Guild Wars 2

Wow, it’s Thieves like you guys who give us a bad name.

Did he say Thieves were OP? No.
Did he say he couldn’t beat them? Not that either.

All he is doing is pointing out a possible bug (which may be true, because 4500+ Heartseekers seems a lot) and you all unload the standard ‘L2P complain more noob’ responses.

To the OP, you won’t get any help here, as you have noticed. If you want, go test it out in Heart of the Mists with a friendly Thief and, if the skill is bugged (wouldn’t put it past Anet) send a bug report.

Edit: If you all keep moaning that Heartseeker is so bad, then surely it being able to do the amount of damage mentioned is indicative of a bug, no?

Yes but that isn’t an excuse for being overly powerful. If you remember, Ele survivability was nerfed.

xcavars.5049:

Stuff. It’s the post just two above so I won’t quote the entire thing.

The real issue that I have with what you did isn’t that it is not effective (because it is).

It’s that when fighting you, all I am doing is pressing 5-2-1 over and over again (with a few other buttons like healing skill or Blinding powder, and dodging occasionally) and you have to do so much to counter me.

Add in a little bit of skill on my part and while your tankyness stops me from doing enough damage to kill you, you will never bring me down either.

Also, the other problem I have with Thieves in WvW is that we can build a lot of damage but still survive because of how broken stealth is. Unfortunately without it the Thief sucks (it’s tied to initiative regeneration, health regeneration, and condition removal), but it should still be brought down. There needs to be a reliable, easily accessible way to counter it.

Playing Southsun survival with a group of friends would be really fun, ditto with Sanctum Sprint and all the other mini games.

In the spirit of fairness it could be a separate ‘room’ (like a private PvP room) so that normal games are still balanced.

Okay, so I tried to improve the calculation a bit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/
The ratios for crit damage tradeoff are from 1:12 to 1:16 (not including traits/runes).

First, the base 4% crit chance is included because the formula on http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precision accounts for this.

Second, for fury, all you have to do is to move the graph 20 to the left because it is just a free 20% crit chance.

I actually did this because while the charts that you linked tell you which gear pieces are the best for getting crit damage, it doesn’t tell you at which point you should stop getting crit damage (and get precision instead). Also, the graph at :

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Average_damage_increase

Isn’t very useful since getting 5% crit chance and getting 5% crit damage (moving one space sideways or one space down) isn’t the same – it’s a lot easier to get 5% crit damage.

In the attached graph the blue+red lines are without fury (based off the ratio which varies from 12 to 16), and other two with fury. What it shows is that until you reach 46%ish crit chance, you are better off getting critical chance instead of crit damage. (and 26% if you have fury).

Some people get cavalier gear instead of knights while their crit chance is still very low. The graph shows this is a loss of damage and also when exchanging to cavalier gear is better

Obviously it doesn’t account for things like procs or Hidden Killer, but factoring something like that in is really difficult. You have to adjust for these according to your build. In short, this isn’t meant to be something that you follow to the letter, but as an approximation.

For the graph, the x-axis is the crit chance, and the y-axis is the bonus crit damage.

Yes, afterwards I will run the numbers for the different pieces, but for now I’m focusing on seeing if it makes sense first.

Recently, I was wondering about the relationship between crit damage/precision and how to budget them.

To put it simply, let’s say you already have x amount of crit chance, and y amount of crit damage (whatever they may be). You now have the choice to add a Cavalier (Power Toughness Critdmg) or Knight (Power Toughness Precision) piece. How do you know which one gives more damage? (just assume you are doing WvW so toughness is a must-have stat).

Obviously, to get crit damage you have to sacrifice precision, and vice versa.

The formula for crit chance from the wiki is: crit chance=(p-822)/21 where ‘p’ is precision.

Using a random exotic piece of cavalier jewelry I have, to get 3% crit damage, you have to sacrifice 40 of some other stat. In this case it is precision.

