Guild Wars 2

Ways to counter stealth:
Stack conditions before he go stealth
Heavy AoE in predictabe place of thief
Constant movement,
applying protection,
aoe chill/criple
Root
Knockback/stun/knockdown
Swinging your weapeons basic attack( if it connects you know where is thief)
Look at combat log when random attacking and you know if you hit thief
The last and the most trusty- bunker build

Not gonna argue, stomping with necro is harder then with other classes. I myself send my pet, and stand behind him warrios rocks,interupts wont reach me nor thief nor engineers pulls. Other then that, its teribad at stomping.

Ok someone asked to raid so gonna do it:

Thief

Spvp Rating 10/10

Reasoning: Good killing, runaway capabilities, A lot of points earned, as you are fast mobile and deadly killing unsuspecting foes. No cons.

WvW 8/10

Reasoning: Very few choises of weapeons, in WvW shortbow mandatory, leaving only 1 choise for weapeon, Melee as thief as WvW in zerg battles is imposible making it ridiculously weaker when going with zerg. Very powerfull going solo or in small scale pvp. Cannot cap too effectivly as stealth mechanic dont allow it.

Tpvp 6/10

Reasoning: Cannot bunker as invisibility and dodging to avoid damage lets enemy cap point, Not viable as bunker. Stealth does not allow caping points, if you need to heal, you lose, or let enemy to retake point. Very few viable builds(d/d dominates in most sets). Strenghts, perfect roamer, hight movespeed and invisibility lets them get to places unnoticed, perfect at stealing chieftain/svavnir at 1st map. Good burst with opener from ranger range,gives less time to anticipate attacks.

Extra notes: Very easy to learn and pick up class, with burst viable w/o hight learning curve, Not extremely strong PvE, very low basic hp, Survivability through stealths/shadowsteps, does not require as much help from defencive stats as others.

Extra notes rating 9/10

Tottal rating 33/40 Or rly strong 8. Balanced class with exeptionaly no weakness in Spvp.

More backstab trash talk ? you can play backstab all you want, as a thief i got no problems with it
nor on my mesmer…
nor on my guardian…
nor on my ranger with s/d gs…
nor on my engineer with bomb kit…
nor on my a/m hammer warrior…
nor on my d/d or s/d and staff ele…
Nor on my s/d staff necro…
Bloody hell thats all of the classes…Thief sure is OP every class has build to counter him heavily…

I am sure, you all want to roll berserkers amulet but that is not the best amulet on many classes. I only use it on thief and mesmer since only 2 of them can survive ok with… well also rifle knockback engineers too, if played well.

Other classes do not have enough survivability with berserkers amulet, they just dont… You take bersers amulet and then cry i got killed in 1.5 second by a thief or w/e else.
Maybe think, that it is not working strategy ? or you want to make it a working strategy by nerfing thief.

Leeain.2431:

@Immo.9217
Read all the topic.
Please copy and past to me all the time that me, and other people, wrote that everybody knows support is not only healing… but this is a topic where we talk abut healing.
Thanks.

@Daays.4317

Because a game where defense = offense is boring to watch and play?

Because you play DD.
So you like kill and kill and kill…
I enjoy defence, so for me is boring a game where a rogue or a warrior can kill you in 2sec.

aydenunited.5729:

Stin.9781:

I dont think toughness and healing power are low powered, i allready see guardians outheal any kind of bursts, back to full hp 1on1. Any futher increase would ruin burst dps day.

Things i could agree upon is that:

1. Healing needs rewards.
2. Some healing has too long cd’s
3. some skills need wider aoe of heal on guardian, while some healing aoe’s on other classes need reductions.

These, I agree with.

This is a good suggestion… hold on a second… I wrote the same things 10000times.
CD, area effect, rewards…

So wierd… now you agree? o.o

The difference is that i suggest also (and not only) to change healing power from 0.125 to 0.3 and allow regen to stack x3.
Not 1=1 and not x24.

