What is Going On with Thief

I am not a Thief player, but is thief performing poorly as of late? While kind staying under the radar?

In raids/fractals, DD, power staff or condi D/D is behind. It can break 30K, but barely. I am not sure where DE rifle stands now, but it is substantially worse in solo PvE after anet remake.

In sPvP, I occasionally see cord thief doing well, but I do not see core thief much anymore. D/P DD is still serviceable, but cannot kill anything solo and is not a good +1. I always hear about "strong" condi build, but I rarely ever see it functional. And even then it is poor man 's mirage. After the last patch I have not seen one DE in any game do well. Granted, I do not do much sPvP (mostly 1 game to get the daily).

I dunno about WvW. I assume thief still holds well there. But roaming seems to be completely dominated by mirade as of late.

Is it just me thinking thief is under performing?

Not just you, Thief really is under performing.Pretty sure most of us think that.

Thief is doing so bad that only thing which could make it worse is if Anet would remove the class.

A big part of the problem is that thief is the rogue / assassin class of this game, and they tend to be the most hated. It is frustrating to fight someone who can stealth and shadowstep away and basically always keep the fight at his terms. Furthermore it is a bursty class, and everyone hates getting one shot. Previous history of thief have had them quite OP and I think Anet is a bit afraid to venture too far into that again. And as a thief main I agree, we should not get buffed, it would make us too strong, but other professions needs to be nerfed. It is a problem that thieves can't overstep a line where they become the untouchable one shotters, so other professions pretty much need to follow thieves in terms of power, but right now they have surpassed thieves.

@"Rezok.2709" said:A big part of the problem is that thief is the rogue / assassin class of this game, and they tend to be the most hated. It is frustrating to fight someone who can stealth and shadowstep away and basically always keep the fight at his terms. Furthermore it is a bursty class, and everyone hates getting one shot. Previous history of thief have had them quite OP and I think Anet is a bit afraid to venture too far into that again. And as a thief main I agree, we should not get buffed, it would make us too strong, but other professions needs to be nerfed. It is a problem that thieves can't overstep a line where they become the untouchable one shotters, so other professions pretty much need to follow thieves in terms of power, but right now they have surpassed thieves.

one thing i allways have wondered, is why Anet doesnt just double hp in PvP szenarios. or half the global dmg outbuff his a special buff/debuff. it would still allow for high dmg output in a PvE setting while prolonging fights in a PvP setting (including WvW which is basicly PvP aswell on another scale). They allready went that direction by splitting up the skaling between PvP and PvE.

As to your Question OP:If we define "underperforming" as "performing worse than others" intead of "worse then needed" then yes, he is underperforming. Its not that he is horrible in a vaccuum (allthough he will be if the trend of nerfs continue), but has been overtaken by other classes. Since the Especs are basicly a class gaining some features of another class, Thief has slowly lost his unique features. Othe classes can do what thief could aswell, but bring more to the table, in terms of sustain, group buff and such.And while it is true, that Thiefs Especs also borrow from other classes (daredevil for example is basicly Thief using some Warrior tricks), Thief still has to work with his lower than average overall usefullness in a group setting.

@Grissman.2845 said:one thing i allways have wondered, is why Anet doesnt just double hp in PvP szenarios. or half the global dmg outbuff his a special buff/debuff. it would still allow for high dmg output in a PvE setting while prolonging fights in a PvP setting (including WvW which is basicly PvP aswell on another scale). They allready went that direction by splitting up the skaling between PvP and PvE.

the issue with 'just double the hp'is , it would be fine in a glass vs glass fight but not when there is a bunker in there. you need burst to kill people in a pvp szenario with double the hp you will need double the burst and therefor bunkers would be untouchable in small scale wich would cause a balance issue.for example with my thief i can hit up to over 35k with a malicious backstab on a glass target, yet a bunker with perma protection spamm i might only hit for 10-15k and he will heal up to full within a second as i cant keep up that pressure, i can oneshot them or nearly oneshot them when they do not have protection up for a moment. now with double hp even on such a bursty build i wouldnt be able to kill a bunker in 100 years while he can ensure i cannot kill any of his allies with rez skills and traits and his heals. the gap in sustain between glass and bunker is just so big, builds with damage to kill a bunker will pretty much instant kill non bunkers.

You can tell when thief is doing bad when you see complains on forum only about mesmer... Lol. Realy though, people will not stop complaining about thief unless it becomes an irellevant profession.