If ‘T’ is the total budget of stats allocated to precision+crit damage, then you have T-p stats left for crit damage. The bonus crit damage you can get will be (T-p)(3/40)*.

Therefore, the crit multiplier is 50% + bonus crit damage, which is:

1.5+(3/4000)(T-p) (not as a percentage)

The average damage multiplier from crit chance (CC) and crit damage (CD) will be:

damage = (CC x CM)+(1-CC)

If you expand this out, it’s a quadratic equation. But we don’t really care what the equation is, only at which point it reaches its’ peak. Therefore, I differentiated with respect to ‘p’ and set this equal to 0

d[damage]/dp = d [(CC x CM)+(1-CC)]/dp = 0

After a lot of number wrangling and calculator mashing (which you may want to check yourself because it might have a mistake inside) this simplifies itself to:

3T-6p= -4466

We don’t care what ‘T’ is so I put the crit damage equation back in to show that instead. It gives:

Crit Damage = [(1534+3p)/4000 -1.5] * 100

In other words, this is a graph of the ‘optimal’ amount of crit damage which you should have for the precision that you have. Go above it and you should trade crit damage for precision, and vice-versa for going below.

Now I haven’t done math in a loooong time so would like to ask if it’s correct, and if not, why it isn’t. If it is correct, what would you do with this information?

Edit: Fixed the mistake

Travlane.5948:

Sunflowers.1729:

Travlane.5948:

. it should do a % of incoming dmg

I would actually kind of agree to this, mostly because it would help fix Grenade Engis and LB Rangers.

Then sit back and watch as you complain that Backstab is useless because it damages yourself too much…

% with a cap of 400 dmg? that sound better? i mean theres always an answer

Right now retaliation is used as a counter to multi-hit attacks. With a change to the mechanic, it would be a counter to all sorts of damage which (I think) is a stupid way to fix it.

At least now you can go “oh I will not use x and y attack”. With this change it would be “he’s going to damage me no matter what I do, and there is nothing I can do against it”.

Travlane.5948:

. it should do a % of incoming dmg

I would actually kind of agree to this, mostly because it would help fix Grenade Engis and LB Rangers.

Then sit back and watch as you complain that Backstab is useless because it damages yourself too much…

Travlane.5948:

yes yes yes we all know engineers have the same problem. but even in the grenade spec they have other skills to use. thieves dont. if u d like to point one out on p/p or p/d plz do show me.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot

^and weapon swap. In all the time I’ve played my Thief, not once has retaliation been an issue. I’d say it affects my Thief the least out of all 5 lv 80s.

Of course he is right to some extent, but to claim that things can’t be overpowered is ridiculous.

League of Legends is pretty balanced by most accounts. Release Xin Zhao was a broken nightmare of ridiculous proportions. Obviously there were still counters to him, but that didn’t keep Riot from hotfixing him almost instantly.

Which ties back in to another point: having counters doesn’t mean it’s can’t be overpowered. As you can see from the example I just gave.

Zacchary.6183:

Regardless of that, there is always a counter to everything but like anything else it needs to be worked for. People can’t keep thinking inside the box forever.

This is blatantly untrue.

Cyclical imbalance? Must be a pretty long cycle then, because for the past 9 months the best team composition for PvE has been some combination of Mesmer + Warrior + Guardian + something, and for WvW roaming the Thief (no comment on sPvP, because I hate it).

For zergs, you have the clump-together-spam-1 strategy which works exceedingly well, and 90% of zergs use it to great effect. There are a few other ways to zerg (e.g. kite groups) but if there was ‘Cyclical Balance’ we would see more of such strategies appear, then counter-strategies appear to remove that. This is (at least on T2 NA where I am) not the case.

Can’t you get it into your head? People are complaining not because they don’t want to counter it, but because there is no counter (or nothing better in the case of PvE).

