Guild Wars 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FH1kzDQ_4nA

With this build a thief restealthes every 5-7 seconds. Count it in the video. That is from the thief perspective. From the opponents perspective it would be every 4-5 seconds given the culling. Its like fighting something you can’t see half the time.

Now imagine fighting a full group of those. Target assist gets dropped every few seconds. What do you do? Pick another target with full health? Spot waldo the thief to try and dps the target again?

Fighting a thief is like getting in the ring with an invisible boxer. He chooses when and how hard to hit you -weapon swapping guranteed crit sigils- and you take it. After that, he will keep going invisible every 4-5 seconds. The concept of the current thief stealth is simply as absurd as that. I doubt this was intentional by Anet.

The list with the broken mechanics of the thief is long:
-Over the top damage
-Break out of the fight and re-engage whenever they choose without penalty
-Teleport across the vast plains faster than anything in the GW2 universe
-Finish and revive people from stealth..I don’t think wow had the balls to introduce such a ridiculous concept so hats off to the person who came off with this while sober
-Restealth repeatedly losing the focus target marker on them -which is huge when being targeted by a group
-Semi-spam attacks while evading being hit (death blossom)

When you sit back and look at that list..it kinda sounds like hacking, to be honest.

We understand that the developers have A LOT on their table. However, some issues are glaring in their nature and -although they bring glee to a minorty of the customers- they do affect a significantly larger proportion of the customer base negatively.
A lot of the issues are easy to fix. Culling is a difficult problem? Sure..reduce the restealthing-why even restealth more than once within a minute??- untill the culling issue is fixed.

A lot of the customers when they log on they want to enjoy a fun and challenging game.
Having to deal with frustrating broken mechanics is annoying.
Having to deal with them repeatedly is frustrating.
Seeing nothing is done -in a timely fashion- to address these issues is disheartening.
When you reach disheartenment in a videogame, that is the point when customers move on. It is hard to convince friends to join the game when videos such as these are being used to troll on other games forums when deprecating the master piece that is GW2.

We have faith in you, Anet. I hope you don’t leave things to fester like certain game developers *cough*SWTOR*cough*, turn around and find a lot of the customers and fans have moved on.

Recently.1043:

Dat pic is so dumb. wvw in a spvp forum, and that was clearly over 1 second since you lived with endure pain.

spvp yo. Bring a shield, swap to it to block the heartseeker spam, then smash him after he burns all his initiative. BS thief is the easiest theif for a warrior to fight. If you think that’s bad, a good condition thief will own you without getting hit once.

1.‘Dat’ pic is not so dumb. Up to activating endure pain it was under one second. Wish I could have activated it sooner but well..after thieves break out of stealth the rest of us can’t see them..true story.

2.The discussion is not about countering this..the discussion is why should a class deal this much damage in under one second out of stealth AND remain stealthed while doing so.

I agree about the condition thief. You can’t kill what you can’t see 50% of the time =).

The spvp amulet is almost equivalent to full exotic armor/weapons and jewlery so this situation is mirrored in spvp.

The only people who think thieves are fine and everyone has to L2P are thieves..I guess Anet disagrees as evident by the backstab and pistol whip nerfs. Let me guess..were you saying ‘Dat’ was balanced before Anet balanced it?

Having someone saying their class is fine when everyone else says it is not fine kinda borders on bias..

Dual.8953:

/sees warrior with low toughness, health, bull’s charge, and frenzy
/Sees him complaining about WvW in sPvP
/suspects his other weapon is a Great Sword
>_>

Its sad that these are the posts of people who play thieves. At least this isn’t a L2p one.

No..my other weapon set is sword/warhorn for the number 2 sword to leap out of a zerg and number 4 warhorn to break cc and grant switftness to party members to get away.

No..frenzy was not up when I was taking that damage..I’m sorry that you think thieves deal that much damage only if someone has frenzy up.

And no..If you read my post carefully..youl notice that my armor is a mix of toughness/vitality.
Are you suggesting I go full toughness vitality as a class with the highest base toughness/vitality to survive a broken class? Should all the other class do the same as well?

/Sees imbalance >.>

ASP.8093:

Let’s talk about “e-sports”…

Did you ever play GW1? If your monks took two seconds to respond to a spike by the enemy team, you’d be dead every time. Quick reflexes, situational awareness, and anticipation are all a central part of most competitive video games.

I don’t really care for Backstab spikes. I don’t think it’s, like, necessary for thieves. But you’re complaining about 100-to-0-in-two-seconds-flat builds when you’re playing a warrior designed to do just that and only that. Your build does telegraph its attack much more, but you also:

1. Do more damage total.
2. Have much more hp even with your “glass cannon” getup.
3. Get 5 seconds of invulnerability.

My armor is all toughness/vitality exotics and my runes are full toughness as well: Melandru. Should I and every other class go full toughness vitality to combat a single broken class? I think not.

A. You can see glass cannons coming and thus respond accordingly. I can’t see a thief coming and I don’t think its fair playing whack the invisible mole to try to counter one that is stealthing your way.

B.All glass cannons when they engage they stay and pay the price for their engagement which is a fair deal. Thieves on the other hand can simply get away, heal and return to do the same thing when the opponents cool downs are down.

ASP.8093:

You don’t see the damage numbers pop up, but you still deal damage.

You can’t target ranged attacks at them in stealth (and untargeted ranged attacks in this game only go, like, 2 feet before they fall down, for some reason), but melee swings and area attacks hit just fine. Also their condition damage keeps ticking normally.

If you see a thief who’s low on health hit Shadow Refuge, for example, a Whirlwind Attack through it can often kill him. (You’ll still have to wait ~10 seconds for him to appear on the ground. Or run around until you see “finish him” and then start swinging at the air.)

