Guild Wars 2

Laika.8795:

Add 1 init cost and -100 range to HS, and your problem will pretty much be solved. But really, if you immobilize or even snare those noobs, they are just bleeding init. Just hit them with one of those and dodge away and enjoy the free kill when they peter out.

Acelerion.6820:

tl:dr: heart seeker needs to decide if it wants to be damage or utility, it shouldent have both. Compensate in other areas ect…

I completely agree. S/x gap closer does practically no damage, it is like 90% utility (but it’s utility is second to none). I don’t see how anyone justifies huge range, combo finisher, and ridiculous situational damage. It is especially stupid in the logical progression of being able to do amazing damage with mug>cnd>bs, and just keep on your target until dead with this ability. A choice must be made. Revealed should come up no matter what (no stealth stacking) culling disabled and HS changed… After that, 100% L2P at all the whiners out there.

This I can agree with completely.

Sebrent.3625:

Stiv.1820:

The problem with this is I do play another class that I now consider my main (getting any ascended junk I get anyway).

I feel your pain here … I hate getting non-ascended rings now … I only have so many globs, vials, etc. to put into the mystic toilet and magic find at higher levels in fractals is frowned upon and I sure as heck don’t want to be weaker anyways.

Stiv.1820:

Thieves can get away a good amount depending on how conservative they play. If you aren’t dying occasionally on your Thief you aren’t playing it to it’s full potential. Thieves have great mobility and juking with stealth but we aren’t the fastest.

Wait, dying as a class is an indicator of playing it to its full potential? I’m calling shenanigans!

He’s saying that because if you aren’t dying then you aren’t pushing yourself to the limit. You’re pushing the kill switch whenever you think it’s too hard rather then seeing how far you can go.
This is probably the main reason thieves escape so much in WvW. They learn very quickly that they can’t take much punishment so they bail out at the slightest uncertainty to compensate. They have difficulty learning their limit because they always bail out when pressured.

Sebrent.3625:

I didn’t say it shouldn’t have them, but it should be visible for at least half the fight. If that means you need some additional tools, I’m all ears.

More evasion, P/D needs something over P/P that isn’t Sneak Attack and Flanking Strike needs enough of a buff to justify choosing S/D as opposed to S/P or D/D.

By far the best suggestion I’ve seen make Revealed happen no matter what. It with the culling fix would end perma stealth. Dagger offhands would keep their rotations, D/P would take it the hardest but it has enough blinds to manage.

Sebrent.3625:

Notice how you got to stick around until that happened. If they had all run together you could have followed and continued the same. Others can’t do that.

I didn’t say whether or not that was you at the end. I simply stated exactly what you stated on the ehmry forum when you posted this … that a warrior on another server recorded it and you’re in it as the sword thief.

As far as “look! I almost died when 2 people ganged me and CC’d the crud out of me by the Dolyak”. You know what happens when someone else gets CC’d to high heaven? They die. Almost is pretty useless.

So the class that has its defense tied entirely to stealth and evasion, shouldn’t have stealth and evasion. How is that reasonable?

Sebrent.3625:

It would be nice if they changed cloak and dagger as currently a Thief fighting against a Ranger or Mesmer has the Ranger pet or Mesmer clones as easy cloak and dagger targets. It makes fighting Thieves as these classes rather frustrating as your class mechanic is benefitting your opponent.

It would be a neat mechanic if CnD missed Clones but still hit Phantasms. And maybe let ranger pets stay looked on thief if they were already targetting before hand.

Just gonna say, DPS burst builds work far better on players then they do dungeon Vets and Champions.

bladie.5084:

scouting is already easy enough on a thief imo. Giving thieves skills cooldown won’t happen cuz it defeats the purpose of initiatives. What makes sense is they’ll prolly raise the initiative cost? Who knows. Lets not forget that everyone’s abusing stealth culling atm so that’s a big plus. Pretty sure it’s not gonna get fixed for a long time.

Actually they’ve announced they’re removing culling in this month’s patch.

sostronk.8167:

jportell.2197:

They already have a 3 second debuff… Culling takes effect here… I think the debuff should apply whether they cause damage or not.. This would make them choose wisely before they started using stealth…

It would only be a nerf to bad players, but yeah I agree.

