Guild Wars 2

Stealth is not that powerful in PvE. Can it be useful? Sure. Is it as powerful there as it is in PvP? Heck no. When some thieves (and others when not playing tanky) can be one-shot, that stealth is not nearly as useful.

Assassins also had to chain abilities. They weren’t told “here’s 5 skills, 3 are only useful 2% of the time but you can spam the other one or two skills”.

Thanks. Yeah, she has been the biggest source of Mantra information for me as I’m not a big fan of “glass cannon” and like to leverage the plethora of utilities we have at hand as Mesmers.

If you ever get the inkling (or drink enough :-p) to try out mantras again, please record it.

On another note, have you ever played around with any of the on-clone-death traits? I bounce between traiting for them from time to time as I, too, constantly swap out traits and gear to try new things.

When going to the OP to watch the latest video, I skimmed back over the text real quick and noticed that you mentioned that you sometimes play a Mantra build. I was curious if you had any footage playing any of your Mantra builds.

It seems to be one of the much less commonly used types of builds so I’m always curious for chances to see good players using them.

Thanks.

Quells.2498:

I think Anet should wait to assess the Thief until after culling is taken care of instead of jumping the gun. I’m not blaming culling entirely but clearly it’s an issue and I think it would be premature to “nerf” a stealth based class before the culling is handled.

I half agree because the culling is a large issue and it could be exaggerating the problem in WvW and that an iterative approach is better than “whack-a-mole”. I half disagree because of how easy it was for me to simply pick up a thief and in a few minutes already be doing similar things in sPvP where culling is not an issue.

Quells.2498:

Also, no class will ever be balanced in any game mode when each mode uses the same pool of abilities. It’s just not possible. I’m not insinuating that each mode needs different abilities; but rather that each mode can have changes made to the same pool of abilities that don’t affect the other game modes.

I agree that we will likely never have perfect balance. That, however, does not mean a best effort should not be made to make things as balanced as we can. I’d say the Thief is currently an outlier when it comes to class balance due to all the shenanigans they can pull off in PvP.

Sadly, as I’ve said before, I think this comes down to bad class design as the Thief seems to be largely dependent on stealth (someone have a good build that isn’t?) which is extremely powerful in PvP but much less powerful in PvE.

I’m aware of the differences in sPvP and WvW, that’s why I mentioned it though. We don’t have the culling issue (usually) in sPvP, but the Thief still has a ridiculous amount of stealth there.

The Moa is a good example of the other thing I’ve been saying about fighting Thieves versus fighting other classes … seeing attack animations.

You can see a Mesmer casting Moa Morph so you have a chance to dodge roll, etc.

You can see a X class cast Y ability, so you have a chance to dodge roll, etc..

You can not see a Thief cast backstab so you have to guess when to dodge roll, etc.

I think a large reason Thief is “weak” in PvE is due to the players. You can’t apply the same “do lots of dps” and “stealth tons” tactics to dungeons that you do to WvW and sPvP as dungeons have an abundance of AOEs and many NPCs have too many hitpoints for you to burst them down without taking damage in return.

I’m always annoyed to see Thieves running dungeons with Signet of Shadows for the movespeed … that extra movespeed for just you is not as helpful for you and the group as something like Smoke Screen when you know there will be several enemy NPCs with projectile weapons.

Ozii / Sintacs / Sinnacle (same person) …

Winning is that point when it’s all but 100% certain that player X is going to down player Y.

If a Thief feels like he’s losing the fight, he can stealth and get out of their. High mobility + stealth = easy escape. If the Ranger is losing, he has to get away from a high mobility class. If he has sword and greatsword he has a chance, otherwise that thief is much more maneuverable than him and he’s dead.

I know you like your Thief now more than your Mesmer, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues with the Thief class, Sinnacle. I don’t want to see thieves “weaker” as then they’ll suck even more in dungeons (though I think that’s largely due to the abundance of bad thieves). Instead, I want to see Thieves a little more on-par with the other classes as far as their risks to rewards.

… it’d also be nice if this culling garbage was fixed … though even in sPvP Thief has an abundance of stealth. I Jumped on my lowbie thief and went in there and in the first 5 minutes I was tearing people up and topping scorecharts. What would kill me the few times I died? Other thieves … unless I killed them first, of course.

I have an 80 ranger and get compliments from people from time to time. However, whenever I see another Ranger I get a bad feeling.

The reason for this is simply because I feel that Ranger and Thief are two classes in dungeons that if the player isn’t great are simply a wasted slot. A guardian can play horribly and still provide something while these two classes cannot.

I amused that Thieves complain about things like well-played trap Rangers. Yes, one of these can kill a good Thief, but only if the Thief decides to not simply disengage.

See what happens here? If the Thief is winning, the Ranger dies. If the Ranger is winning, the Thief simply escapes. The Thief may even try again and again after resetting the fight each time.

I love when I’m using the mouse to move the camera (always) and right-click selects a diff target or deselects my target … wish that was fixed … I’d love the option to turn that off.

If you really want to improve your condition duration:
4 Superior Runes of the Mad King gives you +15% bleed duration and +10% condition duration
2 Superior Runes of Lyssa gives you +10% Condition Duration

That’s +35% Bleed Condition Duration +20% Non-Bleed Condition Duration

As to Crits, it’s not uncommon to see a Thief with 30 in Critical Strikes have 100% crit chance out of stealth (i.e. 100% crit chance on backstab) along with 20+ in Shadow Arts.

As such, arguing “that was a crit, they won’t always crit” is not a strong argument; especially since the Critical Strikes tree also contributes to crit chance and crit damage so fits well into burst builds.

Honestly, as I stated in my post about Thieves in WvW vs PvE vs sPvP, I think the current incarnation of Thieves is bad. Thieves are dependent on stealth to a degree where they are often not enjoyable to fight against in WvW (arg! @ culling), they aren’t that effective (comparatively) to other classes in dungeons, and they aren’t good at contesting points (can’t contest while stealthed).