I think Thief is in a very good state in PvP. Both core acro S/D and D/P, are viable, but you have to know the pros and cons of each build, and choose the one that better fits your playstile. It has a practically exclusive role in PvP (which I find incredibly fun, a thousand times more entertaining than just one-shoting people), and several tools to help your team and obstaculize your enemies.

In WvW it is slightly worse, and the rise of assassin's signet D/P builds are a little sad to me, because it favors a mechanically less complex combat, but it has it's spot. I think that the problem is not only that here thief is a little underperforming, but other classes are absurdly strong for duels, allowing to destroy thieves if they manage to land only a few attacks. Thief is still really decent in WvW tho.

In PvE, thief is very mediocre. You can still pull some good numbers (i've had people telling me to not bring daredevil/deadeye, only to shut up when the boss was killed and I was a significant amount of dps over directly stronger professions in terms of damage). It also brings nice cc and some utility with the new stolen skills.

In general, thief is pretty weak right now, but there's a pretty big circlejerk going on asking for unreasonable stuff and making "panic threads". Thankfully, some posts actually give good suggestions and information about the actual state of thief.

In my opinion about PvE, Anet needs to focus on buffing the thief on it's single-target damage dealer role and give this profession a few supporting tools, (the new stolen skills are basically what I mean, but I think we could have this recently added aspect of thief more explored in depth) so we are not just edgy stabbers, but also a resourceful class that can pitch in in other stuff than damage.

@"lkilian.1854" said:I think Thief is in a very good state in PvP. Both core acro S/D and D/P, are viable, but you have to know the pros and cons of each build, and choose the one that better fits your playstile. It has a practically exclusive role in PvP (which I find incredibly fun, a thousand times more entertaining than just one-shoting people), and several tools to help your team and obstaculize your enemies.

In WvW it is slightly worse, and the rise of assassin's signet D/P builds are a little sad to me, because it favors a mechanically less complex combat, but it has it's spot. I think that the problem is not only that here thief is a little underperforming, but other classes are absurdly strong for duels, allowing to destroy thieves if they manage to land only a few attacks. Thief is still really decent in WvW tho.

In PvE, thief is very mediocre. You can still pull some good numbers (i've had people telling me to not bring daredevil/deadeye, only to shut up when the boss was killed and I was a significant amount of dps over directly stronger professions in terms of damage). It also brings nice cc and some utility with the new stolen skills.

In general, thief is pretty weak right now, but there's a pretty big kitten going on asking for unreasonable stuff and making "panic threads". Thankfully, some posts actually give good suggestions and information about the actual state of thief.

In my opinion about PvE, Anet needs to focus on buffing the thief on it's single-target damage dealer role and give this profession a few supporting tools, (the new stolen skills are basically what I mean, but I think we could have this recently added aspect of thief more explored in depth) so we are not just edgy stabbers, but also a resourceful class that can pitch in in other stuff than damage.

Well the devs just nerfed single target dmg Dagger and Sword AA attacks so I wouldn't expect them to reverse the nerf... On the other hand thief would be in a good position against all the "other classes that are absurdly strong for duels", and which need to "only land few attacks" to destroy a thief if they didn't kill the D/P DrD endurance access. They nerfed it on SoA, they nerfed in on CV, and on top of that they fucked up Dash too while the cripple spam right now is more than real. I know there were some ridiculous perma evade thief builds out there, but come on, just nerfing the whole trait line won't get the fair results people are after. The fact they nerfed endurance access wasn't necessary bad, but when compared what they introduced in terms of defenses both passive and active on other classes, you will see how thief is an undesired place when you play against experienced players, cause the only ones that are vulnerable to thief right now in WvW are just the inexperienced. Just a heads up, D/P DrD hasn't get any buff, only nerfes, since the patch when they changed Leading Strikes as I can remember, that was more than a year ago if not two... the only way that it got "buffed" was by nerfing other ridiculous stuff that were going on to other professions. D/P thief it's still fun to play though, if you're not into competitive stuff and really stick to decapping (in sPvP) and +1ing (in both sPvP and WvW) and being very selective with your targets while not over-committing.

I'm curious though when you say "assassin's signet D/P builds are a little sad to me, because it favors a mechanically less complex combat", what are the less sad an more mechanically complex thief builds you are comparing it to... just curious, and I really hope your not talking about the power D/D nostalgia, 'cause I'll get even sadder than you...

