Guild Wars 2

There’s a dozen reasons why you’re wrong. I don’t know which to put here though, since you made a blanket statement with no justification or opinion attached.

Killthehealersffs.8940

evilapprentice.6379:

Just out of curiosity, what would he have done against a Bola -> frenzy -> bullsrush-> HB’s warrior? By your argument, that’s broken too.

edit: Oh, and just a sidenote – the frenzy isn’t required with how squishy that mes was.

When we see the warrior pop frenzy , we are ready to dodge
We can <<see the bull rush>> animation and dodge
By having a player that istantly teeports + stealth + have a 10k free attack , aint gonna happen

Well, step 1 involved not running right by the thief and giving him free access to your flank – that’s beyond a rookie mistake. Secondly, I’ve managed to dodge Pre-load CnD->Steal dozens of times, and I’ve had it dodged when I use it. It’s actually pretty easy when you learn what it looks like, just as easy as dodging a bull rush. Maybe you should try that out.

Also, how do you dodge when immobilized by bola?

Carrioncrow.6872:

Seether.7285:

Carrioncrow.6872:

There it is:

“Obviously the Mesmer is a Very bad player” -Seether

….lol, Your killing me.

Doesn’t matter if he was a good player or a bad player (He was actually decent) there is absolutely nothing he could of done to stop the combo. That is the point of the thread.

Sorry, most players in TPvP are not even “decent”, I highly doubt this mesmer that got melted in hot join is decent.

He could be the best kitten player in the world and there was still not a single thing he could of done to avoid the 22k damage. That is the point of the thread.

Just out of curiosity, what would he have done against a Bola -> frenzy -> bullsrush-> HB’s warrior? By your argument, that’s broken too.

edit: Oh, and just a sidenote – the frenzy isn’t required with how squishy that mes was.

Ok, I’ll say it – the tears contained herein are just kittening delicious. Reading post after post of misinformation, hyperbole, denial, and outright lies honestly puts a smile on my face. I’ve never seen a group so bi-polar; so unbelievably lazy they couldn’t be bothered to try to learn to play (example – roll the class your having trouble with and learn it. Example 2, find a buddy who plays said class and duel them in an empty pvp server. That’s all you get for free), but who will fiercely come to the boards to spew their shortcoming anywhere and everywhere to the point where a dedicated thread has to be started.

My spec is -particularly- weak to backstab-instagib builds. I don’t have any blinds, stuns, Knockdowns or knockbacks. My only AoE cc is centered on me, which isn’t going to help stop the 5→f1→Signet→backstab train. I only have 1291 toughness. They still don’t bother me, because I play a thief. I know -exactly- what to do when I see a D/D thief rushing toward me, and 75% of the time, they’re dead before they know it, and not even stealth + inf arrow retreat will save them. I don’t win em all – mistakes are made, flat out better players will beat me sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. I understand their risk vs reward situation. The moment that steal→CnD misses, they’ve lost. The smart ones will immediately run – congratulations, you won the fight with a dodge roll or AoE blind. Your dodge roll shut down a player for 45 seconds. The dumb ones will press and be on the floor in 8 seconds. The cost of missing their 3 second kill is being killed in 3 seconds – that’s how risk vs reward works.

It’s also a kitten poor spec to bring to a group fight. I’ve had Backstab-instagib thieves drop me in a group fight because I wasn’t on the lookout for them. 90% of the time they run away and I get ressed, or they try to stomp and get floored by my teammates in 2 seconds – they have no toughness, no stability, and all their utilities were blown getting a down; they’re literally a free kill. Even if they escape, they’re useless for 45s to take you out of the fight for 6 seconds. Who won that tilt?

Seriously, from the bottom of my heart – learn to play. Your lack of skill is killing you, and you’re not getting any better coming to the boards to cry your wittle eyes out – it’s just making you look bad, and taking away from time you could spend improving your game.

To add to Seether’s point – GL getting a stomp off as glass cannon thief. I’ve been dropped a number of times by a glass cannon (4 times in 1 foefire, thanks to their teams 3 glass cannon thieves!) – guess how many times I got stomped?

Why that’s right, 0. One of my teammates would glance in the glass cannon’s direction, and he instantly ran away. He knew he didn’t have a ghost of a chance of getting the stomp off before he got mauled, and he was out of tricks (having blown them all to drop me). I got revived and went back to work. To recap, their thief was now useless for 45s-1m, I was out of the fight for 6-8 seconds.

Kimbald.2697:

Not that we really needed another post on it, but just out of curiosity for the replies so far:

you guys actually think GW2 is material for an e-sport than?

It’s got the potential. The solid base is there – it just needs a little time for fixes/tweaks/improvements/developed metagame. Once the game is on completely solid ground, we can hope for spectator mode, ladders/rankings, etc… (hopefully with a quick turnaround).

rickshaw.5279:

Sanis

i guess ppl dont realise what buff, nerf and FIX means…

That depends.

If you’re implying that this was a “buff”… that’s debatable.

If you’re implying that this was a “fix”… it wasn’t. Since the tooltip was accurate and the ability functioned exactly as stated.

If you’re implying that it was a “nerf”… that’s debatable.

Bottom line: It wasn’t a “fix” since it was functioning as intended/designed. A “fix” is what Protector’s Strike went through. An ability not functioning as intended/designed.

I disagree. I define “nerf” as “Unnecessary negative change to an ability”, and fix as “Bug fix/balance fix”. The PW change was a nerf – it was completely unnecessary, and didn’t change the issue people were having (Quickness PW spam). The assassins Sig change was a “fix” – the original sig was being used in a way Anet hadn’t envisioned (glass cannon 2 shotting), so it was “fixed” to be more viable for other builds, and less gimmicky. Of course, this is just the way I see it, not trying to claim it as fact.

Thank you for your professional, in depth, and well thought out opinion. It’s a sad day when someone in such a prominent position to judge this field comes out with a blanket statement as kitten as this. This is embarrassing to ask, but which gaming website do you write for again?

edamber.1549:

Yeah condition is really lackluster, 120 damage per tick? Laughable.

I can’t tell if you’re honestly misunderstanding the situation, or just trolling; regardless, this has absolutely nothing to do with Penace’s point.

I’l test when I get home. Until then (assuming you can login), try re-slotting the runes. Maybe theres a minor bug and they need to be “reset” so to speak.