And if you don’t get in there in time then he gets away? It only takes what..3 seconds to land it on yourself?

Daecollo.9578:

XII.9401:

20,633 health, 1281 toughness. I got hit for 15367 damage in UNDER a second. If I was an Ele with lower health I’d be dead aka one shut in UNDER a second.

So:

1.My armor is half vitality and half toughness. No tough/vit on weapons and trinkets. Glass cannony. Regardless. I thought you were not supposed to one shot a person in under a second in this game? Last I checked this isn’t a FPS.
Even with higher toughness/vitality I can’t survive two thieves doing this in under a second..let alone a class with lower base toughness/vitalit like the ele.

2.Damage by unknown in the picture. We still can’t see thieves once they come out of stealth.

3.There are ridiculous resetalthing cooldowns on thieves. Anyone fighting a pistol thief condition build can testify to that.
Can’t fight what you can’t see half the time..its almost like..hacking..

4.Thieves can travel faster than ANYTHING across the map and you can’t catch them.

5.You can finish a downed player or rez one while stealthed. Why isn’t any action taken in stealth breaking it? Its bad enough already that you can initiate an attack unseen.

I find it silly that we are talking about e-sport when these ridiculous issues are still not fixed.

How is it the thieves are still unbalanced this long into the game?

I already have two good pvpers quitting over the broken thief class mechanics saying -rightfully so- that needing this much time to fix such simple imbalances in a thief means they will take another year to get to the bunker builds or the mesmer. I have been telling them for months to give it time. They have more than two people working on it but they usually start by balancing the OP professions like eles and Engys.

So is the message that we should Roll one of the holy trinity: Mesmer, Guardian or thief or leave the game with our money? One things for sure..one year from now Eles and Engys will still get nerfed =D .

First of all this is WvWvW, Esports is SPvP, so your topic is wrong.

Your stats are poor, my thief has 1780 toughness and 18000 health.

Your a Warrior, you have higher armor/higher health (8k more then thief does.)

So basicly, your in mostly berserkers gear, a glass cannon, complaining about another glass cannon destroying you, you have no toughness, little vitality. (20k-18k=2k extra health.)

You deserved to die that easy and deserved every point of that damage.

1.I thought the amulets represented the stats you can obtain by a full exotic set of armor, jewlery and weapons? That means that this situatation is reflected in spvp. Thus, this is reflected in e-sport. Unless your suggesting the open space and fresh air makes this situation different than spvp..I’m not talking about tower siege.

2. Having your armor consisting of a balance of toughness and vitality does not constitute a glass cannon. A glass cannon would be someone who does not put on 6 pieces of armor having vitality/toughness.

So are we supposed to go full toughness/vitality in spvp or wvw to survive a thief?Why should all the classes tailor around the thief class? That is called imbalance.

3. Kinda not interested in your stats. I got hit by a glass cannon and my health dropped to 25% in under one second. Mind you, I never saw it coming since its stealth and now I am starting a fight blowing my heal less than a second into the fight..how is that fair? Why are thieves allowed to do so much damage and stealth away?
You should not do this much damage in under a second. And if you did..how come your class is the only one allowed to get away with it while other glass cannons sit their and pay the price after they burst the opponent?

PS: That was sarcasm at Eles and Engys being OP.

Bloodgruve.6038:

My main is a thief. I am WvW as a guardian and mesmer. I have not died to a ‘1 shot backstab’ thief in quite a long time. This is because I know how to deal with it.

First and biggest problem is the rendering issue, this needs to be fixed before any changes are made to a class. This issue is terrible, I’ve found myself in the middle of an enemy zerg, they just appeared around me, they were not thieves…

Second problem is that people complaining don’t know how to counter the thief or have come across a thief who has all of their cooldowns available and were not prepared for it. Roll a thief, learn it and know it and then you will see that it’s not so terribly OP against an experienced and skillful opponent. I’m not saying this is easy to counter but there is a way.

Blood~

The 1st two lines really sum up your argument. Play an OP class to counter an OP class..gotcha! Pick one of the holy trinity.

Say what you want..this thread would not be so long if ALOT of the paying customers were not dissatisfied with the thief class being overpowered with broken mechanics.

To sum up the imbalance and broken mechanics:
1.Damage is still too high. See my recent thread on 75% health wiped in under a second on my warrior.
2.Amount of re-stealthing with certain builds like the pistol condition build is out of control.
3.Ability to move across land faster than anything in the game. We never bother chasing a thief in wvw.
4.Ability to revive or finish downed players in stealth. Any action performed in stealth should break it..period. Stealth gives you the -almost always- unopposed element of surprise.
5.Ability to get out of any fight. If you commit to a fight you should pay the price like the rest of us.

But yes..thanks for your unpredictable arguments:
1.L2P. I’m sure the person hacking the orbs was thinking the same thing.
2.Play a thief or a holy trinity class..coz it’s all about skill, yo!
3.Play another game.

I’m sure Anet is sensible enough to realize when there is significant imbalance in-game and move to address it before they lose a player base that does not thrive on taking advantage of these imbalances.

Every company makes mistakes..but not every company leaves those to fester..and fester..till they start losing the majority of their customers.

20,633 health, 1281 toughness. I got hit for 15367 damage in UNDER a second. If I was an Ele with lower health I’d be dead aka one shut in UNDER a second.

So:

1.My armor is half vitality and half toughness. No tough/vit on weapons and trinkets. Glass cannony. Regardless. I thought you were not supposed to one shot a person in under a second in this game? Last I checked this isn’t a FPS.
Even with higher toughness/vitality I can’t survive two thieves doing this in under a second..let alone a class with lower base toughness/vitalit like the ele.

2.Damage by unknown in the picture. We still can’t see thieves once they come out of stealth.