@"Rezok.2709" said:A big part of the problem is that thief is the rogue / assassin class of this game, and they tend to be the most hated. It is frustrating to fight someone who can stealth and shadowstep away and basically always keep the fight at his terms. Furthermore it is a bursty class, and everyone hates getting one shot. Previous history of thief have had them quite OP and I think Anet is a bit afraid to venture too far into that again. And as a thief main I agree, we should not get buffed, it would make us too strong, but other professions needs to be nerfed. It is a problem that thieves can't overstep a line where they become the untouchable one shotters, so other professions pretty much need to follow thieves in terms of power, but right now they have surpassed thieves.

About us escaping and fighting on our terms: that's basically the fantasy of the profession. We have stealth and mobility so that we can start and end a fight on our terms. High burst and low health or moderate damage and moderate health. Taking someone from 100-0 in a second isn't OK, but being nerfed because we are "not fun" to play against or because we can run if the fight goes bad isn't wrong. Every time I'm on any other toon and make a thief run away I get the satisfaction of winning. If people really need that gold and xp for killing the thief completely, then they got issues to work out...

PvE took heavy hits with the recent nerfs to dagger AA because it had to get emergency-buffed in HoT with the powercreep back then, which was a shallow hotfix done to keep the thief relevant since offenses were buffed so much with HoT and the thief has no group support. Rifle got reworked and as a consequence it deals less sustained damage by being unable to spam DJ and the loss of the 15%-21% damage modifier from Malice due to problems the DE had in the PvP modes because the Deadeye and its rifle is a poorly-designed kit.

In PvP/WvW, thief feels relatively weak because the class is largely incompatible with excessive powercreep of other professions. It's not so much been nerfed but everything else made so strong that the windows to exploit the weaknesses of an opponent are much smaller and much harder to punish than before. DE with malicious attacks makes D/P backstab extremely easy to one-shot-kill someone. DJ has little counterplay being an unblockable ranged nuke. Most of what the thief currently does just involves some kind of cheese and safe play.

Like other posters above me have said, the thief doesn't need buffs. The nature of the class being stat-disadvantaged but active-defense/burst damage-advantaged and requiring a high skill cap makes even small buffs really exploitable by good players and makes the class potentially easily overpowered. The thief is generally in a good spot and only one or two builds feel oppressive to play against or feel very weak, but these are mostly thanks to mechanics like stacked stealth which other professions are similarly exploiting, so I think a blanket nerf is warranted here, and in the case of weak kits, it's just because of lack of synergy with weapon sets or the PoF meta countering it. The thief only feels weak because it used to fight on its terms despite being the "weaker" participant in the fight as far as stats go. Changes to other professions, and most significantly powercreep with PoF, especially to mobility and invulnerability/damage negation uptime, have made thieves lose a strong portion of their agency in a given fight and generally feel as if they need to play on the back foot and using resources defensively, rather than being able to play more proactively and aggressively when fighting on their terms. Because cooldowns and cast times have been dropped so much, and the initiative system does not scale well with dramatic changes without breaking the class entirely, the thief has stayed relatively the same as far as power levels go.

The problem really is just other professions being overbuffed and allowed to do too much. But nobody is willing to concede being OP and most of the actually-competitive players who look at things more objectively have simply left the game because of the state the competitive modes are in.

speaking just for WvW here:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:The nature of the class being stat-disadvantaged but active-defense/burst damage-advantaged and requiring a high skill cap makes even small buffs really exploitable by good players and makes the class potentially easily overpowered.you have to specifically note i guess what good players in that context are. for example i abuse for WvW the IMO strongest aspects of the thief as i play for the best results i can get and am often called especially by opposing 'good' thieves that i am not a good thief after killing them for using 'broken' aspects of our class like insane burst damage coupled with heavy stealth abuse. while they now think they are the good thieves, you can be sure buffing the thief would most probably buff me more as i am ready to use every advantage i can get from my class, they are not.if we buffed thief damage for WvW because the average thief is still playing the ageold d/p daredevil or core s/d builds wich lack in damage considering how defensive you can build these days for WvW, then imaginge the damage my non meta deadeye with alot of sustain cause perma stealth & 21k+ hp ( i run valkyre now because people hate me on berserk just the same and its just minimal damage loss for 10k extra hp), that will crit already those meta thieves for over 30k backstabs and can easily kill most of the tankier builds in its current form within seconds.only because people dont use what the class offers, doesnt mean it has to be buffed so people are strong in any way they can think of playing.if all eles would prefer to play staff in WvW roaming and consider other weapon choices as cheesy, anet also wouldnt buff ele till they can wreck everything picking a suboptimal build.if you want to win, build for it. if you want to impress with your 'skill', dont get mad for being killed my a stronger build, that is what you should expect.and suprise strong builds will allways require less skill for the same results, yet the maximum results with the same skill are higher on a strong build. wich might not matter in a duel type 1 vs 1 but in any fight were your opponent has even a slight envoiremental advantage = most fights.