Penace.7304:

evilapprentice.6379:

In actuallity, it might be something to do with venom’s from Residual Venom triggering. I recall testing a build with residual venom and leeching venoms – for both devourers and ice drake venom, rapid attacks caused the last venom proc (from residual) to not fire correctly – I gained the health from leeching, but the effect didnt stack.

If I hit Ice drake and shot 4 vital shots, the affect would happen 4 times, and I’d leech health 4 times. if I used a rapid attack such as sneak attack or pwhip, the affect would occur 3 times, but I’d leech health 4 times. This might not be the case with you, but your testing times(provided in the link) syncs up with this possibly being the issue.

Thought of that, tested on different classes with different skills, Runes are simply not working neither is Vigil of Chilling.

Is this recent (IE, is this issue since the patch?) I ask because I know for a fact that my 2 piece afflicted/agony setup was giving me 25% longer bleeds all last week (though I haven’t tested since update)

In actuallity, it might be something to do with venom’s from Residual Venom triggering. I recall testing a build with residual venom and leeching venoms – for both devourers and ice drake venom, rapid attacks caused the last venom proc (from residual) to not fire correctly – I gained the health from leeching, but the effect didnt stack.

If I hit Ice drake and shot 4 vital shots, the affect would happen 4 times, and I’d leech health 4 times. if I used a rapid attack such as sneak attack or pwhip, the affect would occur 3 times, but I’d leech health 4 times. This might not be the case with you, but your testing times(provided in the link) syncs up with this possibly being the issue.

I don’t use SoS. Most PvPers don’t use SoS – its passive is ok, its activated is meh. It’s not bad persay, it just gets outshone by more useful utilities for most builds.

Shukran.4851:

evilapprentice.6379
you forgot that thief is the only class who has 3 weapon sets and 5 utility skills, 2 elite if traited (30 critical, rune XIII)

That only unlocks if you play the class for more than 2 days, and win 10 Tpvp matches, so it doesn’t count for 99.9% of these people.

Daecollo.9578:

I didn’t know this was the thief forum…

Honestly there are several broken traits/bugs that effect thief atm, but people can only focus on the 2-3 builds they actually have…

Pistol/Pistol thief is completely broken and useless.

Dagger/Pistol Thief does no damage and is broken and useless.

Pistol/Dagger Thief is completely trollsy and does little damage, only useful in preventing people from capping anything in WvWvW.

Sword/Dagger is useless, its only situational against 1 class, Guardian.

Several Traits are bugged to not apply “boon duration”, alot of traits are under-powered and don’t make any sense at all, Thieves have some of the lowest “DPS” (not burst damage.) in the game now because they have the lowest pool of time to do damage, it just happens all at once unlike other classes.

While I don’t believe thieves are OP, its not as if they’re in any worse shape than other classes when it comes to needing bug/functionality fixes.

- P/P is underpowered, not broken – there’s a big difference. It just needs a few minor tweaks (body shot being changed, a decision whether or not unload should be a direct damage or condition/utility type skill)

- D/P has one major problem, and that’s root on shadow shot. Otherwise it has alot of potential. You don’t see people running it because D/D has better burst, but when they finally fix shadow shot, I see it making a comeback, as its a kittenload more versatile/group friendly.

- P/D. This is the hilarious one. I wreck face with P/D – if you know how to play it, it’s absolutely amazing. Its a condition/attrition style build, but once you learn the ins and outs, its very powerful (if a bit limited by capture point style spvp)

- S/D needs some work, no arguing there.

I’m not 100% sure of traits not working – I know most the superior SPvP traits work, because I run them and I’ve seen them work. Can’t comment on steadiness of DPS, never tested it.

Thieves need alot of fixes, but they’re hardly alone in that. Let’s not pretend thief is a useless class in need of alot of love before it becomes viable, that’s just as bad as the people who cry about how OP it is.

Payneful.7934:

evilapprentice.6379:

Fellknight.4820

Lemme get this straight but if a theif has a 10% run speed signet with a swiftness active ability something the necro, elementalist and ranger would kill for you would suddenly suck lol.

And don’t lie every theif would slot it.

So with Shadow Refuge, Hide in Shadow’s, Blinding powder, and cloak and dagger at your disposal you couldn’t possibly escape.

And with Steal, Heartseeker, Death Blossom, and Inf.Strike at your disposal you cant get right up on someone.

Cmon I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Guys guys, I’m ashamed here. We all somehow forgot that when a thief escapes death, said thief has won the fight. Every game currently being DM style, when you don’t kill a thief, he wins. It’s not as though we’re playing in a capture point environment, which would value chasing your target away from the cap point or slowing them down en route to said points, denying their team nodes.

We also forget that thief has some of the BEST base HP and armor – why do they need all those gap closers when they’re so tough? ALSO, you can’t even hit them when they’re stealth! its 3 seconds of invincibility that they can spam! How could ANet possibly launch the game with the class in this state? It’s unbelievable. Literally unbelievable. I can’t believe it.
[/sarcasm]

Can you believe it?

I cant! Literally.

Fellknight.4820

Lemme get this straight but if a theif has a 10% run speed signet with a swiftness active ability something the necro, elementalist and ranger would kill for you would suddenly suck lol.

And don’t lie every theif would slot it.

So with Shadow Refuge, Hide in Shadow’s, Blinding powder, and cloak and dagger at your disposal you couldn’t possibly escape.

And with Steal, Heartseeker, Death Blossom, and Inf.Strike at your disposal you cant get right up on someone.

Cmon I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Guys guys, I’m ashamed here. We all somehow forgot that when a thief escapes death, said thief has won the fight. Every game currently being DM style, when you don’t kill a thief, he wins. It’s not as though we’re playing in a capture point environment, which would value chasing your target away from the cap point or slowing them down en route to said points, denying their team nodes.

