Guild Wars 2

GankSinatra.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

Dude, you’re a thief basher all over the forums, you should be better at this.

Because you totally didnt just prove you’re a hypocrit, omitting facts you clearly know full well, right

Yes troll, I’m somehow a hypocrite (it has an e – the forums have spellcheck, use them) for only mentioning that Mug is a trait, and not explicitly leading you to the exact position where Mug is located (you know, you can’t just look it up on any website that builds GW2 class specs), because it’s silly to assume that a player complaining about Mug’s power might know where in which traitline its located, and for how many points.

Gank – thieves exist. Get over it. Your intellectually inferior and frankly pathetic trolling won’t get you what you want. The thief boards have a dozen trolls more effective/subtle than you – please feel free to continue sucking on whatever class you currently employ until the far more intelligent trolls ruin the thief class; I certainly can’t stop you. All I can do is point out your flaws to the point where any average human being would be so embarrassed by their shortcomings as to stop posting and cry in a basement somewhere.

I’ve never understood why pets were an entirely separate entity from the player itself.

Example: One of the biggest weaknesses for a condition spec’d player is the lack of burst. You get strong consistent damage in exchange for the ability to say “at X%, I can drop you”, which is completely fair.

However for some reason Rangers are allowed this split. The ranger himself can do excellent condition damage, and their pet can do solid direct damage. Why? Why do they, out of 8 separate classes, get the ability to split their spec? Its not like condi spec rangers are clearly inferior to other condi specs – they’re competitively powerful compared to other condi specs, why do they get a pet that does direct damage to complement their spec?

Slowburn.5319:

evilapprentice.6379:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

evilapprentice.6379:

1) This is just a video game. Real life preempts it. You’ll discourage normal people with normal people priorities if you punish people for not being able to make it to a tourney they signed up for.

And what about the other four players who get their win/loss record tarnished because of the leavers/no shows?

Bottom line is, if you screw over an entire team in sPvP/tPvP you deserved to be punished, regardless the reason why you did it.

It is unfair to punish others trying to play the game for YOUR real life problems.

evilapprentice.6379:

2)You can’t control people. Any harsh penalty will do more harm then good. Instead of tourneys popping with leavers sometimes, you’ll get a tourney system that takes 3 hours to pop.

I don’t see any correlation whatsoever between punishing leavers/no shows and an increase in queue times…. if anything making people stick to the tourney they signed up for should make rosters fill quicker… not the other way around.

A) Life sucks. Wear a hat. RL >This game. That will always be true.
B) You know what, you’re right. Just like the drug war has reduced the number of drug users in the USA, and the war on terror has reduced terrorism around the world, I’m sure harsher penalties on leavers will reduce their numbers and improve the overall quality of the queue.

It really isn’t too much to ask that a person has a reasonable expectation of finishing a match before joining… if you don’t think you’ll be able to finish, hotjoin. Pretty much all the suggestions in this thread acknowledge the accidental/incidental leaver and noone wants harsh penalties for these players… but currently there are way too many afk’rs and leavers and RL is not the reason.

oh, and i am wearing a hat

My point was that any ban discourages normal players with real lives from joining. I’ve never queued for a Tourney when I wasn’t confident that I’d be available for it, but RL supersedes it – If my pet knocks over a glass of soda, or my child starts crying, or my wife needs a hand moving something heavy, this game drops to the bottom of my priority list. Some sort of punishment for leavers would surely reduce the number of trolls/kittenty players/etc that populate tourneys, but it would also discourage real people, with real people responsibilities from queuing for fear that they might be penalized for having to take care of real people problems mid-tourney.

jportell.2197:

evilapprentice.6379:

GankSinatra.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

jportell.2197:

Mug only depended on mug.

Except 3 posts prior to yours that I quoted, I pointed out exactly the kittening opposite. Mug only does “insane” damage if you’re running extremely high power and satisfy the conditionals on a number of DPS oriented traits.

If you can’t make your point without ommitting facts, hyperbole, or just outright lying, it’s probably not worth making.

Also, as a side note, mug is a trait.

You omitted the fact its a minor 5 point trait.

10 point major, since I actually know where abilities I profess to have knowledge about are located.
A)There’s no need to point out where mug is – If you don’t know where mug is on the traitline, what makes you qualified to come to the boards and kitten about it?
B)2 of the 3 traits Jportel claimed where necessary for Mind wrack to hit hard are…I bet you’re going to feel silly when I finish this sentence…10 points in.

Dude, you’re a thief basher all over the forums, you should be better at this.

But also compare backstab to mindwrack… that is the big difference. Thieves can still pull of gnarly burst without mug thanks to backstab. Also thieves can pull off their burst every 4 seconds mesmers need at least 10 seconds.

Let me clarify – I’m not trying to weigh in on Mug vs Mind Wrack – I don’t know Mes’s numbers well enough to express an opinion on the matter, and unlike most people on these boards, I’m not willing to call something OP/UP/etc unless I feel like I completely understand all the factors associated.

I was simply pointing out that “7-8k Mugs” don’t exist, and “4k mugs” were a product of extreme Min/Maxing combined with a number of conditional DPS traits One of which requires your target to be below 50% health. New players who don’t truly understand what’s going on are going to come to these boards to try to figure out why they’re getting pasted so hard – when they have trouble with thieves, and come to boards and see idiots crying about “7-8k mug crits pre-nerf”, confirmation bias kicks in and we have a whole new wave of idiots. I’m just trying to prevent that.

I referenced your post to point out what a misinformed/trolling poster Gank was – he’s all over the boards crying about anything thief related; my guess is his mother did not love him.

As far as your point, I was clarifying – claiming that mug “Only needs mug” to crit like a beast is disingenous/misinformed. Mug Only needs Mug to work (obviously), huge crits (In the 4k realm) with it come from being a min/maxed GC thief and satisfying a number of conditionals, one of which requires 30 points in the Crit/crit damage traitline AND your target to be below 50% health.

GankSinatra.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

jportell.2197:

Mug only depended on mug.

Except 3 posts prior to yours that I quoted, I pointed out exactly the kittening opposite. Mug only does “insane” damage if you’re running extremely high power and satisfy the conditionals on a number of DPS oriented traits.

If you can’t make your point without ommitting facts, hyperbole, or just outright lying, it’s probably not worth making.

Also, as a side note, mug is a trait.

You omitted the fact its a minor 5 point trait.

10 point major, since I actually know where abilities I profess to have knowledge about are located.
A)There’s no need to point out where mug is – If you don’t know where mug is on the traitline, what makes you qualified to come to the boards and kitten about it?
B)2 of the 3 traits Jportel claimed where necessary for Mind wrack to hit hard are…I bet you’re going to feel silly when I finish this sentence…10 points in.

Dude, you’re a thief basher all over the forums, you should be better at this.

jportell.2197:

Mug only depended on mug.

Except 3 posts prior to yours that I quoted, I pointed out exactly the kittening opposite. Mug only does “insane” damage if you’re running extremely high power and satisfy the conditionals on a number of DPS oriented traits.

If you can’t make your point without ommitting facts, hyperbole, or just outright lying, it’s probably not worth making.