I can accept that so long as my up time doesn’t take a hit.

Zepidel.5349:

I’d like to see longer stealth times with reveal on damage. Thieves don’t feel very sneaky when the longest stealth we have is 15 or so seconds that taking up 3 skill slots….

a nice 30 second stealth with a 30 sec cd, that would reveal you if you took any dmg at all would be really nice. I would be able to run around wvwvw and scout/look for straglers and cheesy stealth spam tactics would be nullified by a single bleed/AoE from an opponent.

And Pistol/Dagger would become completely useless and Sword/Dagger would be inferior in every way to Sword/Pistol. No gusta.

Not so much classes are play styles. I only really have Sword 2 as a stun break so things with knockdowns and blowouts can be annoying.

Xsorus.2507:

The ability to reset a fight will always be overpowered in any PvP game..

The ability to do it multiple times till you manage to win is why Stealth is overpowered.

in DAOC if I screwed up, I could vanish and be useless for a bit..It had a long cooldown.

in Warhammer online, i had to exit combat for 10 seconds I believe it was before i could stealth again.

In Rift, Vanish in that game had a 2 minute timer, and was moronic as well.

In SWTOR, Marauders had an incombat stealth on a short cooldown that they could abuse and again, they were overpowered…

This game actually goes a step beyond Marauders in stupidity..

You can stealth, constantly.. in combat…With no Penalty….there is no disadvantage to having stealth in this game…

You can escape virtually every fight if you just play smart….

If you screw up, you can just run away with no one able to do anything about it.

You get to do this while having some of the best Damage in the game…

I have a thief, it is overpowered… and a complete joke to play..

Stealth is overpowered if you have a low TTK and don’t need a high uptime to be effective. Unfortunately, only 1 out of the 4 stealth sets fits that description. S/D, moderate to high uptime required to be effective. Completely overshadowed by S/P without stealth.

Yak’s Bend would be required to get one for all thier users.

Heinel.6548:

Dual.8953:

D W.5179:

Jinks.2057:

Heinel.6548:

Jinks.2057:

So everyone is just complaining about all thieves then.

Its either too much damage or too tanky or stealth abuses too much or resets fight at will etc etc etc

Gotta hate those 30 30 30 30 30 thieves running around

Not all. Thieves who don’t abuse stealth is not in the complaint.

That’s not true. We could go thru all the pages and pick out just as many if not more complaints about glass thieves damage.

Every aspect of the thief class has been complained about in this thread.

This thread needs to be locked.

LOL, why does this thread need locked? It’s a discussion.
I don’t think anybody would be complaining about thief burst if there was no issue with stealth. I agree that this thread went pretty off topic and started targeting thieves instead of stealth, but it’s kind of understandable since one directly relates to the problem with the other.
Of my three mains, a thief is one of them, and the crap you can pull off while abusing stealth needs addressed. I don’t know how to address it, but a conversation like this one can often spark an idea with some middle ground they may catch a developers eye. In other words, I hope this thread does not get locked, but I also hope it gets back on topic.
When they “fix culling” with the next patch, who knows, maybe stealth will not be an issue. I doubt it since historically, most games with stealth have balancing issues to where the stealth class is either completely useless or OP… Would love to see ANet be the group to find the middle ground.

Assuming all thieves only want to burst. Tch.
S/D has no burst and no condition and it’s control is accessed through spamming CnD -> Tactical Strike. If stealth is nerfed the set becomes completely inferior to S/P, with a weakened defense and completely shattered offense.

Just what makes you think spamming 2-second daze is acceptable?

Daze isn’t very strong. It’s a weaker stun pretty much. It only interrupts and stops the victim from using skills for its duration. The victim can still move, evade and stun break. I should also add, Daze from tactical strike can only be achieved when flanking (It blinds from the front), and it’s a melee attack. S/P can daze with Head Shot (a 4 init ranged attack) or Pistol Whip (a 5 init melee attack which doesn’t need to be in the back and has an auto miniburst with invulnerability) Also, while dazed, S/D thief’s best offensive option is their auto attack.

D W.5179:

Jinks.2057:

Heinel.6548:

Jinks.2057:

So everyone is just complaining about all thieves then.