We also forget that thief has some of the BEST base HP and armor – why do they need all those gap closers when they’re so tough? ALSO, you can’t even hit them when they’re stealth! its 3 seconds of invincibility that they can spam! How could ANet possibly launch the game with the class in this state? It’s unbelievable. Literally unbelievable. I can’t believe it.
[/sarcasm]

spoonfoy.7315:

evilapprentice.6379:

There’s a consolidated thief thread for a reason – throw your misguided complaints down the well of no return with the rest of the players who couldn’t be bothered to learn how to play and leave the rest of us to discuss things of actual importance on these boards, PLEASE.

i wanna steal this and post it everywhere. can i steal this and post it everywhere Evil A? cause im gonna.,.,.,

By all means – but lets hope they actually listen though. The only move remaining is to type it out in underlined, bolded, italicized caps, and lets be honest, it won’t do any good.

sami.3801:

Dual.8953:

I find it hilarious how quickly someone complained about Ele’s Downed state. Anyways, I don’t think there should be any be all and end all method to finishing enemies off. Downed skills that negate Stab/Stealth/Invul stomps shake things up nicely imo.

You’re reading just what you want. And if you ask me, I’m happy with the Ele’s downed state change, cause before it was a joke.

About the topic, I dont understand why for example necro fear can be blinded and mesmer teleport not. And I’m not talking about 1vs1, no matter how many teammates are playing with you, if you want to stomp a mesmer you have to wait until he blinks. And I know it’s easy and he has a red triangle over his head, but you lose time trying to do it.

I was very clear earlier. Please don’t just “Read what you want”. The necro’s ability can be used to save himself, save a teammate, or stop an enemy revival. The mesmers ability can only be used to save himself. The necro’s downed ability has less raw “power” (it can be blinded), while having alot more utility.

Edit: Concerning Necro, I’m not exactly 100% sure on how their fear works. I believe it works as I’ve claimed, but I don’t want to be hypocritical. I do know for a fact that Engi, War, Guard and Ranger down states DO work that way. Necro probably also works the same.

Real quick –
-Team Game, not 5 to 8 players soloing
-Down abilities listed above can be used to stop stomps on teammates
-Down abilities listed above can be used to stop revival on a downed enemy
-Thief, Mes and now Ele down abilities can only be used to save themselves, nothing else.

Different but equal.

There’s a consolidated thief thread for a reason – throw your misguided complaints down the well of no return with the rest of the players who couldn’t be bothered to learn how to play and leave the rest of us to discuss things of actual importance on these boards, PLEASE.

barti.7685:

Jesiah.2457:

@ Speshal

Finishing someone in stealth is no stronger than finishing someone with stability. I don’t see how that’s an issue by comparison of the two, considering stealth doesn’t grant stability. You can’t stop someone from stomping you in stealth as per say a warrior / necro? Well … you still can’t stop them from stomping you if they have stability on. Same thing, just can’t see them.

That would be why they didn’t change it, and probably don’t plan to.

theres a big diference between stability and stealth as in stealth makes you invisible where as stability doesnt. stability gives your team time to react on the downed player situation stealth on the other hand makes your team think the downed player is ok while obviously a thief is finishing him off invisible..

Stealth lasts 3 seconds (4 if traited). There are 3 utilities that a thief can use to stealth (Hide in shadow, blinding powder, shadow refuge). Other than that, its CnD or Black powder→HS. This isn’t a game where a thief can come from outside the fight already stealthed, and stomp you before anyone knows it (95% of the time, there is the occasional situation where this happens. Even then though, stealth will tend to drop mid-stomp, Since it only lasts 3-4 seconds). If you see a thief stealth near a downed player react accordingly.

I’ve been knocked down/stunned/dazed/DPS blitzed down a dozen times on stealth stomps because players saw me stealth near a downed teammate, and realize that I’m probably going for the stomp.

When someone stability stomps, your only options are to try and burn that player down ASAP, or hope your teammate can be revived before the stomp goes through (which is a much shorter list of counters than a stealth stomp).

Now, back to the point.

Wow, didn’t take the boards long to drift from “Assassins signet changes are great, no more BS instagib builds!” to “This new assassins signet is even more powerful than the last one!” did it? What was it, like 6 posts?

Damaging Conditions definitely need a little something, but what that something is will be hard to determine – they’re close to where they need to be, and any changes need to be careful not to make them overpowered. That said;

- Conditions should not be removed on down. Its just silly. Conditions already do low front end damage, why are you wiping out all my effort because you went down? Direct damage doesn’t suffer the same penalty. It’s a big deal for denying a revival; you can’t always immediately go for the stomp. Direct damage and AoE can keep a downed player out of quick revival range, setting up for a stomp in the future, or slowing down a revival long enough to get the stomp off – apply condition damage to a freshly downed player who’s got a friend ready to revive him in 2-3 seconds is a waste of time usually because of the low front end damage.

I personally like 2 of the options set out here – condition damage critting, or an ability that says “Consume all conditions of type x – do some reduced % of the damage they would have done had they gone to full lenght”. Both have potential problems though.
I’m not sure how other classes are built, but conditions that could crit on Thief wouldn’t be so bad – its almost impossible to build a condition spec you’d actually want to run with any traited crit/Crit damage. You’d probably be running 30-35% crit from a Rabid Ammy, and something like 0-15% crit damage. Other classes I don’t know well enough to make that assessment; if there is a workable condition build where you could get 50%+ crit and 40-50% bonus crit damage, double damage bleeds might eat people alive.

I -really- like the idea of an activated “Consume conditions, do X damage” sort of ability as a counter to constant condition cleansing, but it seems complicated concerning placement. If you stick the ability on a weapon, which weapon? If you make it a utility, which utility do you replace/change?

Poxxia.1547:

Ahem … don’t you yourself (OP) make a strange generalization? And doesn’t your whole point fall a bit apart once you realize that?
Anyway: I know 2 places where the word “proof” has any relevance … none of them are here.
Somehow your little anecdote is sufficient to put the burden of proof “on the other side”? Why is that relevant …. and can that even be accomplished? I am baffled honestly. I have no issues with thieves in general, even if I find DB-builds a bit silly and backstab ott … it is things that can be tuned, I suppose.

You have to ask yourself … if people don’t approach your information in a constructive way, then “where did I go wrong?”. If you care, that is … if you just want to point fingers at them, saying they are bad, then by all means, do so. From what you wrote here, I have my doubts about how you approached them, and what your agenda really is … just saying

Unfortunately, I did not fraps the fight – all I have is my anecdote. I did however try to be as specific as possible; what abilities i was using, their classes and or specs, how they could have easily countered me time and time again, but chose not too…

The point of my post was to explain how I took 4 extremely poor/inexperienced players (I’m not knocking them, but their lack of understanding plays a crucial role in my point) and turned them in 4 more players who are going to visit these boards and beg for thief nerfs. Explaining here exactly how I was playing, just how poorly they were playing, and how their lack of even basic understanding of the thief class created a situation where everything I was doing seemed some uncounterable magic; and all people focus on is “4 on 1, thief is OP”, perfectly parroting the way the players from last night reacted, and just proving my point perfectly.

