, and a high health pool, is it so hard to actually use some of them?

XII.9401:

Roll a thief, get farmed by them or leave the game. I thought Anet’s position on the matter for a year made it clear for everyone?

Do you really have that much trouble? That’s really sad. I take my engie, guardian and my uplevels where ever I want in WvW, and have zero problem with thieves. What’s your excuse?

Omnitek.3876:

Stealth is not op.

Stealth with 25% movement speed, 900 range ports, blinds, shadow step, and the damage output is OP.

I was teasing a guild thief who is a big roamer about spamming HS. He said “every class has a skill they spam”. I explained that no class has a skill that hits for 3k+ that they can cast 4 times in 4 seconds. Laughed my kitten off. It is a class with the lowest skill cap when it comes to roaming for a reason, the mobility, stealth and damage.

Want a fix? When stealthed, reduce movement speed by 25%. Or give 2 classes the ability to see/break enemy stealth. A trait, or utility or w/e. Doesn’t matter.
Boom. Done. If stealth isn’t a crutch that you lean on, you will have no problem with the change right?

You really don’t get it. I’ll illustrate using a warrior with GS/AA vs pretty much any thief set. The warrior can go 2345 swap 2345 swap 2345 swap into infinity pretty much and all those skills will deal decent damage. I realize it’s not quiet so seamless but the fact of the matter is once you’re out of skills on one set, there will be enough skills to tide you over on the other set. (And don’t you dare mention a non-kit engie, I run an HGH Coated Bullets engie and can spam 123 all the live long day)
Now enter a thief set. They all have an auto attack, a stealth attack, one strong damage attack and weak 3 utility attacks. On top of that their initiative is shared between both of their sloted sets, so they can’t just swap when they run out like other classes, they’ve gotta choose the skill that will give them the most for their cost, the utilities do little damage and are really expensive, so if they’re bursting, thief isn’t exactly loaded with viable options.
Oh and about your "no class can 3k+ 4 times in a row, so what? Some classes can do 3k+ on most of thier weapon skills and use swap rotations to spam them infinitely, and many of them are multi target.

On to stealth sets. There’s 4 stealth sets, D/x’s are both burst and the most commonly seen, S/D is control and P/D is condition. Now here comes the tricky part about these sets, D/x works well with long stealths but S/D and P/D need to use their stealth attacks as frequently as possible, they’ll idealy stay in stealth no longer then a second. The bursters are the ones with Heartseeker and backstab, and though they benefit from long stealths, they don’t need them. Keep that in mind when suggesting stealth nerfs. Stealth isn’t a crutch for the non-burst builds, it’s their right leg.

(Also, it’s 50% speed and I don’t know where you got ports from. Blind is only one miss and necessary for sustained CQC which the non-bursters need. 25% speed debuff ruins stealths purpose, which is a positioning tool)

Also, Why is this a thief thread now?

Half my guild was working together yesterday to get to the top. I think they got as high as you can go.

Luthan.5236:

Dual.8953:

Imo, stats like Zerker have no place in WvW, if you’re squishy in a zerg you’re a liability to the zerg, if you’re zerker for roaming you have less consequences, but Soldiers or Rabid can do just as well as you.

I prefer it… cause damage, damage, damage. And AoE. It is fun. I want to do damage against the others and especially if they all use higher defensive stats it won’t work without good amount of power. Still I’m not fully berzerker but I use a lot of power(I don’t like conditions and I rarely die to conditions in zerg fighting… just to many others helping). Power more reliable. Can’t be cleansed.

Also I die less often than most others in zerg fighting… cause I just throw AoE and run away ha ha. Of course the others following the enemy to get killed… they are stupid. High defensive stats won’t help there if you run to the legendary defenders at their spawn or if your main zerg stays and 10 run to follow 1 guy around the whole map and running into some other enemy zerg.

Thief… I never do 1 vs. 1. If he gets lucky and 1st hit then losing. If not I can make him run away… but they often get lucky – so running away after he hits. Killing a good thief can almost be impossible. If you just come with 10 to kill him you waste time and they just run away. Ignoring them is better… only if they attack Dolyaks but then you just stay and defend them all the time(killing thief – even if it works – then moving away… won’t help they just come back and kill Dolyak you need to stay there).