Its either too much damage or too tanky or stealth abuses too much or resets fight at will etc etc etc

Gotta hate those 30 30 30 30 30 thieves running around

Not all. Thieves who don’t abuse stealth is not in the complaint.

That’s not true. We could go thru all the pages and pick out just as many if not more complaints about glass thieves damage.

Every aspect of the thief class has been complained about in this thread.

This thread needs to be locked.

LOL, why does this thread need locked? It’s a discussion.
I don’t think anybody would be complaining about thief burst if there was no issue with stealth. I agree that this thread went pretty off topic and started targeting thieves instead of stealth, but it’s kind of understandable since one directly relates to the problem with the other.
Of my three mains, a thief is one of them, and the crap you can pull off while abusing stealth needs addressed. I don’t know how to address it, but a conversation like this one can often spark an idea with some middle ground they may catch a developers eye. In other words, I hope this thread does not get locked, but I also hope it gets back on topic.
When they “fix culling” with the next patch, who knows, maybe stealth will not be an issue. I doubt it since historically, most games with stealth have balancing issues to where the stealth class is either completely useless or OP… Would love to see ANet be the group to find the middle ground.

Assuming all thieves only want to burst. Tch.
S/D has no burst and no condition and it’s control is accessed through spamming CnD → Tactical Strike. If stealth is nerfed the set becomes completely inferior to S/P, with a weakened defense and completely shattered offense.

Dralor.3701:

Have said it before, as have others, its going to be hard to balance the class until they fix the stealth/culling issues where an invisible player can kill you because they are not being rendered. Until that happens and people have spent some time playing without the culling… its hard to have a balance discussion.

I don’t see how ANY thief player can think it is fair that stealth is not working as intended in WvW, I certainly don’t.

Also wanted to add, as far as stealth goes while it is mostly a thief issue there is a the good WvW groups always hit their opponents after going through a stealth/invis field. With culling being hit or miss anyway, this tactic gives one side plenty of free kills before the other have even seen them load.

Well culling’s been announced as being removed next patch so there’s no point saying stealth needs to be adjusted for culling anymore.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Stealth definitely needs a nerf. The only ‘counter’ in the game to stealth is random AoE damage. Every other mechanic / playstyle has a solid counter: burst damage, conditions, boon stripping, etc. etc. With the upcoming reduction to aoe damage, thief stealth is getting an indirect buff.

When specced properly, thief stealth can grant a speed boost, condition stripping, regeneration and vigor.

Either the traits need to be adjusted around the mechanic, the mechanic needs to be adjusted around the traits, or the profession’s base statistics & abilities need to be adjusted around both. The second option may be simpler, but not necessarily better.

In short, ArenaNet created a game mechanic that has no reasonable counter, and that needs to be fixed.

Explain to me why I shouldn’t see this as “invalidate balanced and support builds, all thieves should be bursty glass cannons”

Yeah. I don’t think any thief would complain about making SR an elite so they can free up an extra utility slot.

Iove.3902:

7/10, like that armor but it is over used. The purple skin doesn’t go with the colors too well, but the colors make the armor look nice. Could try to contrast the colors with your skin.

No one laughed at my second picture!

@Nefarious, I ran out of Trans Stones QQ

NEW HAT!

You have this ghost piraty raider feel. Looks cool, 8/10.

Dralor.3701:

Not sure what part of D/D there is to stun break since its just raw damage, also fail to see how it is possibly the worst weapon set when it has the highest burst. Unless that dude was just kidding?

I see D/D as crazy effective. On the direct damage end it has Backstab and Heartseeker. 2 of the most complained about skills in the game. It has Cloak and Dagger. A skill that the other two dagger offhands need to keep themselves from being UP. And if you got condition you don’t even need CnD. You’ve got Deathblossom.

Illusions.3108:

what gear would you all recommend for high dps

Sustained or burst? Direct or DoT? Single or Multitarget?

Fjandi.2516:

Dual.8953:

Funny because a Ranger with good Vigor and endurance recovery can be a real pain to fight for thieves. Horn 4 is good for keeping a thief marked. Same with Longbow 2. You’ve also got Cone AoEs, circle AoE traps, a lot of evades, good healing, a block counter and some other AoEs.

