Guild Wars 2

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Ruggan.4102:

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight…

No, necros can’t hit walls to get health any more, it was fixed. And it was for the purpose of damaging the wall, not getting healing, because the healing (and really, the damage, it just was for contesting WPs) is so unbelievably kitten so as not to matter. In fact, are you honestly comparing 25 health per hit to being able to stealth? Because that is laughably bullkitten.

From March 26 Patch Notes “•Necromancer trait: Now allows life-stealing on walls in World vs. World”… so umm please get your facts straight. This was the last patch and that is what the patch notes said. As for comparing it… yea I can. People used to complain that thieves could hit walls ect to gain perma-stealth… they cannot anylonger and I agree with that… from the simple standpoint that inanimate objects don’t have eyes or other senses to make it so a thief could gain stealth. On the same token… walls don’t really have life so how does a necro steal life from them?

Zenith.7301:

Ruggan.4102:

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d ele or engineer arrives.

Thieves can both chase and disengage the best of any class, and people resent that despite the fact that thieves are not great in larger team fights, so they mainly roam.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

LOL Dagger Storm. And if you complain it’s an elite, the same is the case for ranger and necro, and engineers don’t even get stability unless it;s a 50% chance fromtossed elixir S.

Condi removal costs a slot — your condi removal is bundled into your heal. And from stealthing with traits, which you can use frequently.

P.S. Thief resets the fight for the reason anyone else tries to as well. They mess up, get a key skill dodged, etc. Thieves can just reset far more reliably than other classes, with only ele and mesmer having close to the ability to reset.

What about Dagger Storm? It is the only and I do mean ONLY stability granting ability on a thief… and it is an ELITE. Other classes get not one, not two, but multiple abilities to do this and not a lick of them require the elite slot. But lets look at ranger… the elite skill gives 20 seconds of stability… shared anguish transfers those conditions such as stun ect to your pet every 90 seconds, lets not mention the 6 ways to sunday that a ranger can grant himself and his pet protection. Oh, and most of those protection and stability things are traits not slot skills and they are in trait lines that a good deal of rangers use anyhow… such as skirmishing, beastmaster, and wilderness survival. So no, not even a contest.

Condition removal is bundled with stealth, correct. As for use frequently… well I guess you didn’t hear that they decreased the amount it can be used by increasing the reveal debuff timer. And yes, you actually do have to go into stealth for the condi removal to work… so if you hit Hide in Shadows for a heal and you have the revealed debuff… you do not cure those conditions. Oh yea that goes for cloak and dagger, blinding powder, ect ect. Any other class who has a debuff on an ability so they cant use that ability even when the CD timer is over (keep in mind, most of a thief’s stealth abilities are slot skills such as hide in shadows, blinding powder and not weapon skills… though we do have a few of those).

As for the ability to reset more effectively than most other classes (BTW, I would argue that Mesmers and Ele’s actually have better abilities to reset a fight… can we say invulnerability?)… well sure a thief should. After all, we are a medium armor melee class with the hit point base of a necro… which means, even on my ranger who has 356 less vitality than my thief (equal level), my thief trails his hit point pool by 1815 hit points so there is an actual difference in base hit points of over 5k… which is rather significant. Now, I know ele’s and necros and mesmers have low hit point pools… but then again, they have pets and aoe and ranges and channels and heals and invulnerabilities, and confusion and the list goes on and on.

Zenith.7301:

Probably because they’re the only class that can escape anyone they want, even zergs if they want to.

An ele can’t RTL away if he’s rooted, but a thief can infiltrator’s arrow out of roots and can hit random animals to stealth away.

Basically, thieves can reset fights. Yes, thieves can lose to several specs, especially confusion or retal ones, but their difference with other classes is that they can still harass and disengage at will from even fights that do not favor them, whereas a necromancer for example is kittened if a competent thief catches him, or a mesmer is screwed the moment a d/d ele or engineer arrives.

Thieves can both chase and disengage the best of any class, and people resent that despite the fact that thieves are not great in larger team fights, so they mainly roam.

Yes, Thieves can hit random animals to stealth… oh no… a necro can hit random non entities like walls to gain health. And if a thief is hitting animals to stealth, they are running away… how do I know this… because no idiot is going to cause themselves more agro and attacks when trying to win a pvp fight… oh yea keep in mind… in WvW there are no “white” animals, they are all red and agro… so umm yea.

Infiltrator Arrow will get a thief out of root… yup you are correct. It is one of the FEW abilities that do allow for some kind of condition removal for thieves. Other classes have condition removal, transfer, and stability. Find a thief ability that gives stability… oops it isn’t there.

So let me get this last part straight… because a thief can run away, the thief is OP? If a thief is so OP… then why does the thief need to reset the fight? Doesn’t make sense.

B Rad.5416:

Thief just 8k BS 5k Stealed me in spvp gear (so no 100+ crit damage). I’m sorry thieves but you (and I because I am one) need to get nerfed. In a game with no healers no one should be able to insta gib you. No ability in this game from ANY class should be able to do over 4k damage PERIOD. If classes can hit over 4k in spvp I think anet should really think about putting healers in the game to mitigate insane burst damage (took 15k damage in 1 second from a thief).

Well, technically, since every class has a heal ability… every class is a heal class. Secondly, if a thief is doing 8k BS dmg then they have to be specd for extremely high crit dmg % so I have to take umbrage with that statement. Third, 8k is actually no where near what a warrior can do with 100b… and you really cant say that no class should do over 4k when you must then think about how the player builds his toon… because 4k dmg is a lot if you are not specd for toughness but its nothing if you are. And I would really like to know how you took 15k in 1 second from a thief considering the high dmg burst abilities of a thief are things like CnD followed by BS… in this case, it takes longer for CnD to go off than 1 second and it takes longer than 1s for the thief to get behind and then use the BS. By your figures above (the 8k dmg) the theif would have had to pull of 2 perfect or near perfect critical hits using a BS and be able to do that in 1 second time… since that is impossible to do.. your comment is not only foolish, it shows your ignorance and bias against a class that you obviously have no clue about and have no clue how to handle in a fight.

OIIIIIO.7825:

Hi , I will try to address your concerns.

“The dmg is low and stealth debuff need to get reverted to 3 sec again. "
Thief Damage is actually high if you specialize for it.

“The 4 sec debuff screws our rotation. "
True this will take practice to re-learn to play

“Thief got no support thats good/better then other professions. "

Stealth is good support, Our Stealth is better than Mesmer Stealth
Vulnerability is good support, not better than other classes
Poison + Weakness is good support
And our dmg is now lower then most professions by a large margien,

“on top of that we are one of the harder pve professions to play and can easily get 1 shotted in some exp mode dungs. "

This is just a QQ I have an easier time on my thief than I do on an engineer
*Note I have not tried engineer since the patch

“Why bring a theif instead of a warr?”