Unfortunately, “where i went wrong” was I started out my thought with “I don’t think thieves are as OP as most of the boards feel….”. There was more after that, but that was all wasted effort; claiming you don’t feel thieves are as big a problem as people think they are is a quick way to get a negative reaction from everyone who has ever felt cheated by one. People often feel cheated by thieves because of (read original post)

It’s not often someone ignores their instant visceral dislike of your opinon, reads the rest of your points calmly, and then thinks about them – my first point was so out of whack with the reality they live in, then the rest of my reasoning is probably pointless hyperbole, and they’re just going to rush to point out how I’m biased, I live in a fantasy world, “4 on 1 what? OP, broken, right there, blah blah blah”.

Logical Paradox.7946:

Sabbathius.1465:

OP,

You just have to stop and ask yourself one simple question: have you ever done that with any other class? If you haven’t, odds are Thief is OP regardless of how you may feel. Or the classes with which you couldn’t do what you did on the Thief are UP. Either way, it’s not balance.

This and more this. This is the one point in here that matters most. I’ve played every single class in the game in pvp: Bunker builds, condition builds, glass cannon builds all in an attempt to figure out my play style and what I liked best. Even as a bunker guardian, there is no way I could survive any reasonable duration of time against 4 players. When you, as a thief, can survive 4v1, you’re able to do something that no other class can even come close to. Doesn’t make a difference if you didn’t kill someone. You literally tied up an entire team for three minutes, which is more than enough time for your team to cap the other two points and then bring backup.

Then you’re not as good as you think you are. I don’t say that to antagonize you, but from what you’ve said and my own personal experience, its obvious. I’ve watched bunker engi’s dance around 3-4 players in GY in foefire on numerous occasions. I’ve also seen a guardian -easily- tank 3-4 players (of course, both those situations are somewhat build dependant). Not for 3 full minutes, but Mind you, these players knew what they were doing compared to the ones I described from my experience.

If you had bothered to read my post (or try to understand it), you’d notice that most of the time those 4 players weren’t doing anything, or were actively killing themselves. The entire point of the post, in fact, was to point out how from their perspective, I was unkillable in a 1 on 4, where it was more like a 1 on 1.5, seeing as how most of them had no idea what to do. The purpose was to show that when people come crying to the boards about ANY class, it should be taken with a grain of salt, because alot of the times these people don’t understand why hitting their big damage ability while I’m mid dodge might be a bad idea.

If your guardian was in a 4 on 1, and all 2 of the players did was try to shoot you through your reflect abilities, would you call that a 4 on 1?

crewthief.8649:

evilapprentice.6379:

The Boz.2038:

Yeah, you ran into noobs, big whoop. Thief is still OP.

By all means, if you’d like to discuss, discuss. If you’re just going to lay out blanket statements with no backing, please don’t bother.

The evidence to his statement is littered throughout this forum and several others. If you’re honestly too biased to recognize that the stealth mechanic as a whole in GW2 is a bit out of hand…no amount of ‘proof’ on our point is going to dissuade you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies

You go ahead and read that. Your post, and most of the posts on here, fall under one or more. If we were to listen to the boards, every single thief spec is broken (its no longer underskilled and underexperienced players crying about burst, bleed specs are now unstoppable too) and somehow ANet missed it. Literally, every single effective way to use a thief is so powerful it cannot be countered, and somehow ANET MISSED THAT ENTIRELY.

That just sound’s extremely believable to me, you know? </sarcasm>

Using my thief, I fought 4 players at the mine for well over 3 minutes, solo. I didn’t cap the point or get any stomps, but regardless, when they finally dropped me, the entire opposing team started pointing out how OP thief was, and after that display, “How could I deny it?”

Well, rather easily truth be told. None of those 4 players had the slightest clue what they were doing – I stopped playing and explained to them what they did wrong and how to counter my build. They didn’t know thief at all, some of the more basic PvP gameplay mechanics, or even their own specs very well. They all left anyway, but here’s a long list of examples -

- All 4 of them stood around in my caltrops every single time I used them
- The second I stealthed, they acted like Mobs; They stopped moving entirely (usually in my caltrops), and not a single one attempted to find me using Autoattack
- A warrior and engineer attempted to shoot me through the duration of both of my dagger storms
- Not a single one of them did anything to my shadow refuge – with a mes, an elemenatalist, an engi, and a hammer/rifle warrior there, they didn’t drop any sort of AoE in my shadow refuge (which I used every time as my oh kitten button).
- The mes used Mass invisibility twice. Both times, every single player was exactly where they were when the invis was dropped. They hadn’t moved a step.
- At no point were they dodging away from me. Anyone with a passing understanding of how thief works would have identified in 2 seconds that I was survivability/conditions build, and relied on stealth to keep myself up. My primary access to stealth was CnD – the player I was on could have literally dodge rolled when i got near him while the other 3 players shredded me and the fight would have been over in seconds. At no point did they do this, both the Ele and the Mes were more than eager to meet me in melee.
- They stood around and ate DB after DB. I wasn’t using deathblossom much at the beginning of the fight, because 99% of the time its stupid to spam it… unless your opponents have no idea whats going on. Then its kind of funny.

Despite explaining all this to them, they continued to cry how OP thieves were. These are the kind of players I envision rushing to these boards to lament how OP thief is. It didn’t matter that I explained my spec to them, and even linked them my abilities. It didn’t matter that I explained how THEIR specs could have countered me – “thief’s OP, cant wait for the nerf”

Concerning 4 – Just change it to 15 minutes of No Rank/Glory gain. There is currently no system for testing builds; You have to jump into a Hot join and just see how it goes. If the build doesn’t work the way you were hoping, why force me to not have fun for 10 minutes? In addition, lots of hot joins turn into zerg vs non-zerg. I have no interest whatsoever in fighting a zerg – if you force me to stay, I’ll just sit down and wait til the round is over. I’m not PvPing just for glory, but to have fun – I’d gladly not gain glory for 15-30 minutes to test out a build, or escape an unfun game.