I’ve run with a Soldier’s zerg, we kept tight and ate every other zerg in EB, bigger or smaller, with little to no losses.

As with most things in GW2, nothing can match Guardian.

I think you’re selling a few of venoms short, the CC ones can be useful. I’d like if they performed like Mantras so we wouldn’t have to blow them all at once.
Personally I find traps more useless then venoms.

Biggest problem I’m seeing is no one seems to realize there is two ways thief uses stealth that are pretty much opposite to each other. All the dagger main hand builds operate best with long stealths in which they build set up for their bursts. Sword/Dagger and Pistol/Dagger on the other hand don’t have high damage single strike stealth skills like Backstab; Sword/Dagger has Tactical Strike which blinds from the front or dazes from behind; Pistol/Dagger has Surprise Attack which stacks bleeds. S/D would suffer from a massive loss to it’s ability to CC if revealed was increased (that 4 sec revealed from a few months back nearly broke the spec) and P/D would suffer a massive loss in its Condi DPS. Both these specs were designed to use their stealth attack as often as possible and rarely maintained their stealth for the whole duration.

Terrahero.9358:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terrahero.9358:

shadowraith.9124:

Most popular and successful mmo of all time has had perma stealth since release and has kept it across 4 expansions.

I think we can end these discussions now.

While in Stealth a Rogue moves slower, unless specced for stealth speed. A Thief runs just as fast as everyone else, if specced for stealth speed he’ll be faster then anything.

A Rogue takes damage, even from a DoT, and his stealth will be broken. A Thief doesnt not exit Stealth when taking damage. Even getting downed doesnt cause a Thief to lose Stealth.

Re-stealthing for a Rogue meant leaving combat or blowing lengthy cooldowns. Restealthing for a Thief comes on abilities with no cooldown and a cost low enough to resealth everytime Revealed fades. Abilities with a cooldown are still much lower by comparison.

A Rogue has limited gapclosers, either they need to be specced for or they come with a lenghty cooldown, or both. A Thief has a multitude of gapclosers on low cooldown or no cooldown at all.

Looks like a Rogue in “the most popular MMO ever” has quite a few drawbacks just to get perma-stealth. Drawbacks the perma-stealthing Thief does not have.

A bit biased aren’t you?

A rogue purges all DOTS when stealthing in combat.
A rogue cancels all channeled spells on it when stealthing in combat.
Rogues in WoW had stuns. Tons of them.
Rogues in WoW had difficult to remove snares.
Rogues had high sustained damage and effective burst dumping options.
Rogues had activated defensive options outside of stealth.

Lets face it, the thief and rogue are simply too different in two entirely different mmos. If you’re going to try and compare classes between games, at least try to find one more closely related. Shadowbane for example.

Ow im the biased one for punching holes in the other guys comparison. But hey, ill bite.

-Rogue had to blow a long cooldown to restealth and purge dots. A Thief has a 30sec cooldown heal with stealths and removes burning/bleeding/poison. And it doesnt even matter as much for the Thief because the Rogue would immediatly destealth if he had DoTs, a Thief wouldnt.

-A Thief can cause AoE blind when he stealths. Causing whole groups to miss their attacks, and restealths every 4seconds. Unlike the Rogue which, again, had to blow a long cooldown. Even if the Thief didnt spec for Blind on Stealth he can still pick up Blinding Powder which combines an AoE blind with Stealthing.

-Yah, they had a lot of stuns. And with practise, and if everything went the way it was intented they could stunlock a lot of your health away. A Thief may only have 1 stun, but it doesnt need a prolonged CC to deal a lot of damage, just 1 button, Backstab. And he can reuse it over and over. Stuns are simply not needed to deal as much damage on a defenseless victim like a Rogue.

-Thief has impossible to escape mobility. Either you move slower then a Rogue, which could still be removed/immuned, or you run slower then a Thief. Which is much harder to counter. Basicly its Warrior, or go home.

-Between the 7k backstabs, the 4k CnDs a Thief cirts 2k+ on autoattack. You want to talk substained and burst?