Lol stop there pls. The warhorn is wasted in a trap based build, same for the longbow and 2h sword (on a side note….the longbow….really? lol). You are saying other ppl don’t know the game mechanics yet you seem not to know how the ranger class works. Rangers can obviously use every skill and weapon at the same time lol.
I agree on the first part tho. Is really hard for a thief to fight a good bunker ranger, and this is not a surprise, since the bm bunker ranger is kinda op in small scale. I admit that, i know that, and i play a bunker ranger.
Can a thief kill a good bunker ranger (in wvw)? Yes he can, but it won’t be easy at all.
Can a bunker ranger kill a good thief? No way, if the thief is loosing the fight can just run away and keep himself stealthed by spamming c&d on mobs. Luckily not all thieves are that coward.

I wasn’t saying take all of them. Just listing possible options. Barrage was mentioned. It’s a long bow skill. Long bows have Rapid Fire too, which is a channel. Stealth doesn’t end channels.

Dralor.3701:

Dual.8953:

Dralor.3701:

Dual.8953:

Dralor.3701:

Learn to fight invisible players who can reset at will is not specific advice, there is in fact no advice you can give. The only two tactics that work are stalling while you run to safety, being a full bunker spec who they can never kill or running with a mob.

See that there is the attitude. We’ve tried explaining coming tactics, weaknesses, tendancies. Other players try to ignore it or talk it down. They don’t want to improve, they want free kills.

I’m really confused. As someone who plays a thief myself, everyone else does feel like free kills (when I’m on my thief!). Its really boring when the other player can’t fight back, there is almost zero interaction.

You’re D/D right?

Yup.

No set performs on the level of D/D. Probably D/P and P/D are second. It’s no secret P/D is only good because of stealth. I use S/D. A burstless set that can daze with its stealth attack. It like P/D, uses its stealth skill often to be effective, and it’s stongest damage dealer it it’s auto-attack (same auto-attack kitten P).

I tried BS D/D the other day (training my guild mates to handle Thieves). D/D’s insane compared to other sets.

Dralor.3701:

Dual.8953:

Dralor.3701:

Learn to fight invisible players who can reset at will is not specific advice, there is in fact no advice you can give. The only two tactics that work are stalling while you run to safety, being a full bunker spec who they can never kill or running with a mob.

See that there is the attitude. We’ve tried explaining coming tactics, weaknesses, tendancies. Other players try to ignore it or talk it down. They don’t want to improve, they want free kills.

I’m really confused. As someone who plays a thief myself, everyone else does feel like free kills (when I’m on my thief!). Its really boring when the other player can’t fight back, there is almost zero interaction.

You’re D/D right?

SteepledHat.1345:

Dual.8953:

See that there is the attitude. …….. They don’t want to improve, they want free kills.

How dare you call us all thief players!!
:)

Hahaha, very clever. You know very well the context I meant.

Dralor.3701:

Learn to fight invisible players who can reset at will is not specific advice, there is in fact no advice you can give. The only two tactics that work are stalling while you run to safety, being a full bunker spec who they can never kill or running with a mob.

See that there is the attitude. We’ve tried explaining coming tactics, weaknesses, tendancies. Other players try to ignore it or talk it down. They don’t want to improve, they want free kills.

If you want to range single targets, I suggest a Pistol. P/D event has the retreating 3 skill, albeit a bit different.

Dralor.3701:

It is hard to make a call one way or the other until they fix culling, but even with that being said it would be more constructive if the other side simply didn’t say l2p.

The other side has tried giving specific advice, and it was thrown back in thier faces.

Though mobile, they’re really slow and ineffective against infantry, not to mention expensive. So I think they’re fine.

TainoFuerte.8136:

Dual.8953:

Yes. List everything that any class can do with enough skill.

Ah, the “everyone just needs skill” argument. It just so happens that those people in the woods hacking at dolyaks are thieves for lore reasons? It’s not that, for example, a random Necro caught in the middle of nowhere by 2 or 3 guys is completely fubared vs a thief who just stabs a deer and runs away?

For the zerg thing, you realize that thief is the successor to they class whose job was to, shadowstep to key targets in the enemy party, burst them down then shadowstep back right? Also Assassins where tankier then Thieves, sporting things like sustainable enchantments that gave them a 75% chance to dodge attacks.