Your group wants to skip some content – Stealth
You want higher DPS (Conditional)
You need a wall which a warrior can not bring
Access to Dark/ Smoke fields , but I will stop here as I feel I have backed up my statement.

“Sadly if u wanna be able to play this game in non noob grps its time to reroll warr or mesm…..”

This is also QQ It is certainly possible to play this game in non noob groups, this really comes down to who you know.

OP I hope this helps give some perspective. If there is anything inparticular I could do to offer help let me know I would be glad to. GL on your Journey in Tyria!

1) High Thief Dmg is dependent, for a good part, on stealth… BackStab, Cloak and Dagger, Stacking Might ect… it is also a dependent part of heals and condition removal. A Warrior bellowing out 100B can do exponentially more dmg with that 1 attack button than a thief who cant enter stealth. So yes, even if specd for it, the stealth nerf still hurts our dmg and decreases our dmg down to lower than almost every other class if not every other class.
2) Stealth is support? Yea its support so the thief can rez or get a group past mobs… so in that case, sure its support… but just like I don’t like being an Enchanter in EQ just because I can buff someone’s mana pool, I don’t like being a thief just so I can rez someone… that isn’t the role of the thief. If it was, why not just call them Morticians or Doctors or Field Medic…
3) Thief is easier? With no ability to get rid of agro in PvE, a downed set of skills that only leaves us a few more seconds til death, and now an entire trait line made unworkable… sorry but thief just became that much harder to play in PvE. As for engineer… umm lets see, you just got your turret dmg and health increased, the arc for the turrets increased, your sigils for your weapons now apply to your bundles… umm ya those are harsh nerfs.
4) Why bring a thief instead of a warrior? You make some points but most of them are mute. For one, Higher DMG… sorry, a warrior does higher direct dmg than a thief and for condition dmg well you could bring an ele or a necro… and both of them can apply vulnerability, strip boons, steal life or some combination of that… not to mention pets for additional dmg as well as additional condition dmg (with the necro)… add to that Mesmers for their pets and the ability to reflect cond dmg, direct dmg, and strip boons. So, no there is no reason to bring a thief other than your previously stated reason to run past mobs or to rez.

Dolan.3071:

Good riddance. Nerf Thieves into the ground so they no longer become the “go to” option for any sort of PvP. Then, after everyone has given up and goes off to learn a real class, slowly bring them back. Don’t even mention it in patch updates, just bring them back to their former glory and let the worthy players take notice.
An example of such a nerf could be +50% damage taken while stealthed.
People aren’t mad at individual thieves, a solo 1v1 with a thief usually ends in victory/ you run away with your tail between your legs, my point being the class IS NOT OP. People are mad at the HOARD of thieves, it’s a profession that works too well when you get heaps of them together. A multiple thief burst will kill anyone straight up, as well as the combined stealth capabilities. Thief works great, and is well balanced… When there’s one… But there is never just ONE.

Now about your shot at Elementalists, I advise that you take your own advice and actually play the class. Burst healing is all we got, sorry we don’t just keel over after you CnD + Mug + Backstab + Heartseeker Spam.
Let alone the irony of stating that another profession should dare be able to escape, yet play one that can ALWAYS retreat. Yes, yes invisibility is not invincibility but to argue that stealth isn’t the best escape tool in the game is foolish.

I personally think thief needs a buff in the dungeon department. Because really, other than Shadow Refuge it brings nothing extra to the party that a warrior can’t do better.

And us thieves are sooo sorry that a “hoard” of thieves is able to take you down… so lets see, to take you down it takes a hoard of thieves but, and you state this in your post, it just takes you a single person to take down a single thief… but that means that thieves are the go to class and OP? Dude, come on… please think about your statements before you make them.

As for thief having the best escape ability in the game.. yea duh they were supposed to be the most slippery and the best at escaping… too bad that is bunker ele’s and mesmers at the moment. And please, don’t claim that Ele’s only have their burst heals… considering the utility of switching between separate elemental abilities at a whim and each of those elemental abilities having some type of utility attached to them… Ele’s become far more than just burst healers.

That’s basically what he wants to see happen Das

Burnfall.9573:

To begin, I’ve always asked myself Why would a Thief use Stealth in this game? Thief doesn’t Stealth. Why would they? . I can not find any Mmo’s where a Thief uses Stealth abilities. The Only Class which fits that Profile and Attributes is Ninja a.k.a Nin.
I found an interesting info. about Ninja Stealth.
http://www.cart-white.co.uk/ninja/stealth.htm

Ninja fits your Profile and Attributes Perfectly except with the Nerfs.
So if you are concerned about Stealth being Nerfed or Crippled after this patch, why Not Ask For A Ninja Class? or to be Replaced by a Ninja Class?, Than you can have all the Stealth’s etc.. you want.

Everquest, Everquest II, WoW, Dungeons and Dragons Online… just a few examples of thieves using stealth mechanics… as for where the idea comes from.. it comes from Hide in Shadows from Dungeons and Dragons pnp games where a thief was able to sneak around virtually undetected using a skill set for its class. As for Ninja using stealth… yea well, sure I guess… but isn’t a ninja just an assassin and thus just another type of thief? Unless of course you are thinking about the modern definition of thief… in that case, perhaps the thief here should get Rap Sheet as an ability, Parole Officer pets, and a crow-bar to do house breaks…

Sifu.6527:

twoscoops.6913:

Please explain why you completely nerfed our dungeon viability by adding 1s to the revealed debuff.

Were we overpowered to begin with?

Thanks

Please explain what Anet did to COMPLETELY nerf your dungeon viability.

Sure..
1) There is an entire trait line devoted to stealth. Because of the extra 1 second reveal plus the no reduction in agro…. the line becomes rather useless except as a way to run past mobs before they see you.
2) A good portion of a thief’s ability to remove conditions, evade attacks, and apply boons requires stealth. So, with an extra second of reveal, those traits become clunky and do not synergize with a build.
3) In order to gain most of our major dmg abilities and our good heals for survivability, the abilities require stealth or use the stealth mechanic within them… Backstab, CnD, critical hits while in stealth, heals while in stealth, regen while in stealth, ect.
4) One of our downed abilities is to stealth while healing… however, since that no longer reduces agro, the mobs simply stand on top of us waiting for the stealth to fade and clobber us into mud pudding.

Does that answer your question? Oh, I know what you are going to say… well build a thief that doesn’t use those abilities… sure, now go build your guardian without heals or boons, build your warrior with light armor and no banners, build your ele without AOE, build your Mesmer without clones or invulnerability, build your ranger without his/her pet… should I go on?

Einlanzer.1627:

PopeUrban.2578:

randomfightfan.4091:

Sure caltrops nerf sucks for condi thieves, but it was warranted.

I’m also confused at why you as a person feel that cutting 5 seconds off of the duration of caltrops was “warranted”

Enlighten me.