If there was a cyclical imbalance, we would see (for example) a surge of roaming Engineers to counter all the roaming Thieves. That’s obviously not happening.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Aether McLoud.1975:

PinCushion.7390:

Aether McLoud.1975:

This is a computer game, of course nothing in it is hard to do. Compared to all the other professions though, ele and engi are definitely harder to play.

I find Elementalist and Engineer to be about the same difficulty level as driving a stick-shift car.

Which, to be fair, is asking too much of about 90% of the american population.

/flameshield=on

Honestly I’m kind of tired of people saying this, whether it be true or not, and using it to justify all kinds of things.

Maybe it’s true that most players suck (which means you really have to define what ‘suck’ is, because then almost everyone sucks, which doesn’t make sense) but don’t forget that it’s a game too.

Maybe Arenanet could make an exceedingly difficult dungeon, that only elite players could complete. As a Dungeon Master (with the stupid pre-nerf Simin), it probably wouldn’t be too hard for me to complete it, but the majority of the player base would complain. Now that in itself wouldn’t even be so bad, but what if you put it in as time-gated, and part of the living story? This is basically the Aetherblade dungeon.

Alternatively, take Thieves (#1 example because everyone complains about them). I decided to play D/P and started destroying everyone with 3 buttons. Now at the very highest level of play, they might be balanced, but for everyone else it’s simply not fun to deal with someone who stabs you for half your health and keeps going invisible, with massive regen+condition removal. At most players’ skill levels (according to Thief community, 90% of people suck. Their words, not mine) the class is stupidly OP even though neither player is ‘better’.

Basically, what I’m saying is that for this game to be popular, you can’t just balance around the highest levels of play and tell everyone else to “deal with it”.

I’m not gonna “deal with it”, I’m going to play LoL where they actually balance around all levels of play so that it is actually fun instead of thinking “wow maybe if I practice for two months this game might become fun”.

End of rant….(if it sounded offensive then I apologize because it wasn’t directed at you).

Edit: It doesn’t mean that hard content shouldn’t exist. It just means that there should be easy content too, for the less hardcore players, and that PvP shouldn’t be balanced only around the best players.

Sorry I went really far off topic.

Aberrant.6749:

1v1 capability matters while roaming.

The point is that being able to escape matters more. I can always choose to not take a certain camp/dolyak/sentry and move on to something else if there is someone whom I cannot 1v1.

You can’t choose to escape if your class just doesn’t have the mobility/stealth to avoid getting run over by a zerg.

There are also things that can be done without having to 1v1, such as contesting keeps, following zergs, and setting up supply traps (and stealth traps, which are completely useless).

If I wanted an ego-measuring contest then I’d go play sPvP, not roam. Being able to 1v1 is of very little importance.

If I may direct everyone’s attention to the title of the thread.

A good 1v1 class (however you want to define it) doesn’t necessarily make a good roamer. Even the best 1v1 player cannot 1v1 a zerg, because a) the player will die in about 0.5 seconds regardless of his skill and b) obviously it isn’t a 1v1 any more.

Minionmancers are really good at 1v1. So are spirit rangers. When was the last time you saw one of those roaming around?

Being able to escape zergs through speed/stealth and having the capability to take camps/dolyaks/sentries is the only thing that contributes to being a good roamer.

So to answer the question, no, there is nothing that comes close to the ability of a (non brain-dead)Thief to escape.

If the topic was “which class is the best at 1v1” then I would be inclined to suggest something other than Thief (Engineer?) but that’s not what it is asking at all. In fact, being able to 1v1 extremely well is even more useless than being a good roamer. Unless the enemy server has no groups larger than 2 in WvW, it is a very pointless ability to have.

Anyway I still don’t think Thieves are the worst at 1v1. Not the best, but not too bad either.