Aside from my points where fixing culling and allow thieves to compete with elementalists as viable roamers in sPvP (i.e. nerf the ele that arenanet has admitted is “too much”), I think it would be good to move the Thief away from relying so much on stealth and give them more active defenses. The Mesmer and Ranger are good examples of classes with active defenses so I’ll elaborate on how they work for them:

For Mesmer, you have distortion shatter evading all attacks as well as blocks, blinds, and skills like blurred frenzy that also evade all attacks.

For Ranger, you have weapons with evades built into some of the attacks. The 1h sword has 3 evades from it’s #2, #2 2nd activation, and #3. Dagger has 1 evade on its #4, Greatsword evades every 3rd auto-attack and blocks on #4, and Shortbow evades on #3.

The thief already has some of this with #3 on Dual Dagger having a built in evade and Thieves can trait such that they can dodge roll 3 times on a full bar of stamina whereas everyone else can only do so twice on that same full bar of stamina.

The one issue with this route could be that by giving less stealth but more evasion, you now see the Thief but he’s using attacks that evade the whole time before stealthing again … though maybe initiative and/or the revealed timer could prevent that.

Ultimately, there should be at least 3 full seconds seeing the Thief come out of stealth and the next time they are able to stealth … maybe 5 full seconds, though I can bring quite a bit of pain in that amount of time on all my 80s.

I think the thieves that are saying “AOE where you think they are!” are thinking about the times they fought against an Engineer with bomb/grenade/flamethrower, Necro with staff, or a trap Ranger.

They are ignoring that most other people don’t have the AOEs for that tactic to be effective. For example, a non-trap Ranger has only Longbow (lol) with 1 long CD AOE (#5) and Torch’s small AOE at your feet. A Mesmer has Mind Stab on the Greatsword and Chaos Storm on the Staff. A Necro without Staff could possibly have wells.

There are plenty who don’t have massive amounts of AOE to throw at where they think a class is. Sure, they could try to melee, if they have a melee weapon equipped, and even then they are simply swiping at air trying to get the animation to go to the 2nd auto-attack. Even when it does, a good thief simply moves.

Lastly, when the tactic to beat a build is “blindly attack where you think they might be”, there is an obvious problem.

So there are three places each class has to be evaluated in, PvE, sPvP, and WvW.

In WvW there are two types of fighting, zerg and non-zerg.

In zerg fights, Thieves are not as effective as Guardians, etc. as the mass amount of random damage can be difficult to avoid. A few stray hits and the thief is downed.

However, when it comes to non-zerg fights, Thieves are king. Why is this? High mobility and stealth allow them to pick and choose their fights. Stealth and culling issues allow good thieves to be visible for roughly 1 second before they can restealth and this is spammable.

In PvE, I honestly hate having most Thieves in a dungeon group. I think this is in part due to the class but also in part due to the people that play the class. Since you can’t burst most enemies down in dungeons but they can burst you down, the common Thief gameplay of “just do big damage” is often a massive failure. Rather than taking smoke screen to block enemy projectiles, traps for CC, etc., the simply try to do big damage and go down often.

Those who try to do range complain that they don’t do nearly as much damage. I’m not sure how warranted this is since I don’t play my own Thief in dungeons, but I often do less damage in dungeons as well (except CoF p1) as in most I change my gear, spec, etc. to be more survivable and provide more control over fights.

In sPvP, Thieves are able to stealth and kill very well. The culling and stealth issue is not a problem here, but Thieves are able to weave in and out of stealth effectively to get kills. However, we don’t commonly (compared to Ele/Guardian) see Thieves used by the successful sPvP tournament teams due to the thief’s dependence on stealth and the fact that you can’t contest points while stealthed and the fact that the Elementalist is currently such an obvious choice for roamer due to their ability to pack damage, survivability, mobility, and support into a single powerful build that ArenaNet has mentioned is “a bit much”.

So we have the Thief outperforming in WvW but we have them outclassed by Elementalist in sPvP and either underperforming or being played poorly in PvE.

This creates an issue as a simple nerf to “fix” WvW could make PvE and sPvP worse. A buff to PvE or sPvP would make WvW even worse. Making a class’ s abilities work differently in different parts of a game is “less fun” as you’re no longer the same class in each and it can cause problems further down the road with maintaining the game due to the two separate rulesets for class abilities.

Two obvious fixes are to tone down the Elementalist in sPvP so that Thieves are a competitive choice for roamer and fix the culling so that WvW doesn’t have the stealth + culling issue.

Beyond those fixes, I don’t think it would hurt for the Thief class to move away from being so dependent on stealth and instead be given something to compensate for actually being visible in WvW … or perhaps new builds will spawn to adapt to the need as has happened with other classes.

frans, your post is basically saying:

(1) The flaw is that you don’t always have someone to come save you when a thief catches you 1v1 in WvW

(2) It’s not thieves that are the problem, it’s WvW

The first one is amusing.
The second one leads to the question of “then why isn’t this being brought up for other classes”.

You guys keep saying that “there is no infinite stealth build” … but there are posts asking how to do it with replies on how to do it and there are videos showing people do it.

You guys keep saying that “infinite stealth doesn’t do enough damage to kill” … but those same videos show them doing more than enough damage to kill.

You guys say to blindly attack in refuge … but refuge is a large AOE and the thief can move around inside it, can see you, and you can’t see the thief … the thief can even dodge roll … and it allows the thief to stack stealth so that when it ends its short duration you have quite a long stealth duration.

You guys say to dodge roll backstabs … but we can’t see stealth thieves … hence the stealth part.

You guys say cloak and dagger doesn’t do much damage, but it did over 5k in the screenshot I posted from this week.