-So does a Thief. Shadowstep, Daggerstorm, Withdraw, Smokescreen, Roll for Initiative, Infiltrators Signet, Signet of Shadows are skills that have defensive applications and dont in any way, shape or form involve Stealth.
Pistolwhip, Flanking Strike, Disabling Shot, Death Blossom have a build in Evade component. Dodging while attacking.
And then there is still like Blackpowder, Infiltrator’s strike, Infiltrator’s Arrow and Shadowstrike that can be used to get out of a hairy situation or facetank an enemy.

All abilities that can be used to directly keep yourself alive, and nothing to do with Stealth. Or did you mean “Thief doesnt have a 5min cooldown ability that directly gives him a flat defensive bonus” Because then there is always Daggerstorm, dealing damage while being immune to projectiles and unCCable.

On the defensive thing, Rogues have passive evades; because of that they can stand there facetanking like a warrior. Thieves cannot. Thieves always have to be active with their guards, and most of them make is so they have to stop attacking. No other class in this game has to defend as actively.
Also Daggerstorm is crap. It only reflects projectiles, doing little for in close quarters, not to mention this game has a crap ton of ranged AoE.

Rogues and Thieves are completely different beasts. Rogue is a Warrior who happens to be able to stealth and stun. Thief is an agile but fragile fighter with tons of positional tools but little to no passive defenses.

Be kinda hard to give clear numbers. It depends on attendance. We can assume most servers have a similar population. It’s just in some servers WvW isn’t a focus, more leaning to PvE or SPvP. I suppose the best they could do is post a chart with all the hours of a week showing attendance as a percentage of total online for every hour.

LordByron.8369:

Renxian.6982:

………….

Not to say you prove my point perfectly but when you make pots like this you show a deep lack of knowledge about the game and the meta…..

The added rudeness is just to complete the picture of a good % of thief players.

That is maybe a sign of a class being effective with no effort at all.
And the best part is the class has even a high skill ceiling…..figure if a bad thief player can be effective, how much is a good one.

Really? How would you act if day in and day out for almost a year, layman assaulted your skill and integrity, baring witness to persecutions ranging double standards to slander.
If and other class in the game performs a high burst it’s automatically because they’re skill. See 100 nades. People act like Thief is some god class when in truth, the only thing people can accurately claim thieves accell at are minor WvW objectives resource gathering and map completion. No one will choose a thief in anything PvE if a guardian or warrior is available (or just about anything that’s not a ranger). Some commanders disuade thieves from zergs because they’re “rally fodder”, and in TPvP they’re a real contender for 7 or 6th place in the tier listing.
So tell me why we should not be more then a little tired of it all? Especially when you have classes like Guardian, who have the entire game handed to them on a silver platter and catch zero guff for it?

Imo, stats like Zerker have no place in WvW, if you’re squishy in a zerg you’re a liability to the zerg, if you’re zerker for roaming you have less consequences, but Soldiers or Rabid can do just as well as you.

Con: non-burst builds that focus on Tactic Strike or Sneak Attack are now unusable.
People really need to realize half the stealth sets in this game are not burst sets. Long cooldowns are fine for bursters, but crippling to condi and control specs.

Thedenofsin.7340:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACOxV5CA52w

End thread.

No other profession has this kind of advantage over other players. No other profession can solo groups of players like this. It needs a very heavy nerf.

Go one youtube and put WvW solo (Insert and class here) and you’ll find amazing soloists. Yishis is a pro player who’d probably do just as well on any class. He’s hardly a good example of your garden variety thief.

I’d say do what RAM from Yak’s Bend does. Go Soldiers, build to survive. If you get a big enough zerg, it doesn’t matter how much damage they do individually, but if they’re glass, they’re rally fodder. Keep your zerg tight on you, and when you encounter an enemy zerg, charge right through them without stopping to ensure you made a kill. There’s a lot more to know but that’s all basic commander strategies.

Bil.6354:

I agree that stealth has to be revised. Its simply annoying, not challenging.

