Hilarious is all I can say. Never played before and still managed to troll people. 2 button madness.
The interesting thing is that this ISN’T a demonstration of two buttons.. but regardless of that… it does highlight a key detriment of the thief. That is the horrible options a thief has with his weapon sets.
First, you used your shortbow and inf arrow. Second, you used all of your utility skills. Third, you used your elite skill. Fourth, you used your auotattack skill. Fifth, you used steal, and finally you used heartseeker.
So what was left out? well you didn’t use the thief’s d/d third ability – because its a condition damage evade attack on a direct damage build that literally sucks all of your initiative on one use and thus makes its entirely worthless. You also didn’t use the thiefs d/d fourth ability because it has been nerfed so hard that the initiative cost to use it against the damage output it provides is so grossly out of wack that it is useless.
The point here – alot of the thief’s supposed problems are inherent flawed profession designs. The abilities on that d/d set are gimped with your only recourse really being auto attck or heartseeker… with utilities or cnd being a stealth setup for a unique version of the autoattack. That’s it.
And as someone else pointed out – all of your kills occur with you jumping into a fight that is now unbalanced. you solo’d no one. you would likely have killed no one and been dead every time.. if not for help from teammates.
so nerf the backstab unique autoattack. nerf mug. hell go ahead and further nerf heartseeker. Then the thief can just sit back and commentate the match.
Haven’t really seen that many guilded premades pug stomping the frees.
Other than DTC, JFK, AIM, DCed, Pro, Imtl, King, Zero, Team Paradigm Mexico, dLrm, Qz, Pz, OP, and maybe about six more that I can’t remember at the moment… the rest of the groups are just pugs.
(edited by mursie.3681)
The solution is to nerf the damage modifiers that you can pick up through traits, nothing else. It’s obvious to anybody who has actually put some thought into it and actually played it.
Why do scholar runes add such a huge amount of damage? Why can you pick up 4 traits with damage multipliers of 10, 10 , 20 and 5% respectively that are additive? That’s the root of the issue.
Obviously this needs to happen at the same time as bunkers are nerfed.
what you say is very true
but
1)fix to this will hurt every build not the problematic bs .
2) anet will not likely do this massive revamp in the near future.
3) true and true again to nerf bunkers but this need to happen in the same time as burst nerf.Mrbig i don’t see it the way you are,thieves can go venom share and they have good group utilities they can share boons & so on & so on
but i do agree thats not as viable as just going burst romer in the current state of the meta.anet sure needs to give some buff to group support to the profession maybe then we wont see so many cheesy builds.
this role realy need to viable for a thief.Nope, thieves can’t go venom share.
Condition thieves are useless in a team environment, venom share are the "less"useless among them but they don’t give consistent advantage to your team, neither they give your team decent sustain, and drop like flies to burst.
They can spread a very little amount of conditions, easily AoE removed by a single ele dodging in water attunment.
Currently burst is the only way to play as a thief, and that’s why we only play burst: because we have no other choice.
without burst, the thief is the worst class in the game, yet people is too dedicated to QQs instead of thinking about a way to balance this game.
You’re making the same argument as most eles who swear by the 0/10/0/30/30 build while there are eles out there who run a burst build or full glass cannon build, an ele with no EA and water remove condition is far from being useless ..on the contrary.
Thieves got traps-deception and of course venoms, a support thief is completely viable in my opinion..
Name one top team using one?
Viability is a claim that needs to be proved by winning matchs against the top competition, its not something one just asserts.
there you go making sense again… jeez.. STOP IT
If thiefs are so overpowered, how come the top players in paids tend to stack eles,mesmers and guardians, and thiefs are less common?
Thiefs are middle of the pack in terms of balance, certainly not weak, but hardly to write home about.
stop making sense…wth
A well played thief is nearly impossible to kill on my Guardian. Their ability to stealth multiple times for extended periods of time means either I can’t do damage to kill them and they end up bursting me down, or I end up getting lucky with AoEs and they just run away in stealth never to be seen again.
Just one scenario from today: I found a thief 1v1 and initiated the fight. He opened with stealth and as soon as he started doing damage I used Shelter just do soak up as much of his HS spam as I could. He then stealthed again and I started AoEing where I thought he was. Must have worked because I saw him for a split second and then he stealthed again and ran off.
I had taken little damage and had done some nice damage to him (though I couldn’t tell how much because I couldn’t ever see his health bar).
I decided to attempt a pursuit because I saw him running way off in the distance. He must have switched a utility or something because when I caught up to him again (he was actually waiting otherwise i never would have gotten close to catching him) he stealthed, then opened with a stun and proceeded to burst me down before I even realized what had happened.
Long story short, I think stealth is just way too overpowered in this game when used by a decent player and can be such a powerful survivability tool that a player can invest entirely in damage and still be very hard to kill.