You can keep saying the Thief is “fine”, but, again, there are screenshots, other forum posts by you same guys (and gals), and videos that all say otherwise.

@Laika
What question did I not answer?

You guys asked about why Thief wasn’t as popular in sPvP. I answered. Elementalist has the same mobility, doesn’t require stealth which is actually a hinderance when contesting a point in sPvP, and can provide support while providing good dps. The thief doesn’t provide support unless they are a venom share build in which case they are no long as good of a roamer as the Elementalist. Additionally, as I stated, the Elementalist is superior when it comes to AOE damage which is quite helpful when it comes to contesting a point against multiple enemies.

@Faeyd
Because of the way sPvP works. Team’s employ 2+ bunkers. These players are built to hold a point against multiple people long enough for the roamer(s) to assist. As such, they simply have to “not die” for X amount of time till their roamer(s) come and team on the Thief. In WvW, those same bunker builds get chipped to death by the heavy stealth thief. The burst thief isn’t really a threat to them, but it can often quite easily escape from them as well.

Now, if I could just roam in WvW as a bunker and know that in the next 15 seconds after I start a fight that a teammate will come 2v1 the Thief with me, that’d be great. However, that doesn’t really support the “Thieves are fine” argument.

Also … let’s not forgot that skills, state, abilities, etc. are not all the same between PvE+WvW and sPvP.

Forcing the thief to stealth is the same as moving them off. Hence, due to the Thief’s dependence (as described by so many of you) on stealth, it isn’t hard to move them off a point.

Also, if you actually listened to the top sPvP players, Thieves can be good roamers, but with the current power of the Elementalist, especially due to not needing stealth and having massive amounts of AOE, the Elementalist is the prime class to have as a roamer.

As far as the “unseeable” and “massive DPS killing machine” … as I’ve said many times before, those are two different thief specs.

The unseeable is an issue in that they still do good enough damage to kill you while spending a ridiculously low amount of time out of stealth.

The massive DPS killing machine does damage just like any other glass cannon. However, the difference is the lack of animations. We see elementalists ride the lighting, burning speed, etc.. We see warriors bull’s charge, bola, 100 blades, eviscerate, etc.. We do not see the stealth thief and their backstab.

Faeyd, this has been discussed. In sPvP, teams are trying to control points. The Thief can’t contest those points while stealthed. Thus, the uber-stealth Thief build isn’t very viable in sPvP. However, in WvW, it’s quite viable.

If you actually look in the Mesmer section, there are plenty of builds that don’t take Decoy and Mirror Images and plenty that take only one or the other. But back to the Thief…

A group of 5 thieves is a pain in the butt to kill because they can easily call target and focus one non-Thief target at a time while the non-Thief group will have difficulty doing the same.

5 Thieves versus 5 Mesmers could be interesting.

That said, the idea that “the game is balanced around groups” doesn’t really do much against the fact that Thieves are able to dismantle groups if those groups don’t have very particular builds and even then the Thief can simply escape and find an easier group. Anyone else that runs into a group with a hard counter to them dies.

Please don’t all caps again. It simply makes it harder to read.

So far, I’ve tried several different sets of exotic gear (Cleric, Rabid, Knight) on my Ranger and by direct damage is simply bad. Even with 90% crit chance with food and fury my crits barely hit 900 – 1100k in melee. I wasn’t expecting large hits, but a solid consistent 1k instead of barely would have made more sense to me especially when I see other classes in the same gear (my Mesmer included) do much more than that.

Because of this, the only good way I can think of to do reliable damage on the Ranger is condition damage (see my Rabid gear mentioned above or Apothecary) as conditions do the same damage for everyone with the same condition damage and Ranger’s have a good number of ways to inflict conditions.

Now, this works pretty well, but I’m not happy that in order to do competitive damage I need to go condition damage.

As far as pets, I agree that it’s aggravating that our pets become practically useless in large fights as the plethora of cleaves and AOE drop them quickly. The problem I imagine they are having with this is balancing getting a pet off you versus pet’s surviving this encounters. I know I sometimes try to use my pet as a missile to finish off someone who ran to the back lines in a fight.

@Maugetarr: I’m curious how you’re getting those percentages for stealth. When I give numbers, I give how I got them. Let’s people check. Also, no, Basilisks Venom does hold you long enough for a glass cannon thief to down another glass cannon. Thankfully my Ranger is tanky and my Mesmer can still shatter while in it, but others are not so lucky.

@Laika: I do have a Thief alt that I play around on to see wtf it is people are doing and how “hard” or “easy” it is. The hardest playstyle for me to mirror was a good sword Thief who made use of the awesome mobility given by that weapon.

I can’t help but notice you completely ignoring the very simple math I showed where in those 4 seconds you can have stealth you are regenerating 3 of the 4 initiative it took you to C&D. It’s 4 initiative because I’ve been talking about Infusion of Shadow, not Patience. That doesn’t match up with you and other people’s claims that it’s “costly” to keep using Cloak and Dagger.

Additionally, Cloak and Dagger still hits hard, as shown by the screenshot I posted earlier where it hit for 4k.

You can try to talk poorly about people or you can talk about the class. Talking about the class and providing facts, not instances where someone sucked, are what needs to be done.

You know what happens when I auto-attack in a refuge with my melee weapon against a good thief? I get 1 hit on the thief and he dodge rolls while stealthed away from my melee arc. He can see me, but I can’t see him so it’s much easier for him to avoid my melee than it is for me to guess where he is. Only the bad thieves allow my 2nd auto attack to hit.

By the way … Thieves have 4 utility stunbreakers … way to know your class, fellas.

• Haste
• Infiltrator’s Signet
• Shadowstep
• Roll for Initiative

Sword is less popular because its stealth attack, Tactical Strike, does half the damage of backstab and more people seem to value that damage over the 2 second stun.