at least for WvW roaming thief is in a good if not too good position so i dont expect buffs here. i dont really run in zerg and neither play spvp nor instanced pve with thief so i can only make assumptions on those parts.

@MUDse.7623 said:speaking just for WvW here:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:The nature of the class being stat-disadvantaged but active-defense/burst damage-advantaged and requiring a high skill cap makes even small buffs really exploitable by good players and makes the class potentially easily overpowered.you have to specifically note i guess what good players in that context are. for example i abuse for WvW the IMO strongest aspects of the thief as i play for the best results i can get and am often called especially by opposing 'good' thieves that i am not a good thief after killing them for using 'broken' aspects of our class like insane burst damage coupled with heavy stealth abuse. while they now think they are the good thieves, you can be sure buffing the thief would most probably buff me more as i am ready to use every advantage i can get from my class, they are not.if we buffed thief damage for WvW because the average thief is still playing the ageold d/p daredevil or core s/d builds wich lack in damage considering how defensive you can build these days for WvW, then imaginge the damage my non meta deadeye with alot of sustain cause perma stealth & 21k+ hp ( i run valkyre now because people hate me on berserk just the same and its just minimal damage loss for 10k extra hp), that will crit already those meta thieves for over 30k backstabs and can easily kill most of the tankier builds in its current form within seconds.only because people dont use what the class offers, doesnt mean it has to be buffed so people are strong in any way they can think of playing.if all eles would prefer to play staff in WvW roaming and consider other weapon choices as cheesy, anet also wouldnt buff ele till they can wreck everything picking a suboptimal build.if you want to win, build for it. if you want to impress with your 'skill', dont get mad for being killed my a stronger build, that is what you should expect.and suprise strong builds will allways require less skill for the same results, yet the maximum results with the same skill are higher on a strong build. wich might not matter in a duel type 1 vs 1 but in any fight were your opponent has even a slight envoiremental advantage = most fights.

it's cool bro, no worries thief will not see any buffs. and even if they (anet) thought about buffing thief, they wont do it because of you specifically, yah know, due to your mad skillz.

<3

@MUDse.7623 said:speaking just for WvW here:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:The nature of the class being stat-disadvantaged but active-defense/burst damage-advantaged and requiring a high skill cap makes even small buffs really exploitable by good players and makes the class potentially easily overpowered.you have to specifically note i guess what good players in that context are. for example i abuse for WvW the IMO strongest aspects of the thief as i play for the best results i can get and am often called especially by opposing 'good' thieves that i am not a good thief after killing them for using 'broken' aspects of our class like insane burst damage coupled with heavy stealth abuse. while they now think they are the good thieves, you can be sure buffing the thief would most probably buff me more as i am ready to use every advantage i can get from my class, they are not.if we buffed thief damage for WvW because the average thief is still playing the ageold d/p daredevil or core s/d builds wich lack in damage considering how defensive you can build these days for WvW, then imaginge the damage my non meta deadeye with alot of sustain cause perma stealth & 21k+ hp ( i run valkyre now because people hate me on berserk just the same and its just minimal damage loss for 10k extra hp), that will crit already those meta thieves for over 30k backstabs and can easily kill most of the tankier builds in its current form within seconds.only because people dont use what the class offers, doesnt mean it has to be buffed so people are strong in any way they can think of playing.if all eles would prefer to play staff in WvW roaming and consider other weapon choices as cheesy, anet also wouldnt buff ele till they can wreck everything picking a suboptimal build.if you want to win, build for it. if you want to impress with your 'skill', dont get mad for being killed my a stronger build, that is what you should expect.and suprise strong builds will allways require less skill for the same results, yet the maximum results with the same skill are higher on a strong build. wich might not matter in a duel type 1 vs 1 but in any fight were your opponent has even a slight envoiremental advantage = most fights.