So, please, next time read all the topic and than answer…
You agree with half of my suggestion.

I cant agree with regeneration stacks as i am invis based thief, if i stack regen allready, with 3x regen i could stealth for 4 seconds healing 1000 per second…. each 5 seconds. That would be heavy unbalance, very heavy.
If healing power also incrase to 0.3 and 3 stacks of regeneration i imagine immortal thiefs running around with invisibility spec.

I agree with guardian aoe on orb of light maybe and some on breath heal.
Other then that ele needs smaller aoe on healing, and ranger needs his water field fixed too. Make it more potent but shorter in duration

Well you do need viable burst spec’s but… you got so much cc on your element swap, that, big damage would make it unbalanced class. Atm you can tottal disable target for some 4 seconds. With reliable burst it is enough to kill sqishy targets, even maintaining tankyness.

I dont think toughness and healing power are low powered, i allready see guardians outheal any kind of bursts, back to full hp 1on1. Any futher increase would ruin burst dps day.

Things i could agree upon is that:

1. Healing needs rewards.
2. Some healing has too long cd’s
3. some skills need wider aoe of heal on guardian, while some healing aoe’s on other classes need reductions.

Now look, Water combo fields, if my teammate ele says im puting down a combo field i just give it 4-5 blast finishers all team got 10k heals or even more, and regeneration… isnt that healing ? If you want to heal alone you wont be able to do it, its not the right game, now if you want to cooperate with your teammates thats the way to go. Ele,ranger, guardian can all sucesfully heal with combo fields. Mesmers with ethereal fields can remove conditions.

Ele has 4 atunments and quite long cooldowns so you actauly do sth else not only heal… as GW2 said, NO DECIDACTED HEALER. If you imagine supporting/healing as sth you do alone this is not the game, in this game its team doing the work, not healer, not support.

I wish you read my post up above saying why healing increase is lower then attack damage increase. The damage can be lowered,prevented, and so on. power increased by 1 and toughness increased by 1 willl not change damage, meaning 1000 power extra against oponent with extra 1000 toughness, will act the same, while healing actualy increases survivability.
Healing compliments toughness better, If we increase it more, bunkers become unkillable at all to any burst dps though its close to that allready atm.

3 Seconds Criple Yey, with 2k damage if 2 glass cannons are near each other they will take around 5k each maybe more if light armor. Actualy against single target its just lackluster exept criple against groups its just too good sometimes.

Thief dagger offhand is stealth spam weapeon… If you change reveal time dagger offhand becomes pretty weak, and ther offhand is atm unplayable. Means … thief is faked unless you play pistol whip or backstab instagib builds.

Thaiden.3487:

Fought against a thief in WvW who used this to be stealthed 90% of the time. He could not kill me and I stuck on him for about 5 minutes (I used everything from bursting him down to tonnes of AoE) but EVERY time he would get low on health he would just go stealth and stealth and stealth some more. Even with AoE he always managed to blink away even while crippled and would be healed by the time he came out of stealth again.
Definite problem. Please fix A.S.A.P.

So a thief could not kill you, nerf him right … ?

D I V A.6018:

I see a lot of people don’t understand the problem with thiefs.
When a thief tells me: "Just think of us to be an overall challenge. If we beat you, due to our superior 1v1 damage, it is probably because you are a terribad player, l2p.

…I just think of any reason why a thief going for glasscannon can beat similar skilled players rolling ele, engineer etc?

There are two things utterly broken with the thief’s class: Their burst damage and the fact they can stealth 4+ times in a fight.

It is as simple as this: If you are superior to a thief and survive his first and second attempt to “I win-button” you to death, he will simply vanish and laugh at you.
1. HARSHLY reduce their damage
2. For dwanya’s sake introduce a global cooldown for stealth (30 seconds+)
3. OIverhall their profession mechanic regarding initiative
4. Rethink their downed abilities.

Anet, pick two of the above.