Sword also doesn’t allow Thieves to Spam Heartseeker. Pistol Whip is great but it doesn’t leap at the target so it’s “harder” to use.

4 stunbreakers that are all utilities when you can only have 3 utilities? Lol.

Portals don’t allow people to gimp a player without a visual. In fact, you can see when a Mesmer places their initial portal and you can see the 2nd portal for a little over a second before it becomes active.

Again, the portal provides players a chance to react. This is why there are those amusing instances in WvW where a Mesmer portal bombs but the other side has stacked AOEs and hundred blades warriors on top of it. A welcome surprise for those using that portal and a few unhappy comments at that Mesmer.

As far as classes being equal, I don’t mean they should be able to do everything equally well. I think the sums of their strengths and weaknesses should be equal. Right now, Thief is king of WvW roaming.

Also, to be clear, I have more Thieves simply escape than insta-gib me. It’s the good ones that are the killers. The bad ones just simply continue to reset the fight and are a pain in the kitten Then they go off and fight other baddies who have no chance because of the advantages.

Given two equally skilled players, the Thief beats the non-Thief.

When it comes to the burst thief, let’s just ignore the fact that stunbreaker’s don’t get you out of basilisk venom (lol?).

When it comes to the stealth thief, they are the stealth thief because they have taken those 30 points to get those traits.

You thieves can talk about how your class is “fine” all day, but until other classes can zerg surf, reset fights, etc. even half as well as the Thief, you’re just blowing hot air.

We can continue to pretend that all classes are “equal” or we can be honest. Heck, anyone notice the comments about Rangers being easy targets not being disputed? There’s a reason for this … just like there are reasons why specific Thief builds are a bit out of control in WvW.

I don’t mind that a Thief can do great damage. I don’t mind that a Thief can stealth. What I mind is that a Thief can fight me for 30 seconds and spend a majority of that time stealth while still doing damage to me. I mind that a Thief can kill a person without that person even seeing the Thief. Those are not right in a game that is supposed to be visual with its combat. In both those instances I’m provided with no visuals … instead I have to blindly swing at where I guess he is.

No, I’m saying it’s both my server and the ones we’re fighting this week.

The past 2 days the various people I roam with have noticed it as well because the number of fights we get into that don’t involve 2+ thieves is becoming less and less.

It hasn’t been just me noticing it. Our server’s teamspeak has noticed an abundance of thieves as well. Perhaps it’s just the Thieves doing a majority of the roaming and other classes sticking with zergs more …

Also, why would I be noticing my own server’s abundance of Thieves? Obviously my server’s thieves aren’t killing me.

Laika.8795:

Except that there is a rule that says you have to stand in there. That rule is: if you leave the circle, you are unstealthed and revealed for 3 seconds. You can dodge roll around in it, but should you accidentally pop out, you’re guaranteed dead.

Yep, so you place it and stand in it while you receive plenty of initiative and health from it while avoiding the AOEs and melee attacks. You’re stealthed so you only have to avoid blind attacks. You may not be aware of this, but most classes don’t have an abundance of AOEs either.

Laika.8795:

Sebrent.3625:

It’s nowhere close to what a tanky build has. Simply stating numbers doesn’t mean a thing. That video shows that people are quite wrong when they say things like “Thief dies to a slight breeze” or “Thief can’t be both tough and do good damage”. The video shows both those types of statements to be wrong.

You’re right, it’s not a tanky build, but enough to mitigate damage. He’s selectively thinning the heard of weak targets, and the groups he is fighting are too stupid to understand how to counter him. If your teammate gets downed by a thief, rain aoe or autoattack over their body and it’s over. You rarely saw that in the video, and when you did, you also saw the thief run away and abandon the stomp.

Yes, when there were multiple people doing it or a Chaos Storm (can daze) to interrupt, he did not stomp. So I need to carry friends around in my pocket that jump out and autoattack over my body after the stealth thief downs me?

Laika.8795:

Sebrent.3625:

You have admitted in other posts that clipping is an issue. It does make the Thief invis almost 100% in WvW if they so wish it. The abundance of NPCs, etc. that I’ve listed multiple times as well make it trivial as well to land a C&D.

There are so many videos that show thieves popping out of stealth for only a second and then restealthing. It isn’t “sensationalized”. It is something that there is a pile of video evidence for.

Yes, it’s also wasting 6 (4 w/ trait) initiative just to stay stealthed, procing it off things like random white con fauna that is not hurting you. Do you think it’s something you can do forever if you want to eventually engage your enemy?? Yes, you can get trolled by a thief C&D stacking on you. Gain distance and move on, or force him to engage at reduced initiative.

It’s not wasting it when it is soft-resetting the fight for the Thief without doing the same for the person they are fighting. While stealthed, you’re cleansing conditions, healing, and regenerating initiative quicker. At the same time, your opponent is not cleansing conditions without popping a cooldown, is not healing without popping a cooldown, and their cooldowns are not recharging quicker.

As far as thinking a Thief can do it forever if they want to engage? Yes. We’ve seen plenty of videos where Thieves do just that. They aren’t really using their initiative for anything except stealthing w/ weapon skills and normal initiative regen is 1 per 1.33 seconds so in the 4 seconds that you are stealthed you have gained 3 initiative. With a 4 second stealth and a base of 12 max initiative, you are losing 1 initiative per C&D into a backstab so can do that ~12 times before even running the risk of running out of initiative.

Heck, look at that math. It is not costly for the Thief, it is very effective, and it is not hard to do.

Again, there’s no wonder we’re seeing such a large influx of Thieves in WvW.

Heck, when looking for the ways people counter stealth thieves, you have to be tanky enough to handle their burst, have CC to keep them from stealthing, and have enough burst to kill them during that CC.