What I said doesn't really disagree with your statement. I'm not going to try to argue who specifically is a good thief or not or even discuss the merits of playing a less-than-optimal build, but speaking holistically, because of the design of the thief, the performance results between skilled and unskilled players playing the same build will be much wider than say, scourge, so a buff to the thief - particularly when it comes to numbers buffs - can cause a non-insignificant number of thieves to begin to perform too well as far as reasonable counterplay by their opponent is concerned.

It's this sensitivity to balance that needs to be realized is all. I think a lot of people just don't fully test what the class is capable of or examining the edge cases that may turn into some kind of OP/FoTM no-skill cheese before asking for buffs. We saw this in the previous thread about the old version of PI running a soldier's tank build. 8k+ hits (before considering sigils) playing a tank build spamming CC is insane and justified the changes. The same is said about Larcenous Strike's damage pre-nerf (I still think the AA nerfs weren't justified on sword); I posted a screenshot of hitting someone for 17k with what people were saying never hits above 6k.

If we don't look holistically at the class it ends up OP or skill-less like it has at points in time throughout the game's history. I don't want to cheat my opponent out of a win just as much as I don't want to be cheated out of one.

The case of the thief's balance at this point in time is the design flaws and imbalance of other professions. Anything short of a complete and total rework of the entirety of the thief and all its subsystems (stealth, evade chaining, initiative, weapon skills, stealth attacks, etc.) will result in something getting way out of hand.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:speaking just for WvW here:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:The nature of the class being stat-disadvantaged but active-defense/burst damage-advantaged and requiring a high skill cap makes even small buffs really exploitable by good players and makes the class potentially easily overpowered.you have to specifically note i guess what good players in that context are. for example i abuse for WvW the IMO strongest aspects of the thief as i play for the best results i can get and am often called especially by opposing 'good' thieves that i am not a good thief after killing them for using 'broken' aspects of our class like insane burst damage coupled with heavy stealth abuse. while they now think they are the good thieves, you can be sure buffing the thief would most probably buff me more as i am ready to use every advantage i can get from my class, they are not.if we buffed thief damage for WvW because the average thief is still playing the ageold d/p daredevil or core s/d builds wich lack in damage considering how defensive you can build these days for WvW, then imaginge the damage my non meta deadeye with alot of sustain cause perma stealth & 21k+ hp ( i run valkyre now because people hate me on berserk just the same and its just minimal damage loss for 10k extra hp), that will crit already those meta thieves for over 30k backstabs and can easily kill most of the tankier builds in its current form within seconds.only because people dont use what the class offers, doesnt mean it has to be buffed so people are strong in any way they can think of playing.if all eles would prefer to play staff in WvW roaming and consider other weapon choices as cheesy, anet also wouldnt buff ele till they can wreck everything picking a suboptimal build.if you want to win, build for it. if you want to impress with your 'skill', dont get mad for being killed my a stronger build, that is what you should expect.and suprise strong builds will allways require less skill for the same results, yet the maximum results with the same skill are higher on a strong build. wich might not matter in a duel type 1 vs 1 but in any fight were your opponent has even a slight envoiremental advantage = most fights.

You say getting out of hand, but the thief meta, even before the aformentioned nerf and at least since HoT was never a brainless prfession, you always needed a certain amount of skill to be able to play this profession meta and be able to achieve something and never viewed as a dueling proefficient choice. I approve of what you say and I wish the other profession get toned dow for the good of all, but for the part of "getting way out of hand" if thief would get buffed an not totally reworked I have to disagree... though the cries on the forum about thief might get out of hand, nothing unusual though...

@DeceiverX.8361 said:PvE took heavy hits with the recent nerfs to dagger AA because it had to get emergency-buffed in HoT with the powercreep back then, which was a shallow hotfix done to keep the thief relevant since offenses were buffed so much with HoT and the thief has no group support.

The auto attacks were not nerfed in PvE.

In PvP/WvW, thief feels relatively weak because the class is largely incompatible with excessive powercreep of other professions. It's not so much been nerfed but everything else made so strong that the windows to exploit the weaknesses of an opponent are much smaller and much harder to punish than before. DE with malicious attacks makes D/P backstab extremely easy to one-shot-kill someone. DJ has little counterplay being an unblockable ranged nuke. Most of what the thief currently does just involves some kind of cheese and safe play.True. That's why I can't take players like MUDse (who promotes thief in a very excessive way) seriously. He plays cheesy gank/oneshot builds that are not fun to fight against. People like him kill the fun of others. The game should not be designed for the needs of such players.