It’s quite simple really – it stacked 2 bleeds per tick, causing up to 15 bleeds for a large group of enemies that lasted up to 20 seconds while also crippling everything in the same radius. This is very powerful for a utility skill (and thematically inappropriate, frankly), and the result of that is that Thieves were overdependent on it while leveling (regardless of build). I went from having a very difficult time playing my Thief to suddenly destroying groups of mobs abruptly when I picked up the skill.

I believe the Caltrops nerf was needed; what will happen now is that some of the serious playability issues the class has in PvE that were previously partially masked by broken-ish skills like Caltrops will be revealed more overtly and they’ll be forced to address issues like terrible Downed skills, terrible Vital Shot, and weaksauce Stealth.

Now the extra second on the Reveal debuff – that’s a whole different ballgame. They clearly didn’t stop to think about the ripple effects. I have to be honest, I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in their competence at this point.

So what your saying is… a skill that allowed a player to take on groups of mobs needed to be nerfed so that the player could no longer take on groups of mobs? If that is the case, then ranger entangle, ele’s AOEs, ranger traps, Engineer turets… and the list goes on… need to be nerfed as well so those classes cant take on groups of mobs. With my ranger, if I throw down entangle, it does a DOT and I then hit them with a ranged trap… with a dot… and a group of mobs is dead before I send my pet in… and in the mean time, I take no dmg because the mobs cant even get close to me. Oh, and lets not forget that enemies now SEE the area of the caltrops…. do you see the area of a ranger trap when laid down? Umm that would be a NOOOOO!

Sebrent.3625:

Faeyd.5094:

Actually it’s the perfect illustration. There has to be specs that are simple to play and still get some joy out of or the game dies quickly due to no new players. The fact that the thief is actually far better when played with the stabilizers off is good class design. Now rack up a load of experience on the thief and go back to warrior… bingo, thieves no longer a problem. You have Learned to Play so why is it you think it’s OK for the guy next to you dying to HS spam shouldn’t have to learn to play to stop it?

First, I disagree. Look at the Mesmer class. Go back in our threads from beta. People thought we were a horrible class, weak, hard to learn, etc.. Still, many of us chose mesmer as our first/main character and now look at that community.

Second, There is a difference between “simple to play” and “simple to be effective”.

Warrior is “simple to play”. However, a warrior can’t spam 1 button and continuously close on someone in melee. A Ranger is “simple to play”, but they can’t just spam 1 button to beat another noob.

The problem with the guy next to me having trouble with HS spam is that he is forced to get better to win. The noob doing noobseeker spam is not forced to get better to win. In fact, the guy dying to noobseeker spam may be the better noob, but still losing because they are at the noob level.

Have to seriously disagree with your last statement… the Noob would then be forced to learn to get better. For example… in a chess game, player 1 uses the same 6 move check mate over and over… player 2 must learn to counter that move. Once player 2 learns to counter that move, player 1 must learn a new strategy or constantly lose to player 2. In this case, the player forced to get better to win against HS will start winning against the noob using heartseeker… thus the noob will need to learn new strategies to compete against the new learned skills of the player.

Columba.9730:

Why aren’t thieves in WvWvW balanced as they are in Spvp? It makes no sense that they are much more powerful in WvWvW and can abuse the culling bug to permastealth.

See, Most thieves actually welcome the fix to culling.. there is a reason for that… IT ISNT A THIEF ABILITY!!!! Please grasp that fact before moaning about perma stealth from culling. If you want to moan about an actual ability that a thief can put on their ability bars… fine but make a logical argument… but please… just because Anet has an issue that they implemented to save on their own servers… don’t blame the thief player.
As for your signature quote… Thieves don’t complain that people upset their god mode with nerfs… on the contrary… people complain that thieves are in god mode because they haven’t learned to deal with the thief.

Sebrent.3625:

Hey Cynical, I’m well-aware of how toughness works. I’m also aware that Mesmers (light armor) are doing quite well in Knight’s armor … as I previously posted. Watch some of SevenMirror’s stuff.

There are also Engineers and Rangers that are wearing +toughness gear.

If you actually know what the differences are between light, medium, and heavy armor it’s a ~14% difference between light and heavy. ~7% difference between medium and heavy. So what’s the issue here? for every 100 damage you’d take, a warrior takes 93. 1,000 to you is 930 to the warrior. Oh no, he took 70 less damage than you. I guess that warrants you being stealth for a majority of the fight while he has to stay visible and dodge roll attacks from people that can actually see him, lol. Just like Rangers, Engineers, Necros, Elementalists, etc. do.

But yeah … If you could backstab a Thief for 10,000 damage, you’d only backstab the warrior in the same set of gear for 9,300. Lol! You sure told me! :-p

But you are forgetting base stats… as that poster mentioned. Sure, its only a 70 dmg difference to the dmg done… but not to the percent of reduction in health pool. For example, a warrior starts with a base health pool that is much… and I do mean much higher than a thief… Since a thief starts with the same health pool as a necro… So 1000 dmg to a thief is usually around 2% of their health pool (assuming a 20k health thief) where as a warrior build with the same vitality stat is only taking 1/2 of a percent of their health pool from that 930 dmg. When you add into the mix a warrior is able to heal as effectively if not more so than a thief… well, that 70 dmg difference becomes a MAJOR difference.

I, personally, have already shelved my thief. I am a PvE player for the most part and after the last patch where agro reduction was no longer part of stealth, I had to look over the other 22 patch notes. In my investigation, I found a reduction of at least 33% effectiveness to nearly every ability in the thief arsenal over those patches. At the same time, I found 23 increases to the abilities of other professions in just one patch.

So, I began playing a Ranger. In PvE, my ranger is able to solo every vet out there and most champion mobs doing relatively nothing but sicing my pet on them and firing my short bow or long bow… thus taking little to no dmg from the mob and therefore never being in serious harm from the mob. I could not do that with my thief no matter what spec or build I used.

The next issue I had with my thief involved dungeons. I found my thief dying more and more because of the lack of agro reduction while mesmers, engineers, guardians, warriors, rangers, and ele’s were owning the bosses with little more than a wink of the eye and a chuckle. Since the lack of agro patch, even my downed skills became useless since I can no longer stealth on down (or use the stealth field on down trait) and heal while mobs walked away. Compare this to Rangers being able to summon their pets to heal them (even if the pet is technically dead)… this heal I noticed then becomes about 1000 health regen every pulse… so even if my Ranger did, by some drastic set of circumstances, go down, he was back up in a second or two… especially if the healing spring on down trait was specd.

This patch to stealth isn’t going to hit a PvE player as much as it will a PvP player or even a WvW player… but for them it will hit the thief class hard. For a class that already has relatively little utility in a dungeon or fractal setting, the class will become even more useless… this is assuming that the devs do exactly what they said in the video… See, thieves rely on stealth for heals, condition removal, dmg avoidance, might gain, ect… all the stuff that other classes have seen increases to. And yes, an Elementalist is more mobile and “slippery” than a thief.