Also, as a side note, mug is a trait.

Swim.6830:

Maybe not 7k (which mesmer EASILY does now on shatter) but mug did 4k at the least. One of the hardest hitting abilities for an Ele is Firegrab, which misses easily and target has to be burning, and even on crit specced glass cannon, you might have gotten lower than 4k damage and NOWHERE near 7k. And I am talking semi-viable build(like current mesmer shatter) and not some kitten one trip pony.

I believe you meant 4k at most. 4k at least implies that it would be easy to get mug to crit for 4k, and it would be easy/possible to get it to crit even higher – looking at the HS’s that hit you, and the armor value you supplied, it’s easy to discern a few things.
- The thief hitting you was min/max GC – 25 or 30 in DA, 30 in Crit strikes running executioner, zerkers ammy/jewel with power runes.
- He almost definitely had stacks of bloodlust, probably 20-25, Or was running Assassins Sig (or both).
- You were below 50% when that mug hit (adding 20% to the damage via executioner). You also took an additional 10% damage from Exposed weakness (since his steal poisoned you), and its possible he was over 6 init, adding another 10% damage.

A 4k crit on a base 45s CD boosted by that many conditional requirements isn’t exactly “the norm”.

Some math to prove my point. Go to Gw2skills and build a GC thief as I described – slot Assassins sig to simulate some bloodlust stacks. You’ll end up with 3463 power. Since you’ve got 2400 armor, I took the listed HS damage at under 50% for the 2200 armor and 2600 armor targets and split the difference – 1461. now add 30% – 1899.3 (lets call it 1900). Now multiply that by 108% and you get 3952 – The last HS that hit you before the 6k one (when you dropped below 25%) hit you for 4,482 – I’m not too up to date on the DPS variances, but this points to the fact that there might be a few extra factors these calculations aren’t taking into account (like 10% for over 6 init, 10% for having over 90% health from scholars, etc).

So, I’m pretty comfortable saying that a 4.4k Mug crit can only be achieved by fulfilling a long list of pre-requisites – running a total GC build by power stacking like crazy, running executioner, stacking bloodlust/running assassins sig, and fulfilling 1 or more of the 25 point minor “10% more damage if” traits.

4k is not a “typical” mug crit.

EpiChlo.4072:

I have been seeing complaints to how bad we are being nerfed, that we should be “deleted”, so on and so forth. I have a few things to respond to.

1. We are useless without stealth, will die easy, can’t do anything, ect.
Please learn to adapt. There are many builds that work without stealth(my first thought is D/D Condition or Unicorn Build) You can play any of these AND do great damage. It’s just differen’t.
And if you still want to play backstab or some other build be prepared for revealed and learn to play around it. We have many ways to move fast. Shadow Step, SB 5, Heartseekers ect. Use other forms of damage that don’t require stealth. Even backstab builds can use heartseeker and do a good amount of damage. Or help a group with basilisk venom.

2. You wont be running into them every 5 feet. Most solo players wont drop them and if they do it’s super obvious. The animation is slower than other traps, takes longer than any stealth besides shadow refuge and if someone shadow refuges you can use your stealth trap(you have them too) and counter their wasted shadow refuge.

3. Worthless in a zerg.
Well this is partially true. But if you are a squishy thief were you ever much use in a zerg? If you just run with them stealthed you aren’t helping them fight. You can’t push cause you insta die. But let’s say you get hit by a stealth trap, oh no one person in the zerg can’t do anything. Except stun people, and do large critting heartseekers.

TL:DR
Don’t complain because you can’t adapt or don’t want to become skillful enough to play while revealed.

And again, it’s not about the actual cost/application effectiveness of the trap, how well it can be used on thieves, and so on – I’m not a fan of Anet introducing any effect that effectively invalidates an entire traitline, some traits outside that line, multiple utilities, and more for any class.

If the trap were meant to solely target portal/veil bombs, it could have simply pulsed a 3s reveal every second for 10s in the same radius. 30s reveal is pretty clearly targeted at thieves caught in the trap.

TL:DR – You shouldn’t wants traps targeted at shutting down a huge chunk of a classes functionality, regardless how well you can play around it. Its lazy, kittenty, kitten poor design, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s used to kitten up your class, and this game in general. Furthermore, accepting the trap as is makes you a bad, lazy player – I don’t want to beat an Ele because I dropped a trap that locked him into his current attunement for 30s, I want to beat him because I outplayed him.

bobross.5034:

Certain classes have a real problem with thieves, and this gives them a (costly) answer. It doesn’t kill thieves outright, but forces them to react. Thieves are still very mobile as well, so if they get caught by this trap, they should be able to get away for 30 seconds, and then start over.

The trap can’t really be used as a reaction to a trolling thief anyway, as the thief can see a person use it. This means the thief can avoid the trap, unless they are careless, and then who’s fault is that?

Within a zerg, a revealed thief can wait for 30 seconds and use short bow, not a big deal…this does offer options to prevent portal bombing, which just enhances strategic elements of the game…laying down extra resources to protect an exposed treb…not a big deal really.

And again, it’s not about the actual cost/application effectiveness of the trap, how well it can be used on thieves, and so on – I’m not a fan of Anet introducing any effect that effectively invalidates an entire traitline, some traits outside that line, multiple utilities, and more for any class.

If the trap were meant to solely target portal/veil bombs, it could have simply pulsed a 3s reveal every second for 10s in the same radius. 30s reveal is pretty clearly targeted at thieves caught in the trap.

wookie.8934:

Let me think about this. Pre-nerf, Mug would hit for an insane amount of damage and was completely unavoidable unless you were very lucky. As it stands, shatters are also very easy to avoid if you simply dodge-roll — a novel concept, I know. Unlike Mug, it doesn’t take pure luck to avoid 90-100% of the burst damage. Nerfing mind wrack will literally force everyone into phantasm builds.

Mesmers’ abilities can be avoided if you know how to dodge and what to look for. Mug was basically a free 7-8k crit on zerker builds.

Please stop the hyperbole – Mug was not critting for 7-8k in PvP.

Blackhat.4016:

What would be the counter to a condition that punishes people if they remove it? Wait until you die?

I like most of the ideas but usually every kind of damage needs a counter.

Condition damage? Remove them.
Burst? Invulnerability or protection.
Regular DPS? Protection and regeneration.

The “new” condition? Well, there is no counter other than waiting until you die. You can’t punish people for using the proper way to fight against condition builds.

I would like a new condition which adds something unique to the game, not a another DPS condition.

There was a really nice suggestion by Nemesis.8593 on his Youtube channel but sadly it doesn’t fit Anets DPS idea…

I agree with you to a point, but conditions need some kind of “Cover” mechanic – currently, it’s too easy to cleanse them.

A good way to balance (IMO) would be to give the condition unique —effects-- (lines added to avoid stupid overzealous filter) when cleansed, and when on the opponent, making it a choice whether or not to wait the condition out or to try and cleanse it.

Perhaps something like Removes a boon every 2 seconds for X seconds; if there are no boons to remove, randomly applies another condition (either any condition beside this new one, or a specific subset) for 2s – if cleansed, does X damage immediately (X being a substantial number, since you’re trading immediate health for boon longevity/condition avoidance).