The problem really is just other professions being overbuffed and allowed to do too much. But nobody is willing to concede being OP and most of the actually-competitive players who look at things more objectively have simply left the game because of the state the competitive modes are in.True too.

Traits and skills are simply overloaded - for every profession.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:speaking just for WvW here:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:The nature of the class being stat-disadvantaged but active-defense/burst damage-advantaged and requiring a high skill cap makes even small buffs really exploitable by good players and makes the class potentially easily overpowered.you have to specifically note i guess what good players in that context are. for example i abuse for WvW the IMO strongest aspects of the thief as i play for the best results i can get and am often called especially by opposing 'good' thieves that i am not a good thief after killing them for using 'broken' aspects of our class like insane burst damage coupled with heavy stealth abuse. while they now think they are the good thieves, you can be sure buffing the thief would most probably buff me more as i am ready to use every advantage i can get from my class, they are not.if we buffed thief damage for WvW because the average thief is still playing the ageold d/p daredevil or core s/d builds wich lack in damage considering how defensive you can build these days for WvW, then imaginge the damage my non meta deadeye with alot of sustain cause perma stealth & 21k+ hp ( i run valkyre now because people hate me on berserk just the same and its just minimal damage loss for 10k extra hp), that will crit already those meta thieves for over 30k backstabs and can easily kill most of the tankier builds in its current form within seconds.only because people dont use what the class offers, doesnt mean it has to be buffed so people are strong in any way they can think of playing.if all eles would prefer to play staff in WvW roaming and consider other weapon choices as cheesy, anet also wouldnt buff ele till they can wreck everything picking a suboptimal build.if you want to win, build for it. if you want to impress with your 'skill', dont get mad for being killed my a stronger build, that is what you should expect.and suprise strong builds will allways require less skill for the same results, yet the maximum results with the same skill are higher on a strong build. wich might not matter in a duel type 1 vs 1 but in any fight were your opponent has even a slight envoiremental advantage = most fights.

In PvP/WvW, thief feels relatively weak because the class is largely incompatible with excessive powercreep of other professions. It's not so much been nerfed but everything else made so strong that the windows to exploit the weaknesses of an opponent are much smaller and much harder to punish than before. DE with malicious attacks makes D/P backstab extremely easy to one-shot-kill someone. DJ has little counterplay being an unblockable ranged nuke. Most of what the thief currently does just involves some kind of cheese and safe play.True. That's why I can't take players like MUDse (who promotes thief in a very excessive way) seriously. He plays cheesy gank/oneshot builds that are not fun to fight against. People like him kill the fun of others. The game should not be designed for the needs of such players.the issue is buffing some meta builds will in most cases buff the cheese builds i use aswell or will create new ones. if you want the thief to be a strong skill based class, we need a complete rework and first of all remove everything you consider cheesy. especially in the case of thief the game is designed for the needs of players like me. if a bad thief tries to utilize cheesy stuff he will still keep dying against decent people of any class, but if an average or above average thief is utilizing our cheesy stuff then he will kill the fun of others for his own fun. now most of the better thieves i know refuse to play cheesy stuff, thats how they got better to begin with. therefor you wont often run into a cheesy thief who is able to actually use his cheese, many wont even realize how much cheese is possible with thief as they never experience it. so then buffs / nerfs are asked for meta builds wich could have unwanted effects on cheesy builds.you know i once was a skilled thief and was trying to improve on that every day, refusing to play any cheese. but then i decided to play to win. wich means i will allways run the strongst build i can think of for my needs. if this build would be stronger the more skilled you are, without any cheese etc. i would run it. but as it currently is cheese is pretty strong. i would actually love the thief to be skill based because then i could play the strongest build without people insulting me all day that i killed them altho they think themselves better, wich you cant really tell after a oneshot.i just want you guys when asking for buffs to the thief to keep an eye on the cheese, do not buff the cheese, the cheese is strong enough or ask specifically cheesy aspects to get nerfed while asking for your buffs. because if thief gets buffed while not keeping an eye on the cheese, then even a couple of cheese thieves like me will cause a lot QQ and demands to nerf the thief wich then might just nerf the wrong aspects.but hey if you dont want input from people who will abuse the cheese because you cant take it seriously i can retreat from the forums and watch you ask to buff me more to then insult me ingame for being even more cheesy :3also i only play oneshot since PoF and even if i had played 24/7 since then, it would have been just ~half the playtime i have on thief so its hardly all i did with thief. before deadeye oneshots did require too much of an investment to be efficient, wich is all i care about and you know that i didnt play oneshot before, because we fought together and against way before PoF.