If you don’t have all three, then they are going to burst you down for not being tanky enough, continue stealthing, or simply survive your damage while CC’d.

Laika.8795:

If you SR in a zerg, you’ll be downed in a second if anyone has ANY common sense, but you operate on a “everyone is minimally exceptional” protocol, I see. Furthermore, Last Refuge is more of a liability that it is a gift, you’ll see many thieves (including myself) wishing they could opt out of it’s effects. When you’re in a situation that your health is dropping to 25%, you’ll be desperately trying to land C&D. You’ll more often than not land that critical C&D when blinding powder procs, and thus enter revealed. Do some research, you’ll find just how unpopular that trait really is.

Plenty of thieves use Shadow Refuge as just another quick stealth. There is no rule that says you have to stand in there. Furthermore, you can dodge roll around in it. Furthermore, I’m not talking about zerg vs zerg in all my examples. When I’m roaming, the fact that a zerg can chase a thief out of their refuge is not helpful.

As far as Blinding Powder at 25% hp, that’s a corner case for that trait that people complain about. Many times it saves thieves butts. Mesmer has a similar trait that gives decoy at 25% so I’m aware of the issues.

Laika.8795:

He had +300 in Shadow Arts trait line, and +100 from food. +400 toughness is nothing to sneeze at. So yeah, there’s my evidence you’re wrong.

It’s nowhere close to what a tanky build has. Simply stating numbers doesn’t mean a thing. That video shows that people are quite wrong when they say things like “Thief dies to a slight breeze” or “Thief can’t be both tough and do good damage”. The video shows both those types of statements to be wrong.

Laika.8795:

So what’s your excuse when you see us and fail to “react” to our C&D? This insane notion that we are invisible 100% of the time is going way too far, and you and Columba are sensationalizing a problem that is non-existent, other than a documented culling bug that is being addressed. Should you have that extra second, however, I promise you you’d still be crying, so it’s a moot point anyway. I feel like I’m arguing with a brick wall.

You have admitted in other posts that clipping is an issue. It does make the Thief invis almost 100% in WvW if they so wish it. The abundance of NPCs, etc. that I’ve listed multiple times as well make it trivial as well to land a C&D.

There are so many videos that show thieves popping out of stealth for only a second and then restealthing. It isn’t “sensationalized”. It is something that there is a pile of video evidence for.

Laika.8795:

If you get caught not paying attention to your surroundings, that’s on you. Stupid burst happens on many classes, not just thief. You can react and avoid the BS, I’ve done so SEVERAL times before. It might require a little more reaction speed than some people seem to be capable, which is more of a l2p thing, which is why we see so much QQ. And for your Engie reference, you’ve apparently never seen a 100nades GC do their work. I PROMISE you their burst is 10x worse than a GC thief.

My issue with this is that you don’t see the Thief at all until a second or two after you’re downed. With the 100nades engineer, you see the engineer and you see the AOE circle. That’s the defining difference that bothers me. I’m well aware that a 100nades engineer, quickness 100blades warrior, etc. can burst you down just as quickly. The difference is that you see their character performing the action(s). With the thief you do not see them performing the action.

Laika.8795:

Sebrent.3625:

Thanks for highlighting this. You know what happens to non-thief classes when they get crowd controlled in a zerg? They die. The thief disengages and waits for a better chance.

Ok, this is just ludicrous. Apparently the thief is the only class that has means for escape. Sensationalizing your argument just makes it sound more desperate. As for disengaging and waiting for a better chance, anyone that escapes can also do that. You make it seem like they can stealth from miles away and just waltz back into the heart of the zerg. 4 seconds max on that stealth, and if the zerg is so unaware that they don’t notice his approach, they deserve it.

No, there is a massive difference between a Thief stealthing and escaping and my Mesmer stealthing and escaping.
(1) My mesmer is MUCH slower than your thief
(2) To continue stealthing like the thief I have to have multiple skills (decoy, veil, prestige [torch], mass invis [an elite]) … and even with all 4 I am less able to stealth than the Thief.
(3) With traits, all thief stealths removes conditions, heals, and regens initiative … Mesmer stealth, at best, can give you aegis, protection, or regen … and it’s random and requires 30 pts in Chaos for this one trait.

Now, I’ll concede that Mesmer has distortion and clones confuse noobs, but Thief also has several movement abilities that are also evades.

When it comes to other classes escaping, they break the stun and/or remove the chill/cripple/immobilize only to be hit by another one by the zerg. It is much more difficult for non-Thief classes to escape from the middle of a zerg the way the Thief does.

Here’s the thing, I’m not talking about all Thief specs, I’m talking about two.

Burst Thieves are able to kill a person within a second of initiating on them and without that person ever seeing the Thief’s avatar before being downed. This doesn’t happen to tanky builds, but it is an issue that people have to be tanky to avoid a situation where they are downed by someone before even seeing that someone. That’s not fun. If it was, give engineer back their normal mine kit, make mines invis, and let a 5 mine stack insta-gib people. We’ll see how “fun” that gets.

Stealth Thieves, as illustrated in the video I posted (and there are so many online, just look) is able to stealth so much that unless the player decides to fight with several abilities on cooldown (which they have a choice in), they are fine. In fact, they are able to hunt down people within a group. If the group wisens up, the Thief gets away. Other classes would die when the group wisens up. The thief merely has to bide their time or find a new target … and the Thief is fast enough that that isn’t a problem.

RedSpectrum.1975:

you want to know what i think is op? coming from a thief? Crowd control like crippled chilled immo’d you name it. If im immo’d in a zerg, thats game right there. You want to know why i disengage? because what you guys were doing to try and kill me, it was working. so, keep doing it. want to know why i reengage? because after i dissapeared you guys thought that i was gone and cleverly turned your backs and proceeded to run away. honestly when people do this they should have a consumable item that when double clicked puts giant bold lettering over your head saying Please Backstab Me!