Edit: Though there are some thieves that I can just ROFLstomp they tend to lack skill or don’t use stealth effectively. In roughly half of my encounters with Thieves where I end up winning, the Thief just stealths and runs away.
So what seems to be the problem ? You win 50 % of fights vs thiefs by making them run away. That means you left alive, and both saved your repair bills. Oh i know, You mad couse even if u won and made him run away, he dont need to repair his armor. Now I get it. Lol.
Now hear the thiefs plight.
“I went to contest a point today. There was a guardian standing there. I did all my usual opening moves… he just stood there and took it. Still had 1/2 his health. I immediately got bounced away… he spun around his candlestick and proceeded to heal to full. I tried to do more dmg but his spirit weapons almost killed me. It looked like he wasn’t even playing…but he really didn’t have too… the dmg he could absorb from bubbles and the damage he could dish just from retaliation and AI spirit weapons caused me to stealth and run away. I wish I could help my team and capture that point…but a no-talent afk guardian is standing there and he can literally kill me by popping retal and letting me kill myself. It must be hard to be so overpowered that ppl literally kill themselves when attacking you. It must be really difficult to jsut stand on a point and laugh because no one person will move you from it. Oh and thank god the only pvp matchups in this game are conquest based…because as a bunker guardian… I dominate that.”
signed – a beaten, yet overpowered, thief
- clearly this is a generalization of guardians..but I hope it gives perspective of the same generalizations made about thieves. Finally, there is one way to absolutely prove that thieves are not OP. That is to look at structured PVP paid matchups.
If a class was overpowered you would expect to see at least one per team..most likely more. Heck, if they were extremely overpowered..you might see the whole team be a thief.
In reality, you see maybe one per team. Maybe none. WEIRD. what do you see then? Two guardians? Two Eles? Two Rangers?
How do those classes have two in a five man team..if the thief is so overpowered? How is this possible?
SPOILER – because the thief is not OP
(edited by mursie.3681)
I’m sorry what was this thread about again?
And your reasoning for why this thread was created is because…" I honestly think the main problems with thief is that some of their strongest traits are tier 1 abilities, so they rarely have to choose between good traits. "
And your trait that you feel is so strong for backstab thiefs was what? … “Something that should be looked at to at least make the class more balanced is to rework the trait for condition removal on stealth”
so in summary: Thread is about glass cannon instagib insane number backstab thieves.
You think thieves are strong because their t1 traits are so strong and they dont have to choose between them. Specifically the t1 condition removal trait.
Problem with argument – the trait you identify is not used by the thieves producing the numbers that conceived the thread.
Comprehend that.. Bottom Line: If the trait you identify was changed… hell if it was freaking removed from the game… it would do absolutely NOTHING to change the entire purpose of this thread. Because it has ZERO impact on why instagib thiefs are instagibbing.
(edited by mursie.3681)
Let’s sit for a minute and dispute about the current tournament meta game. Yesterday, i’ve seen a chain of round composed of 1 setup: 2 ele bunkers, 1 mesmer ( for portal), 1 guardian bunker, 1 random dps ( as long as it’s not engi cause of the low overall dmg), and honestly, that setup is unbreakable. Imagina a situation – Mesmer guarding 1 point( with possible portal for others), 1 ele bunker guarding the second one(along with the dps), 1 ele bunker and 1 guardian bunker at the point that’s the most occupied. Result? You can’t really do anything, since 2 bunkers will just kite you and push you back( taking the point eventually), and if u decide to go any other point, they just tele using the mesmers portal.
Atm in my personal opinion there are 2 things( besides unbalanced classes), that are ruining the pvp:
1. Mesmer’s portal – honestly, if you get a mesmer in your team, not only he can burst you down in a second, if he’s bad, he can just call his friends to shred you,
2. Too many bunkers – atm there is really no point running anything else, since pvp is only based on conquest, if you got f.e 5 bunkers, you are victorious, cause you can knockback enemies and capture points so easily, and even if they would try to recapture, if enemies got guardian or ele bunkers( with skill) there’s no chance you will take them down, unless you are at least 3vs1.I’m so frustrated about this game atm, even tho pve is quite amazing, pvp mode feels like it’s something just added, but not developed. Tournaments are dominated by bunkers( ele and guardian especially), hotjoin pvp is dominated by thieves and mesmers who can burst you down in 1 sec(literally), which makes it not fun for anyone that decides to play anything but a bunker build.