Cactus.2710:

Jabberwock.9014:

Supposedly racial elites aren’t supposed to outshine class elites. So why is it that Norns get snow leopard form with a ridiculous 1600 range dash, coupled with a 5 second stealth (on 10s cooldown)? This gives way too much mobility/escapability to classes that don’t have innate mobility, but only if you are a norn. Sure it’s terrible for battling, but that’s not what you’ll be using it for.

Really though, all racial elites should be completely disabled in wvw.

No combative player is going to waste an elite like that, so tell me … what’s the difference between a roamer who runs far away at the sight of you and one that runs far away after you jump him? Answer: nothing.

You do your forum name great justice.

The difference is that the roamer lives, and can keep taking camps/killing Dolyaks/doing stuff without having to run from a waypoint.

Edit: I roam to get points, not for some skill-measuring contest. Does it really matter if losing an elite skill means I cannot kill someone as easily, or at all? Killing them isn’t going to get points, but being able to reset the fight over and over again (see Thief stealth, Norn Elite, pre-nerf RTL) means I don’t have to worry about dying to a larger force, and can keep taking important objectives.

Atherakhia.4086:

If this thread had a point, servers that are grossly outnumbered or had poor coverage would actually have a chance. Since we know this isn’t the case, apparently roaming isn’t worth squat in this game.

You’re forgetting that the server with more people also has more roamers…

GW2 is just not a good PvP game:

-Dodging allows you to dodge burst damage, and some are well designed (e.g. 100 blades, Whirling Wrath) to be telegraphed and dodgeable, then you have things that aren’t (S/D Ele, Thieves) and leaves very little counter-play (or at least, it’s a lot harder to avoid).

-There are so many flashy effects. It’s hard to tell what is going on with explosions, minions/summons, and particle effects on your screen. Again, no counter-play when you can’t even see what is going on.

-sPvP is not beginner-friendly. When I just started out and decided to mess around, there was no guide, no matchmaking, and it basically left me very confused as to what was going on, other than ‘stand in these circles to get points, and kill other people’.

-It’s terribly balanced (my opinion). And they only seem to be balancing around the highest levels of sPvP, in which case why would the remaining 90% of people play a game that is unbalanced for them?

Someone won’t go “wow if I reach a certain level of skill it will be fun”, practice for weeks to beat a Heartseeker-spamming Thief (which is very effective for how simple it is to play), then go “ah now I can have fun”.

That person will just go “oh lol that class is so easy, let’s just play it”. And that person was me! Now, even though I am still the same unskilled person, I destroy other totally unskilled people simply because of a choice at the character select screen.

I don’t really care if the Thief-support-brigade comes and says “oh but look the best players can do it so everyone can”. Guess what? If Microsoft sold a computer that only people fluent in 5 programming languages could use, they would never have gotten anywhere.

Nothing against Thieves in particular, as there are other builds that are powerful at low skill levels, but since they seem to have gotten so many complaints, it seemed like the most obvious example.

-There are a lot of dumb mechanics, like massive amounts of dodge, uncounterable stealth, and crazy sustain which may be balanced (or may not) but is very annoying to play against.

Keep in mind I don’t play sPvP very much (because WvW is more fun) so this is just based off my own experience there. And as a disclaimer I have a Thief, Ele, and Mesmer all at lv 80, so before you say “go play those classes and see how wrong you are”….

Edit: Just because something is annoying does not make it overpowered. But it can still be annoying.

Zacchary.6183:

Monsoon.2589:

Zacchary.6183:

EvilSardine.9635:

Dual.8953:

17k is a number I’ve heard attached to 100nades, but I’ve yet rarely heard with BS (like once against someone without armour rare).

Say again? This backstab was done to my warrior with 1500 toughness. I had full health, no conditions like vunerability, or anything. I was just standing outside of my keep watching a few people in the distance. I died in just two hits (C&D and BS).

Thieves, how can I “L2P” if I can’t see almost 20K in damage coming?

You were standing outside the keep. You were too busy watching those few people to scan the other 260 degrees for incoming enemies. Your fault for letting you guard down and standing out in the open.