Yes, that’s kind of complicated – but you (meaning “the game player”, not you personally) want the DoT to be new, exciting, unique, and most of all useful. This covers all those bases.

Anhellbro.7213:

I am lol. 0 Thiefs win me 1vs1 from realese…

And I’ve never Mommy-Daddy Sheet Monstered myself.

IE – we’re both lying.

Hot Boy.7138:

evilapprentice.6379:

Hot Boy.7138:

But what’s the issue with having an option to toggle having your build viewed on or off? Who don’t mind sharing their builds can leave it on. Who do mind can leave it off. Doesn’t matter which side you take, this option works for everyone. Blows my mind when people disagree with an option that works for everyone.

You aren’t allowed to mind sharing your build. When you signed up for GW2, you accepted that the Dev’s wanted PvP to be neutral ground – it was designed so that there is no advantage in PvP besides skill alone. Part of that is not being able to make some super secret build and squirrel it away, because it has nothing to do with your skill in playing said build. Like I’ve already said, if you want to play a game where there are differentiators other than skill alone, go play your standard gear treadmill MMO. Then you can feel great in your T8 gear trouncing players in their T1 gear because you put in so much more time than they have.

Furthermore, you’re not doing anything people won’t dissect and copy in a week anyway, especially if your build is any good.

How does having a custom build create unbalanced gameplay? Whether someone knows your trait set up or not, everyone has access to the same races, professions, weapons, sigils, runes, traits, etc as everyone else. I don’t understand how you equate wanting to keep my trait build to myself with wanting to play game with a gear treadmill. They’re two totally different things. Having gear that another player doesn’t have access to is a clear imbalance. Having a custom trait build, that everyone has access to is somehow creating a disadvantage? This is part of a fair, competitive environment. Given the same tools, lets see what players do with them. Some players will be very creative and others not so much. An option to toggle it off and on doesn’t give anyone an advantage or put anyone at a disadvantage.

And yes, pvp is a competitive environment.

The simplest way I can explain this is as, imagine a girl getting ready for prom. She goes to a tailor instead of buying her dress in a store and asks for a custom made dress. She gets her dress, goes to the prom to see that everyone is wearing the exact same dress. Sure she looks beautiful still. It doesn’t take anythign away from her, but still, everyone is wearing the exact same dress. That’s the simplest way I can explain it.

Keeping one’s build to oneself creates no disadvantage. We’ve been playing without seeing each other’s builds for the first 8 to 9 months of the game, so what’s the problem with an option to turn it off for those who want it that way? I still don’t see what’s there to disagree about. You’ll still have the option to leave yours on.

Players better than you (and me, for clarification) will gladly go and post builds equal or (most likely) superior to yours online, and give everyone a detailed description on how they work, what traits they use, and the general playstyle, all in the name of healthy competition. All you’re doing by insisting that you’re build have the option to be kept secret it let everyone know how petty and possessive you can be about a video game.

If you’re cool with that, by all means keep insisting that you keep your virtual baby safe from prying eyes. In the meantime, get used to the current meta and have some fun, if you can through your possessiveness issues.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

evilapprentice.6379:

1) This is just a video game. Real life preempts it. You’ll discourage normal people with normal people priorities if you punish people for not being able to make it to a tourney they signed up for.

And what about the other four players who get their win/loss record tarnished because of the leavers/no shows?

Bottom line is, if you screw over an entire team in sPvP/tPvP you deserved to be punished, regardless the reason why you did it.

It is unfair to punish others trying to play the game for YOUR real life problems.

evilapprentice.6379:

2)You can’t control people. Any harsh penalty will do more harm then good. Instead of tourneys popping with leavers sometimes, you’ll get a tourney system that takes 3 hours to pop.

I don’t see any correlation whatsoever between punishing leavers/no shows and an increase in queue times…. if anything making people stick to the tourney they signed up for should make rosters fill quicker… not the other way around.

A) Life sucks. Wear a hat. RL >This game. That will always be true.
B) You know what, you’re right. Just like the drug war has reduced the number of drug users in the USA, and the war on terror has reduced terrorism around the world, I’m sure harsher penalties on leavers will reduce their numbers and improve the overall quality of the queue.

1) This is just a video game. Real life preempts it. You’ll discourage normal people with normal people priorities if you punish people for not being able to make it to a tourney they signed up for.
2)You can’t control people. Any harsh penalty will do more harm then good. Instead of tourneys popping with leavers sometimes, you’ll get a tourney system that takes 3 hours to pop.

YourOwnFear.2743:

evilapprentice.6379:

JeroenXP.5364:

A lot said the ranger should have an option too see stealth with a skill since they do need some love. But overall a thief should not be able to chain stealth, just now fighting a thief who is 75% in stealth in a 3-5 min fight. This is not being out played because a frigging 8 year old can chain stealth abilities.

Most thief players come with there poor excuse of “stealth is our only survival” well guess what that’s block and immunity for other classes but hey we can’t spam them where we can use them 75% in a fight. I hope one day Anet would just listen better and don’t come with silly solutions like a trap mostly specific used just for one class, that’s just poor game design and I know Anet can do better.

Hey guess what, Immunity is just that – absolute immunity from all attacks for a set amount of time. Block is the same (though there are a handful of abilities that hit through block, they are a very small % of overall attacks). Stealth on the other hand offer 0% damage mitigation. 0% damage mitigation. You cannot compare the 2 as if they were the same because they don’t do the same things.

Maybe he is a sb/lb ranger? He then can’t kill what he can’t target (unless the thief is dumb enough to stand in the big red circle 4-5x without healing). Stealth is just as effective damage mitigation as block. Stealth also allows me to reposition for an advantage. Now I am not against stealth because I play every class at max lvl but you can’t deny that stealth is the most effective defensive tool in the game right now. As long as the thief or mesmer isn’t dumb enough to stand in aoe.

This is all based on wvw since spvp/tpvp make stealth a lot less useful and a lot easier to counter.

Well than that’s the fault of his choices, isn’t it? No one forced him to go Lb/Sb. That would be like be complaining if a backstab thief 3 shot me because I run around with base toughness and 14k HP. I chose to be that glassy fully knowing that a D/D GC thief might 3 shot me.

If you haven’t learned to roughly guess where a thief might be based on his MH weapon, you aren’t trying. Hint, if he has a dagger or sword in his MH and stealths, he’s probably trying to get behind you. You can use that information to severely neuter how effective stealth is as an offensive tool, AND if you happen to not be running Lb/Sb, you can reduce the defensive abilities of stealth with this knowledge as well.

Hot Boy.7138:

evilapprentice.6379:

Ostricheggs.3742:

if I look at an engi and see his utilities, cooldowns, health, boons and watch him play for 15 minutes I can give you a build with 95% accuracy.

Spectator mode isn’t going to unveil some super secret uber leet build no one knew about. I hate to say it, but most good players can dissect your build in a single fight against you, let alone actually watching you play. Why not make it easier for nubs? It’s only a game and it helps new players.

This.