DIVA

Thief cannot stealth 4+ times a fight unless he is not bursting you. If he is not bursting you, you got all chances to survive.
IF he is bursting you, he does not have 4x stealth only 1x which is his heal and he will not use that to attack will he ?
Innitiative cannot be overhauled with current weapeons as they are made for innitiative, 1-2 damage abilitys 3-4 utility skills helping to survive/make/close gaps. If you overhaul it thief will not be able to play, Your suggestion is tottaly remaking the whole class that is.
Downed state is ok Imo, the problem is downed state damage scale with stats so glass cannon thiefs obviously deal more damage when downed, teleporting lets them dish out more damage when downed then other classes. Otherwise no problems. I see warriors hiting me for 2k trow rock which aint ok too.

Thief shadowsteps atm can fail quite often, but once you are quite experianced you will know when it will work. The only problem for me is Flanking strike which i find rerely using only since it does less damage in whole animation then autoattack plus sometimes makes me to go in wrong direction, creating gaps though im melee class ><.

Would be ok, atm its either tottal win or tottal loss, target either runs away or your team focus it down. Too strong 1on1 too useless in massive pvp. It indeed needs a chance.

Reasons why healing < Damage

1. Dodge (tottaly avoids any damage trown at you)
2. Defencive skills (evasions, invisibility, block, illiusions, guardian domes, reflecting projectiles and stoping foes and so on)
3.Downed form (they created downed form so you enter it, if you got altruistic healing you do not need downed form)

Now about conditions, many classes got condition removals yet very few classes got working decent boon removals thats why boons are weaker then conditions.

Even if i match boons look Vuln 25 stacks-25% more dmg,<Protection 33% less damage

Stacking up many conditions is harder then stacking 1 regen/protection.

Thats about it.

Are you mad? thief requires 3 stomps ? since when ? look time for tp is 2 times longer then time t stomp after your first stomp if you are near m in first 4 seconds( which is a lot of time to run to me) you can stomp me before i use invisibility as it will have 1 second cooldown left, If you are 5-6 seconds late then just autoattack space where i was recently. i still take damage and i bleed while beeing invisible. Mesmers require 1 stomp if you know how to play and theydont spawn out of range… Warriors vengeance is kinda silly but i allready dealt with it,

I dont even need Sr for that… you can just use smoke bomb and few blast finishers for 15 seconds invis if i want . Diffrence ? none by the time im out of invis my innitiative wil be full again and Smoke bomb cooldown is shorter by 50%. Things like this always existed however its easier to achieve with SR now. Some players know nuthing of combos so just keep blabing.

If they reduced bunker builds a lot and increased healing ok
At current point healing would make bunkers indefinetly best choises ingame.

Yukishiro.8792:

By bad I thought I was clear I meant bad for the game, not bad as in underpowered.

Both of those skills do more to ruin tPVP than almost everything else combined. The guardian gandalf staff skill is problematic too, but only on a few areas.

Well old shadow refuge was realy stupid… it gave 20 seconds invis (Not moving) autoattacks could have killed me in it, as i could not run out untill it was 3 seconds left. Atm its counterable easy if used in combat fear mesmer gs push heavy aoe and such still counter it. And actauly if you want to nerf shadow refuge its ok but fix Blinding powder then as other then that, i do not see myself using any stealth skills to do actaul damage.

Yukishiro.8792:

Portal is bad. So is shadow refuge. They are both garbage “bring the class” skills.

As a thief i trait into stealth in Spvp, making my shadow refuge heal me around 6-7k if i stay invis all 15 seconds + removing all conditions. Its not crap at all, however its counters are quite obvious.

The problem is Mesmer portal beeing the perfect most powerfull defence not thief beeing able to sneak up on your point( as a stealth class should)

Caping the point from red to blue takes 14 seconds. Ressing yourself takes 15 seconds. ele runs away and can ress himself in time i cap the point, or i have to leave the point and lose points for my team to stop ele from ressing. Either way my team loses something. I either lose some points, or i let ele run away, knowing i might get attack fast again. Thief downed state is weaker as it can only teleport in Line of sight, meaning if he teleported from where you stand your ranged attack can hit him, if you position yourself + you can just dps him down.