Thanks for highlighting this. You know what happens to non-thief classes when they get crowd controlled in a zerg? They die. The thief disengages and waits for a better chance.

You know what happens if a warrior escapes from a zerg and runs off and that zerg turns their backs to the warrior? They live and if the warrior comes back they again see him and react to him.

Jerks.3172:

Several ways of reset how? only hide in shadows and shadow steps assuming you have no iniatiave from missing your CnD

You’re not mentioning Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder nor the trait, Last Refuge, that gives you Blinding Powder when 25% hp. That’s a ton of stealth.

Jerks.3172:

Take a good amount of punishment? you serious right here? if a butterfly lands on a thief they just go downed.

Watch the video. There are plenty of times he gets CC’d and takes quite a good number of hits and lives. There’s my evidence and he had ZERO +toughness on his gear, just a few pieces w/ Valk stats.

Jerks.3172:

They do not have to wait 3 second to restealth. Yes, thief can chain stealth but if they screw up and stealth wears off before chaining they dont get stealthed at all and get revealed..

<sarcasm>It must be so hard to chain stealth when you can hit clones, phantasms, ranger pets, random critters, and neutral NPCs in order to continue stealthing.

It must also be difficult to hit people who can’t see you so don’t know when to block/dodge to prevent you hitting them. </sarcasm>

As far as the advice to “blindly swing at the area you think the Thief is stealthed at” … how is that fun?! Against non-Thief classes, we get to see our opponent, react to each other’s skills, etc.. Against the Thief we have to guess that the thief was dumb enough not to dodge roll while stealthed and blindly swing? That’s “awesome” and it works if the thief is low on health and too dumb to take advantage of the dodge roll mechanics and their high movespeed. Dumb thieves are not the problem.

I have provided a video and a screenshot illustrating what people are talking about. What have you thieves been illustrating? That you don’t want any nerfs.

Let’s be honest. There is a reason for the massive influx of Thieves we’re seeing in World vs World. About 1/4 of my server’s WvWers last night were Thieves and it was the class I kept constantly running into from other servers as well.

There are obvious reasons Thieves are so prominent in WvW while other specific classes are not.

I’ll put it this way.

When I face a good player playing any other class, I am fine with losing the fight and I reflect on their likely build, how my build pairs up to it, possible weaknesses exposed in mine, and how the flow of the fight went as far as mistakes made and things done “perfectly” by both sides. I am able to do this because non-Thief classes offer good fights.

However, I do not have this feeling when it comes to Thieves playing those 2 builds as forcing people to blindly swipe at air constantly throughout a fight or forcing them to play a tanky build or be insta-gibbed by an invisible enemy are not good fights.

The reason Thieves have been dropped down on the sPvP boards is because you can no longer capture/contest a point while stealth and this form of combat requires you to largely be in stealth. That much should be obvious.

The other reason is because D+D Elementalist and Guardian are so powerful at their respective roles in sPvP that many teams are taking 2 of each. This is something that was actually mentioned by 2 ArenaNet devs in an interview this month … also mentioned by the well-known, top-tier sPvP players in that same interview.

As far as “they weren’t on the same team”. Those guys were trying to kill him while he constantly stealthed and plinked away at that Ranger. I’m sorry, but I don’t know any other class that can constantly harass one player in the middle of a zerg like that without eventually dying from the damage from 10 players. If he had been able to do that for a few seconds or simply downed a squishy I wouldn’t care, but he was able to consistently keep pressure on a tanky player with an entire group trying to kill the one stealth thief picking them off one-by-one.

Some of the players he fights are good.

Also, I should not be screwed against you because I have a teammate that blows except in the case that he somehow gets finished while you’re downed. There isn’t another class out there where given two equally skilled players, one suddenly has an advantage because the other one has a noob join the fight on their side.

All the things mentioned about the thief class “not being OP” that people have brought up have been largely dispelled by that video. I’ll go through them again:

• Have to miss “several cloak and daggers before [you are] in trouble”
• Have several ways to reset the fight
• Can take a good amount of punishment without +toughness gear
• Damage for a stealthy, non-glass cannon can take down even tanky/evasive characters … even when they have friends nearby.
• The Thief does not have to wait 3 seconds to re-stealth.

Here is a video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHOpACoX4ic

Take a look and listen. He has to “miss several cloak and daggers before [he] is in trouble”. He also has several ways to reset the fight. He takes a good amount of punishment several times even though he doesn’t have +toughness gear. His damage is quite good, capable of taking down some tanky targets.

I’m also not seeing him forced to be unstealthed for 3 seconds after stealth breaks.

Arekai.5698:

Anet wouldn’t dare to ask about Ranger gameplay in a hundred kittening years.
It would be death threats all over again, like with the aqua patch. It was still hilarious though.

Death threats? That’s quite a bit overkill.

Unstealthed for 3 seconds my butt. When I got dropped from that screenshot, the Thief showed up long enough to cast C&D which re-stealthed them so they could stomp me.

Additionally, the fact that there is a downed state doesn’t really help with the argument that a Thief can burst you in 1 sec without you even seeing them since in 1v1 you lose once downed like that. Must we bring friends just because we might run into a good Thief? That seems silly to me.

As far as the toughness stealth build, if they became visible when they initially backstabbed me, that’d be great. I could then block the Cloak and Dagger, but that doesn’t work. Additionally, even if I block it, they can simply do it again and reset the fight for their self and I’ve eaten a backstab since I was saving my block/dodge for C&D and there’s no visual indicator for backstab. Furthermore, 3k is lowballing it unless we’re suddenly talking about a Thief in Masterwork hitting a Warrior in exotics.