This isn’t corporate espionage people. You’re not some super secret spy, and your spec shouldn’t fall apart if someone else can see exactly what it is. Similarly, you shouldn’t want to keep your spec a secret – everyone has equal footing in GW2 gear wise from the getgo because its supposed to be about skill – go play one of the other dozen MMO’s with gear treadmills if you want a non-skill based advantage over your opponents.

You should be encouraging new players to get into PvP. New players need something to start with – trial and error only goes so far. If you keep demanding the game be so insular and exclusionary, PvP will become even more of a ghost town than it already is.

If none of that sways you, your point is likely moot anyway – I’m willing to bet Anet, like nearly every other MMO in the past 8 years, has a clause in their ToS which states that your character isn’t your possession; you’re in fact probably “leasing” it from ANet, who retains full ownership. Since (its likely) Anet owns your character anyway, they can do whatever the kitten they want with the spec you built on the character you lease from them.

But what’s the issue with having an option to toggle having your build viewed on or off? Who don’t mind sharing their builds can leave it on. Who do mind can leave it off. Doesn’t matter which side you take, this option works for everyone. Blows my mind when people disagree with an option that works for everyone.

You aren’t allowed to mind sharing your build. When you signed up for GW2, you accepted that the Dev’s wanted PvP to be neutral ground – it was designed so that there is no advantage in PvP besides skill alone. Part of that is not being able to make some super secret build and squirrel it away, because it has nothing to do with your skill in playing said build. Like I’ve already said, if you want to play a game where there are differentiators other than skill alone, go play your standard gear treadmill MMO. Then you can feel great in your T8 gear trouncing players in their T1 gear because you put in so much more time than they have.

Furthermore, you’re not doing anything people won’t dissect and copy in a week anyway, especially if your build is any good.

Zelulose.8695:

Ignoring the thief defenders I repeat….

I think the issue is that something must be done to allow players to counter a thief’s backstab without ruining the stealth attacks or stealth itself. So far the only methods I know are the following: Changing backstab damage, giving BS a cooldown, causing backstab to reveal on hit, causing backstab to reveal on block bind and evade, reducing stealth to prevent more backstab, longer reveals to prevent more backstabs, a nerf to blinding field to prevent stealthing for backstab, or ultimately removing backstab itself. What do you think should be done to give players the ability to counter backstab? One of these options or a new alternative?

a suggestion for COUNTERS is more on topic.

I suppose we could lower BS damage, as long as we increase Dagger damage across the board to justify it.
We could put a CD on BS, as long as we increased the BS damage to justify it.
We could reduce access to stealth, as long as thieves get access to protection and stability.

Or you know, you could L2P? I mean, are there other ways to counter an ability that currently doesn’t pose a problem to skilled players?

Ostricheggs.3742:

if I look at an engi and see his utilities, cooldowns, health, boons and watch him play for 15 minutes I can give you a build with 95% accuracy.

Spectator mode isn’t going to unveil some super secret uber leet build no one knew about. I hate to say it, but most good players can dissect your build in a single fight against you, let alone actually watching you play. Why not make it easier for nubs? It’s only a game and it helps new players.

This.

This isn’t corporate espionage people. You’re not some super secret spy, and your spec shouldn’t fall apart if someone else can see exactly what it is. Similarly, you shouldn’t want to keep your spec a secret – everyone has equal footing in GW2 gear wise from the getgo because its supposed to be about skill – go play one of the other dozen MMO’s with gear treadmills if you want a non-skill based advantage over your opponents.

You should be encouraging new players to get into PvP. New players need something to start with – trial and error only goes so far. If you keep demanding the game be so insular and exclusionary, PvP will become even more of a ghost town than it already is.

If none of that sways you, your point is likely moot anyway – I’m willing to bet Anet, like nearly every other MMO in the past 8 years, has a clause in their ToS which states that your character isn’t your possession; you’re in fact probably “leasing” it from ANet, who retains full ownership. Since (its likely) Anet owns your character anyway, they can do whatever the kitten they want with the spec you built on the character you lease from them.

JeroenXP.5364:

A lot said the ranger should have an option too see stealth with a skill since they do need some love. But overall a thief should not be able to chain stealth, just now fighting a thief who is 75% in stealth in a 3-5 min fight. This is not being out played because a frigging 8 year old can chain stealth abilities.

Most thief players come with there poor excuse of “stealth is our only survival” well guess what that’s block and immunity for other classes but hey we can’t spam them where we can use them 75% in a fight. I hope one day Anet would just listen better and don’t come with silly solutions like a trap mostly specific used just for one class, that’s just poor game design and I know Anet can do better.

Hey guess what, Immunity is just that – absolute immunity from all attacks for a set amount of time. Block is the same (though there are a handful of abilities that hit through block, they are a very small % of overall attacks). Stealth on the other hand offer 0% damage mitigation. 0% damage mitigation. You cannot compare the 2 as if they were the same because they don’t do the same things.

S/D does a pretty phenomenal job against boon reliant bunkers (99% of them, if not 100%). They’re still bunkers, and the fight will take a while, but it works.

It’s especially powerful in a 2 on 1 situation – remember, a Bunker is designed to hold off opponents for as long as possible, usually numerous opponents. My 10/30/0/30/0 S/D-S/D build (A variation of the one jumper posted) combined with pretty much anyone else neuters a bunker pretty hard.

Other spec’s work as well, but if you’re having trouble with them, try S/D.

1 through 5 sound pretty solid.

Though with chains, I’d remove the on-dodge damage – damaging players for using their defensive mechanics (dodge being the only universal one) feels off.

There’s also the question of how often the new condition can be accessed. If it’s going to be tied to medium or long CD’s, it needs a different design than one that can be accessed every 5-10 seconds.

If the condition is tied to long CD abilities –
Condition XYZ – stacks in duration – deals decent damage over time (midway between poison and burning per second, numbers could be adjusted). Cannot be cleansed. When other conditions are cleansed, XYZ does some direct damage and dispels a boon.
This would give condition based specs some psuedo-burst – you load up your target then hit them with this (or even vice versa, depending on durations). Now your target makes a choice – eat the conditions and try to use heals/boons to survive, or eat the damage/boon removal to keep conditions from eating them alive.

If the new condition is tied to short CD abilities –
Condition ABC – Stacks in intensity – Does X DPS (lets say around 75% what bleeding currently does, number could be adjusted) – every time ABC expires on a target (this would include the ability reaching its full duration OR being cleansed), that target is afflicted by burning or poison or bleeding (or other conditions, though I think the damaging ones do it best). When cleansed this is done for each individual stack, and the duration is X seconds. The duration for the additional effect when triggered by ABC reaching its full duration is X/2 seconds.

AikijinX.6258:

In actual Spvp match the reveal debuff is still 3sec. Test it yourselves. Stealth, then check the reveal time. It goes right down to 2… 1…. Doesn’t really give your 3, because it had already started on stealth.

Perhaps I’m mistaken. I only bring it up because a few weeks ago I was testing in the mists and noticed the change, but was informed about the Mists/actual game split. I assumed your case was the same.
I’ll check when I get home.