Thieves are supposed to be sneaky, sneaking around the enemy territory is sneaky, so excuse them for not running around like a drunken norn warrior looking for a brawl.

I didn’t realize “sneaky” meant literally zerg diving and doing whatever. Fascinating.

It’s like thieves don’t tire of using the same arguments. Right here it’s “thieves are supposed to be broken”.

Sorry, not buying.

Anyone can solo a dolyak. I do it on my underleveled alts. The skill thing was more pretaining to the soloing camps and keeps. Anyone can do that with enough skill.

I’m guessing you never seen what a good necro can do.

They’re doing what they’ve always done. Hunting squishies in the enemy party, just like the GW1 Assassin. You’re saying they aren’t sneaking to do that? They aren’t marching around for all to see, they’d die instantly if they did that, so yes they’re sneaking.

TainoFuerte.8136:

So killing Dolyaks, soloing camps, harassing supply runners, killing zerg reinforcements and previously back flipping towers all alone endlessly with nobody to stop you doesn’t contribute to WvW? Wow, could have fooled me.

Thieves are the literal troll class. Mess up? No problem, reset the fight at your whim. Enemy zerg coming? No problem, stab a rabbit and invis away. Downed a player around too many people? Go zerg diving, stab his corpse, get your kill and leave. You know, just like all those other classes that can go high damage, overextend into the enemy team and escape without repair costs. Oh wait.

RTL lets Eles do the same? UNACEPPTABLE NERF NERF NERF NERF

At least you could see whether the Ele was going to flee or keep fighting vs having to guess if the Thief is just trolling away or applying Basilisk and precasting CnD for you.

The real problem here is that thieves actually believe that being able to do whatever they want against anybody else without any risk involved isn’t the very definition of being an overpowered class, just like the rogue archetype has been in basically any other game.

Yes. List everything that any class can do with enough skill.

For the zerg thing, you realize that thief is the successor to they class whose job was to, shadowstep to key targets in the enemy party, burst them down then shadowstep back right? Also Assassins where tankier then Thieves, sporting things like sustainable enchantments that gave them a 75% chance to dodge attacks.

Thieves are supposed to be sneaky, sneaking around the enemy territory is sneaky, so excuse them for not running around like a drunken norn warrior looking for a brawl.

vespers.1759:

Sunflowers.1729:

Well it is possible that thieves are not overpowered, assuming you take the best players and no lag/culling.etc

Thieves are extremely good at preying on people who have low to decent skill level. While the very best players can counter a thief (which may or may not be true, but that’s a different issue from the one below), most can’t.

Is this a problem? Many thieves like to argue that “L2P n00b, if the best players can counter thieves, why can’t you do the same?”

Let’s take a different scenario. I’m a dungeon master – would it be appropriate to raise ALL dungeons to the difficulty of, say, Arah P4? Of course not; just because I can complete a difficult dungeon doesn’t mean that all dungeons should be made equally demanding – the average player needs something to do or they will quickly leave the game. What I’m saying is that the game cannot be balanced around the bestest estest players, same as the way that monsters in fractal lv 1 don’t instantly 100-0 you

WELL JEEZ SINCE PEOPLE CAN DO FRACTALS LV 40 AND NOT DIE I DON’T SEE WHY IT SHOULDN’T BE THAT WAY FROM LV 1. What a valid argument.

Now back to the thief-L2P argument. Is it easy to Steal + CnD + Backstab? Yeah you’d have to be pretty dumb to not pull it off. How about spamming heartseeker? Even easier!

Now how do you counter this thief? Oh you just have to stun him, hope he doesn’t press blinding powder or shadowstep to get out, then do a lot of damage. Of course you need to dodge backstabs from someone you can’t even see. Hit the air and be a mind reader, predicting where the thief went. If they shadow refuge you’d better have some way to forcibly remove them from the circle or they will reset the fight.

Yes, the best players can do that. But can an average player? No. So why should thieves be able to destroy people who suck, even though the thief sucks as bad?

Sure you can argue that the game is balanced around the highest skill levels since it is a competitive PvP game that they are aiming for, and I’d have to agree with you on that point.