3.There are ridiculous resetalthing cooldowns on thieves. Anyone fighting a pistol thief condition build can testify to that.
Can’t fight what you can’t see half the time..its almost like..hacking..

4.Thieves can travel faster than ANYTHING across the map and you can’t catch them.

5.You can finish a downed player or rez one while stealthed. Why isn’t any action taken in stealth breaking it? Its bad enough already that you can initiate an attack unseen.

I find it silly that we are talking about e-sport when these ridiculous issues are still not fixed.

How is it the thieves are still unbalanced this long into the game?

I already have two good pvpers quitting over the broken thief class mechanics saying -rightfully so- that needing this much time to fix such simple imbalances in a thief means they will take another year to get to the bunker builds or the mesmer. I have been telling them for months to give it time. They have more than two people working on it but they usually start by balancing the OP professions like eles and Engys.

So is the message that we should Roll one of the holy trinity: Mesmer, Guardian or thief or leave the game with our money? One things for sure..one year from now Eles and Engys will still get nerfed =D .

20,633 health, 1281 toughness. I got hit for 15367 damage in UNDER a second. If I was an Ele with lower health I’d be dead aka one shut in UNDER a second.

So:

1.My armor is half vitality and half toughness. No tough/vit on weapons and trinkets. Glass cannony. Regardless. I thought you were not supposed to one shot a person in under a second in this game? Last I checked this isn’t a FPS.
Even with higher toughness/vitality I can’t survive two thieves doing this in under a second..let alone a class with lower base toughness/vitalit like the ele.

2.Damage by unknown in the picture. We still can’t see thieves once they come out of stealth.

3.There are ridiculous resetalthing cooldowns on thieves. Anyone fighting a pistol thief condition build can testify to that.
Can’t fight what you can’t see half the time..its almost like..hacking..

4.Thieves can travel faster than ANYTHING across the map and you can’t catch them.

5.You can finish a downed player or rez one while stealthed. Why isn’t any action taken in stealth breaking it? Its bad enough already that you can initiate an attack unseen.

I find it silly that we are talking about e-sport when these ridiculous issues are still not fixed.

How is it the thieves are still unbalanced this long into the game?

I already have two good pvpers quitting over the broken thief class mechanics saying -rightfully so- that needing this much time to fix such simple imbalances in a thief means they will take another year to get to the bunker builds or the mesmer.

So is the message that we should Roll one of the holy trinity: Mesmer, Guardian or thief or leave the game with our money? One things for sure..one year from now Eles and Engys will still get nerfed =D .

JQ runs havocs? I run around on SB and I’ve never seen any JQ small groups :o.

Bumpity bump bump bump.

Is there a server with quite a few 5man groups running around? I have tried a few and I am still to find one with a guild with a regular 5man.

Things that need to go:

Thieves resteathling repeatedly in a short interval.

Thieves moving across the map faster than any other class or any thing that ever lived in gw2.

You should not have multiple get out of jail cards. If you engage in a fight you should tough it out. If you lose..tough luck..learn to play like the rest of us.

The multiple restealthing has to be fixed either by introducing cooldowns or increasing the initiative requirements.

Its like monty python chasing a thief around. How can anyone take this game seriously if these glaring imbalances and broken mechanics are still in effect months into the game? The fixes are simple and easy.

Can we please fix the ridiculous repetitive stealthing on thieves? How is this allowed in the game? We can’t fight a class you we can’t see 50% of the time.

Why do thieves have so many get out of jail cards? If you engage in a fight you should not be allowed to get out of it so easily.

Can we please introduce a cool down on it, already? If you choose to engage in a fight you should pay for the consequences and not be able to bail out and come back later as you please.

The fix is really easy. Introduce a cooldown on certain abilities like the rest of the classes or increase the initiate to prevent restealthing more than once in a fight in such a short time.

Gintoki.6405:

the rendering is only usually an issue in wvw.. you need to realise its not as easy as you think to play thief…. wvw is great and all but interms of learning about balanced pvp its no use really..

Um no..thieves are the easiest class to play. Anyone who played one and rolled ANY other class can say that if they are honest.

Its not about rendering issues, they can restealth so many times during a fight that fighting a thief now is a joke.

I still can’t understand how thieves still have the insanely repeated stealth during each encounter. They can re-stealth repeatedly and on short times.

Also, Why hasn’t the insanely fast teleportation across the map not been nerfed? Why are thieves the only class who can engage whenever they want and escape whenever they want? Isn’t it bad enough that they can initiate the combat on their terms? Let the thief class play on equal ground similar to the other classes.

How can you fight something you can’t see 50% of the time? What? Spam your AOEs – assuming they are PBAOE or AOEs- and hope you get lucky? Is this Anets idea of esport pvp?

Why are thieves allowed to stomp from stealth? This should be disabled. Anyone with common sense would see how ridiculous that is. Simple stealth preventing almost all the downed abilities from working?

Everytime I suggest to my friends to come try out pvp in GW2 they link me a thief video saying the pvp balance is a joke at the moment.

We have been asking for balancing for the class and we are still seeing these issues unaddressed.

Are we to assume that our options are either to roll a thief and call this thief wars or play another game since a broken class is considered acceptable months into the game?

Foss.4830:

Ember.4326:

Sigh, people who don’t have the slightest clue or haven’t even bothered to go through the intro and try backstab out call out numbers like 19k bs, jesus be with us. Highest I ever managed to land was 14.4k backstab and ironically, that was against another thief >_> Got some 700-800 games on my thief.

Also show me one class without a stun breaker ability. Oh it was on cooldown? well boohoo, kinda happens to thieves too when the only stun breaker they run (shadowstep) is on cooldown and a warrior/mesmer/glass ele catches you with one CC, you blow up.