As far as “exaggerating on the healing in stealth”, >400 hp a sec is excellent health. Since every stealth lasts for 4+ seconds in the stealth build, that’s 1,600 health every time you stealth … on top of faster initiative regen (compensates for spending initiative on stealth) and condition removal. The initiative isn’t much of an issue since it’s only used for stealthing since backstab is more than good enough damage.

I’m amused that your answer for countering the stealth is to “gain distance” since that simply gives the Thief more time to regenerate initiative that is regenerating (more so thanks to on-stealth traits) faster than most cooldowns (particularly the ones for blocking, etc.). Most classes can’t outrun the Thief either.

Daemon.4295:

I disagree that Anet needs to communicate more, look at the mess Jon Peters caused by promising changes we didn’t end up getting (the infamous Aquaman patch). The level of ranger-rage in this forum would probably be a lot lower if Anet had never commented on the state of the class to begin with.

That’s merely speculation and I believe the Ranger forum would instead simply complain that the Thief forum has a post asking what people think about Thief gameplay.

Mesmer Greatsword, Ranger Shortbow, and Ranger Longbow (I’m most familiar with) don’t seem to do crap when I shoot facing where the stealth Thief is. I might as well be shooting at my feet from the look of things.

As far as the different Thieves:

The Burst Thief can down someone, cloak and dagger, and finish them and the finish is the longest part of that. They are stealthed the entire time except for a quick cloak and dagger so you see them for a split second if you’re already looking at that teammate.

The Knight’s Thief does wonderful damage. Again, please see the plethora of videos on YouTube of Thieves wearing plenty of Toughness gear. You can actually survive the initial burst from these thieves, but they are quite tougher to kill thanks to the wonderful things traits give them while stealthed. So while they aren’t doing 10k backstabs, let’s say they do half, so 5k. Multiple 5k backstabs is more than enough to kill any class and the Thief is more than capable of inflicting multiple backstabs in a short amount of time thanks to the ease by which they can stealth.

I agree, 1v1 downed state you’re pretty screwed, unless you’re a Thief near mobs as your #1 is good damage in most builds I’ve seen and #2 and #3 provide plenty of time to kill a random WvW mob.

Laika:
Not everyone has AOE/Cone interrupts. My Mesmer only has Focus and Greatsword and I don’t usually use Greatsword in WvW unless sieging. My Ranger’s stuns both require you to see the target.

Not everyone has a melee weapon that can hit a stealth target. Not an issue for me, but for others it is.

Not everyone has the direct damage to get a Thief off a downed teammate by blindly auto-attacking with a melee weapon. Many of us can’t kill someone in under a second with our class and decent power the way a Thief can or are simply running condition builds. Furthermore, the really tough stealth thieves are using Knight’s armor which makes them quite capable of eating these attacks. Furthermore, the Thief is stealthed, hence healing from traits while downing the player and then able to escape after downing.

This is not uncommon stuff. Again, there is a plethora of videos on YouTube featuring all of this, even against great players.

If they know their stealth build, they are likely traited to (1) Remove conditions while stealthed (2) Heal while stealthed (3) Regenerate initiative faster while stealthed.

Because of (1), I’m not sure I believe the “use condition damage” advice.

I would appreciate at least a “ping” from ArenaNet acknowledging whether a class is where they believe it should be or if some “tuning” is currently warranted.

Pings on various “bugs” in the bug lists on each class forum as well could use some acknowledgement as well.

It gets tiresome and discouraging seeing only player posts about bugs, possible balance issues, etc. for months without any feedback whatsoever.

They are trying to not play “whack-a-mole” with classes after they did that with spirit Rangers and essentially neutered that build. We should all be able to respect that though we’re obviously none too pleased with the fact that it was our beloved Ranger class that that lesson was learned.

I do agree that it would be nice to just get a ping from them. Specifics would be nice but unnecessary while I think at least pinging us would be greatly appreciated. Those who would still complain are always going to complain, but those of us just asking “are you still there” would be much happier.

That said, if you look at the various class forums on here, each one seems to be largely untouched by dev posts in the last 2-3 months. 2 months for Thief, 3 months for Ranger, etc.

How hard is it for a thief to get off a stomp in WvW? With cloak and dagger it’s trivial.

As far as stealth goes, I’m fine with thieves having stealth. What I’m not fine with is:

• Being downed without seeing a single animation, nor even the avatar of the player that downed me with melee attacks
• A player being able to continuously soft reset a fight
• A player able to not only constantly escape on their terms but continuously reinitiate the fight with a “cooldown advantage”. A good thief is patient. They wait for retaliation, etc. to be down, make you blow cooldowns, then disengage long enough to get full initiative and do it again until you don’t have enough to counter with. Then you get plinked down with stealth attacks.

Perhaps using steady weapons and turning off auto-attacks?
Or maybe a frost trap?

Thanks for the info. I greatly appreciate this.

Could you do a comparison where you keep cripple on the moving golem? I’d hope that the dps increases decently with a crippled golem.

Dual.8953:

Sebrent.3625:

I had plenty of toughness, thank you.

Also, when did it become a requirement to not only have top-end gear but a specific set, otherwise someone can kill you without you even seeing them?

Warrior 100 blades, Engineer grenades, glass Ele, etc. all have one huge factor in common … you have a chance to see them coming and can dodge roll, block, etc..

With the thief, no amount of situational awareness is going to let me know that he has targeted me instead of the 10 other people there. The only indicator is suddenly being killed by an invisible opponent. <sarcasm>I guess I should have been using dodge rolls, distortion, etc. any time I so much as thought any player on the other team was looking at me…</sarcasm>

Thinking “he’s not going to hit me” and getting punished for it is your fault. Sure it was probably an indiscriminant choice on the thief’s part, but you’re the one who dropped your guard. Thief’s and his predicessor Assassin’s job has always been to target squishy supports in the enemy ranks, and to burst them down and get away.

(1) There is a difference between “Burst” and “Insta-gib” where the enemy is invis for the whole 1 sec it takes.