However when you see mostly thieves and bunker builds (to survive the thieves) in WvW, it might be a sign that balancing should be done around the masses, preferably in a way that doesn’t affect the top-end viability of thieves (should Anet decide that at the very highest levels of play, thieves are not OP).

TLDR: L2P is not a valid argument – thieves can suck and still dominate.

well said. i’ll add that some thieves say “use aoe” well what about the classes that on’t even have aoe? i play ranger and my aoe is barrage. that’ll be really handy vs a cloaked thief trying to get behind me and pew pew with a 6k backstab 4k heart 4k heart 3k basic.

Funny because a Ranger with good Vigor and endurance recovery can be a real pain to fight for thieves. Horn 4 is good for keeping a thief marked. Same with Longbow 2. You’ve also got Cone AoEs, circle AoE traps, a lot of evades, good healing, a block counter and some other AoEs.

Nah. Personally I like to run leaving a trail of grenades behind me. It can have some nice versatility if you can master it, being able to run and fire without the speed decrease of running backwards or sideways.

Sunflowers.1729:

Well it is possible that thieves are not overpowered, assuming you take the best players and no lag/culling.etc

Thieves are extremely good at preying on people who have low to decent skill level. While the very best players can counter a thief (which may or may not be true, but that’s a different issue from the one below), most can’t.

Is this a problem? Many thieves like to argue that “L2P n00b, if the best players can counter thieves, why can’t you do the same?”

Let’s take a different scenario. I’m a dungeon master – would it be appropriate to raise ALL dungeons to the difficulty of, say, Arah P4? Of course not; just because I can complete a difficult dungeon doesn’t mean that all dungeons should be made equally demanding – the average player needs something to do or they will quickly leave the game. What I’m saying is that the game cannot be balanced around the bestest estest players, same as the way that monsters in fractal lv 1 don’t instantly 100-0 you

WELL JEEZ SINCE PEOPLE CAN DO FRACTALS LV 40 AND NOT DIE I DON’T SEE WHY IT SHOULDN’T BE THAT WAY FROM LV 1. What a valid argument.

Now back to the thief-L2P argument. Is it easy to Steal + CnD + Backstab? Yeah you’d have to be pretty dumb to not pull it off. How about spamming heartseeker? Even easier!

Now how do you counter this thief? Oh you just have to stun him, hope he doesn’t press blinding powder or shadowstep to get out, then do a lot of damage. Of course you need to dodge backstabs from someone you can’t even see. Hit the air and be a mind reader, predicting where the thief went. If they shadow refuge you’d better have some way to forcibly remove them from the circle or they will reset the fight.

Yes, the best players can do that. But can an average player? No. So why should thieves be able to destroy people who suck, even though the thief sucks as bad?

Sure you can argue that the game is balanced around the highest skill levels since it is a competitive PvP game that they are aiming for, and I’d have to agree with you on that point.

However when you see mostly thieves and bunker builds (to survive the thieves) in WvW, it might be a sign that balancing should be done around the masses, preferably in a way that doesn’t affect the top-end viability of thieves (should Anet decide that at the very highest levels of play, thieves are not OP).

TLDR: L2P is not a valid argument – thieves can suck and still dominate.

My problem is where people aim to bring the OP specs in line. They want them down and they don’t care if the more balanced specs and are screwed over or changed into something completely different to do it.

I find it hard deciding between context but, if I’m talking about an attribute of the class I’ll use Thief’s and if I’m talking about players I’ll use Thieves as my general rule of thumb.

What Server are you on?

Unarmed brawlers are always kitten. Especially when they go over the top. I want a class that can grab their opponent by the face and ram them into the nearest wall. Or do flip kicks for knockdowns.
I think I’d like to see the return of the Ritualist and the Dervish.

It’s not really the forum moderator’s job. Try Services > Support.

Genesis Notch.1905:

Apply x number of hit that a thief can receive during stealth. This counter decreases when the thief receives non-conditional damage, and if this number reaches 0, the thief should be revealed.

Also, if possible, faint footsteps.

Doesn’t sound viable. Thieves don’t stealth long enough to warrant it. Any prolonged stealth with the exception of Shadow Refuge is the result of regular restealthing.