I can survive bs thieves on my ele just fine, unless they catch me with all cds down. Then I die, and that is absolutely fine. But if I have time to get protection up between the steal CnD -> bs, there won’t be a problem with that thief anymore.

Oh well, maybe they nerf that. Time to bust out more bow condi builds, god people cry in whisper like mad when they can’t get their head around how that build functions.

Yeah 20k low end is blatantly full of kitten. If you got hit for 20k your probably pure 100% glass cannon using some ability to make u take more damage. the only time ive ever hit for 20k was on a glass warrior using frenzy.

The only nerf that I have read about wasnt even really a confirmed nerf. One of the devs replied to a topic stating that they are “Investigating” thief burst damage. Which to me means that they are well aware that it needs a strict adjustment.

To everyone else my advice is to not run glass builds anymore till its fixed. Been running my mesmer with a decent amount of toughness and while the spike gets me low it doesnt kill me outright. Gives me enough time to pop off decoy and get my clones rolling. Toughness will save your life.

All the other classes not playing with certain builds because of one single OP class does not make sense..fix that class=people get to play the way they want and are happy.

Archaon.6245:

Lukin.4061:

It is funny when people complain about thief burst dmg while doing nothing to prevent it If they nerf the bs dmg, then all truly powerful builds will become more common (like bleeders or dazers) – that will become a scary day for those that are still having problems with backstabs.

I’m testing my own condition build just for it…just for make noobs cry even louder on forums, louder than never before

This, Anet should look into all the thieves abilities and balance them accordingly. The daze build is powerful as well.

It is pointless and lazy fixing one aspect and waiting for more complaints to mount up against another aspect to deal with it. All they are ensuring by taking this amount of time addressing the obvious with easy fixes -been done before countless times in countless games- is push people into leave the game.

It is very disappointing that they are taking this much time to address something so obvious to everyone. It does not bode well that for every imbalance , the same agonizingly slow process of balancing is gonna happen. That will only make people fed up. Why spend your time, money and effort building your character if they will be weak compared to other classes.

Might as well make this thieves wars2 or mesmers wars2 or just leave the game.

XII.9401:

Vahn.9728:

Alright, this is messed up, so follow me with this:

Rampage: (aka juggernaut)
Tier 2 elite (30 skill points)
-Turns you into an underwhelming brute, albeit cool on paper since you’re hulking out, punching and smashing left and right, the idea of the skill is to give you stability and access to an array of launchers and knocks.

-Takes away all your utility skills. Also eats all your boons. And makes you unable to do certain things since you are transformed.

Cooldown: 180 seconds.

---

Elixir X
Tier 1 elite (10 points)
-Turns you into either the same underwhelming brute OR into elemental tornado (which, btw, is another Tier 2 elite), literally mimicking both the warrior’s and ele’s elite. The idea of the brute is the same as above, OR make em completely immune to damage while transformed into the tornado. Both also focus on knocking people around.

-Also like Tornado, turns you into a whirlpool underwater.

Cooldown: 120 seconds.

—

So… Engies get a cheaper, shorter cooldown rampage OR tornado, that they can further enhance with traits (since it’s still an elixir) for the following bonuses:

-Reduced cooldown.
-Longer duration. In fact, I’ve tried my best to lengthen the duration of Rampage on my warrior (rune of water, monk, and 20 points into disc tree), just because I wanted to punch stuff for longer, and I’ve only managed to get the stability gained to last longer, the transformation ends after 18 seconds, AND takes the extra seconds of stability along with it.

—

I’m not arguing the usability of Rampage, how good or bad the skill is. Same goes for Tornado. But it does make me scratch my head WHY Elixir X does what both of em can do, for cheaper and on shorter CD.

Sure, some might say engineers aren’t meant to be in melee, it has no synergy… Sure, it’s random… But at least reduce the CDs of Warrior’s Rampage and Elementalist’s Tornado to 120 seconds. We are paying 3 times more skill points for it… And it’s not like people are gonna use these ANYWAY since they are bad as is. >.>;;;

A:Elixir X does one of them. Not both of them. Its random. Engys don’t get to choose making this skill unreliable.

B:Its crap. I use my racials in Wvw or supply crate drop. No engy I know bothers with this useless skill.

I don’t understand why your using engys having it as an excuse to buff it in warriors. Elixir X affected by traits or not..crap is crap. This ability needs serious revamping for both warriors and engys. Want to look at a good elite? Mesmer..two of the best elites in the game.

Vahn.9728:

Alright, this is messed up, so follow me with this:

Rampage: (aka juggernaut)
Tier 2 elite (30 skill points)
-Turns you into an underwhelming brute, albeit cool on paper since you’re hulking out, punching and smashing left and right, the idea of the skill is to give you stability and access to an array of launchers and knocks.

-Takes away all your utility skills. Also eats all your boons. And makes you unable to do certain things since you are transformed.

Cooldown: 180 seconds.

---

Elixir X
Tier 1 elite (10 points)
-Turns you into either the same underwhelming brute OR into elemental tornado (which, btw, is another Tier 2 elite), literally mimicking both the warrior’s and ele’s elite. The idea of the brute is the same as above, OR make em completely immune to damage while transformed into the tornado. Both also focus on knocking people around.

-Also like Tornado, turns you into a whirlpool underwater.

Cooldown: 120 seconds.

—

So… Engies get a cheaper, shorter cooldown rampage OR tornado, that they can further enhance with traits (since it’s still an elixir) for the following bonuses:

-Reduced cooldown.
-Longer duration. In fact, I’ve tried my best to lengthen the duration of Rampage on my warrior (rune of water, monk, and 20 points into disc tree), just because I wanted to punch stuff for longer, and I’ve only managed to get the stability gained to last longer, the transformation ends after 18 seconds, AND takes the extra seconds of stability along with it.