(2) My defenses were not down. I’m a bloody mesmer with 3 stunbreakers, distortion, blocks, etc.. Those weren’t on cooldown. Those were ready for the first person who wanted to fight me. Unfortunately, you don’t get to fight a stealth thief. They insta-gib you or constantly restealth and tear you down in chunks.

Let’s be honest, this stuff happening was why the thief got a change to their signet. However, it is still happening to even well-geared players so the fix did not work.

I had plenty of toughness, thank you.

Also, when did it become a requirement to not only have top-end gear but a specific set, otherwise someone can kill you without you even seeing them?

Warrior 100 blades, Engineer grenades, glass Ele, etc. all have one huge factor in common … you have a chance to see them coming and can dodge roll, block, etc..

With the thief, no amount of situational awareness is going to let me know that he has targeted me instead of the 10 other people there. The only indicator is suddenly being killed by an invisible opponent. <sarcasm>I guess I should have been using dodge rolls, distortion, etc. any time I so much as thought any player on the other team was looking at me…</sarcasm>

Here we have my Mesmer get killed before the Thief even becomes visible on the screen. 11k just from the backstab and I’m wearing full exotics with ascended pieces.

The thief uses the well-known combination of:

• Cast cloak and dagger
• Steal right before it finishes the cast so both hit instantly and they are stealthed
• Backstab

I was in the middle of fighting at a tower when suddenly just dead. No thief was visible until 2 seconds after I was down and then only long enough to cloak and dagger to stealth again to down me.

5.3k, 5.1k, and then 11.3k and I never got to see him and it happened in a second at most.

Tonight, from the gear, you can see I was more glassy than when on my tanky ranger, but even then I should at least have the chance to pop distortion, blink, etc.. A chance to actually see my opponent and react.

On my ranger, who can always be found in full exotic with lots of toughness (knights) and with 30 wilderness survival (300 more toughness) loses at least half his hp to this combination and then the thief continues stealthing and backstabbing. With a ranger pet, the stealth is even worse. Often it only takes the initial combo plus 1 to 2 more stealths and he’s down. Perhaps they are just lucky when hitting my tanky character :-/ Lol

Combat in GW2 was advertised as being able to actually fight your opponent and watch each other’s animations to do so. This is broken when you fight a non-baddie thief.

Furthermore, the ways you counter the thief’s burst are on longer cooldowns than the thief’s initiative regenerates and they have the stealth, mobility, and ability to shed conditions (via stealth) to reset the fight quite easily.

Daecollo.9578:

Sebrent.3625:

@Jonny.9370 and @Daecollo.9578
It is not about cooldowns. It is about actually seeing the ability and having a chance to react. There is a massive difference between reacting to something you can actually see being performed and simply guessing what they will perform next.

Warrior:

• I see bolas so have a chance to dodge/block/etc.
• I can use condition removal to get out of bolas
• I can see bull’s charge so have a chance to dodge/block/etc.
• I can use a stunbreaker to get out of bull’s charge
• I can see Hundred Blades so I can dodge/block/etc.

Thief:

• I can see him stealth but not I must guess at what time he is going to backstab me.
  He has 3+ seconds to choose from.
  • 2 Dodge rolls don’t even cover 3+ seconds and leaves you with no stamina to dodge cloak and dagger so then what would you do for the next backstab even if this did work.
  • Blocks don’t last longer than 3 seconds but thieves have multiple ways to get more than 3 seconds of stealth.

The thief is going to backstab you within 2-3 seconds and cloak and dagger you after revealed is gone, if you can’t time this you should play a thief and learn how it works.

You’ve obviously never fought a warrior who saves his skills, if he just suddenly bull’s charges you first, yes its easy to dodge, but if he WAITS and uses it a little later, especially at VERY CLOSE melee range, its almost impossible to dodge. (your also ignoring the shield stun warriors have as well.)

Yes, the thief is going to backstab me anywhere in the next 3+ seconds he is stealthed. How exactly does a person guess when during that time the backstab is going to happen? On my Mesmer, I counter with my own stealth but on my Ranger I’m stuck guessing when to use one of my many evades.

As far as cloak and dagger being easy to evade, that’s great except when there are enemy NPCs nearby that the thief simply hits with cloak and dagger to gain stealth again. Then there’s the 3 other stealths I previously mentioned that many stealth-spec thieves are taking.

Jonny.9370:

Sebrent.3625:

@Jonny.9370 and @Daecollo.9578
There is a massive difference between reacting to something you can actually see being performed and simply guessing what they will perform next.

But how do you know to expect a bullrush and look for it from a warrior? Experiance has taught you that most warriors will prep 100b with a snare. You have adapted and this is no longer an issue. My argument is why do people refuse to apply this to thieves as well?

The difference is in exactly what you said. You “look for” the warrior’s bullrush. Yes, you expect it, but you’re also able to “look for it”. I can expect backstabs all day, but I have no way of looking for them to get that 0.5 sec window to dodge roll, etc..

Jonny.9370:

I have to say, however, trying to think of it from other perspectives has lead me to think that maybe if Steal was not on a seperate GCD from everything else, there would be less of an issue. As it is now, Mug and CnD occur simultaneously and puts you in the perfect position for BS, effectively nulling the cast time of CnD where you would be visible to the opponent. I think that is what you are trying to tell me.

I have little to no problem with the thief being adept at glass cannon vs glass cannon. Like Mesmer, they are largely situated around simply not getting hit … even moreso than Mesmer.

My problems are:

• the ability to constantly “soft reset” a fight for only the Thief (not who they are fighting) with stealth that ¹ Regens health ² Removes conditions ³ Regen initiative quicker ⁴ can be used constantly
• the lack of any cue whatsoever to enable people to dodge roll, block, etc. (see: react to) a backstab.