Edit: 1 more fun thing i noticed: Happened to me few times now – with random tournament setups, people decide to go afk( telling that on chat) cause of the 4vs5, when they spot an engineer in the team – are they really that underpowered? true that i rarely see an engineer in pvp, but didn’t think they suck that much as a profession to be the reason to go afk instantly < lol>
wait.. i read your two points that are ruining the game and I didn’t read anything there about overpowered instagib thieves. Are you saying this isn’t an issue? Because judging the rest of the forum blabber this seems to be the only thing worth talking about. somehow the real points, which you have highlighted here, are continually downplayed because apparently the only ppl with login forum capabilities are hotjoin pros getting instagibbed.
wait.. i read your two points that are ruining the game and I didn’t read anything there about overpowered instagib thieves. Are you saying this isn’t an issue? Because judging the rest of the forum blabber this seems to be the only thing worth talking about. somehow the real points, which you have highlighted here, are continually downplayed because apparently the only ppl with login forum capabilities are hotjoin pros getting instagibbed.
Quite a few people in this thread have been completely outskilled by talented thieves, I think all we are missing is a screenshot of someone being killed by 17 hits of heartseeker. I honestly think the main problems with thief is that some of their strongest traits are tier 1 abilities, so they rarely have to choose between good traits. Something that should be looked at to at least make the class more balanced is to rework the trait for condition removal on stealth so that it does the ability after 3 seconds in stealth instead of once when you enter stealth and then again 3 seconds later. At least this way thieves will be forced to make decisions on if they should backstab as quickly as possible or wait and get the condi removal. (it would also make the trait to increase stealth time much stronger)
Taym, your comments do nothing but further cloud the reality of a thief. Please realize that the stealth condition removal trait is in the shadow arts (toughness) line. A GC thief that produces the screenshots above (which do not occur on a non-frenzied paper class) occur only due to being completely specced GLASS CANON with ZERO points in the shadow arts line. I had to respond to this because your entire argument is a contradiction. YOu note that thiefs don’t have to make choices because their traits are so easy to obtain…and then you highlight a trait that requires a tough choice to take… are you going to be GC to apply burst pressure… or shadow arts and something entirely different.
Nerf the thief backstab all you want. Go ahead, thieves in tpvp are already not a main composition priority and when you take away the ONLY thing they are currently brought to high end tpvp to do.. you will see no thieves. Seriously, let’s all just get it over with and play ele’s and guardians already.
It’s pretty obvious that d/d ele’s are in desperate need of a buff. How in the hell can they possibly crush 30 man zergs with that spec… just can’t do it. sure you may annoy the zerg…but ultimately you’ll have to run away on that build. ANET… for the love of god…give the ele d/d some love and buff them.
I’d just like to give a big thank you to all that took the time (especially The.Guy) to make this thread. I have been struggling with d/d ele’s for awhile now, both in spvp and wvw and this thread has made me realize the errors of my ways.
Recognizing the need to dodge the ele’s damage… out dps his heals… and keep the ele snared/immobilized has really increased my confidence and success with d/d ele encounters. For so long I was literally just eating the ele’s damage… thinking it was incoming heals. I recognize now that my 6 ability is not a damage spell against an ele but actually a heal for myself… this explains why my dps was never strong enough to overpower the ele’s heals. Using abilities 1-5 I think I have seen the ele actually need to switch attunements to water and cast a heal… before this almost never happened.
I’m working on snaring/immobilizing… for so long I thought just emoting waves was the plan of action… but hearing that snares/immobilizes may pin the ele down is definitely a neat trick worth trying.
IN summary.. seriously?
The fact remains that, even if the combo is on cooldown, you have access to a combo that:
1 – the target cannot see coming – at all – (this is to contrast with quickness + 100B)
2 – will reliably kill or put unto death’s door anything but a 100% pure bunker build in approximately 1 second (if caught unaware without boons up, it will also kill 100% pure bunker eles because of their low base hp)
This approaches the absolute ceiling of human reaction time, and is absurdly unfair, especially coupled with the many “get out of being squished free cards” thieves get.
Mesmers you can see coming, and can only do this because of a bug causing +100% mind wrack damage.
Warriors you can see coming, and once the one-trick is gone they can’t escape.
Thieves do have many weaknesses when not doing this, they have serious mechanic issues and weapon and weapon set viability issues due to ill-advised nerfs and design choices in specific sets, but THIS combo needs to go.
Either a hard-block needs to be put in place to prevent the mug-c&d-steal-backstab combo, or the damage of one or more of these needs to be toned down significantly.
NOBODY has a right to an IWIN button, even on a long cooldown, if you want instakills the FPS world is that way
It’s an L2P issue. nothing more. A good warrior will destroy a thief. And know..the warrior is not a 1 trick pony. the warrior can shield block until the time he chooses to destroy the thief. If the thief trys to combo burst, warrior endure pain’s turns immobilize and 1 shot’s the thief. I’m glad you can see the warrior and mesmer damage…thank god… because they can do it, even while being seen, and do it quite effectively.
Take away the thiefs ability to be unseen when delivering damage…and you’re left with a mini pet. laughable, maybe cute, but certainly not deadly nor important to care about in any way.
in tpvp… the thief is secondary to many classes. this, in and of itself, is the most formidable proof the class is not over-powered.
unfortunately… alot of ppl… need to L2P.