There should not be Healing others since it leans towards 1 type of playstyle. Look basic explanation:

Healing boosts bunkers more then burst classes.
A bunker that can hold indefinetly 2vs2 with healer on his side, leans towards combo of heal and tank. Now while dps and tank cannon break the barrier of healing/tanking so it is at a loss. Dps and heal, Can focus down healer first, however, the second bunker alone is able to hold point solo for 20 seconds even w/o healer so healer has time to return and heal him up.
In the end healer+ bunker combo will be superior.

So what Anet decided ? All can heal themselfes, all can support to some extent.
Now it comes to this that 2 vs 2 its all about builds/skills of players not about classes.

I welcome this decision, with open arms, the only problem it might couse is that:
It might happen that Dps>bunker or Bunker>dps in meta.(the 2nd option is how it is atm)
To avoid such things where any bunker>any dps player must not be able to heal back all damage it takes indefinetly. Adding more healing might break that.

Aga.8641:

Gee, this thread for the 10000th time.

Yes bunkers are annoying and no the meta wont ever change so long as the only game mode is conquest, you know, where you need to actually hold objectives…

Well, thing is balanced teams do well in touraments. Bunker teams win against most balanced teams if they got equal skill. Bunker teams counter is… none even if you kill bunker he holded point much more longer then we we gained by killing him.

Im kind of annoyed by bunker wars lately, met a lot of teams with composition of bunker ele, bunker mesmer, guardian, bomb kit bunker engineer and ussualy class X.

So, stealing point solo is no longer an option mesmer or another bunker lives long enough for help to arrive, meaning builds with solo roamer no longer work stealing points. So you either make 2 roamers and have -1 person in middle/close point but chance of stealing their point(gives disadvantage to your team anyways) or you also bunker up.

Not gonna call for nerfs, but what do you think about meta which is all about better bunkers.

P.S. who wanted to say you can steal 1on1, play more paid tourneys, atm its next to imposible to solo 1v1 point vs any of classes mentioned above.

MarcusKilgannon.5048:

Stin, I’ve only ever come across 2 elementalists that were good. Everyone else playing is severely lacking or is it the class is underpowered? Because it seems odd that a person playing a thief, which you would assume would have some learning curve can almost always handle their character well and instant drop people like nothing. Which I proved when I made a thief with 2 other friends as thieves, making it to tournament finals without having a clue how to play the class. It’s not a L2P issue, it’s the class is below everyone else. Same with ranger, and if you think ranger is L2P, Arenanet made a post earlier this week stating there will be large changes to the class utilities etc. Why? Because the class is not as good as the majority.

So class should be balanced for average player not for, the skillcap it can be playd upon at its best ? Is that what ur telling ?

I have met dozens of good elementalist and got 800+ games or so on thief around 70% tourament win rate, im sure i see more what classes are capable of, I also play simple Spvp from time to time and see new elementalists as fish bait only in Spvp. But how you imagine buffing class for easier play not increasing hight skill cap, to overally too hight levels.

Spvp if you get automatchd is not that bad) picking a server instead might lead to problems of beeing matched to ppl with 10x more experiance.

Ive playe WoW Dota LoL HoN and kittenloads of other stuff and Tpvp is very good here, Spvp is all about best Bursters while PvE is a bit not my taste :P Most people dont like wiping a lot and running back.

It was in patch notes, that if you stand 5 seconds in shadow refuge while area is shown for enemies you have 10 seconds free movement invisible. However they reduced time we could be invisible and caped stealth time limit to a smaller one too in same patch, but ppl who ask for nerfs dont know that so w/e.