Sunflowers.1729:

evilapprentice.6379:

Deamhan.9538:

evilapprentice.6379:

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Look at all this whining. I guess all the glass cannon power thieves and permainvis thieves are going to finally be afraid of something, just like other players have been afraid of them since launch day.

The fact that those players need a “Your spec is invalid for 30s” button to win is a pretty sad commentary on WvW.

The fact that these thieves needed a “Your spec is invalid for half the fight” is a pretty sad commentary on thieves. Let’s be quite honest here. When going stealth, the player loses the thief as a target. This invalidates half their skills right there. Not having a clue where the thief could be pretty much invalidates the rest.

Your inability or unwillingness to learn to counterplay a thief is not the same as invalidation. Your skills still work, you just don’t know how to use them properly.

The fact that thieves still appear to be some mythical menace in WvW, yet in TPvP people have no issue with them is an example of the skill and experience gap between the 2 game types.

Don’t bring everyone down to your level, aspire to rise to theirs.

This is probably the 10th time that I’ve said this – do not compare WvW to sPvP (or tPvP).

-Crit damage is capped
-Damage (in general) is less
-Stealth stops point capping. This is enormous

And none of those things have anything to do with knowing how to counterplay thief in a fight.

“Oh noes, the thief went stealth. Whatever shall I Do? I Cannot possibly have any idea where he might be going!”

Well genius, he has a limited amount of time in stealth. Seeing as he has to get behind you for S/X or D/X to gain anything out of stealth, that’s probably where he’s trying to go. If he happened to be running a pistol it’s a little more difficult, but luckily Pistol MH is crap.

In WvW you can have more crit and damage….and more toughness and vitality – the stats you focus on are your choice.

-Running away serves no purpose in sPvP. In WvW it stops a very long walk back and you can go do other things like kill dolyaks. In PvP if you run away then you just lose the point.

Running away might be more advantageous in WvW, but “Serves no purpose in TPvP” is either an outright lie or an indication of your inexperience. Not waiting for respawn and Not giving the opposing team 5 points are important. Let’s also not ignore how non-trivial “Losing the point” is.

You’re right though, we shouldn’t be comparing WvW and TPvP – One is a PvP mode where gear is normalized and fight outcomes are based mostly on experience. The other is a PvE mode that needs I-win buttons to overcome the lack of player experience.

Deamhan.9538:

evilapprentice.6379:

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Look at all this whining. I guess all the glass cannon power thieves and permainvis thieves are going to finally be afraid of something, just like other players have been afraid of them since launch day.

The fact that those players need a “Your spec is invalid for 30s” button to win is a pretty sad commentary on WvW.

The fact that these thieves needed a “Your spec is invalid for half the fight” is a pretty sad commentary on thieves. Let’s be quite honest here. When going stealth, the player loses the thief as a target. This invalidates half their skills right there. Not having a clue where the thief could be pretty much invalidates the rest.

Your inability or unwillingness to learn to counterplay a thief is not the same as invalidation. Your skills still work, you just don’t know how to use them properly.

The fact that thieves still appear to be some mythical menace in WvW, yet in TPvP people have no issue with them is an example of the skill and experience gap between the 2 game types.

Don’t bring everyone down to your level, aspire to rise to theirs.

Hexs.8015:

I think revealed is good at 4 seconds. IMO thieves are overall in a good place right now.

I’d like them to give pistols a good once over though, the vulnerability shot and auto attack seem a bit under tuned

D/D is still an inferior set in almost every way to D/P.
S/P is rarely taken due to the fact that AA > PW, and doesn’t cost init. If PW did something interesting and unique, it would be a different story.
P/D is underpowered and boring because its 5->1….5->1… and stacking all your damage onto a single condition makes it ridiculously easy to cleanse.
P/P is a worthless, poorly designed spec that needs an overhaul. Body shot is still garbage, Vital shot and Unload are on opposite sides of the spectrum, and P/P has 0 access to a thiefs normal defensive measures (Stealth and evasiveness)
Alot of our traits are useless, and need to be combined/redesigned.

On the plus side –
D/P is a very solid, playable spec.
S/D is a very solid, playable spec.
SB is still one of our most well designed and useful weapons.
The traits we have that are worth taking are generally very good.

AikijinX.6258:

Reveal Debuff in Spvp has been reverted back to 3s. Just was not released in patch notes, wanted to give Thieves a surprise. May,14 and a surprise they did (Anti stealth traps)

I thought this too (pre 14th), did you test on dummies in the mist? For some godawful reason, its 3s in the mist, and 4s in actual games (which is obviously extremely confusing)

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Look at all this whining. I guess all the glass cannon power thieves and permainvis thieves are going to finally be afraid of something, just like other players have been afraid of them since launch day.

The fact that those players need a “Your spec is invalid for 30s” button to win is a pretty sad commentary on WvW.

Sunflowers.1729:

Zikory.6871:

So far I have only used them on thieves while scouting and roaming. They are quite effective to have placed and used to kite them in the area. Waste of supply because supply has a limited amount is also untrue. If you have a objective with full supply, thats a waste of supply (debatable depending on upgrades for keeps and towers) As for full camps taking 10 supply to lay a trap is not a waste considering the supply will refresh and you gain a tool to help you defend.

Even if it is not a waste of supply, you are still using 15 badges for a chance to possibly get a badge or two from a Thief you may or may not kill. Unless people are really that stupid, in a few weeks the novelty will wear off and nobody will bother using these traps on Thieves

And again again, it’s not about the actual cost/application effectiveness of the trap – I’m not a fan of Anet introducing any effect that effectively invalidates an entire traitline, some traits outside that line, multiple utilities, and more for any class. It sets a poor precedent

The trap could have simply pulsed a 3s reveal every second for 10s in the same radius. That would effectively counter cloaked mesmer portal runs and veil rushes without kittening up an SA thieves day. It’s either lazy design or was intended to specifically kitten over a thief.

Travlane.5948:

d/p if played perfect will never lose to s/d…… and d/p has blinds for group play which is better than what sword does…..s/d doesnt do anything for group play other than being able to hit more than 1 target if they group up. p/d does the most for group play when running condi hp build.

S/D strips boon and splits attention – you either ignore the S/D thief teleporting around and stealing protection/stability/vigor/regen while doing solid DPS, or you attempt to engage, at which point the S/D thief teleports away/plays evasively effectively making that player waste his time. Bonus points if you become annoying enough to garner the attention of 2 or more players and waste their time.

D/P takes advantage of surprise and burst, S/D takes advantage of making players waste a disproportionate amount of resources attempting to deal with them.

Meridian.8730:

But so far all the “devs” have done is make thief burst weaker and now nonexistent.

True about weakening the burst, but that isn’t necessarily the whole story. Perhaps the Dev’s are lowering damage across the board, and they’re just starting with the high burst classes first. There have been talks about fights going on much too quickly, and the introduction of Boon stealing for thieves and Boon hate for warriors was an attempt to give those classes a way to deal with bunkers that didn’t rely on a raw damage increase (which would make those classes hit amazingly hard on non bunkers)

Thieves still have burst, it’s just not as good as it once was.

Thieves have been getting nerfed since launch, but don’t let that discourage you.