As for 5, its a bit early to tell, but compared to last week, I’m seeing ALOT more competent necros. I dont play the class, so I can’t be sure, but it appears they’ve finally fixed the issues/found the right specs/whatever, because I’m seeing ALOT more of them, and they’re doing well. They might not need said buff.

6 – Bunkers – They certainly -feel- too powerful, but I haven’t sat down, rolled a guard/ele/engi, and played the spec for 2 weeks. I’m not going to cry on the boards like everyone else (not accusing you of this, but the sPvP boards are just 90% people crying for nerfs) that they’re broken until I understand the class fully. Could be your right, could be we all just need to learn to counter them a little better.

I used to run P/D, something different to Samuraiken’s build

30 shadow arts (4,6,11) (Blind on stealth, remove conditions in stealth, regen health in stealth)
20 acrobatics (2,9) (Might on dodge, 2 init every 10s)
20 trickery (3,8 (dodge caltrops and vigor/boon rip on steal)

Key is maximizing bleed duration – you want 50% longer bleeds. for armor, 2 krait, 2 afflicted, 2 centuar, and agony on the weapon. Signet of malice, caltrops, shadow refuge, stun breaker of choice (I happen to really like Inf sig) and elite of choice. Carrion ammy with a shaman’s jewel makes for decent power, condi damage, toughness, and vit.

It does get boring though. You’ll never use body shot, its extremely rare that shadow strike is a superior option to CnD (though those few times you do use it, its awesome), and Dancing dagger is very situational. its mostly autoattack, close for CnD then wait for your oppponents dodge roll, Sneak attack (pistol stealth opener is basically a quick 5 shot autoattack), rinse, repeat. Support/Survival Ele’s will be a nightmare (since they are one of the few classes that can drop your bleeds faster than you can stack them, and their constant small heals negate your poor direct damage with pistols), even a decent necro generally takes for-kittening-ever to drop, and high HP hammer warriors last long enough to attrition you down if you make any mistakes.

It is fun surviving 4 on 1’s long enough for your team to arrive and find most of your opposition at half life in a hot join , but the spec is too slow and stealth dependent to be reliably used in capture point tPvP.

NaZ.1457:

Traverse, I think you over-simplify a lot of stuff in for the sake of being concise.

The reason why Thieves are OP is that there are no player-induced (Read: skill) counters to a well played thief.

Consider:
- they can ALWAYS escape to heal.
- they have on demand, 100% damage mitigation in the form of stealth. Even block/invuls/shields pale in comparison, as stealth forces the other player to retarget (exceeding difficult considering how absurdly many classes have pets, including thieves), while other class’s abilities don’t force retargetting. Either way, every fight a thief enjoys many extra seconds of no incoming damage, and there is NO COUNTER.
- they get an upper hand at the start of most fights, all if played properly. Stealth combined with “backstab-like” abilities is not something that can really be countered in a skilled match. You can’t counter what you can’t see – and even if you get lucky dodge/AoE guessing, 5 seconds later you’d have to do it again. NO REAL COUNTER.
- stealth executes are priceless, and better than stability (ie. no dmg taken from downed opponent). There is NO COUNTER to stealth execute.
- thieves are impossible to kite. If they are ever crippled, they go stealth – completely eradicating any hope of doing damage while kiting – which is a ranged class’s only hope. They have multiple teleports/leaps, and only an elementalist burning cooldowns can really get away. Otherwise, NO COUNTER.
- downed teleport is an incredible skill – and saves more thieves (and mezmers) than any other downed ability. It always takes longer to finish them (even for ranged classes). This pays off huge when defending points, waiting for backup, etc. Again, there is NO COUNTER to this.

On a spreadsheet, thief abilities don’t seem over-powered. But it is the one class that has NO COUNTERS when played properly.

Defending thieves by saying “groups can target and burst them at the start of fights” is not a counter, or balance. Any class, regardless of being OP, can be group bursted at the start of fights. That’s really not the point, but identifying that as an option really suggests there they have no gameplay-based COUNTER.

You could have just typed “I dont know what I’m talking about!” in all caps and saved me 5 minutes of my life.

Let’ kitten these apart 1 by 1, in order of hilarity.

“- they have on demand, 100% damage mitigation in the form of stealth. " – This is like typing “Stupid Bunker guardians, always bursting me down” IE, it makes no sense. Anyone who’s played the game more than 10 minutes understands how stealth works, and its not as you described. Any attack will hit a stealthed thief, you just can’t target them. The idea that Block/invuln pales in comparison to STEALTH is laughable, and shows your inexperience.

“thieves are impossible to kite. If they are ever crippled, they go stealth " – You’re obviously unaware how a thief achieves stealth in this game. We only have a few buttons that say “No conditions attached, here’s some stealth”. Hide in shadows (one of our heals) and blinding powder (on a 60s CD) are it, more or less (there are steal stealths too, but those can’t be relied upon). Other ways require being in melee range and hitting a 6 init attack, or Using black powder/heartseeker (9 Init), so No, thieves arent “always going stealth” on you while you’re kiting. You are lying, or bad.

“- they get an upper hand at the start of most fights, all if played properly. " – Armed with the above knowledge (you know, about how stealth actually works and not the fairy tale version of stealth you believe thieves have to compensate for your inability to play), its very rare a thief will approach you unawares in stealth – you’ll almost always see them coming. If a thief stealths near you react accordingly – it only lasts 3s (4 if traited).

“- downed teleport is an incredible skill” Downed teleport is an incredible skill, to keep the thief from getting stomped. It offers nothing in team support however; a thief cant knock an opponent off a stomp/revival in the way warrior, engi, necro, ranger and guardian can. It’s a trade off. The counter to ground teleport is another teleport skill (Which admittedly, not every class has) which can be used mid stomp to teleport you to your now staked thief.

“- stealth executes are priceless, and better than stability (ie. no dmg taken from downed opponent). There is NO COUNTER to stealth execute.” – I’m going to take a guess and say you live in a world of 1 v 1’s, because I Can’t imagine anyone who would prefer stealth to stability for stomping, Don’t get me wrong, stealth is nice, it just doesn’t have a thing on stability stomping in most non 1 on 1 situations.