^ the guy aboves right, but 1 thing with shatter mesmer is burst is too easily achievable w/o help of utility or anything else meaning a rly powerfully hight dps mesmer has kittenload of survival even beeing glass cannon same as thief, just in a more confusing way as you get illiusions added.

Lumines.3916:

Give eles a break, they can still only stop your stomp once. If you do it the moment you get them downed, they can’t always myst away. If anything, Thieves can still stall for way longer than anyone downed still.

The range eles run is longer then thiefs + they reset hp on mist form. Thief can teleport, stealth after 6 seconds after tp(stomping is like 5 seconds so its nough time) then after somewhat 3 more seconds tp again. In all that time we bleed taking heavy damage, unless you dont notice us. Ele dont bleed runs around and resets hp. Tell me which is more powerfull.

MarcusKilgannon thats your L2P issue with elementalist beeing behind other classes. It has much highter skill requirments however is much better in experianced hands then most other classes. Anyways, atm ele stompbreak runaway is uncounterable and needs to be weakened so it has at least 1 counter, raw dps, fast finisher, or sth like that.

Its not OP however it came to a point where taking Blinding powder is useless as we got shadow refuge. They should be kind of evened out a little. Current balance of our invis is like 1 aoe invis 10 seconds 1400 heal other aoe invis 3 seconds and blind on enemy.

Malicious.6742:

What does all that have to do with Shadow Refuge…

Asomal.6453:

Though Smoke Screen is 30 seconds CD against 60 from Shadow Refuge, but SR is superior,i’ll give you that. However, it’s not like god mode to revive yourself or an ally. Is it good? Of course it is! I use SR all the time for those cases but let’s be real here: How many people keep attacking you when you enter stealth to revive an ally? You and your ally didn’t move from place but some people may think ’’wow where did they go?" and does nothing until you reapper!

If you trait for heal in stealth and if your mate actually keeps ressing himself it’s not that hard to res – unless heavily aoe’d ofc.

Are you mad ? with healing traits in shadw refuge u heal 700 hps for first 5 seconds then 350 or so for next 10. The tottal healing is around 7000 if you dont go out of stealth for 15 seconds. plus 1400 that shadow refuge innitialy heals making it around 8400. Pretty incredible but doesnt go with caping points or heavy backstab or other builds if you aim for damage.

Ok so look this situation :

Ele captured your point but you came and killed him. he mist forms and runs behind Obsstable breaking LoS. You either leave point or let ele ressurect basicly. Thief can teleport however he he needs LoS to teleport so cant go behind obstacle that you cant see from place you planed to stomp him.
And yes mesmer phantasm when downed got too much damage.

I Would say the Mist form should not remove damage, Right now it can avoid any type of stomp stability/dpsed/double/triple or w/e you can think of. Just make them lose health reset and it should be all ok though.

Mesmer shatters are ok… well maybe boon removal is a bit too much, Portal became 100% needed utility for all mesmers since its the best teamplay ability ingame. One time we fought 2 mesmers who had their portals in diffrent sides so 3-4 ppl emerage in one side, kill fast, tp back, They could hold 2 points with 3-4 ppl in each place, thanks to portals. In my opinion portals should get HP, so it can be destryed by aoes and random attacks.

Well evading shaters when multi stuned isnt rly effective, as i told in first post, Magic bullet, clones run to me, if i break stun he immobilize with sword 3 and blade flurry, which leads to eating shatters/flurry and some other stuff… which is uncounterable unless you use 2x stunbreaker on specific trait to make you invisible once you are cc’ed

he can use one that gives confusions, too since rangers main skill is crossfire which hits like 2 times per second…

Tested build similar to this on mesmer on medium golem 3x shatters 1600 average dmg dmg. Blade flurry 3600 dmg, Duelist like 6k dmg then shatter phantasm and illiusions you got again. The overal damage was 6×1600+3600+6k. That was 19200 damage. Probably not the mst damage, however much harder to counter then warrior stunlock with Bullcharge.