I believe you are the original thief troll forum warrior I have heard so much about…a unique combination.

You did not address the point the person was making which was about the amount of damage dealt in 2 hits and in instead blamed the person for not being prepared and ready to be attacked by an invisible foe. Further more, your original first two posts on his issue on the first page clearly seem to show a lack of maturity and a clear desire for trolling instead

And my point is they asked for it. They failed to use situational awareness. They made themselves accessible to the thief. So whether or not they got killed, it was their fault that they got ambushed. Also here is a little secret…

So what if I stealth in then do the combo (just as the stealth times out)?

Next you’re gonna tell me that ‘situational awareness’ (congratulations, you managed to slip a fancy term in) involves placing stealth traps everywhere you stand?

Shemsu.8721:

Monsoon.2589:

Zacchary.6183:

EvilSardine.9635:

Dual.8953:

17k is a number I’ve heard attached to 100nades, but I’ve yet rarely heard with BS (like once against someone without armour rare).

Say again? This backstab was done to my warrior with 1500 toughness. I had full health, no conditions like vunerability, or anything. I was just standing outside of my keep watching a few people in the distance. I died in just two hits (C&D and BS).

Thieves, how can I “L2P” if I can’t see almost 20K in damage coming?

You were standing outside the keep. You were too busy watching those few people to scan the other 260 degrees for incoming enemies. Your fault for letting you guard down and standing out in the open.

I believe you are the original thief troll forum warrior I have heard so much about…a unique combination.

You did not address the point the person was making which was about the amount of damage dealt in 2 hits and in instead blamed the person for not being prepared and ready to be attacked by an invisible foe. Further more, your original first two posts on his issue on the first page clearly seem to show a lack of maturity and a clear desire for trolling instead

Actually he did. The thief class is designed to have the highest single target burst (funny story though, it doesnt). There is no issue with the amount of damage he dealt, that same warrior, if fully geared and traited for damage could have done as more or more damage with hundred blades, or killshot, or even axe AUTOATTACK. thats right, warrior axe autoattack does more damage than backstab. pay attention when standing on open ground in wvw.

No, no he didn’t.

The point was that you can be instantly bursted down from 100 to 0 in <0.5 seconds, with nothing that you can do about it. Heck, with the latency that I have, I’d probably be dead even before seeing it on my screen.

Hundred Blades, Killshot (unless casted from stealth), and axe autoattack are all telegraphed moves. Warriors also don’t have an instant 900 range blink.

Edit: You would probably make a better point if you used S/D burst Eles or Shatter Mesmers. On the other hand, they don’t even burst as hard, or as quickly.

I think they said the problem was being able to zip around and bunker somewhere for a bit, then take some other point, and basically run around and do everything at once.

Being able to reset fights isn’t that important (IN PVP NOT WvW) or else Thieves and Mesmers would have been smacked with the nerf-bat a lot harder.

Look I’m just playing the devil’s advocate, albeit not very well…

To be fair, rocket boots takes up a very valuable slot (especially on an Engineer who has only 5 weapon skills) and RTL is a skill on a weapon with a lot of utility.

It doesn’t matter anyway. Anet is never going to balance for WvW, and especially not roaming (notice how >50% of roamers are Thieves? If they cared about this at all then such an obvious imbalance would have been fixed ages ago) because they want sPvP/tPvP to be the focus.

Making RTL a 20 second cooldown would throw the balance there completely off, so they can’t do it.

Edit: Although having RTL fly off the ground would be pretty cool!

Kolly.9872:

Change Aegis so that it only lasts 3 secs when activated and put a 4 seconds cooldown on it after every succesfull block and we can start discussing about a “reveal” debuff change.

Hey, while we’re at it, let’s give Aegis-applying skills a 4 second cooldown!

Deal!