Its like you’ve never played this game before, and you’re just parroting things you’ve read on the boards.

VictorTroska.3725:

Rolled thief to test it out. Top killer and I spammed random buttons. Landing backstab is joke. I dont see why is it so hard. These so called “pro” thieves say you need to move and spin around to make it hard for thief to land backstab, hah, I could land it almost all the time. Only problems were when I tried to backstab another thief or mesmer but rest is easy.

Best of all, I could run full DPS glass cannon spec without worrying of toughness or vitality. Stealth > Toughness. With ability to dissapear everytime you get focused is golden and then return with 14k backstab made me laugh.

Current thieves so seem to tell “l2p” or l2 dodge" are jokers. They rely on high damage burst insta kill because they have no skill to play thief class. Thats why they are defending thief damage to very end. Seen that in other mmo’s where class damage was overboard, majority of fotm heros would defend that because they dont know how to play and only reason they are “good” is damage.

What did I say about utter fabrications? You most certainly didn’t roll a thief, pug que a tourney, and top anything. I don’t care how well you did in hot join, it’s -really easy- on any class to rofltstomp around a bunch of disorganized lone wolf glory hunters.

“Top killer and I spammed random buttons” is just hilarious. Do you think I know as little as you do about this game, that a ridiculous comment like that would go unnoticed? Come back when you’ve actually tried.

Choops.3710:

Compare the thief are OP posts versus any other spec/class combo. Coincidence? Everyone needs to learn to play? Orrrrrrrr is your main a thief and that drop in your 12k backstabs would really rustle your jimmies? Hmm…

All it shows to me is people would rather throw up their hands and squeal than learn how to play. Like I said, go roll a thief and play it for a week in tPvP – then I’ll talk to you like an adult.

@ehtom

You did that in tPvP did you? Against players who had an iota of understanding of how the game works? What did I say about outright fabrications.

All I see if thief QQ. Everywhere on the SPvP and Thief boards – 90% QQ about a class that honestly isn’t that robust. They do a couple things very well (Damage, mobility) and a number of other things horribly (Support, survivability that matters in Capture point pvp). 2 days of playing on one and you’ll know everything you need to identify and counter (to the best of your ability, which of course is spec and class based – thats the idea behind soft and hard counters) any thief build you see.

You’re all aware you can roll a thief yourselves and see what they do, right? That’s how I learned to counter the classes giving me problems. If you’re not able to identify a Thief spec (or any class at this point in the game tbh) by fighting them for 5 seconds, then you’re a bad. There are a handful of specs in every class that work best for the current format, and 90% of players are running them. You should also learn how to identify bad players – I don’t feel good when I absolutely wreck someone, because 95% of the time, its obvious they have no idea what they’re doing, and I didn’t win because of skill.

And the outright fabrications have to stop – “I fought a DB rogue that did 15k damage to me in a matter of seconds!”. No, no he didn’t you lying scrub – that’s nearly impossible. You could Stand still in caltrops while a thief DB spams (or even shoots you with a pistol, using stealth for the opener every single time its up on a perfect rotation) and he won’t do 15k damage to you “In a matter of seconds”. “How do I kill someone who’s always dodging?” – I run a DB spec, every non scrub I fight understands how the spec works and how to avoid getting utterly owned by it (it starts with not standing still and eating DB’s to the face because you don’t understand how the game works, and ends with having some sort of condition removal ability because you understand how the game works)

It’s just plain infuriating to see so many people who couldn’t be bothered to attempt to learn how to play begging ANet to get the nerfs rolling so that they can turn this game into skill-less crap fest where even the kitteniest player has a chance, because why should they have to try? Take a casual glance at the boards right now – people are literally kittening about every viable thief spec – its not just about burst damage anymore, it’s about “Waaah, he doesnt stand still in my big dps skill, what am I supposed to do??”

New Rule – Play a thief for a week in tPvP before you’re allowed to come crying to the boards about how OP they are.

You people are just plain silly. Downstate is fine. It’s working exactly as intended, and well. If you can’t deal with it, this isn’t the game for you.

Why is it people only think of themselves in a team based game? How can a downed thief or mes stop a downed teammate from getting stomped? Oh, they cant; unlike warrior, engi, necro (I believe, I dont know the range of their fear), and if in range, guardian and ranger. Someone mentioned blind – unless the blind if being applied passively (such as by Black powder), or by a second player, you hit 1 ability to consume the blind, then use your stomp prevention (i’ve seen non kitten warriors,guardians and rangers do it all the time, sometimes even IN a black powder in the case of guardians and rangers thanks to careful timing). If a second player is blinding you to ensure the down, too kittening bad, its a 2 on 1 against a downed player, they’re supposed to win.

The only class that (probably) has a right to kitten about downstate is Ele. This is an assumption, since I don’t have a ton of experience with them, but not having a stomp-prevention ability immediately available upon down seems, from the outside, a glaring weakness (since every other class gets one).

VictorTroska.3725:

Achieving same result if not better with less effort and skill than other class. Ability to run glass cannon build to maximize your damage while having excelent survival and get away abilities.

To all moaning thieves, I dare you to roll glass cannon elementalist and be as effective as glass cannon thief.

Thief class will be nerfed, it is inevitable and when that happens. True thief players will remain and still shine, while rest of the garbage (which is majority) will move to next fotm.

I dare you to roll a glass cannon thief and have the same level of access to CC, healing and AoE as an elementalist. Then you can roll a support thief and compare him to a support ele. THEN you can roll a tanky/survival thief and compare him to tanky/survival ele.

Oh, the thief class doesn’t do support or tank/survival as well as ele? Thieves should be pissing and moaning on the Ele boards for more combo fields, AoE, heals, stability, protection, and CC (most of which is built right into their weapon skills). Right?

Or maybe its that they’re different classes with different strengths and weaknesses… but that’s so simple, how could anyone overlook it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess

And again, this isn’t a post about class balance, etc…

psyt.9415:

They could always pull a Call of Duty or BF3 and charge us for spvp mappacks. More money in their pockets. Maybe even introduce a few extra weapon types in a few packs would be interesting.

I’ve honestly got no problem paying for additional maps – though that could cause problems (I’m not a company running a massive MMO, so what do I know). Rather than “map packs”, I see a “PvP expansion” coming in the future, though not in any sort of acceptable time frame.