Ye thx.
Well the thing is 23k burst with 25k hp and class with portal/invis to runaway seems a bit hight to me. My ranger had 18k hp running hight damage spec, which isnt even close in damage to mesmer, and has way less hp

Ok ran into imposible mesmer build, would like to ask few questions.

The tactic of this build was:
Magic bullet(stun)>shattter+sword flurry+phantams(if im not dead yet)

The whole combo was hiting (2000 armor) for 23k(i got 18k hp) not minding phantasms summoned later, whole time i was stuned, from magic bullet(maybe other stun too which i dont know of), and if not stunbreaker instant dead.

The mesmer later claimed hes using knights amulet (power/prec/vit)

1. How often can you set up such a combo.
2.Could it be hes using Berserkers amulet(the damage seems unreal minding that its done in stunlock when using knights)
3.According to him he had 25k hp.(25k hp and burst of 23k(according to combat logs are insane) seems little fishy). The question is knowing this info could you try to give me info of spec(25k hp knights amulet based on shatter 1 of weapeons is sword/pistol 2d one is staff as he was using warlock from phantasms)

I guess that is all.

Well i would say this change is welcome for people who had too low or no time to react, in normal pvp whre ppl react in time nuthing changed. Its even better, as now countering that 1 hit wont drop signets usefullness to 0, as it did before so its better in pro pvp.

The whole change in damage is tottaly same. The first 3 hits deal 15% less damage.
This makes instagibs less possible and gives more time to react.
However we can enjoy it too, as now, thief can use that signet in a lot of builds not just Backstab.

Go read Assasins signet 15% topic.
We arent stronger, the overal damage is tottaly same. However the damage from first 3 hits lower 15% in backstab build. Meaning people got more time to react.
Yet now signet can go in many builds not just backstab.

Omg i wrote clearly its not a buff nor a nerf, its a change only. I did tests on full vitality mesmer(1836 armor 28k hp) There was 1% increase in damage compared to old trinket.

However now, the innitiatial burst has around 15% less damage, and focuses more on heartseekers after the backstab to even out the damage.

In tottal it does not change the damage, however gives greater chance to survive if your reaction isnt that of a snail.

Having all that in mind its a very welcome change, since that signet is also usefull in other builds too, not only backstab.

P.S. Its not 75% buff… look steal>CnD>BS>HS>HS does 29k damage on non moving glass cannon light armor. The old signet increased 8k backstab to 12k=4k more damage.
New one gives 15% increase to whole combo=29k*1.15=33.35k
The increase is 4.35k.

Diffrence in damage is 350 damage, however the time to pull this off is larger, meaning its nerf to instagib combo which most people could not react. Otherwise its just a welcome change.

Im up for castbars i guess. Easier to see castings on Charr then on asura for sure.

Ok ill continue futher explanation.
Thief in stealth gets extra slow, if he dont have swiftness of SoS, he cant possibly land a backstab on a moving target unless target is moving in direction favourable to thief. Now imagine:

Thief stealthed, slowest ingame w/o any buffs.
You run with your signet=outrun thief. If he want to catch up to land backstab he… well he cant if he use heartseeker to catch up he cant backstab as he blew his invis. So a failed backstab would result in death.
Also the range on Heartseeker is affected by SoS.
No movespeed buff=shorter leap on heartseeker, which can be outrun in that case if you got swiftness.

So imagine if thief is slower then necro/warrior/guardian/ranger/ele. Thats 5/8 classes faster then thief if speed nerf the guy above told is completed. Mesmers got portals, and 1/8 classes is same thiefs. Meaning 6/8 classes could outporform in roaming.

Who cares about my insane bursts if i am slow to arive in spot im needed in Tpvp.

I would better take fastest profesion into Tpvp, then most bursty one.

Spvp sincerely lacks more needed roles, thats why burst dominates there. However Tpvp is pretty balanced and well maintained. If not lack of maps i would dare to call it perfect.