(bad comparison is bad)

Evilek.5690:

Jabberwock.9014:

Evilek.5690:

Come in sPvP with your Thief I’ll show you how Elementalist is strong.

Not talking about sPvP genius. Hence WvW forums. And in sPvP necro dominates both since last patch anyways.

sPvP=WvWvW in this weapon set. Same DMG,mobility, just everything. MR Oblivious

It’s obviously not the same, stop saying that it is. In WvW, I stacked >100% crit damage on my Thief, which (because of hidden killer) allows for a lot more damage potential.

Zacchary.6183:

How many times must the same kitten be explained to you guys?

Invisibility =/= Invincibility.

I almost never get hit in stealth. All you have to do is move erratically, and stealth is almost the same as invincibility (except for channeled abilities). Most Thieves are terrible and keep walking in the same direction so of course they don’t realize the damage-avoiding potential.

Obviously this doesn’t apply if you can’t move and the enemy knows where you are, but that can be largely avoided by using stun breaks/infiltrator’s arrow/withdraw/roll for initiative.etc

Edit: You will probably get some damage in the first ~1 second after entering stealth, because of abilities that were flying/halfway through being cast. After that, it is very easy to avoid taking further damage.

You can also dodge in stealth, just in case (or to stop a Kill Shot)

I have to say that the flute is incredibly responsive, and sounds nice (it’s really soft though)

You need to trait properly, for +2 initiative on skills that stealth you.

The issue at hand isn’t whether it is ‘realistic’ or not. It’s that stealth attacks don’t require any interaction to pull off. Block, blind, dodge – it doesn’t matter. I just go 111111 and hope it hits, without having to worry about missing.

For every other attack in the game, I have to be careful that the enemy doesn’t have Aegis/some other defensive move, because it will still go on cooldown/use initiative.

Surbrus.6942:

Sunflowers.1729:

Unless you are squishy (or not running solo), you have a snowball’s chance in hell of bursting me down before I stealth again and run away if things go wrong.

So what? In an objective based game type (WvW), sending the enemy running with their tail between their legs is a win.

But I’m just saying that unless you are squishy (which the OP is saying not to do), then you will never beat me.

Doesn’t have anything to do with objective-based games or anything – that’s a different topic, and the Thief forum has already shown me that they respond to all arguments with ‘L2P noob’ and insults. So I will not bother with arguing this point.

It is generally correct. Certain conditions/boons take priority when being cleansed/stripped.

I don’t know the exact order (or if it depends on the number of stacks), but bleeding has a rather high priority.

Unless you are squishy (or not running solo), you have a snowball’s chance in hell of bursting me down before I stealth again and run away if things go wrong.

And

Sure it is really easy to disengage a fight as a thief and run away. Not OP, working as intended and perfectly balanced.

Yeah sure, okay. I guess we all play Thieves to roam then.

Support doesn’t mean ‘healing’. Even though Anet said they do not want ‘healers’, they did say they wanted damage, control, and support.

Right now, only damage is rewarded.

Nuage.5230:

Why, because it was a run-on sentence?

Yes (it is also a completely irrelevant point that is not supported by anything but his opinion).

But mainly the run-on sentence. That must never happen.

Orpheal.8263:

Also other classes should lose stealth, mainly the mesmer, stealth is and should be always a thief only privilege.

Yeah, at this point I stopped taking anything you said seriously

Noroz.9527:

1: Arrow carts do not shoot through, they shoot up and over.

If you aim it at the inside of the gate, the AC will damage flame rams outside of the gate.

The OP already said that he is in full PVT gear, which means (obviously) that he has 2k+ toughness and when he said armor it was a mistake.

Edit: Okay he said he has zerker trinkets. But still, he should definitely have way more than 2k armor. The numbers don’t really match up. Also, 21k hp is hardly glass cannon.