From a PvP perspective, thieves have recieved a few minor buffs/fixes that really improved QoL over the months, and the last PvP patch that fixed FS basically fixed most of the problems with the S/D set, and gave thieves a viable no-stealth alternative for thief style play.

The dev’s have also mentioned that they want thieves to be more mobile, and to adjust their damage calculations so they can spec more defensively without losing too much damage. We’re supposed to be the extremely slippery kings of burst, and the Dev’s claim they want to make changes in that direction.

They’re still playable in tPvP, though you’d probably have an easier time with a few other classes.

I have no PvE/WvW analysis because I’m strictly PvP.

Sunflowers.1729:

The nerf affects Mesmers more than Thieves. Do you think anyone is going to put down a trap just to catch one single Thief? Waste 15 badges for a chance to get 2 badges? Makes no sense.

Conversely, stealth already didn’t do anything in zergs. With all the spells being thrown around nobody cares if you are in stealth or not. Go ahead, press stealth in a large zerg fight. it doesn’t do anything (and you should be shooting from a distance anyway).

Stealth didn’t make any difference in zerg fights so the lack of stealth doesn’t make any difference now.

In 1 week everyone will realize that nothing has changed except veil/portal bombs are much harder to pull off. These traps are expensive enough that they will only be used on large numbers of people, and so it is much more of a nerf to the utility of Mesmers.

So yes, you should reroll a Mesmer. Then be like “ohh so that’s what the nerf was for”.

Edit:
And before the same old argument of “we have more stealth skills than mesmers” pops up, realize that is a completely pointless argument. But eventually, someone is gonna mention it and be like “see we suck”. So read this:

-Traps are expensive and not worth it to use on small numbers of people
-They can only be effectively used for a chokepoint (if anyone tries to circle a supply camp with them, be my guest. It will take more supply than the camp itself has)
-Nobody is going to use them on Thieves because it is a complete and utter waste of supply. It doesn’t matter how many badges or how much karma you have. Your server has a limited amount of supply.
-They are only good for
1) Stopping veil bombs
2) Stopping an invisible Mesmer from portaling the entire zerg in.

It doesn’t have anything to do with how many stealth skills this class has because nobody is going to use it on one Thief. Do people build arrow carts in fields to counter random roamers? Didn’t think so. Arrow carts (like these traps) are only used at strategic locations and not everywhere people feel like fighting.

Stop with all the complaints already – if anything, Mesmers should be left wondering why Anet keeps nerfing their utility.

TLDR:
-Nobody is going to use it on random roaming Thieves
-It will only be used in zerg fights and at choke points.
-Stealth doesn’t even do anything in large fights – before the patch did you see Thieves run straight into the enemy zerg while stealthed?
-Stop complaining about this already. Mesmers had a 50% confusion nerf and now this, and you don’t see them complaining as much.

And if they do use it on a random Thief, they just wasted 10 supply and 15 badges for one kill. So when you step on that trap, you’ve denied them 1/3 of an arrow cart.

If that were the case the trap could have simply pulsed a 3s reveal every second for 10s in the same radius. 30s reveal is pretty clearly targeted at thieves caught in the trap.

And again, it’s not about the actual cost/application effectiveness of the trap – I’m not a fan of Anet introducing any effect that effectively invalidates an entire traitline, some traits outside that line, multiple utilities, and more for any class.

ShadowLordX.5148:

I feel like this deserves repeating here. Everyone QQ’ing over this are overstating the case. Yes, it will suck if you get hit by it. But no, 99% of your fights will not involve this. And out of the one’s that do, it will either be painfully obvious they’re setting it and you can avoid it or kill them while they’re rooted for 4 seconds.

Or you simply disengage and outdistance them. You don’t need stealth for most disengages, really enemy thieves, and maybe warriors or rangers are the only ones who can catch us. And you shouldn’t need stealth to beat 99% of warriors(Seriously this matchup is almost painfully easy except versus VERY good warriors), and any ranger who is decent enough to catch you won’t have the damage to catch you and chase you down. The mirror is the only place to worry about this, and you can counter it the exact same way they do.

Like I said, I Don’t WvW – at all. I no longer run a stealth build, nor have any plans to return to it. This trap has absolutely no effect on my gameplay, and probably never will. It still worries me however that Anet put it into the game.

Regardless of the class and the ability, how would you like it if they introduced a trap that said “You know that trait line you have 30 points in? Every major and minor trait in there is useless for 30s. Plus maybe another trait or 2 outisde that line, your heal, one of your utilities, and one of your weaponskills. Also the thing we’re talking about is one of your primary defense mechanisms (the primary defense mechanism for SA thieves, a trait line commonly used)”

“Dont worry, you probably won’t see it much” doesn’t change the fact that Anet (in their sheer laziness or stupidity, I don’t know which) decided it would be a good idea to design a trap that so completely and transparently targets a single class and shuts it down for 30s.

1 heal, 3 utilities, 1 weaponskill, and 1 weaponset combo (technically 3, but 2 of them are fairly rare, so we’ll exclude them for now). That’s what 30 seconds of revealed effectively renders nearly or completely useless (HiS isn’t “nearly useless” since it still heals, though it is severely UP without the stealth). Also of course, stealth attacks.

I don’t even WvW; kitten, I don’t even run a stealth build anymore – this is just a really, really poor precedent to set. I’m not interested in traps that deny stealth for 30s, or renders protection/regen/stability null and keep the target from gaining them for 30s, or locks adrenaline skills, or despawns a pet, or locks an attunement…

Don’t have effects that specifically target a class to the point where you almost completely nullify an entire traitline, numerous traits outside that line, utilities, weaponskills, and combos. It’s poor, lazy design that makes a playerbase lose confidence in you.

@Serbent

Signet immunity requires 30 points in a traitline most Rangers hate.
Protect Me immunity requires the pet to stay alive … best with bear who is otherwise useless.
Neither immunity stops conditions.
Having both consumes 2 utility slots.

In the same manner your suggestion that thieves have Shadowstep and Roll for initiative would consume 2 of their utility slots. I was merely pointing out that the Ranger has the option to go immune via a utility slot, twice in a particular spec.

Stronger heals? You have one that rolls you backwards, evades, and heals you and is on a 15 second cooldown. You can even get several seconds of Vigor from it … achieving much closer to 100% vigor up-time than a Ranger due to the fact that your heal is on a much shorter cooldown.

And rangers have a heal that’s immediate benefit heals for a slightly superior value, is a water combo field, ticks regen, AND cleanses conditions. They have another that heals double what Withdrawal does for both the Ranger AND Pet, albeit over 10 seconds (not ideal for the situation that you described). Withdrawal is admittedly a better heal for the situation that you described, but since ranger has other escape options (Sword 2, lightning leap) and plenty of evades, the gap isn’t that big.

Protect Me immunity requires the pet to stay alive … best with bear who is otherwise useless.
Neither immunity stops conditions.

A thiefs immunity is contingent on it being added in an expansion or something, because it doesn’t currently exist.