Viridian.2357:

After finally breaking down and leveling a thief to 80, getting it geared, etc… I have to say thieves are balanced. There is a huge difference between people who know how to fight a thief and those who don’t.

And those who say OMG THIEF STEALTHS FOREVER AND DOES 15K damage! … you can’t spec to do massive damage and infinite stealth. Thieves that do 15K damage are shredded like tissue paper.

Yeah I get the feeling that arguement is losing it’s effectiveness, and shifting to “thieves shouldn’t stealth because it makes them harder to kill when they spec into it.”

Fuzzion.2504:

Necros are a pain to kill. They do no damage but have a ton of hp. Its like trying to kill a brick.

Ugh Tell me about it. I was 2v1ing one and she just would not give an inch (she got my partner down a couple times too). We had to leave cause a zerg was approaching. I think I heard some of my guildies mention a lone necro was holding up their capping an area during a karma train.

I notice a trend. People get bursted down by glass cannon thieves, then make suggestion that would force thieves to play glass cannon.

I find blinds more useful then evades (because you can defend your fellow party members with them), and we have a lot of them too. I’d suggest default to blinds then have evades if blinds won’t work. SB is your best friend when kitten hits the fan.

Reflexmonkey.1943:

Pickmansmodel.1298:

Which class do you play?

If you don’t already use a thief, try playing the class for a while. You’ll figure out their weaknesses.

If you’re already playing thief, and regularly winning against the odds, respect.

I made a thief to see how much of a versatility advantage they have over the other classes. never played a thief before. and for two hours of hotjoins i died three or four times with probably over 100 kills. and your saying their not op? stfu

Hotjoin isn’t the bar people measure by on these boards. Hotjoin’s a place where newbies bash eachothers face in with little to no semblence of strategy and almost completely ignore they’re in a conquest game mode.
At the higher levels, thieves drift down to around the middle of the road in terms of effectiveness.

LordByron.8369:

teg.1340:

Stealth mechanics let anyone look dumb because fighting what you cant see is like gambling. You have to predict where the thieve could be. You dont get any reliable feedback, when you actually hit a stealthed thief.

There are times when you are lucky. But you wont find those moments in thief vids. Those vids only show moments when you are unlucky and those moments lets you look like a complete jerk.

Haha, he spams aoe on my SR but I’m miles away due to shadow step.
Haha, he wastes his CC in that direction but I dodged in the opposite direction.
Haha, he doesnt dodge my backstab because of culling / lag.
Haha, I’m the greatest thief on earth.
Oops, I died… let me cut this off.

well just try to be a little objective…i know its hard.

What’s the chance of opponent hitting you enough times while stealthed?
Its just hard to hit you ONCE while stealthed but its quite difficult to kill with a single hit…(unless you are a glass cannon in that case you are dead and the thief on the forum will proceed to say “wear some PVT you noob” things completely wrong by itself)

You have to gamble your aoe on a 360°+distance so its an uneven bet.

Its not so hard to understand.

AoE are not a good answer to stealth…..its the only little chance to kill predictable (read BAD) thieves…that is all.

Culling is not even the problem…..stealth should be something like mesmers:
A tool you have to use for short times with long CD and NEVER paired with mobility, burst, and insane survival mechanics.

Just remove initiative system for stealth…

Yeah, no. Those suggestion would make S/D and P/D the most worthless sets in the game. The non stealth sets would be significantly weakened losing both attack and mobility, all that would remain useable is backstab burst specs.

style.6173:

bladie.5084:

lLobo.7960:

Terrible idea…
IS as a leap finisher would be crazy OP…
Blind not going away on attacks would be insane OP, even if they didnt stack in duration.

S/P is a good set now, maybe some work on PW to improve time or dmg, but even as it is is a good skill to use…

S/P is not a burst dmg set, is more controll and sustain dmg set.
You can perma blind groups of trash mob and autoattack them to death, helps the group also. You can tank with PW spam if timed right to evade boss (blind imune/10%) attacks, etc… On most bosses IS/PW/SR work wonders to deliver dmg and recover from stuns and conds.

D/P is a good solo set, but not so nice in groups due to combo overlaping that can mess up your stealth.

D/D is still a good ST dmg dealer if you dont need to worry about evading much.