Orpheal.8263:

To become a very dangerous thief only, the game basically forces you to just play with with Berserker Gear and some kind of perma stealthing around CoD with Back Stabbing, because thats the only way a Thief can create in this game high burst damage.
If you play any other kind of thief build, you will never get at all somewhere into the near of dealing such high damage..

Not true, especially with D/P. I have 1.6k toughness and still do amazing damage.

1) Keybind ‘Free Camera’ and hold it
2) Keybind ‘About face’ and press it (no need to hold it down)
3) [Withdraw]
4) Release ‘Free Camera’

There might be a simpler way, but I know at least that this combination works, doesn’t make you look behind (which is annoying and can be laggy), and works 100% of the time.

It’s actually pretty hard for most classes to catch a D/D Ele.

The reason why it feels like you have to fight everyone is because there are SO MANY roaming Thieves. That’s not because Eles are bad compared to everyone else, it’s just cause Thieves are way too good.

Edit: Best chasing power, best disengaging, highest burst. Who thought that was a good idea, especially since you can get all of them at the same time?

For the last time, stop telling people to stand in the Black Powder.

Not only do you blind yourself, I will just Backstab you.

Doomdesire.9365:

. After doing that I’ve yet to see more than 2-3 people who still complained about thieves once they’ve learned the class inside out.

Guess I’m one of these people. Got one to 80 and WvWed a lot, and still think they are OP. But whatever, my Thief is lv 80 so it doesn’t matter.

How to beat a Thief:

-Dodge the Cloak and Dagger
-Build tanky
-Keep your health topped up at all times
-Always be ready to hit a stun break
-Keep them at range (Ele range > Thief range)

The reason I say to build tanky, is because it’s hard to win a glass-cannon fight. Thieves just burst better in every way, from the speed+ease that the combo can be executed, to being able to survive better while maintaining the same damage. Don’t try to beat them at their own game, but instead force them to play a different one – sustained engagements.

Unfortunately, 30 points in Shadow Arts gives a lot of healing, and if they are any good, it isn’t hard to avoid a large portion of your attacks. But at least you won’t instantly lose.

(I’m not saying you can’t win as a burst Ele, but it’s just a lot harder when their combo can instantly kill you)

Unless by ‘beat’ you mean ‘win’. Then no, there is no way to ‘beat’ a competent Thief, especially in WvW (in sPvP you win by capping the point).

Guys, the OP is asking for the highest skill ceiling. Not “Which class is hardest to do well at”.

What he wants is “which of the eight classes has the highest potential when played at the maximum level” (or simply ‘which is the hardest to master’)

I know a lot of people will dismiss Zacchary’s claim since ‘Thieves are so easy to do well at’ but that’s not the question. Oddly enough he kind of hit the mark (even though his post was clearly meant to convey something else), because Thieves are one of the professions with a higher skill-cap.

If you want my opinion, the hardest is the Engineer, by far.

(On an off topic note my Thief is face-roll in WvW, contrary to what Zacchary said. It’s super easy to do well.)

Edit: Read the title of this thread. Skill ceiling

Which forums are saying that Elementalists are OP? Don’t think I have seen such a complaint in a long time – the only exceptions being the two on entering keeps while in vapor form.

What I mostly see:
Necros are OP (Don’t agree, but there are a lot of threads on this)
Thieves are OP (which, as a Thief, I agree with)

Where are you getting these ‘Eles are OP’ threads from?

Ostra.3927:

Necro can easily outrun in pure speed both of them if you slot the right skills

That’s an unfair comparison – Guardians can slot [Save Yourselves] and [Retreat] for lots of swiftness too (in addition to probably having a jump of some sort)

Edit: See the arrow in the post below me? Go up one more post ^ to see what she meant

Razor.6392:

-Ranged aoe damage

That would probably go to Necromancers.
(But I agree with the other one!)

TyPin.9860:

Lol, some have a problem with thief skill, so this is the reason why eles (as different to all other professions except warrior) should get the ability to use doors in downed state? Is this balancing? We have 8 professions, not only 2 and the reason u are annoyed by thiefes doesn’t make vapor form in downed state less broke.