As far as 3 evasion skills for S&D: you have evasion on sword, dagger, shortbow … and no cooldown so you only have to manage evasion

Please tell me you’re not pretending that D/D or Shortbow are viable options for “slip in, drop someone, slip out”. We both know the only weaponset that even has a chance is S/D. For S/D, FS currently chains to LS, meaning a thief can’t “dodge spam” like a Ranger potentially could. In a long term fight, thief has the edge (since FS has no CD), but since we’re talking about a short term “slip in and out” kind of fight, Rangers S/D having 3 useable skills (on short and further reduceable CD’s, I might add) has the edge there.

If you want to complain about “loads more CC” with pets…

My post was pretty clearly a comparison, not a complaint. I pointed out what aspects Ranger has over thief, and what aspects thief has over ranger – Ranger didn’t get a trap this patch that invalidated one of its defense mechanisms entirely, thief did. If they come out with a trap that despawns all pets AND locks them out for 30s, I’ll be pointing out how that’s a bit ludicrous too. And the specific phrase I used was “Slightly More”, not, “Loads”.

I’d rather dodge more, taking 0% damage from more attacks than dodge less and take 33% less damage from attacks for 2s.

Then roll a thief – your or my preferences don’t come into play here, I’m just pointing out things you left out when you made the comparison.

The fact that you think a Thief’s main advantage is damage shows me what level of play we’re talking about. Thief’s advantage is their ability to control a fight via their mobility and capability to adapt to a number of different builds using only a few different weapon skills. Stealth, when able to use it, is just icing on the cake that make it trivial for good thieves.

In the specific scenario you laid out, both the thief and the ranger Are using S/D (the only weaponset capable of the style of play you described for Thief). Again, in the slip in and out scenario you supplied, there won’t be alot of time to “Adapt to a number of different builds using only a few weaponskills” – you’ll be using evades to stay on target and unloading on it, in an attempt to down it and then escape.

Grab a sword for one of your weapon sets and learn the power of Infiltrator’s Strike + Shadow Return … the only weapon skill in the game that is a real stunbreaker and condition removal as well as a 1,200 range teleport (it actually works farther than that).

I specifically pointed out IS/SS as an advantage thief has over Ranger – seeing as I at no point in my original post claimed Ranger was better than a thief for this (I was merely pointing out each professions strengths relative to your scenario), it’s obvious I hold IS/SS in pretty high regard seeing as I matched it against a bunch of survivability and CC options for the ranger.

Sebrent.3625:

Also … if thieves are still wanting to be able to dive into a zerg, kill someone, and get out without using stealth, take a lesson from Rangers.

• Withdraw
• Roll for initiative

Use both of these and see how much distance you get. It works even better with Sword:

• Infiltrator’s Strike
• Shadow Return

There’s also:

• Shadow Step
• Shadow Return

There is of course the difference of Protection on Dodge roll, 2 slottable immune skills, 3 separate evade skills in Ranger S/D (one of which is amazing for escapes when used with some skill), roughly 4k better base HP, access to better regen uptime, and stronger heals, utility independent CC in pets…

Not saying it can’t be done, or that the thief doesn’t have separate advantages, but lets not trivialize the differences. Rangers have loads more survivability options, slightly more CC (thanks to pets) and mobility and evasion options that are only slightly worse than a thief, while a thief’s main advantage is Damage and IS/SS.

Let’s lobby for traps that remove protection/regen/stability and make the player immune to them for 30s.

Oh, also, one that renders block and invulnerability usesless for 30s.

War Mourner.5168:

Lucky thieves don’t have ample stealth that cleanses conditions, heals them and lets them reset or run from fights right?

But it would be unfair to focus only on stealth, after all, my thief has
Withdraw: heal + escape +mobility condition cleanse every 15 seconds
Roll for initiative: stun break + escape + mobility condition cleanse + init regen every 60 seconds
Shadow step: x2 (stun break + teleport + condition cleanse) every 50 seconds
Infiltrator’s strike: teleport + immobilize, then condition cleanse + another teleport + stun break, on no CD at all!

Oh yes, people catch me all day with this

Man, who’d have thought that the class Anet billed as “Mobile and evasive” (recall, they’ve gone so far as to say they want thief to be the “most mobile class”), running 2/3 utilities as mobility based stunbreakers, a mobility based heal, and one of our most mobile weaponsets might be…

…wait for it…

mobile.

orfeoulis.4325:

I’ll just say that an unkillable invisible enemy that can leave anytime or kill you in 3 seconds if you fail to spam tab target and face him, is a game ruining experience.

If you’re going to engage in hyperbole, please don’t be surprised when others do so as well.
If you want to have a discussion, I’m all ears. If all you want to do is throw out exaggerated blanket statements with little basis in reality, well, we’ve got enough of that here. It’s getting rather old.

orfeoulis.4325:

Thieves are extremely UNFUN to play against. I don’t understand why people are trying to debate whether they are balanced or not.

They are just bad and unfun from a game design perspective. Invisibility and teleport spam are just so aggravating to face in battle. I won’t elaborate in what to change, because the class is designed around those kitten skills and it’s impossible to fix them without ruining it.

I’ll just say that an unkillable invisible enemy that can leave anytime or kill you in 3 seconds if you fail to spam tab target and face him, is a game ruining experience. At least for me.
Probably it’s a blast if you like playing thief, just not my cup of tea.

I find bunker guardians unfun to play against – so many blocks and immunes, knockbacks, full heals, boons galore…perhaps we should remove them from the game.
Same thing with every flavor of Mesmer – why won’t they just stand there and let me beat on them? Also removed from the game.
And don’t get me started on BM Rangers, HGH Engi’s, and Ele’s of any flavor – who do they think they are, fighting back? Removed!

In fact, let’s replace every other player with targeting dummies that cry when I kill them – that would be fun.

Numot.3965:

I would say the current S/d +D/P build is too strong at the moment. Dagger plus the pistol gives you easy access to stealth all the time, Sword and dagger gives you a lot of evasion coupled with high damage.

This is a problem because initiative exist. Most classes are punished by skillful counter-play cause at least if you avoid key skills, they are on cool down. But that isn’t the case with thieves because they don’t have cool downs on their weapon skills, and the cost of said skills isn’t prohibitively high. It doesn’t matter how good someone is at dodging if you just get to throw more attacks anyway.

I would like for more skillful play both with and against thieves that what’s currently in game.

This has been discussed to death – players only like to focus on the positive part of initiative.

Remember, every non thief class gets access to 2 distinct weaponsets (except Ele and Engi, who gain access to even more), each with their own unique cooldowns. Initiative is a shared resource between both a thieves weaponsets. If you go nuts with weapon 1, you can switch to weapon 2 and have fresh CD’s. If a thief goes nuts with weapon 1…weapon 2 is out of juice too.

An additional restriction most don’t recognize is spammable attacks = weaker effects on said attacks. Thieves don’t get KD/KB/Blowback on their weapon skills, nor any buffs on hit. Any stun/immob/daze is extremely short duration. This is because the attack can be spammed – it’s perfectly fair, but something most overlook when hating on the thief class. There are benefits AND costs associated with how initiative works – you can’t kitten about the benefits and ignore the costs when crying for it to be nerfed.

sorrow.2364:

Who cares about Protection/Stability/Block/Immunity?