With all the patches, thief has become a class without a role. I have seen this in so many games (Everquest, Everquest II just to name a couple). I have seen the population of thief players dwindle to nothing because the class had no utility and no use that wasn’t also available to another class. In Everquest, disarm traps was given as a spell to clerics and shaman, Back Stab became an ability of Necro pets, Hide in Shadows became a racial skill for Dark Elves, poisons became the foray of Shamans, find traps and open locks became a spell for all spell casting classes… and the list goes on. Sadly, I see the same thing happening here… thieves are being nerfed into mini (and less powerful, less survivable) warriors with less utility, less diversity, less ability. People complain about thieves being able to “perma-Stealth”… well, what about the invulnerability and heal of some classes not to mention their dmg output and evasive skills…

I really am done with games that take a single class, single them out because people on the forums make over dramatic claims that can not be substantiated as based on that class’s abilities… for example, the perma stealth of thieves really came down to Culling… which isn’t a thief ability, it was a problem with Anet… still people moaned because of that and instead of fixing the culling, Anet decided to nerf down a thief into useless oblivion,

Ironvos.9014:

And maybe thieves should have waited until the update actually happened before whining about hypothetical situations.

Maybe thieves would have if not for the fact that the thief has seekitten0% reduction in their dmg capabilities over 10 nerfs in 23 patches while other classes saw 23 increases over a single patch! And maybe if people who don’t play thieves kept their complaints about stealth to themselves until AFTER culling was fixed rather than automatically blaming it on perma- stealth as a thief ability… Just my two cents worth…

Oh, Devs… since you deleted one of my former posts for calling someone a whiner… how about at least showing some resemblance of non-bias and getting rid of all these posts from people calling thieves whiners? Oh, no guess not.

Thief condition removal is not all in the stealth line, there is a removal in the acrobatics line(when hit at 75% health it removes etc), you have a removal on a signet(just 1 condition but it’s AOE for other friendlies), shadowstep will remove 3 conditions, inf strike return will remove 1 condition, and you also have your heal that removes burning, bleeding, and poison regardless if it puts you in stealth or not. Also a condition removed every 3s is not bad by any means, I believe the guardian trait removes 1 every 10, same for the ranger signet so I don’t think having to wait 3s to stealth and remove some conditions is too bad at all. Again I will say that thieves that relied far too much on stealth will actually have to learn how to play the class.

Stealth is FAR too powerful, that is what people are not understanding. It not only gives you a huge advantage offensively but defensively as well. The fact that stealth can heal you, remove conditions, reduce your cooldowns(regen initiative), increase your crit, give you might, and blind all on top of being able to pick your battles, ambush your enemy, and get away if things go south is imbalanced. What makes it even worse is that it is spammable via C&D and the initiative system. ArenaNet took stealth, which is already a huge balancing act, and dialed it up to 11.

The initiative system is inherently bad. Most decent theorycrafters knew this way back in beta, we had long discussion threads about it. Initiative allows people to spam skills and since C&D applies stealth that means stealth is spammable. As I already said though, stealth is too powerful. That leads us down the road of how do you balance C&D? One way is just placing a cooldown on it but that negates the purpose of the initiative system. The other is to remove the stealth completely and replace it with some other defensive mechanic. The final way is to move the cooldown that should have been on it to stealth itself to prevent the spam abuse. The choice is pretty clear considering they don’t want to remove the initiative system or put in a new defensive mechanic.

Bottom line, the thief has spammable skills with stealth attached to one. No other class can spam their 2-5 skills like the thief so it’s quite obvious why the thief is the only class that will be limited defensively for a short period by one of the things they can spam. If you don’t want stealth to be changed like it is then it needs to be 1-2 things. Either stealth gets removed from weapon skills OR the initiative system gets removed and all our skills get cooldowns. Until either of those happens stealth needs the revealed debuff to keep it from being abused.

Only once we get stealth back under control can we start to iron out the other issues that thieves have. [/quote]

1) Pain response only removes if the thief is already at 75% health and THEN struck with a condition… it does not remove at 75% health
2) The signet cures a condition for each ally nearby… this is true
3) Shadow step does as you say
4) Inf Strike assumes 1 weapon combination
5) The heal that you speak of is a stealthing heal
If you look at the abilities of a thief, they center around stealth… there is a reason for that… just like a necro’s abilities center around death magic and an elementalist centers around elemental magic. So lets take away stealth from thieves… what you have then? A warrior with little to no defense, toughness, vitality, or any other advantage… yup that makes loads of sense

vespers.1759:

Dasorine.1964:

I wouldn’t argue with vesper, he rolls a greatsword glass cannon ranger! wooo!

Funny thing is the bits of the thief that he complains about are the ones that aren’t going to get effected, its all the other thieves that will feel it because Anet doesn’t know how to fix small issues without wide nerfs

i do? no, i don’t use greatsword. i use longbow and sword/axe. i said GS 2 is our highest hitting skill (except maybe path of scars after the buff) and that it hits about 3.5k in full zerk on most enemies, compared to the 9k a thief can do. it seems rather lackluster doesn’t it? i wish i could hit greatsword 2, 3 times in a row and hit 7k with it each time like a thief can with heartseeker but that would be OP wouldn’t it? even considering we still wouldn’t have stealth.

i’ll complain until anet listens and actually tries to balance the game. if it takes 6 months then it takes 6 months (i wouldn’t be surprised if it does).

If you use Long Bow then you know rapid fire can do up to and over 12k of dmg with the press of a single key. I know, I play a ranger specd for crit/cond and my longbow does that plus some because of the cond dmg

Piogre.2164:

Ruggan.4102:

destroying aggro reduction on stealth (which also destroyed a thief’s ability to get out of trouble in PvE

Avoidance of trouble in PvE is not that difficult- even without stealth. Takes practice, in particular, practice without using a crutch stealth. Run laps of the cursed shore without stealth a few times, then describe how hard it is to avoid PvE trouble when you have stealth on you.

tl;dr: Those who have trouble avoiding trouble in PvE despite being able to use stealth, may need to learn 2 play.

Ruggan.4102:

Jeebus!!!!

>_<

Yea when i say avoid trouble… i mean when a thief is downed and the only way to actually get up from that was to stealth, let the mobs move away, and then hit our weak kitten heal ourselves… now the mobs dont move. Now, before you say well you still have the self heal… umm ever seen a ranger use his pet to heal him when he is down? I have… and let me tell you, every time my theif goes down and the pet starts to heal me… i get right back up. Cant say that on a thief

Daecollo.9578:

Ruggan.4102:

vespers.1759:

Ruggan.4102:

Distaste.4801:

This stealth nerf is absolutely nothing. Heaven forbid you actually have to think about anything other than damage stats on your thief. The ONLY people impacted this are the ones that abused stealth to begin with. Otherwise those of us that didn’t abuse stealth won’t really notice it. I run with blinding power, shadow refuge and even C&D some myself and I know it won’t be an issue. I already space my stealths out, I don’t want to be that perma-stealth abusing thief that has zero skill outside stealth. Of course I can see why those that do abuse it are upset, now they need to actually learn to play the class and won’t see huge numbers because they will have to pick up some defense.