—

I’m not arguing the usability of Rampage, how good or bad the skill is. Same goes for Tornado. But it does make me scratch my head WHY Elixir X does what both of em can do, for cheaper and on shorter CD.

Sure, some might say engineers aren’t meant to be in melee, it has no synergy… Sure, it’s random… But at least reduce the CDs of Warrior’s Rampage and Elementalist’s Tornado to 120 seconds. We are paying 3 times more skill points for it… And it’s not like people are gonna use these ANYWAY since they are bad as is. >.>;;;

A:Elixir X does one of them. Not both of them. Its random. Engys don’t get to choose making this skill unreliable.

B:Its crap. I use my racials in Wvw or supply crate drop. No engy I know bothers with this useless skill.

I don’t understand why your using engys having it as an excuse to buff it in warriors. Elixir X affected by traits or not..crap is crap.

Volrath.1473:

With my warrior i can nuke down ppl in 2 seconds and i hear very little compleint about it and on my Engi, rarely a thief can kill me by itself you must be doing something wrong.

As for eles, the glass canon ones are wet paper, not just for thieves, warriors, rangers and mesmers for example can easily destroy them.

I guess you need to spec and gear a little smarter, cuz your obviously doing it wrong.

Full toughness exotics:armor, weapons and Trinkets on my engy with 24k health from the trait line. I get killed in under 1 second. If the thief fails the initial approach, they run away and return when the abilities are on cool down. Similar thing with my ele: full toughness cleric exotics and it still happens. The traits are full arcana and water.

Can any other class in the game get in, kill in under 1second and if it fails it can get away and return to do so? No..

I keep seeing the same useless argument from thieves: L2P said in different ways. Reminds me of someone drowning trying to hold on to anything.

Tell you what..how about once the thieves are balanced you try and do the same thing or try it with a different class. You can’t..guess you need to spec and gear a little smarter when that happens, cuz your obviously going to be doing it wrong. See what I did there?

Volrath.1473:

care to elaborate? since you show such knowledge about the thieves profession and its OP abilities, which are still op, how OP are they?

Thieves no longer have burst unlike other professions, and its survivability is based on mobility and fleeing. what else is there to nerf? stealth? so that there is no suvivability left and make backstab even harder to land? is that what you want?

Just whine a bit more and you might just get that but then every thief and its dog will be playing the heavy armor class that we do not dare to speak of (since all devs play it).

also thieves playing with macros are noobs since thieves are all about timing and opportunity, each skill/ability has its own time to be used, if macroed, at most of the times they will be wasting skills (initiative) / abilities that would be better used in a different situation.

I’m not sure 2 shotting people in under 1 second with 3 buttons is skil.. Oh btw, the recent nerf with the halloween patch did nothing. Thieves are still killing people under 1 second.

And oh..for the person saying other classes should have stealth removal abilities..just..wow..your solution to an OP class is to work on ALL the other classes?

I have a simpler one..balance thieves so that they are on an equal playing ground. We are paying customers here to enjoy the game..we are not spending time and money for the enjoyment of a few individuals such as yourself.

Play an elementalist or an engineer and try and achieve the same results as a thief and try and escape from a fight like one when things go bad then come post here.

I tested this with a few friends running with me in the same group. It appears that the more damage you do to an enemy target the better your chances of getting a badge of honor. Also, if you finish a downed target with a lot of health, that increases your chances of getting the badge -if you were not involved in killing him to start with-.

Given that, this is pretty bad for support players -buffs/cc/heal builds-. I can attest to that as my support ele does not get many badges yet my engineer gets more for a similar number of kills.

This has been an issue with previous MMos where healers or support players were overlooked at launch and were not getting certain pvp rewards.

Can we fix this please? At least allow party members to get the same number of badges thus encouraging team play.

Volrath.1473:

OK, can some one please un-stick this thread now? thieves have been balanced and no longer can burst ppl down. for me as a thief this is a good thing, imo backstab was abusive. I approve of the changes and cant wait to see whats the next thing ppl will whine about, prolly Death Blossom LoL you can remove it if you like i don’t care just give me anything with an evade on it and i’m happy.

Can we now have a sticky on Mesmers and Warriors pls!?

Warriors can dish out ridiculous amounts of dmg in few seconds (unlike thieves) and have lot more HP and Toughness.

Mesmers besides the high burst also have the ability to put someone out of combat for 10 long seconds (like thieves use to do for 1 sec but not anymore) and good luck on finding the right one to hit on.

Thieves still need some balancing despite what a thief player says. This thread is here to get feedback and see if the recent balance affected anything -doubt it did since there are other unbalanced abilities-.
Yes, the rest of the holy trinity -thief, guardian and mesmer- need some balancing but the process takes time.
Sadly, its your turn to learn how the receiving end feels. No worries, there is always the macro to spam all your abilities.

Merciless.5349:

But we only have 14k HP!

L2Dodge, noob.

L2P, noob.

I’m still expecting this from some of the usual Thieves on the board.

No worries. They will get balanced, find it hard to compete on the same playing field and move on to the next OP class. Happens in every mmo. I’m pretty sure they are working on their mesmers as we speak. It will just take a bit of time having to..you know..learn to click more than 3 buttons -1 if you macro it on a keyboard-.

Blazer Hellsing.9184:

Amityel.5324:

ofc it happens in spvp but you are the pro here huh?

Prvoide proof, oops you can’t. Bads always cry with no proof. This is an issue in WvW not sPvP, learn other professions mechanics before calling bug.

lol @ haters, I am pro Thief, Warrior and Necromancer Not good as Mesmer but don’t need to since my phantasms give me free kills. Not that good at bunker Elementalist either, recently started playing one.

Stay jealous.