I’ve been trying to spend money here and there, because I genuinely want this game to flourish, though there isn’t much I want to purchase as a player only interested in PvP.

@Hacker (why the heck does the reply option appear on every thread except those I’ve authored?)

Yes, there will always be class imbalances – there’s no such thing as perfection anywhere in anything, get used to it. As it stands, there’s nothing I’ve seen that feels “broken”, and tbh, I haven’t had a fight in a long while where I felt a class imbalance was the cause of my loss. There are of course hard and soft counters, but that’s part of the design – you don’t try to drop a support ele as a conditions thief, you don’t let a glass cannon whale on you, so on and so forth. We’ll see little nudges towards better balance as the meta develops (I’m seeing a ton more competent necros compared to a week ago, for example).

That’s also not really the point of this post. I’m looking for some info concerning map/game type updates (or at least trying to bring it to the attention of ANet, assuming I’m not the only one who wants it)

Hammerheart.1426:

More maps, more game types, and SOME interaction between Wv3 and sPvP. They’re both pvp and it doesn’t make sense that the community has put pve and wv3 on the same “side.”

WvW != PvP, and if their Aim is Esport, then its going to stay that way.

In spvp, the deciding factor is skill – equal gear, equal playing field – its all about the spec and the skill of the player.

In WvW, gear advantages are an unbalancing factor – you don’t want to reward the person with the most time to play/luckiest drops, you want to reward the -best- player.

@kkagari -
We absolutely need more game types. You see classes running one of a handful of cookie cutter specs specifically because they’re the best for capture point. It’d be nice to see a whole ton of variety when they add TDM, maybe Capture the flag, Escorts or something similar, etc. More maps without more game types would be a bandaid, not a solution.

I don’t mean for the topic to sound inflamatory – it’s just the truth. ANet, you released a game which you hoped would be an ‘esport’ with 3 tourney ready maps and a single game type. It’s been 6 or so weeks, where’s the rest?

I’m glad to see paid tourneys coming out, but all that really means is now we can pay to run the 3 capture point maps. It’ll add a level of difficulty (matching good teams mostly), but it’s still the same exact stuff over, and over, and over again. The Train wreck that was WAR was touted as a PvP game, and launched without 2 major cities (that never showed up by the way), but they had a RIDICULOUS amount of different maps and game types. I understand there’s a lot of things that need to be done, but honestly, how long do you expect us to run the same 3 maps, 1 game type over and over and over and over and over again?

The game is otherwise great. There are of course a lot of little things that will need to be worked out over the next 6 months, but that’s to be expected, and it isn’t anything that diminishes the fun of it all. The only reason I’m making this post is because I’m really enjoying the game, and I’d love to continue.

This might only apply to PvP, so ignore me if this doesn’t sound right to you, but my main focus for Pistol bleeds is to get 50% longer duration – adding 2 additional ticks per bleed works very, very well.

In the past, I’ve gone 1 of 2 routes – 3 afflicted, 3 krait, agony on the weapon (10% longer bleeds) and 10 Points min in deadly arts
OR
2 afflicted, 2 krait, 2 centuar, Agony on the weapon.

Mrbig.8019:

@evil

As i said, and i know it very well since i main S/D from betas, making FS to simply work wouldn’t change anything, it would still be worse than C&D + tactical strike ( with mesmer runes or sigil of paralyzation for an almost 3 secs daze).

A boon stripping is not enough to justify 4 ini when you have better options at the same cost: it’s initiative nature.

The same is for shadow shot: HS closes the gap as well, it doesn’t root, it deals more damage, it’s a combo finisher. It costs LESS INI.

If i have to blind my opponent, SS is suboptimal to BPS ( unless in very, VERY specific situations) since it blinds from range ( the shot also blinds) and creates a combo field, making , with HS, a free stealth+ blind + AoE combo field pulsing blind+ gap closer+ easy backstab for 6 ini. While SS only offers a gap closer + blind. For 4 ini.

Initiative is absolutely about maximizing your resources: it’s a reward/cost constant ratio.

Currently SS and FS are “almost” ( if not in very, VERY specific situations) subpar to all other skills of the same weaponset.

They need a complete redesign. Just like P/P. This hoping they really want to make the thief viable in different ways.

This will take time. Lots of it. There’re other things being top priority, and thief rebalancing is currently not among them.

You, and all other thief players, need to be patient. That’s all i can say.

Again, I agree with you to an extent and feel I should re-phrase. Obviously, re-balancing needs to take a backseat. I should not have mentioned P/P (even though its so poorly designed its infuriating) and other balance issues in my post; even though they’re frustrating, that’s the kind of change that will take time, resources, and testing, and obviously come after more important updates.

I still disagree however concerning broken abilities – as much as I’d like ladder, leaderboards, and so on, they’re all pointless until 95%+ of ALL classes abilities work correctly. SS is only useless because of the root (which I’m assuming is unintentional) – without the root, its double the range of HS, does better damage over 50% (and I believe it does better or similar damage in the 50-25% range too, tho i am not sure), and Blinds – it definitely has a place in D/P. Scorpion wire fails constantly across open ground, making the skill a liability to use. FS is in worse shape, needing a fix in the mechanics and a re-examining of the damage. There’s no reason the mechanics shouldn’t be fixed immediately however; they already have an ability on another class that does the same thing and works correctly. I’m assuming you’re correct, and that the skill would be mostly useless due to sub-par damage, but considering it’s such a simple fix (To Anet – I’m assuming its a simple fix because there is already an existing ability for Rangers that works correctly, and does exactly what flanking strike is supposed to mechanically), why not put it in so that 5% of the time when FS is a good choice, it can be used?

I’m sure there are other issues with other classes – classes abilities working correctly should be the focus of updates. One abilities work as intended, then we can move on to leaderboards and the such, then later on, balancing.

@mrbig

I do understand what you’re saying and agree for the most part, but my problem is they’ve found the manpower to reduce HS and PW damage, even though we don’t have ranking, leaderboards and so on.