Yea but you have to keep in mind… the stealth line is what controls a thieves condition removal, stun breaks, buffs, and heals. So basically, if a thief uses cnd comes out of it and gets hit by oooh i dont know… how about 3 ranger traps where the ranger has condition damage trait of oooh… 1.2k… so the trap ticks a very nice amount of dmg… well the thief now has to wait 3 seconds for their Hide In Shadows to be of use even though it isnt on cooldown… wow yea that makes lots of sense. Lets keep a Ranger from using Healing Spring for an additional 3 seconds past the cooldown of the ability just because one of their trait line abilities gave them regen… wow the fire that would be fueled then.

only a thief could complain that he has to be visible for an extra 3 seconds while dishing out 7k heartseekers and 9k backstabs!

if you die in that 3 seconds, you’re unpseakably awful.

Oooh 7k Heart-Seekers and 9K Backstabs…. In order to get off a 9k BS, for one… the thief has to get around a person to their backside and then actually land it while still stealthed. So they have to 1) go stealth 2) move behind an opponent who just saw them go stealth 3) Hit Back-Stab before stealth wears off and hope they hit. So this unto itself is a 3 key move at best…. So if a person who sees the thief go invis just stands there like an idiot… they deserve a 9k Back-Stab. Now, compare this to a Warrior who can deal out 12k in dmg with the push of a SINGLE button. Since Thieves have maybe 18k health…. some have 20k but the higher your health rating, the more you degrade the dmg output… 12k becomes over 2/3 of their health in ONE shot… So umm yea a 9k BS seems soooo overpowered doesnt it. Now lets look at Heart-Seeker. For Heart-Seeker to do any decent dmg, the target needs to be below 50% health at minimum, it has a defining animation making it easy to time a dodge to… and it uses init just like any other thief ability… lets not forget that the dmg to Heart-Seeker, Cloak and Dagger, Dancing Dagger, Dagger Storm, and BS have all been nerfed down by an average of 50% since Sept 9 2012… in those same number of patches, every other prof has received increases in the effectiveness of their abilities and weapon skills.

Thieves that do that kind of damage will not have 18-20k health.

They will have 10.5kish health.

Thats why i put in there that the higher the health rating, the more you sacrifice dmg output.

vespers.1759:

ensoriki.5789:

vespers.1759:

ensoriki.5789:

vespers.1759:

huehuehue cry thieves cry! hopefully there’ll be a few more nerfs coming after this.

i’d love to see the tears if thieves were rendered as trashy as rangers, necros and engis but alas i don’t think it’ll happen. i’ll just content myself with the bitter tears of reduced OPness.

You know how I know you need to play more?

nope, but i’d love to see you try to defend thieves. 10 points if it isn’t a L2P comment or a comment about how one must play a thief to know thief.

Considers rangers, and engi’s trashy. Engi’s are plenty strong in WvW and Spvp.
Ranger’s are wreckers in spvp, ow-pve, and will be improving in fractals in 9 days.
No but they’re trashy lol wot. Mind boggling the things people say.

Defend what? This changes means jack diddly and was gladly welcomed.
It’s only funny how kitten you are from your clear personal dislike for a profession that you scream for nerfs without shame only highlighting your inability to play. Or in other words, so long as your personal ego is no longer injured you wouldn’t care what happened to the state of the profession.

i don’t play spvp and nobody is bad at open world pvp. they are absolute kitten at wvwvw and dungeons (which is what i play). if you think rangers being acceptable in spvp and open world pvp means they are good and well and don’t need balancing in dungeons and wvwvw you’re really dumb. it’s just a fact.

classes should be balanced for each game mode individually. i don’t care if the ranger is the god of spvp if it blows at wvwv and dungeons.

also minus 5 points for using the “L2P” argument. see my post above if you’re confused. it seems the only arguments thieves can muster to counter the mountains of evidence showing they are OP is L2P and go play thief to understand them.

Ok you want an argument that does not tell you to play a thief to see what we are talking about… fair enough. So lets put it into empirical evidence that you can understand:
1) You dont care if a class is OP in one area but Weak as hell in another… see, here is the issue… if a class is OP in WvW, and they are using the same equipment, trait lines, stats, trinkets, ect ect… then it really does stand to reason that they will be OP in PvE situations. The reason is simple… though there may be minor tweaks with certain abilities in WvW, those minor tweaks are meant to weaken the class in WvW thus making them stronger in PvE. The same is true in sPvP except the fact that in sPvP you can switch up your outfit and gear as you like without spending the gold. However, the tweaks in sPvP are meant to weaken a class from their abilities in PvE… thus if a Ranger is kitten as you put it in Dungeons, then they should be in PvP as well. Its called Logic… try it.
2) In 23 Patches, thieves have seen 10 reductions in their abilities. Of these 10, 7 are reductions in weapon skill damage levels. These have been, on average, a 50% decline in dmg across the board. Of the remaining 3 nerfs, the utility of skills has been changed. For example, Bask venom originally was immune to stun breakers because of its very very short stun duration. Now, with only a slight increase to its duration, it can be broken by any and all stun breakers. In those same 23 patches, all other classes COMBINED have only seen 4 survivability or dmg related reductions. One of those was Engineer grenades and that was because they now give sigil benefits to Engineer bundles… so there was a fair trade off. In the Last pacth, however, All other Classes COMBINED received 23 upgrades to surviviability and dmg skills…. that is in one patch.. ONE!!!
3) Perma-Stealth was mostly caused by Culling… Culling, as admitted by ANET, was an intentional part of their WvW model so as to decrease server side burden. EVERY, and I do mean, EVERY class got 2 seconds of stealth thanks to culling because there was a 2 second delay from when a person entered into the graphics zone to when the graphics would actually be rendered. Granted, this did increase stealth.. But it was not an inate ability of the thief… it was a side effect of a programming decision by the devs… therefore it was not part of the thief class as most people seem to think. To quote one of my earlier posts “There is no button on the thief hotbar that says CULLING, grant 2 extra seconds of perma-stealth”. The other problem with stealth, as pointed out by people was thieves using walls and other inanimate objects to stack stealth… guess what… they cant no more… and guess what… that was an exploit that was unintentional and NOT PART OF THE THIEF BUILD… once again, there was no button stating, hit inanimate object to obtain perma stealth. BTW, that change was welcomed by the thief community.

vespers.1759:

Ruggan.4102:

Distaste.4801:

This stealth nerf is absolutely nothing. Heaven forbid you actually have to think about anything other than damage stats on your thief. The ONLY people impacted this are the ones that abused stealth to begin with. Otherwise those of us that didn’t abuse stealth won’t really notice it. I run with blinding power, shadow refuge and even C&D some myself and I know it won’t be an issue. I already space my stealths out, I don’t want to be that perma-stealth abusing thief that has zero skill outside stealth. Of course I can see why those that do abuse it are upset, now they need to actually learn to play the class and won’t see huge numbers because they will have to pick up some defense.