Man I just love people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Check out this guy’s reply under the thread : Guardian block bug need to go : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Guardian-block-bug-needs-to-go/first#post491913 .

Never seen anyone owned by Anet before. Keep up the good work and may everyone else L2P, ‘bro’ !.

Krustydog.1043:

Everyone but 1st time mmo nubs who think they are actually that good know that thieves are broken. Want to know the most common reply from thieves in game when talking to them about it? “Dont be a hater, just roll one and profit.” Problem is if you nerf them now you prolly kitten off HALF your players. Better to do it now than later before 3/4’s of your players are thieves. Or players say screw this game. Not really that far fetched, SWtoR being a prime example of players who will not tolerate this crap.

No you won’t..people who like the game will stay..this isn’t thief wars 2. Most of the people who play thieves will move on to the next OP classes. Some will actually stay and learn how to fight an equal level class.

Engineer here. 1340 toughness, 24k hp. I got killed in exactly under one second and no..I didn’t use elixir U..

backstab 10k.

There should be no kills under 1 second in this game regardless if they have full toughness or full crit gear. This isn’t a FPS game.

Otherwise, roll a thief and one shot anyone who doesn’t have toughness, 1-2 shot anyone with toughness.

vipersfang.7452:

LOL its so funny to see people trying to defend the thief class. If you understand the human psychology then you would know it is natural for them to defend something to keep their advantage.

No one would be complaining if this class was balanced in the first place. Why don’t people complain so much about the other classes? As far I can see they are not bad enough to make it to the hot topics on this section! It doesn’t matter what reasons you guys give. As a fact, the percentage of thieves in game has been increasing. You guys keep on giving references on how some of the other glass cannons are just the same. lmao that’s a joke, because they are pretty much dead if they fail, but as a theif? you just simply walk away without a scratch.

I have played all of the classes, and let me tell you the thief class is op. If you want kills you can just spam certain skills. If we are talking about 1v1 then the learning curve for theif is close to flat in comparison to some of the other classes.

The op combination that thief has: invisible + movement gank/escape abilities + high damage + hard to finish off.

Some people think thieves are squishy, but do you know there are other classes with same / less defence without the invisible and/or movement?

If Anet wants GW2 to be a fast food then just leave thieves the way they are. New players who did not play thief and get killed all the time will :

1 reroll a thief
2 go play a different game not so unbalanced.

If you play on the most populated server then you would know so far the number of players are decreasing. Class unbalance may not be the only reason but it is one of the main reasons why people quit. People quit when they dont like something about a game. For example, the class unbalance and the lack of pvp in d3. Very few people are rejoining that game because it is easier to loose player than to attract.

PS: I only use thief in spvp and wvw because they are op. The only time I play other classes are when I actually want to enjoy the other fun parts of this game.

Bottom line, people are NOT stupid, there is a reason why the majority of them play a certain class in pvps.

Pretty nice summary. Common sense.

Original post:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes
Thief Poster above replies:
No. They can 4 button (turn on the computer, launch the game, login, queue, etc., Apply venom, hit 5, hit F1, hit assassin’s signet, get behind the target hit 1 ) down people, but they still need to be finished. A lot of classes can 4 button down people. Only the thief can do it from stealth…scary I know.

My reply:
A weak attempt at sarcasm not to mention inability to defend or reply against what I said. Exactly the mentality of a person happy with 2-3 shotting ppl with 3-4 button spam (or 1 if you have a marco set up).

Original post:
Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes
Reply:
What does this even mean? Stealth lasts 2 seconds most of the time, 3 seconds if traited. If you can close gaps without being seen in 3 seconds most classes can do it to with proper positioning. In other words L2P.

My reply:
Well..you can attack people you see coming at you, cc, knock back and see their attack animation and doge it..can you do that with a thief? No. I also lack your addition of L2P..that is always a great indicator that someone is playing a class that is OP and thinks everyone else on the server needs to L2P. Roll another class and see how you fare against a good thief.

original post
Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes
Above OP thief reply:
No. Immobilize and stuns kill thieves like everyone else even when they stealth since they still don’t move. If they use infiltrator’s arrow it’s the same as another class using a blink or teleport.

My reply (Why can’t I reply to a post, already!):
Mhmm..and how many immoblizes does one have in his/her build? are you suggesting we build our traits and class around immoblizes just to counteract one class?
Lets say this game was thief wars 2 and you had to build your class to do that..how many immoblizes you got to keep the thief perma snared?
No thanks..all the other classes should not pick their build just to counteract one OP class. That is imbalance.

Original post:
Can thieves Restealth?yes
Thief reply:
This is the most annoying part of the whining that goes on from people who don’t understand thief game mechanics. You can only restealth if you don’t break stealth with an attack. Otherwise you have to wait three seconds because you get the revealed debuff. This is by design. Everytime you see a thief seem to immediately restealth it is because they didn’t attack while stealthed.

Every other class’ experience:
Thieves attack me from stealth, dps and restealth again. Its not hard to do since every thief does it. With a thief traited in it, you can barely sneak in a few seconds of fighting before they restealth over and over again. And so what..fight and if it looks bad you run out, stealth and come back to finish an opponent who already burned his cooldowns to try and kill you the 1st time while you have the advantage of having your approach unhindered? Please..

Original post
Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.
Thief wanting to remain OP replies:
Any action breaking stealth is just silly and would make the point of actually being in stealth fairly pointless.

Common sense:
No it is not. The fact that you believe you should stay stealthed while performing all manners of action and abilities is just ridiculous. Stealth should grant you the advantage of approaching unseen or building up to a certain action without being attacked. That is it and that is already a huge advantage. Other classes would kill to have an easily used ability that buys you time to build up for your next heal ability or big cool down. You also want to do that AND remain unseen? Why should you be the only class that stomps and rezzes without being seen? Once you initiate those actions you should be shown and be exposed to the penalty of performing those action just like every other class in the game.