The class is at the moment -extremely- boring to play because we get funneled into D/D burst or P/W Burst for 2 reasons -

1) Our survivability mechanics are very poorly suited for capture point, which means we’re often most useful when we’re bursting
2)Our viable weaponsets are extremely limited (and as you mentioned Shortbow basically always HAS to be one of them)

I understand that things like the much needed P/P redesign are going to take time, and I don’t expect everything to work perfectly, but kitten rangers currently have a working version of flanking strike and Inf Strike doesn’t root you the same way shadow shot does; Is it so hard to ask them to mirror the way currently functioning abilities work to fix our currently broken abilities?

Shintai.5618:

Nerfing is the cheapest method. And thats the key issue.

I don’t really want to get into a discussion concerning nerfs (an unwarranted change to an ability) or changes (a warranted change to an ability). I don’t have any empirical way to claim the HS and PW changes were fair, unfair, needed, etc…

The point is Anet,why are you sinking effort into changing our small set of abilities that work rather than fixing the large list of abilities that don’t work to various degrees? Especially considering we have so few weapon choices. You see SO many people QQing about 1 or 2 thief builds because those are our only viable builds at the moment, mainly due to the fact that more than a month after launch most of our weaponsets are crippled by dysfunctional abilities or just plain poor design

To start this off, I’m just going to say I use the word “nerf” in the title because it’s a nice small word that gets my point across in a general manner – I’m not here to argue whether or not HS and PW changes were fair, unfair, etc. In addition, this post is entirely from a PvP standpoint.

Now, to my point – For the love of God, can you fix some of our broken weaponsets before you make any more changes to the few weaponsets everyone uses because they’re the only functional ones? Look at your usage statistics, how many thieves do you see running S/D at a competitive level, or in Tourneys. How about Rank 25+ players? Same thing goes for P/P.

Why do you think there is so much HS spam? Is it because shadow shot is worthless as a closer on a moving target? Thieves ALREADY HAVE the narrowest weapon selection of any class in the game (Ele’s get attunements, Engi’s get kits), why are we locked into using an even smaller selection due to abilities that just don’t work? it’s been more than a month since launch, how is it we can still have abilities that don’t function properly?

Just in case you’re somehow unaware of the issues, I’ll lay them out here. Flanking strike does kind of crappy damage, has a long animation time, and doesn’t hit moving targets almost at all due to the arc of the animation swing – here’s a simple fix, change it a slice animation opener that triggers a shadowstep/stab to your targets backside. There you go, ability mostly fixed. 1,2 and 3 in P/P are just a hot mess – Vital shot screams “Condition build”, Body shot screams “Filler ability no one will ever use, replace before launch”, and Unload meekly whines “Direct damage, sort of i guess”. If any players doubt me, try to remember the last time you fought a P/P thief. If you can actually remember, do you also remember stomping him into the ground while you thought “what’s this guy trying to do?”. Anet, if you doubt me, again, check your statistics. As for shadow shot, its a closer in a melee setup that temporarily roots you on hit – that’s nearly as bad as Flanking strike, and it makes it worthless on a moving target. P/D, while functional, is a silly build – I run it, and the only way to do decent damage is CnD, Sneak attack, auto attack for 3 seconds, repeat. Its a strat that works, but is extremely simplistic, boring, and predictable. And Basilisk venom – Really? Look, I get it if you want to claim 1-1.5 seconds of unbreakable CC is too powerful; I wont argue that – but you kept the cast time? It was already considered the absolute worst of a thieves elites (with the exception of glass cannon backstab setup), and you made it breakable, extended the duration a lousy .5s, and KEPT THE CAST TIME?

Most of what you see on the SPvP boards concerning thieves is kittening about Constant stealth ->Backstab and Pistol Whip builds – can you guess why that is Anet? It’s because S/P and D/D are our only well built weaponsets that work correctly and consistently (for the most part). I love the game, I really do – I think you guys have done an amazing job in a dozen different ways, but it’s still hard to understand how the class with the narrowest weapon selection -still- has issues (ranging from minor to game breaking) with most of their weaponsets.

I don’t think we should turn this into a conversation about the down state entirely. It certainly has a place in PvP (it prevents burst from being king in group fights, and gives this game a genuinely distinct flavor from other MMO’s tbh). Whether or not specific classes need downstate adjustement’s is beyond me at the moment. I’d just like to see condition specs treated the same as direct damage specs when it comes to down state.

It seems a little strange to me that a spec with such a slow ramp up loses all its stacked DPS on down – If i spend a considerable amount of my resources stacking bleeds and a poison on you, watching those vanish on down is kind of insulting – I -did- that damage, they didn’t use a condition cleanse, why is it being wiped out?

It’s particularly frustrating in group play – when my targets drop, they’re the most easily revived because I don’t do any considerable additional damage (like say a warrior who HB’s you and half the shots hit you once downed), and as a conditions build, my options for pulling the reviver off are slim. My build unfortunately doesn’t have an easily accessed stun/kd/pull/push etc (which is an issue with my build, not the game), but there are a number of other specs in the same boat – they do direct damage though, and can generally force the reviver off by doing enough damage to force a retreat, or hit both targets and make the revival itself a losing proposition. A condition spec could do that too… if only all our conditions weren’t wiped on down.

Perhaps its a balance issue – I didn’t playtest the game, so maybe poison lasting through down would make revivals almost impossible, I don’t know. I don’t see the same issue with burning or bleed though. Downed healthpools are huge, continuing a burn or a bleed would simply be a handy tool to keep your target from being easily revived just long enough to get a stomp off, much like direct damage does right now. It’s not as if that damage wasn’t already applied, so it’s not special treatment of any sort.

There’s also the issue of instant revivals, and highly coordinated teams. Taking a down is free complete condition wipe if one of your teammates happens to be running an instant res ability – why struggle to cleanse conditions and heal when you can drop, be instantly revived, and use your heal then? Though what i just described isn’t commonplace by any means now, once we move into paid tournaments with practiced, well honed teams, I foresee that being an issue.

Just an additional quick note (since the edit feature constantly disappears on these forums, it’ll have to be a separate post) – anyone who had bothered to read the post (well, really just the bolded lines and the last paragraph, but I suppose even 6 sentences is a strain), I’m not asking stealth to be changed – I understand thieves aren’t a bunker class, and I don’t expect them to change to one. I’d personally love it, but I admit it isn’t something I ever expect to really work.

I was simply pointing out for the all the thief burst QQ posts that thief is typecast into that spec, since our survivability isn’t suited for point defense, the only available PvP at the moment.