Yea but you have to keep in mind… the stealth line is what controls a thieves condition removal, stun breaks, buffs, and heals. So basically, if a thief uses cnd comes out of it and gets hit by oooh i dont know… how about 3 ranger traps where the ranger has condition damage trait of oooh… 1.2k… so the trap ticks a very nice amount of dmg… well the thief now has to wait 3 seconds for their Hide In Shadows to be of use even though it isnt on cooldown… wow yea that makes lots of sense. Lets keep a Ranger from using Healing Spring for an additional 3 seconds past the cooldown of the ability just because one of their trait line abilities gave them regen… wow the fire that would be fueled then.

only a thief could complain that he has to be visible for an extra 3 seconds while dishing out 7k heartseekers and 9k backstabs!

if you die in that 3 seconds, you’re unpseakably awful.

Oooh 7k Heart-Seekers and 9K Backstabs…. In order to get off a 9k BS, for one… the thief has to get around a person to their backside and then actually land it while still stealthed. So they have to 1) go stealth 2) move behind an opponent who just saw them go stealth 3) Hit Back-Stab before stealth wears off and hope they hit. So this unto itself is a 3 key move at best…. So if a person who sees the thief go invis just stands there like an idiot… they deserve a 9k Back-Stab. Now, compare this to a Warrior who can deal out 12k in dmg with the push of a SINGLE button. Since Thieves have maybe 18k health…. some have 20k but the higher your health rating, the more you degrade the dmg output… 12k becomes over 2/3 of their health in ONE shot… So umm yea a 9k BS seems soooo overpowered doesnt it. Now lets look at Heart-Seeker. For Heart-Seeker to do any decent dmg, the target needs to be below 50% health at minimum, it has a defining animation making it easy to time a dodge to… and it uses init just like any other thief ability… lets not forget that the dmg to Heart-Seeker, Cloak and Dagger, Dancing Dagger, Dagger Storm, and BS have all been nerfed down by an average of 50% since Sept 9 2012… in those same number of patches, every other prof has received increases in the effectiveness of their abilities and weapon skills.

Distaste.4801:

This stealth nerf is absolutely nothing. Heaven forbid you actually have to think about anything other than damage stats on your thief. The ONLY people impacted this are the ones that abused stealth to begin with. Otherwise those of us that didn’t abuse stealth won’t really notice it. I run with blinding power, shadow refuge and even C&D some myself and I know it won’t be an issue. I already space my stealths out, I don’t want to be that perma-stealth abusing thief that has zero skill outside stealth. Of course I can see why those that do abuse it are upset, now they need to actually learn to play the class and won’t see huge numbers because they will have to pick up some defense.

Yea but you have to keep in mind… the stealth line is what controls a thieves condition removal, stun breaks, buffs, and heals. So basically, if a thief uses cnd comes out of it and gets hit by oooh i dont know… how about 3 ranger traps where the ranger has condition damage trait of oooh… 1.2k… so the trap ticks a very nice amount of dmg… well the thief now has to wait 3 seconds for their Hide In Shadows to be of use even though it isnt on cooldown… wow yea that makes lots of sense. Lets keep a Ranger from using Healing Spring for an additional 3 seconds past the cooldown of the ability just because one of their trait line abilities gave them regen… wow the fire that would be fueled then.

vespers.1759:

the stealth is ridiculous, but add in the damage and it’s just a total joke.

the fact that any class can dish 7k dmg by pushing 1 button ( which can be pushed multiple times) just shows what a joke pvp in this game is.

And yet my Ranger, at level 70 was hitting with Barrage on his LB for an average of around 12k due to crits…. not to mention pet dmg and of course conditions.

Sebrent.3625:

Lol, teg, quite right.
Here’s a video of Cynical (oZii.2864) on his thief (Sintact) as recorded by someone on another server.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ArWxfaeeYu4

Anyone else have a video of a single non-thief harassing a group like this while staying in range and then taking a few down? No? I wonder why that is.

Heck, people’s advice is to CC the thief. That’s a bloody hammer warrior.

Do please note how he is actually playing like he has a brain in this video as opposed to the one he made to “prove” that heartseeker spam is “nothing”.

All i see happening here is a thief doing 1-2k crits and then stealthing away after the warrior crams him with 3-5k hits… also note, the warrior’s health bar hardly goes down below 14k at any time in the video. Another note: The people the thief is fighting against actually say… he isnt hitting hard, all he can do is stealth. So umm… basically what everyone then is complaining about is the fact that the thief isnt an insta-kill for them… how pathetic… how sad.

Columba.9730:

Faeyd.5094:

Yamato Shinobi.4378:

oZii.2864:

Yamato Shinobi.4378:

Rayya.2591:

Shrilly.7184:

Rayya.2591:

vespers.1759:

you mean you don’t think this is balanced?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7OYniHrGqE

An thief killing other thieves and low lvls.
Hi , do i miss any point ?
did he even atempted to kill an lvl 80 guardian /elementarist /engenier /warrior /necro /mesmer … with double food buff, like he used ?
would he even had an chance?
How dare you

get off my thrwead unless you are going to see other evidence

I am sorry that not everybody share same point with you.
And please stay on topic, is related to thieves issues.
Stealth is an defence mechanism

Defense mechanism!? Umm… Let’s see, yes, but a good defense only contributes to a good offense. Considering stealth is OP and a GREAT defense, it is easily turned into and used as a GREAT offense. One in which most all other players/classes have little defense against…

The thief is encouraged to flank based on traits or weapon skills. Even the thief rune gives 10% more damage from the side or back.

I’d like to see how someone gets around the side or back of a player not invisible. My backstab hits for like 2.4k from the side on a crit and I have 75 crit damage 2.3k power.

Im in all pvt gear and only 3 zerker trinkets and runes of divinity with like 65 crit damage and iZerker on my mesmer easily clears 4k. Duelist is on average 3k.

Speaking WvW in particular:

Sure, the thief needs to be able to ‘get around’ and have the ability to attack from the rear and from the side. Though they can go in and out of stealth pretty easily. Just because a thief puts on SR doesn’t mean he’ll stay there to be hit by some luckily places AoE. That’s what it is when the thief goes stealth for most classes, it comes down to lucky AoE. Even then, Thieves can get away pretty easily.
If an opposing class is playing a bunker type build and has a high amount of toughness/hp, the thief has a lot of freedom to give up on the fight, stealth, and go for someone else.

The issue(and it’s not completely culling), is the fact that opposing classes against the thief lose target and have little if any reliable tracking of the thief when he goes into stealth. Rightly so, because it’s stealth. However, it’s very hard and almost impossible to fight something you can’t see.