You’re talking PVE, I believe most of the thieves here are implying PVP situations. The first obvious disadvantage is the fact that S/P is not stealth specced, which is perfectly fine imo. And the fact that it’s not stealth specced, makes it a lil more advanced for whoever wants to play it. But what’s disappointing is the dmg, and the skill options of S/P. And lets keep in mind this is the #1 skill set with the most demanding initiatives.

Exactly. Blinds are useless against people who actually move (non PvE). And yes, my comments are focused around PvP and WvW.

Here is what people who think this will make it OP do not understand. You CANNOT spam this. Add up the initiative usage and you will see. You would still end up with a skill that is less effective that D/P but at least it makes S/P more viable.

The reason Blinds would be OP’d is the trait Cloaked in Shadows. As an S/P thief you may not be familiar with it, but with his little gem, a thief with Cloak and Dagger can proc 5 second blinds on everyone in a 240 radius every time they stealth. Which is every 3 seconds.

Alpha.1308:

style.6173:

If this was a change to “help” the thief in PvE, revert it. I never had problems with mobs resetting. This new change just means as soon as I’m visible again, I get attacked. There needs to be a second or two before a mob can react when you appear.

seriously
if this WAS the reason
never had i once gotten a mob to reset on me when leveling my thief using Cloak and Dagger and Backstab
if people actually had an issue with this it’s either a bug that only affected some people (highly unlikely) or just idiots who thought they could Stealth for the full duration to get passive effects in stealth to start activating or something
if not that,then they must have just been too stupid to understand how to act quick enough (which the timeframe was huge anyway) and they really just should NOT be rolling a thief,if that’s the case,period

It had nothing to do with reaction times. Bosses like Lupicus were resetting instantaneously ignoring the other players in the area. Basically, the thief would stealth and the boss would forget the other party members along with the thief and reset the fight.

teg.1340:

Dual.8953:

That’s because we get a whole bunch of laymen making suggestions that would ruin thieves. Things that would be equivalent to, make it so Eles can’t use Boons, or make it so Mesmers can’t use clones or phantasms. Other classes ardently defend themselves too from similar claims against them. Thieves and Mesmers probably take the most heat because they’re based around deception and trickery.

Ele boon stacking has been nerfed significantly with the latest patch in addition to RTL nerf. Fury, Swiftness and Vigor uptime has been extremely cut back. Thats results in less mobility, less survivability and less damage. Coincident nothing has been changed about thief and stealth in WvW.

Nerfed isn’t removed. Eles still have more ways to sustain themselves in plain sight the most classes.

Oozo.7856:

Dralor.3701:

Please don’t confuse stealth being broken/overpowered with thieves themselves being OP.

It just needs to be fixed in WvW, the class isn’t dominating in spvp.

Correct. The only real problem is the frequency of stealth that is available. Frequency of stealth isn’t an issue in sPvP since you can’t cap points while stealthed.

Unfortuatly, P/D and S/D are based around using their stealth attacks as much as possible.

nekos.2584:

Reduktion.5791:

As you can see in this video – this ele is destroying 3 (!!!!) Thiefs simultaneously !!!!

Those thieves need to learn 2 play. They need to make an ele and learn how to counter them…

No one is saying some ele builds are not over powered also. What we are saying is that thieves are over powered and the thief community is doing every thing they can to keep it that way.

That’s because we get a whole bunch of laymen making suggestions that would ruin thieves. Things that would be equivalent to, make it so Eles can’t use Boons, or make it so Mesmers can’t use clones or phantasms. Other classes ardently defend themselves too from similar claims against them. Thieves and Mesmers probably take the most heat because they’re based around deception and trickery. The thing is, unlike the classes, thief’s defense is almost completely based around not getting hit and keeping pressure off. Most other classes are based around being able to withstand hits. To add to the reasons Thieves defend thier stealth, all thier weapon set that have access to stealth (with the exception of condition D/D) revolve around attacking from stealth. And that’s over half thier weapon sets. So those sets are attacked on all fronts when stealth nerfs are suggested.

Despite the animation, the game counts it as hitting 9 times. I think they could be doubling up the hits so after the first hit it goes 1 animated hit counts for 2.
And it is the displayed damage hitting 9 times, not 9 hits equals that damage.