Edit: okay I won’t post inflammatory comments because it doesn’t contribute to the discussion.

People point to Thieves because they have the best escape mechanism that lets them run away from everything when roaming. There is no way to catch a competent Thief who isn’t in a massively outnumbered situation (and I say this as someone who roams on a Thief on a T2 server).

If such a ridiculous escape mechanism can be tolerated – Anet said (and I paraphrase): “just ignore him and move on because you will never be able to catch the Thief” – then how is the Ele mist form state broken at all?

Also, does it really matter that the Ele can mist form into a keep? I don’t see people going “oh wow their vapor form is so OP, let’s all play an Ele to defend keeps”, but I do see a lot of roaming Thieves…

Stealth.9324:

U guys are all wrong.. There is one thing we are REALLY excel at. Guess what?

Looking cool? We get four semi-permanent exotic weapons for the tiny cost of up to 10 skill points each. All the other spell animations are also flashy and colorful.

Nobody can mess with an opponent who has synthesia as well as we can. Nobody.

It’s okay to be a jack of all trades, because the game doesn’t lock you into being a ‘tank healer or DPS’.

From what I remember (because it was a long time ago), in that-MMO-that-starts-with-‘W’, hybrids were shunned because they could do everything decently, but nothing was top tier. You had to go completely tank, or healer, or DPS. Nobody really needed a mediocre tank which could sometimes heal and do okay damage.

However, this is different in GW2. No longer are we locked into the same three roles. In fact, it is perfectly fine to do all three at the same time.

As long it is balanced properly, I don’t see why their stated design goal is a problem

Obviously the actual balancing is easier said than done. Should we be 2nd best at everything, or a distant 5th?

One thing in particular stands out to me: hybrid characters should do everything at the same time. If one decides to go all-out-glass-cannon, it is okay to do less damage than a Thief, but for some reason they get better survivability too. Alternatively if you decide to be a bunker, it’s alright for a Guardian to be harder to kill, but only if you do considerably more damage (which is the case right now – I don’t think there are many people who will dispute that Guardians are in a nice and balanced spot).

One thing to note: I don’t play sPvP very much, so this is all based off WvW and PvE (which has it’s own non-Elementalist-specific problem of ‘just do a lot of damage and dodge a lot’). From what I gather there are specific roles in a team like ‘roamer’ and ‘bunker’, so it might conflict with the rest of this post.

Revised this post for clarity:

The reason I used Red Guard as an example was to demonstrate that Thieves are viable in larger fights. It doesn’t matter whether you think it requires any skill, because if having a couple of Thieves in their zerg allows them to win all of their GvG fights, I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that Thieves do have a place in larger zergs.

The small roamer guilds may be more skilled individually, but that’s the problem – they only fight in small numbers. Everyone already knows Thieves are excellent in small fights, so I didn’t want to point that out again.

Both classes have terrible survivability at lower levels, but it gets (much) better with more skills and traits.

Fractals
General consensus is that outside of the big three classes (Guardian/Mesmer/Warrior), Ele and Thief are on par.

Farming
I’m gonna guess you mean farming in Dynamic Events, in which case pick an Ele to tag everything.

Melee
Pick Thief. More weapon sets to choose from, better damage, equally high survivability – everything is there. The only thing is that in sPvP stealth stops point capping.

WvW
Well this depends what you want to do. For zerging, you can choose both. Even though there is a certain stigma against Thieves, if you watch Red Guard’s videos (edit: a good large-scale WvW guild), you can see they use Dagger Storm a lot. Ele is also excellent in zergs with all the combo fields and area CC.

For WvW roaming….just pick a Thief. Ever wonder why >50% of roaming people are Thieves?

I tried to give an unbiased opinion. Both my Thief and Ele are at lv 80.