Stealth needs to have a counter (e.g. break on damage as suggested) or to be limited as an opener (which still is a big advantage, as you can choose your fights). Most of the times i meet thiefs in wvw i simply cant kill them, even if i outplay them – its simply frustrating not being able to kill an enemy you have beaten.

I would love if anet would redo thiefs in a fasion similiar to gw1 assasins, imho the best thief class design i found in any mmo so far. Give thiefs some form of defence (critical defences, evasion or something) or sustain (lifesteal) to compensate, i would love that for my little asuran stabber.

At the moment the skill/risk/reward gap for stealth is just too huge when compared to other classes.

Where would stealth drop on damage leave S/D and P/D? Remember that there are non-burst stealth builds, and stealth is critical to thier sustainability and control/conditions.
As for Assassin, in gw1 Assassin had a clear aim and goal, which was teleporting past the tanks to burst down the squishy supports, living off a lot of passive dodges. The battles were slower so it was easy to pick out the monk and shadowstep to him. GW2 is a whole other beast, battles are faster, no dodge is passive and everyone can be tanky or squishy, so it’s impossible to approach battles in the same methodical fashion. They gave thieves stealth as a positional tool because it’s much more adaptable then shadowsteps.

I’d prefer thieves getting a rifle to fit their assassin/hit man theme. A few of my guildies would love to see rangers use Staves as quarter staves, and Must say I agree that is certainly fits them thematically.

Terrahero.9358:

kurath.9406:

This idea is terrible. Firstly your server is almost ‘winning’ the match up by Anet standards. The problem is almost nobody assesses the success of a server in a matchup by those standards, so if they adjust the scoring system to reflect that then it won’t seem so bad to people.

Secondly, your idea is terrible anyway. Your solution won’t do anything to improve your goal. Punishing the dominant team won’t make the outmanned team show up any more, they have to improve the rewards for those that are fighting with their backs to the wall – especially in defense situations.

Its not about punishing the server that completely outmans the other servers, its about not rewarding the server that completely outmans the server anymore then they already get for outmanning.

I’d go as far as to say their towers/keeps shouldnt be worth any WXP either. The server that is outmanned on a map usually only gets ganked much harder by both other servers because they are easy pickings.
This would balance that out “hmm, they are outmanned. Easy pickings, but i wont get any WXP for fighting them. Is that worth my time?” Instead they are far more likely to go for the other guy who is actually able to put up a fight.

Might also demotivate people from PvDooring at night, or atleast not reward this practise so highly.

Rather then punishing the players who are WvW fans for being WvW fans, why not reward the fareweather WvWers for stepping up to the plate and perservering?

Seriously, how much sense does it make to go, “How dare you like this mode more then your opponent” ?

You don’t get more people playing by chasing those that do play away.

Krikr.2094:

Why not do what WoW does with stealth and make distance a factor. When rouges get too close or stay still too long they just become hazed and non-auto targetable (as in you can still target them, but you have to click on them). Keep all stealth abilities the same, just change how stealth works.

Wonder if it’s do able. D/P only maintains stealth because it constantly refreshes it. The distance thing could be problematic for sets that need sustain to kill like S/D, but diminishing returns for stealth that hasn’t triggered revealed in over 2.5 seconds could be interesting.

I was actually gonna make this exact post. Vid and all. This is after finally getting past the rudder to this launcher thing, and falling to my death. It’s not fun having to struggle through all that and come to a poorly marked crossroad, where the penalty for screwing up means you have to start from scratch.

vove.2768:

Okay, I see people get overexcited and miss the point. I want something to counter stealth, it’s not okay you engage in a fight and you cannot win it because when low on hp thief will use perma stealthing and run away technics to run away and you won’t even see him. Doesn’t matter if you dot them, dmg them when in stealth, cc them or whatever, it’s just too op runaway mechanic. I myself have a thief and I know how it works, since I laughed everytime when I ran away and people couldn’t catch up with me. Switched to ele though, much more fun.

Stealth needs nerfing, at least make dots or dmg cancel it or put 30s revealed on thief when he runs away and is still in combat, for example being 1500 yards away from last target, you can even remove revealed while attacking from stealth to compensate, it’s a joke anyways.

Fenrir.5493:

LOL, no damage?:

I kno, rite?