Players have no clue that a 6k+ damage assault from a thief is coming, can’t defend against it, and little to no time to react to prevent the thief from going back into stealth. Defending player may be able to get a heal and get back to close full health, but then the cooldown to heal again is typically longer than the thief’s cooldown to for stealth abilities. So even after the initial strike, opposing players are forced to try to predict where the thief is, acquire target, try to land some damage and possibly dodge(depending on health at this point) all within a very short window of time before the thief goes stealth again. Stringing stealth, average to good thieves can whittle down an opponent rather quickly in a 1-1 encounter in WvW. Sure WvW isn’t 1-1, but there are many cases it happens. Besides, I’ve seen a thief take down more than 2-3 players in WvW several times who were trying to fight against the thief. They all died. They’re not terrible players either, but against a good thief, they couldn’t be very effective. It took another thief to come and kill the thief that killed them…

If you don’t take down a thief in the very small window of opportunity you typically hardly have, the thief can easily get away, recoup, and come at you again at his leisure.

I certainly don’t want the class to be nerfed to any major degree. Though, there needs to be some adjustment.

Yes they do have to stay in SR.. For 3 seconds or so.

no they don’t. thieves have reported that they use sr as a way to divert attention away from where they are. thieves have plenty of other ways to stay stealthed outside of sr. culling for one.

FOR THE LAST TIME… CULLING IS NOT… REPEAT… IS NOT… A THIEF SKILL OR TRAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THERE IS NO BOUND KEY TO THE THIEF SKILL BAR THAT SAYS CULLING, 2 SECOND COOLDOWN, PERMASTEALTH!

Drawing Guy.3701:

A thief that has multiple AoE stealths that allow your party to easily pass sequences or objectives. A thief that has some of the easiest access to blinds to help negate damage your party takes. A thief that MORE DPS potential than a warrior if built right. A thief that has MORE survivability than a warrior if played right.

So why would you want a warrior over a thief again? Only two reasons: 1) You don’t know how to play a thief, and thus don’t know their potential. 2) You don’t trust a pug to play a thief. If it’s the second reason, is the problem the thief, or the fact that the Warrior is too shallow that any noob can play one and has little skill curve for improvement?

Personally I still think that Thief is one of the better designed classes with some of the most room for skill to make it the best. Stealth has just made it where that skill was not needed. This change helps as people can use their stealth bonuses without having to start over on killing a mob, and it also teaches them to treat PvE slightly more realistically. It’s no longer an instant “oh kitten” that tells the mob to shrug his shoulders and walk away from it’s enemy that was nearly destroyed. The mob actually realizes that a puff of smoke doesn’t cause that little thief to stop existing – he’s actually still a threat.

You make an interesting statement… first you say that thief has aoe stealth and more survivability than a warrior… and yet you then contradict yourself when you say that a mob wont shrug his shoulders at a nearly destroyed thief. Umm, ok so which is it… does a thief have more survivability or are they always on the cusp of being destroyed?
Now, if we are talking realistic here… umm what makes a person shouting any more dangerous than a person who isnt shouting? So for realism sake should we make those shouts just look good?
Now lets talk about this stealth business shall we? Stealth lasts 3 seconds unless specd to get that extra second. However, by specing for that extra second, you have to sacrifice other things…like dmg output or survivability. What I am hearing in this particular thread is that thieves are great in dungeons because they can get the party past mobs or aoe stealth through Shadow Refuge to revive fallen party members. So basically a thief is there just to revive people… so in essence, in a dungeon, a thief becomes a paramedic period. Yea thats the class I wanted to play…

KOLZ.4501:

Dangerkips.6035:

Hanna must be really pro or something..

On topic:

I’m finding myself asking the same question. Thieves? What are they good for? PvP? >.>

I’ll be anxiously awaiting a serious rework of the class for PvE, as I’m already too invested in my character to consider rerolling.

Or just knows how to play a character instead of crying continuously on the forums, maybe something crazy like that.

Yea, crying on the forums… umm isnt that what all those people who cried about thieves being OP were doing? But to stick to the subject… lets do a couple things
1) Updates: In 23 patches since Sept 9, 2012, the thief has seen 10 reductions in damage and survivability. In those same patches, they have received 7 increases… most of these increases came in the form of their underwater skills… only 1 was truely useful and that was the range on scorpion wire. In those same 23 patches, for all other classes combined, there was a total of 4 reductions. In the last patch, all other classes saw an increase in 23 abilities, trait skills, and weapon skills… thats 23 in ONE patch! In 23 patches, the thief has had 5 damage abilities cut by at least 50%!

2) Proof of Underpower in PvE: I have stopped playing my thief because of the bull nerfs… especially the no aggro loss from stealth. I do, however, log on my thief to do resource hunting. During those times, I sit and watch other players as they battle vets, champs, group events. I have watched warriors, engineers, guardians, elementalists, necros, and rangers battle Champion mobs in Orr and not even break a sweat. I have watched my own ranger (level 20) battle 5-6 level 24 mobs with no problems. I have taken down a level 25 vet and 2 level 24 trash mobs without losing a pet or having to use a heal… so that right there discounts player knowledge of class. I personally have been in dungeons with guildies with my thief and seen guardians and warriors take on every graveling in AC with little to no issue while my thief gets one shotted by the lowest of trash mobs.

Dont sit there and tell people they should re-roll their character because the devs and whiny players who couldnt overcome a thief in WvW decided to make a single build somewhat viable… especially if you are playing a class that can solo champions and have seen nothing but increases in power over the last 23 patches. Why the hell should a person who plays a thief have to conform to a single solitary playstyle and build so that they can be somewhat fun to play? And btw, the way a thief is somewhat viable now is to become a mini-warrior through toughness and cond dmg build… and that is it, nothing more.

TheGuy.3568:

I don’t necessarily disagree but you have to put things in context. Overall we can do fine in PvE but DPS minded players will feel squishy next to a warrior. The things we are good at are rezing and keeping a party from wipes. This is not useless. Some builds like S/D might not tank well but they do good in Survivability much like S/P pistol whip and D/P black powder/blind spam.

As far as healing goes 30 in shadow arts is still there and if you really are worried about getting heals foods like peach pies will give you heals continuously and have not been nerfed.

But I do agree compared to warrior it does seem a great deal imbalanced.

What we do have over warrior is
-better condition removal
-more escape tools
-more evades
-better stun breakers
-We actually have better healing overall if speced for it.

BTW spy kits got nerfed they have a 60 second cd so….

Edit:

Forgot 2 things. We have the best blast finisher in the game, and near permanent weakness and poison through dagger and Lotus Poison, or Shortbow all by it self no traits.