Those are only capabilities hardly available to any profession and all on a very short duration.

Painfully obvious troll is painfully obvious.

Ok, troll – thanks for clarifying.

Zenith.7301:

Make thief condi removal upon entering stealth go. It should remove a condition AFTER every 3 seconds, not every time he spams stealth, which they can do a lot of the time.

Raise BP cost to 8 initiative. It should be a defensive maneuver that costs you something not “tralala you can’t hit me in melee and I’ll stealth at will without even needing to land a cloak and dagger”.

Or they could actually just remove the leap finisher from heartseeker.

evilapprentice.6379:

and thieves do not do attrition well.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

P/D thieves in WvW beg to differ.

And oh please, what good is a necro’s second life bar when they do garbage pressure in it. It’s not even an actual double HP bar — it just a fraction of your total health.

You go play a berserker necro and come back and tell people that life is so hard. Or a berserker (BERSERKER, NOT VALKYRIE) ele and come tell me their survivability is great with all of their 13k HP waiting to be 2-shot and your main survival skills being 75+ sec cd’s.

Hell, where are the berserker rangers? That’s right, they don’t exist because unlike your precious thief they actually don’t do that great a burst, nor often as other classes, and their defenses are crap.

WvW is classified as PvE for a reason – it doesn’t count. You balance around the idea that everyone has the same access to gear as every other player, and you play on maps that are small and roughly symmetrical – the moment you try to start evening out gear levels artificially, you might as well go play rift.

I’ve never WvW’d. From the video’s I’ve seen, however, any player with the most basic grasp of PvP would mop up in there – it appears full of players who take PvE specs into a PvP environment, for the most part have no idea what they’re doing, and cry a whole lot.

For some perspective, I ran P/D in PvP (thats Hot Join and Tourneys, not WvW, to be crystal clear) before it was popular, 6 months ago. This isn’t me claiming hipster cred, just setting up the rest of my story. The spec ran extremely well for a couple of weeks, until players dissected the spec, figured out how it worked, and played the logical counter to it. This rendered the spec largely ineffectual – most of the power behind the spec was the fact that players didn’t know what was going on, because thieves hadn’t ever in the past run Pistol MH. The fact that this spec still works in WvW is a testament to how far behind it is in comparison to PvP when it comes to basic player vs player mechanics.

Your suggestions are frankly idiotic. You’re either a troll or a very inexperienced player – do feel free to clarify which in further posts.

And Just a note, I’ve fought some excellent D/D burst necro’s – they Burst hard with good CC, until you learn what skills to counter/avoid, JUST LIKE A THIEF

sorrow.2364:

I expect just a simple, easy thing.
Thieves who runs glass cannon are as squishy as a Necromancer/Ranger/Engineer/Elementalist/Guardian/etc who runs as a glass cannon.
I’d like to see thieves forced to sacrifice damage to get defenses as much as other professions need to counter the stupid meta they created. I’d like that Thieves need to have at least 1400 toughness and vitality as everyone else need to survive.
That’s all I’d like to see.

I don’t want them to be a free-kill. I want them not to be a win-win profession. I want them to be on par with the other professions. Am I asking too much?

In your above list of glass cannon builds, thieves are by far the squishiest, because they can’t, in any way via their traits, utilities, or weapons, gain protection or stability, have 0 Blocks, and no immunity skills. Every single one of the classes you mentioned have access to at minimum one of those abilities (except maybe necro’s, I don’t know them super well off the top of my head, but they do get a second health bar), even in a glass setup, if they so choose.

I’d like to see thieves forced to sacrifice damage to get defenses as much as other professions

This is the sentence that tells me you never played a thief. Thieves are mostly glass because They, more than any other class in this game, gain the least by sacrificing Damage for Defensive stats. Even the developers of the game have noticed, and mentioned that they’re looking into boosting thief skills base damage so they can spec more defensively and still remain useful in a fight.

Go roll a 10/30/30/0/0 thief with a soldiers ammy – The stats will look nice on paper. 2850ish total armor, 18kish health, 25-35% crit (depending on your runes and sigils of course), 30-35% crit damage, decently high total power…it’ll look like a solid hybrid spec. Then you’ll go play it, and be sorely disappointed. You’ll lose most fights because your opponents still have access to powerful defensive tools, and all you’re rolling with is high armor. Without the damage to pressure them into playing to survive, you’ve given up all control of the fight, and thieves do not do attrition well.

Changing gap closers would be tantamount to redesigning the game. With less gap closers, you’d need to reduce the number of gap openers. With less gap closers, you’d have to adjust melee damage lest you make ranged the clearly superior option in any fight. You’d also have to re-examine any root/snare/stun.

In short, don’t count on it.

Just want to sum some things up here, from this post and others like it.

-Thieves dodge too much
-Thieves have too much access to stealth (Most thief haters would prefer 0 access to stealth)
-Thieves have too much maneuverability (porting, etc)
-Thieves do too much damage
-Thieves can escape fights too easily (tied to stealth and maneuverability)
-Thieves can stealth stomp, which is OP (An oldie but goodie)
-Thieves downed state is OP because its usually a guaranteed stomp evasion (keeping the golden oldies coming)
-Thieves heal too much (SA thieves mostly)
-Thieves can cleanse conditions too easily (SA thieves only)
-Thieves can spam their skills

I’m sure there’s some I missed, feel free to add to the list.

Just to clarify for everyone, thieves
-Are in the lowest HP bracket
-Wear medium armor
-Have 0 access to protection/stability
-Have no block/immune skills
-Have poor access to Regen
-Have poor condition removal outside stealth spam with 10 points in SA
-Can’t bunker at all (can’t hold a point when you’re stealthed or dodging in and out of the circle to stay alive)
-Spammable skills (via the initiative system) means no good effects on said skills (No KD/Kb/Blowback, extremely short durations on Immob/stun/daze, No boons tied to skills hitting)

Mind you the thief has had nothing but damage reductions since the game came out. What exactly is it you expect thieves to be, a free kill? Now that there’s an effective spec that doesn’t rely on stealth (and can most times avoid using it completely) to keep a thief competitive in teamfights, that’s the new thing thieves are too good at.

Just get over it.

Lyndis.2584:

manechi.8061:

dude I think u got something wrong here… we are THIEVES not guardians (tanks) or rangers (range dps) we are suppose to be slippery and squishy.

Not slippery enough to run away from anything and everything whenever you feel like it. If you screw up, I feel like you should be punished for going in when you shouldn’t have, or misjudging the strength of your opponent. Instead, you can do as you please, and it’s extremely frustrating.

The thief is punished – s/he spent a bunch of time and CD’s contributing nothing. Winning != Stomping. If I make a bad call, run in, fight for 20 seconds, and end up running away, you’ve won. People need to understand that.

Most people hated Bunker Ele’s because they would RTL away, “and you wouldn’t get the stomp”. That wasn’t the reason they were so frustrating however – the fact they’d be back in 10-15 seconds, mostly or fully healed, with a wealth of CD’s still up due to their attunement mechanic was the actual reason they were so hard to deal with.