30 second Revealed? Are you nuts? Run and P/D spec, or S/D control spec, then say that. Why not have the damage of backstab? Then the stealth burst specs would have to play like all the other stealth specs, certainly better then rendering two sets useless.

I went in 0/20/30/20/0 with PP/Sb, CC venoms with venom share, blind powder, and shadow refuge, traited to grant regen and remove condition.
Learn the AoEs, and time your dodges. You’ll be the main reviver, and if you know your stuff, have an easy time evading.
I brought Knight’s and kept a sword on standby

Amins.3710:

Ommu.1649:

Revealed debuff should be 60s. If you start a fight, finish it.

Bam.

Right here.

Whoever heard of a control spec that can only control set that can only CC once, or a condition spec tha can only apply a decent bleed once? That’d be S/D and P/D. This is why thieves oppose ludacrice ideas like this. People make suggesting how to balance one spec, and in the process utterly destroy 2 other specs.

You missed Guard staff 3, mesmer focus 4, and ele fire dagger 4.
All in all, Zergs down need power to win, they just need bodies that can take damage.
Guard, Mesmer and Eles are considered needs, Engie, Warriors and Necros are tag alongs, and Thieves and Rangers are burdens.

Archon.6481:

Envy.1679:

Archon.6481:

Why are you guys suggesting stealth traps as a counter to thieves? Are forgetting how incredible thief mobility is? Nothing short of a warrior (specced for it) or another thief will catch me.

Shadowstep + 4 Heartseekers = 3120 distance.

as i said before

no one cares if you run
you arent hurting anyone when you run
running = losing

youre wasting nobody’s but your own time if you run.

I wasted 15 badges and 500 of your karma.
I also wasted 10 supply from your server.
Since I escaped I can go kill more dolyaks
Since I escaped I can go tag more keep doors

I think I won.

Honestly, a Warrior with Sword/Warhorn can run just as well as any thief could.
My kit build can run just as well as any thief.
An Ele can rund just as well as any thief.

Don’t flatter yourself, Stealth traps weren’t aimed at thieves, they were aimed at Mesmer’s Veil (you know, that class that can turn the tides of battle by itself, and has a security routine specifically devoted to it whenever you take a keep.) All the other classes are off taking real objectives, you’re killing defenseless npcs and playing nicky nicky nine doors, real impressive.

So, two thieves found a place where they have a terrain advantage in the EB JP and started ganking those who passed by. Well for starters I’m willing to bet though they kills 20 players, it wasn’t all at once. It’d be difficult to keep 20 people in one clump to attack them at once, and it’s not a huge feat if it was a series of small battle, you said it went on for 2 plus hours, which only re-enforces my claim.
You also seem to lack an understanding of how D/P gets stealth and how x/D gets stealth. I wager you heard the uproar from when there was a thief could stack stealth by using x/D 5 Cloak and Dagger on the walls of enemy structures and figured thieves can stealth off all walls. This isn’t the case, the CnD bug was patched, and it only worked on the walls of enemy structures, there’s nothing to CnD off of in the EB JP but enemy players.
Those red circles you saw were x/P 5 Black Powder. A smoke field. D/P thieves use the Leap finisher effect of thier D/x 2 Heartseeker, on the Black Powder smoke field to yield the Stealth combo effect.
All in all, your lack of understanding, and facts about the event you’ve put forward show this wasn’t all that impressive of a feat. There’s loads of camping spots in the EB JP, and even a single player in a place that complimented thier class’ abilities could do just as well.

Cactus.2710:

Dual.8953:

I’m against Aegis droping stealth, for two reasons; one Aegis is already a warning in and of itself, you hear the “pong” and dodge roll away, let them screw up and destealth on the miss of the second try; two, because the Guardian has perma aegis, I play a Guardian and they already can practically faceroll most content in this game, they don’t need anymore freebies, however, they could add a 13 millisecond aftercast to Backstab. The average person takes about 12 milliseconds to react to sound, I’ve clocked myself between 11 and 14.