So what you are saying is.. the thief class should be kept around to keep everyone else from wiping and should be happy that foods and buffs that any other class can get should be enough to give some survivability… maybe? Now lets take a look at your what we have over warriors bit:
1) Better condition removal? Um sure if we are spec’d for it which means
a) We wont have the heal spec or
b) we wont have the dmg output that makes survivability an option…
2) More Escape: Not since now stealth does not reset aggro. So we can dodge and we can run away… sure there is the roll for initiative trait… but that is a dodge so yea.
3) Better healing if spec’d: Umm ok sure if we take an entire line of shadow arts we have a comprable heal to a warrior who starts with higher toughness, higher vitality, and a higher heal unspec’d… and they dont have to take an entire 30 points to make it a good heal. Oh and since our heals from SA are based on stealth and since you dont lose aggro when healed… either we stay stealthed and do no attacks so we can heal a little… or we go stealth, then attack for some decent but not awsome DPS since BD was nerfed and the thief has undergone 6 other nerfs.

See, I am tired of seeing Guardians, Mesmers, Rangers, Elementalists, Engineers, Warriors all SOLOing a Champion whatever it is in Orr or anyplace else for that matter while taking little effort to do so. All the while, the thief sits there and waits for the mob to die or has died himself. And then to top it all off, the other classes spit out “THIEVES NEED TO BE NERFED”

Most of the stuff listed for the thief nerf i completely agree with. I have a 80 thief and I agree that hitting walls in WvW should not be used to be perma stealth… but thats an exploit, period.
Things I do not agree with: No reset of Aggro from Mobs. People on here are saying thats a good thing because of their perspective of the OP thief in PvP… In PvE however, it makes stealth a useless commodity. Sure, in PvP stealth makes for a great get away… thats because players dont have an aggro table, they dont attack something just because it is causing them dmg or have low health or whatever. In PvE, the MOBS DO!!! So, since a thief can not lower aggro on him/her self… the thief has to either 1) lower their dmg output and maximize their health and toughness or 2) become the constant target of every mob in a dungeon as thier burst dmg outdoes other classes. Basically what this patch does to stealth is make it a heal (for those who use HiS or the Regen health in stealth traits) with a flashy animation. For those who use it to get the BS… well I guess it still works for that although I have seen mobs turn to face me while i was in stealth moving to their hindside… so guess not really that effective there either. Also, for the #3 spot on our downed abilities, it makes that ability completely useless because the mob just sits on top of you waiting for you to come out of stealth… which happens if you start to use the #4 heal ability… Umm yup useless.

katniss.6735:

I don’t think I need to do a write up. The screenshot pretty much sums up the thief class and how OP they are:

Wow, I really would like to know how that dmg happens with those stats. Those stats are pretty much from a thief with no gear on… and I happen to know for a fact that there is no way to get that dmg output with that low of power/precision… I play a thief built on Power/Prec/Crit dmg… my average pve BS is about 5k and my average mug is about 3.5k… this with a 52% crit chance and a 80% crit dmg… not to mention Prec and Power in the high 2k range or higher. Yes, in WvW I can get to the 7k or greater mark but again, because I am statd to do that…

masztipapa.7519:

Backstab thieves can kill almost anybody in a second, thats a serious issue with the class and the other thing that bothers me is the initiative system. Add some diminishing return (so noobies dont spam heartseeker for win -.-), like it only does a third of its original dmg after the first use for like 2 or 3 seconds.

If I had to guess… you dont really play a thief.

TexZero.7910:

Zephyrus.9680:

Columba.9730:

nope, there’s evidence all over that thieves can attack and remain stealthed. videos have the evidence. secondly, I can see other classes as they attempt to unload their high cooldown low cast time attacks. unlike thieves that can spam high damage attacks and remain stealthed. lol.

Well I have a 80 Thief with hundreds of hours in PvP and I’m just informing you the class can’t attack and remain stealth. Period. There’s no consipracy here.

It can attack just after stealth duration ends naturally and then restealth instantly but that’s a single attack, almost no damage, and it still gives away position.

Secondly, that’s called class difference. Theves don’t have 25k HP + massive toughness + 3 out of 5 of their weapon skills being high AoE CC for example (aka zerg busting hammer warrior).

I call BS, and i dont mean backstab.

Plenty of videos have been posted showing exactly how to perma stealth and how to stay stealthed. Yes hitting someone as a Thief breaks stealth, however that is not what people are asking for. They want a theif to be knocked out of stealth when damaged, its that simple.

Also, your Zerg busting hammer warrior…Remind me again how it crits for 12k on a squishy and how it’s able to break LoS on a 2 second cooldown and heal to full.

Cause even running a Shout-Heal Hammer warrior you just cannot beat the fight resetting get out of jail free theives currently have.

PS Those skills cooldowns that you are mentioning are stupidly longer than any thieves skill cooldowns.

But when a thief runs out of initiative, then the cool down is however long it takes to regain initiative. And some of the thief initiative skills cost 5 or 6 initiative to activate. Initiative regens 1 per 10 seconds… 2 if spec’d right. At max a thief can have 13 inititative so spamming say CnD (which costs 5 init) means it can be done 3 times before init is empty and thats using no other skill. Heart Seeker is the same way. Granted, some of the stealth line lets you regain init faster. then again other classes have ways of reducing cool down periods as well.

vespers.1759:

i think it’s unfair that my rapid fire can do 7k in 10 hits but a thief can do 7k+ in 1 hit. i got hit for a 5k steal today. come on. anyone can dodge my rapid fire, no one can dodge a steal from invis.

i don’t mind high dmg, but when you can hit 1 button and do it, or hit the same button and do it multiple times it jsut gets old very fast. also stealth stomp… come on.

i watched a thief dance around 10 people today downing and stomping from stealth. then he ran away.

90% of solo players i see in wvwvw are thieves. at this point i just run away when i see a thief, because i don’t stand a chance. it isn’t a L2P issue. i can handle other classes minus eles and some mesmers alright, but thieves are just something else.

So umm let me get this straight… you are complaining about thieves because you cant take them but other classes that you admit you cant take them are ok? Sounds like a bias to me

I find it funny… some people have made the comment that thieves rock in PvP and WvW because they just 2 button… but they always drop dead in PvE because the player has no skill to play the thief beyond pushing 2 buttons. Now, in my experience, PvE is always easier than PvP… doesnt matter the game. So if a thief cant hack it in PvE then please please please tell me why you have problems with them in PvP? Or is it that your issue isnt with the thief so much as it is with your ego telling you that since you own in PvE you should own in PvP without altering your tactics to match the increased threat?
I have heard this kind of rhetoric before in many many games from Star Wars Galaxies to City of Heroes and Everquest… always someone moaning about a single class that they have a tough time combating in PvP… it always comes to the same thing, however… they cant defeat them so they have to whine. The outcome has been the same in every game as well… the devs get out the nerf bat, make the “offending” class obsolete and a new “flavor of the month” is created. Its sick, its wrong, and frankly it is idiotic. If you as a player cant handle a thief in PvP how about looking at your tactics and your strategy rather than pointing to the thief and saying he is OP. Take some responsibility for your own skill level without putting the blame on everyone else.
Oh for those of you who said my computer cant keep up with a thief in stealth it doesnt render them so they have perma stealth… well, trade in your little tandy 1000 for a big boy computer ok.