Original post:
The issue is not a L2P. It is a gross imbalance and you can see that imbalance when you have two thieves on the same person. How many here think the majority of players will survive that.
People who play an OP class’ mentality:
It is L2P. You’re complaining about game mechanics you don’t fully understand.

Conclusion:
Again, just to prove what I said, the majority of the people who play an OP class have to say is: L2P. No good replies at all. Its really hard to argue against the truth.

No worries. Judging from your post you will just move on to another OP class. Do you have a mesmer alt? That might actually require some more button pressing, though =(.

Valhallen.1693:

Thieves are fine. The only reason they seem OP is because of Assassin’s Signet and Haste. Nerf those 2 abilities and the “OMG I got hit for a billion damage” qq will go away.

If they nerf thieves enough that the scrubs who are getting destroyed will be able to kill them, then thieves will be absolutely worthless in PvP against good players.

Thieves have one thing going for them. Take away the burst damage and they will have no use in any aspect of PvP over any other profession. A glass cannon thief gets destroyed in group fights, can’t defend points against multiple attackers, has few support options, and can’t even beat equally skilled bunker players 1 on 1. They’ll be crappy warriors that can stealth every 5 seconds with less HP, less armor, and no way of winning drawn out fights.

Being able to win a 1v1 every 45 seconds against some scrub running around the map by himself is hardly OP.

As always, people who fall victim to this OP class are called ‘scrubs’ and if this class is balanced it is doomed. I can bring you so many threads of simple nonsense from previous MMos where stealth classes claim the same thing and end up being balanced and learning to adapt to pvp like normal classes or they find learning how to actually press more than 3 buttons -or a macro on a keyboard- is too much for them and they move on to another class.

rickshaw.5279:

I simply don’t have enough time in the day to list every ability I’d love to see nerfed on every class outside of Thief.

Nerf Warrior Adrenaline gain
Nerf Warrior Bunker Builds
Nerf Mesmer Bunker Builds
Nerf Guardian Bunker Builds
Nerf Engineer Bunker Builds
Nerf Rangers some more because they’re not completely useless yet
Nerf Necro’s so they can’t have so many pets in PvP
Nerf Necro conditions
Nerf Mesmer heals
Nerf Guardian heals
Nerf Elemental Bunker Builds
Buff Thief healing

Once that’s done… feel free to nerf Backstab, Mug and Heartseeker.

Sincerely,

- Thieves

You put a good argument against thief balancing. I think you actually represent the mentality of the majority of people who play that class.

/sarcasm off

To sum it up:
Can thieves 1-2hit shot instant kill people? yes
Can thieves approach from stealth giving the the advantage of not being countered all the time? yes
Can thieves escape whenever they want? yes
Can thieves Restealth?yes
Can they backstab when they restealth?yes
Can they teleport across the map faster than any class without anyone being able to catch up to them?yes
Can any other class do any of the above? Of course not.

Can they rez from stealth? yes. Why should stealth hide the downed person AND the rezzer? That most of the time negates the stomping ! why should we work around that? Please fix that. ANY action should break stealth.

Can they stomp from stealth? yes. Why isn’t stomping considered an action that breaks stealth? Whats the point of stability of stealth is a free stability ability for a thief?

What has this lead to? Class imbalance with increasing numbers of people playing thieves and neglecting other classes.

Ok..this is this..but are there any bugs thieves exploit? Oh yes..they can leave stealth and attack and still stay hidden to players. That essentially makes them attack from stealth. Please fix this. Its just..silly.. Please don’t make the class balance in this game a joke for other mmo players.

For one of the posters above..please don’t joke around..thieves are not only OP in spvp but in wvw. Even more so in wvw due to the fact they can approach alot of people engaged in something else and then just stealth away after 2 shotting.

The issue is not a L2P. It is a gross imbalance and you can see that imbalance when you have two thieves on the same person. How many here think the majority of players will survive that.

Like any Mmo, stealth classes start out OP -in this case, exceptionally so- and they get balanced. The majority of people who play them are those who play fotm class. Once you balance them, they will simply move on to the next imbalanced class. Only those who are good players will play the class since now it is balanced and they have to work equally as hard as other classes to achieve the same goal.

Reminds me when I mentioned the thief balancing to my friend, he said: ‘I don’t care..i’ll just switch to my mesmer’. Fotm..fotm..

Evie.1758:

The nerf was absolutely needed! The skill was absolutely gamebreaking.

I could rezz with 100% success 3 already stomped allies in earth attunement with full life and all cooldowns available even the elites.

You could never win in tpvp a clash fight if the other team had an (mostly) support ele with this skill in his bar.

It even hard countered time stomps!

I fully agree. That is why I suggested the above. One shouldn’t knee jerk and over react to something by nerfing it to the ground. The earth ability is OP but aside from that the others are not in tPvP.

Alex.9507:

Evie, you’re absolutely right. Being able to revive 3 dead players and immediately turn a fight around was pretty overpowered (hilarious, but definitely OP). But they nerfed it too hard. It’s now a 5 second channel to do something most other classes can do in two. Also assuming you don’t get interrupted. It went from pretty kitten useful to completely useless in all but the most specific of circumstances.

What I’d like is for them to change it to the following:

Revives allies from downed with full HP, additional effects based on attunement. Change casting time to two or three seconds for all that is holy.
Fire: Next time you go down, auto-rally.
Air: Pulls target to you. Grants swiftness to caster and target.
Earth: Rallies nearest 3 friendlies. -OR- Rallies target, grants 4 second stability and protection to target.
Water: Here’s the kicker; fully revives target from dead, but with maximum down penalty. In other words, target will be revived from dead with 3 stacks of downed penalty, so next time they go down, they die immediately. Possibly increase casting time to 5 seconds again for water attunement.