It appears that you don’t know what a millisecond is. No way you react to sound in 12 msec.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_chronometry

http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/reactiontime.shtml

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Reaction+Time+Human

http://www.colorado.edu/eeb/courses/1230jbasey/abstracts%202005/5.htm

My bad, I was out a decimal point. Yes 120 milliseconds, add that to Backstab’s 250 ms cast time for a total of 370 ms. How do I know I’m 110 to 140 ms? A reaction game I used to play clocked me at it.

I’m against Aegis droping stealth, for two reasons; one Aegis is already a warning in and of itself, you hear the “pong” and dodge roll away, let them screw up and destealth on the miss of the second try; two, because the Guardian has perma aegis, I play a Guardian and they already can practically faceroll most content in this game, they don’t need anymore freebies, however, they could add a 13 millisecond aftercast to Backstab. The average person takes about 12 milliseconds to react to sound, I’ve clocked myself between 11 and 14.

Aberrant.6749:

At least the thief downed state is pretty awesome…

Only in PvP. It’s utterly useless in PvE.

Excalibur.9748:

Travlane.5948:

other classes have just as much energy…like rangers/engineers. we only have like a couple more evades…. and the thing about our evade is most of them are 1/4 second for a 1 second or 1.25 second skill. so we use the skill and are left open most of the time for free dmg. like death blossom. a very risky skill.

and yes we are a lil more slippery than most but not so much. if i was given the choice in losing all the extra evades that we have than other classes to gain “protection , stability, invulnerability, aegis, blocking etc….low HP pool…crap defense/medium armor” u can mark my words i will trade those 2 or 3 evades any and every day for the other things not sure there is a thief that wouldnt.

but would you trade stealth?

Some might, some don’t use stealth at all, but in all honestly, that’s like asking a Necro if they’d trade their Deathshroud for evades.

Personally I wouldn’t because stealth and style is why I chose Thief, if I wanted something else I’d hop on my Engie or Guard. Both of which are can do more then any thief I’ve seen, with less effort.

Stooperdale.3560:

An aggro drop on stealth would allow players to drag monsters onto other players and then stealth to lose aggro. This could be used for griefing but perhaps it caused other problems in PvP.

That’s already kind of doable, but really not that much of a threat in WvW combat. The real reason for the change was there were instances where mobs would switch into out-of-combat mode and get super regen resetting the fight. This was particularly annoying when it happened in boss fights like Giganticus Lupicus in Arah. Lupi would lose target in the thief and forget the rest of the party. Unfortunately, this change they did make needs a lot of fine tuning, they made Downed 3 useless in PvE for instance.

If you do your daily and one or two world bosses, you should net a gold easy. Another thing I do is gather all in sight and sell off what I don’t need. I’ve been able to rack up 10 gold some days with these methods.
Gold Sinks are what keeps the base price of most exotics between one and two gold.

Zephyrus.9680:

@OP, I realize you’re a zerger but everything a roamer does is WvW strategy. Everything short of killing the opposing zerg itself. Unless you include zergbusting teams.

Here’s a guide/checklist so you don’t need a boring video:

- Roamers control supply. Supply wins WvW (in terms of points). They are the reason your towers and keeps are full supply when the siege starts, while the enemy objectives aren’t.

- They ninja towers and keeps.

- They scout the enemy zerg so that your zerg will have the advantage of preparation.

- They are first responders in tower and keep defense and the reason your zerg knows where to go and what to attack and defend.

- They run supply to repair and build.

- They kill roamers (and more) from the opposing team.

I think the problem here is everyone is generalizing what a zerger and roamer is. Roamers can be seen self proclaimed heroes, running around seeking personal gain, when in reality some act as scouts and are wholy devoted to what they can do for their server.
Zergers can be seen as players looking for a free ride, but a good zerger is focused on following the directions of the commander. With a skilled commander and a disciplined zerg, a zerg is the most devastating force on the map, able to accomplish any objective faster then any smaller force, at the cost of some efficiency. They’re fast, strong, surprisingly manuverable and contribute the highest point tick to the server.

Probably the main reason you don’t see as many zerg vids is because they’re harder to do. It’s harder to show all that’s going on, and harder to show all the coordination behind the scenes.

What modes do you play? Also, some turrets like Flame and Thumper have quite limited range.