So yeah. Something to that effect, in part or in whole. At the very least, reduce the cast time.

Again, with a 4.5 second it would not matter if it granted you and the rezzed the power to poop unicorns and rainbows. You still can not cast it in time in the majority of the situations.

Either reduce the cast time -hell.. slot it in an elite..god knows ours are not good and my golem is tired >.>- or make it rez downed players.

If rezzing 3 players from defeated state is too much then reduce the benefit from earth. Make it for 2 players or grant you and the rezzed target protection/stability to go with the theme of earth.

Pikafan.3792:

Alex.9507:

Evie, you’re absolutely right. Being able to revive 3 dead players and immediately turn a fight around was pretty overpowered (hilarious, but definitely OP). But they nerfed it too hard. It’s now a 5 second channel to do something most other classes can do in two. Also assuming you don’t get interrupted. It went from pretty kitten useful to completely useless in all but the most specific of circumstances.

Here’s the hint: you can move while casting the glyph. That makes it a lot better than spending that same 4.5seconds stunning yourself trying to res someone. Also, it is an non-elite skill. Not that elites are fantastic for eles, but point still stands.

Moving around does not negate the fact that it is basically 4.5 seconds and does not negate the arguments in the starting post. The main point is it takes longer to cast it than revive a person the regular way. Also, how many times have we seen an ele just walking around for 4.5 seconds attracting attention in the peripheral screen of vision without being attacked. Even a mindless zerg gets attracted to a tiny asura moving, I’m afraid.

Keelin.5781:

You think you have problems with your rez skills. Try the guardian one – You don’t have it so bad in that department. It revives a single downed person nearby with an equally long cast time , longer cooldown and no secondary effects.

Yes you are an OP class and have many wonderful talents. Why do we get people backdoor complaining about their OP class not being OP enough? Give me half the guardian skills and utilities and you can have the GOR.

In the lakes in the middle of the BG maps you can find now botters in mass farming Kraits for armored scales. Today I saw 8 underwater in one map.

Can we please nerf the drop rate from the Kraits in that zone to oblivion and ban the farmers? WvW is not a place for farming let alone botting. The Que times are already horrible in some servers.

Also for the players, please farm these people for badges of honor. They usually hang around the N part of the lake but not always.

The insanely long cast time -4.5 seconds- AND lack of stability on this ability renders it completely useless in PVE, sPvP and even the zerg fest that is WvW.

Its really depressing mentioning it to other classes and even elementalists and hearing: Glyph of what? response..that is how bad and useless it is.

It is faster to actually attempt to revive the person the old fashioned way.

Is this intentional for it to be this long to cast?

I have a feeling its a bug since when the skill is on the toolbar, the activation time is shown to be 4¼, however when selecting the skill from the utility skill box or checking the skill from the Slot Skills page in the Hero Pane, the activation time is shown to be 1¼. Now that would be an acceptable cast time for it to hold a valuable Trait slot.

My suggestions would be:
A.Reduce the cast time to 1.5 seconds to beat someone downing the target -assume they have stability on or using stealth that does not break on performing the downing action!- and to beat the time in reviving the person the conventional way..kneeling beside them and touching them in weird places. Here are the reasons for A:
1.Elementalists are already at a disadvantage and support being a viable build, we need this. Otherwise roll a guardian to fulfill that role.
2. The health of a downed person can be close to full health at times given the person healing themselves or using appropriate food so it HAS to give an advantage by making it significantly faster than simply reviving the person in order for us to use a precious trait skill slot for it.
3.I can easily cc the unstable stomper and immediately pop armor of earth for stability/protection for 8 seconds and rez. Thus I have armor of earth doing the same intended job as well as having the benefit of protection and stability from it that I can use in other situations.
4.The bonuses from the rez based on attunements do not justify the long casting time: Earth: Yes, valid assuming you can cast the 4.5 seconds since one person will be stomped and the other 1-2 might not be. Even then, you are failing at achieving the objective which is rezzing a person..just revive the person that isn’t focused..see 3 above.
Fire: Its only for a few seconds that you will get the revive. This should be increased as from prior experiences the time ticks by quickly and thus you wasted the effect. Unless your expecting to die as usual being an elementalist..
Air: A fair ability but is useless if its 4.5 seconds since most of these situations its to rez someone at the foot of a keep or tower being multifocused with damage quickly.
Water: A good bonus.
5. Funny story..the act of finishing a downed player does not break your stealth! I swear! True story! So basically a stealther can finish your target while your there waving your hands in the air for 4.5 seconds. Might as well

B.Keep the casting time and make it rez a defeated state. It takes such a long time to cast at 4.5 seconds that it would be easily interrupted in spvp -where the majority of balancing issues come into play- and it can be just as easily interrupted by the mass numbers in WvW. Yes I can pop stability prior to using it but I paid the price of two trait skills to perform one action so it should be a justified reward. Many other classes do the same thing for using certain abilities as well.

C.If cast time is reduced you can move it to elite if really needed. We don’t have good ones in comparison to other classes, anyway.

This is an easy fix. Is it possible to have a look into it? Don’t worry..we will never be as OP as mesmers, thieves or guardians.

1.Is it for PVE? sPvP? WvW?

2.What is your build? full fire? etc

3.Are you after condition damage, crit chance or healing?

Karma exotics from PVE from Cursed Shore (ie, Grenth event) or Malchor’s Leap are of balanced stats. All of those sets are of similar stats -I think- but with a different set of runes. Again the choice depends on what you want: condition damage etc.

I usually suggest for people to focus on what stats they want and then suggest a certain set of MASTERWORK armor which is usually cheap to experiment with. Once you tell us the answer to the questions above we might be able to name sets for y