In a pve setting condi DD is still great and very strong. Its really the power builds that are truly lacking especially with deadeye being a overall flop elite this long into the expansion.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:PvE took heavy hits with the recent nerfs to dagger AA because it had to get emergency-buffed in HoT with the powercreep back then, which was a shallow hotfix done to keep the thief relevant since offenses were buffed so much with HoT and the thief has no group support.

The auto attacks were

not

nerfed in PvE.

Totally forgot this, so I stand corrected. Still not used to the splitting fully. The malice % modifier changes and DJ spammability nerfs still did have a negative effect on the spec in comparison to the rest of the PoF powercreep as far as PvE is concerned, though, so it did still lose a good amount of damage in relation to what's played in PvE. Granted, I do not play PvE, so my knowledge on DPS rankings is all a measure of my theorycrafted work thus far.

@NuhDah.9812 said:

@"lkilian.1854" said:I think Thief is in a very good state in PvP. Both core acro S/D and D/P, are viable, but you have to know the pros and cons of each build, and choose the one that better fits your playstile. It has a practically exclusive role in PvP (which I find incredibly fun, a thousand times more entertaining than just one-shoting people), and several tools to help your team and obstaculize your enemies.

In WvW it is slightly worse, and the rise of assassin's signet D/P builds are a little sad to me, because it favors a mechanically less complex combat, but it has it's spot. I think that the problem is not only that here thief is a little underperforming, but other classes are absurdly strong for duels, allowing to destroy thieves if they manage to land only a few attacks. Thief is still really decent in WvW tho.

In PvE, thief is very mediocre. You can still pull some good numbers (i've had people telling me to not bring daredevil/deadeye, only to shut up when the boss was killed and I was a significant amount of dps over directly stronger professions in terms of damage). It also brings nice cc and some utility with the new stolen skills.

In general, thief is pretty weak right now, but there's a pretty big kitten going on asking for unreasonable stuff and making "panic threads". Thankfully, some posts actually give good suggestions and information about the actual state of thief.

In my opinion about PvE, Anet needs to focus on buffing the thief on it's single-target damage dealer role and give this profession a few supporting tools, (the new stolen skills are basically what I mean, but I think we could have this recently added aspect of thief more explored in depth) so we are not just edgy stabbers, but also a resourceful class that can pitch in in other stuff than damage.

Basically power S/D, which I find more engaging and allows you to pull really nice tricks if you are good enough. The sPvP D/P build with SoA is also pretty good and I think is fun because it can be played in a very support-ish way, while the build I mentioned is purely backstab cheese and mostly played in WvW. Another build that I liked when it was used (but was useful during a very, very short time) was Physical skills D/P shortly after HoT launch, mostly because it had a lot of damage and you could combo all the utilities in a very fun way. It was (and still is) easily countered by the meta once it was well stablished, so it became practically irrelevant. My point is that imo, any stealth one-shot build on thief is not really fun for me, and Anet has been favoring those by buffing certain stuff and nerfing other. I prefer builds that make you time your attacks and play around your enemy, without loosing the "surprise factor" that skills like shadowsteps, headshot or CnD can offer.

I didn't like the nerfs to Dagger and Sword AA, and I think thief lacks strength in their dueling aspect while others are too strong (something Anet should fix, but their balance patches are GLACIAL), but honestly I like more the role of a decapper/roamer that thief has in pvp than just being another duelist. Also, skill rewards this class a lot, meaning that you can still duel people. What you say about " the only ones that are vulnerable to thief right now in WvW are just the inexperienced" is partially false. While a lot of equally skilled players can take you relatively easily if they have determined builds and some knowledge, and it is absurly easy to kill someone with very few practice, builds like for example power mirages are directly countered by thieves right now, especially by s/d thief. Necros are also weak if you have the space and time to kite them well, average skill-level revenants can be effectively pressured if you time well your attacks, and firebrands can be dealt relatively easily, although full bunker builds are really boring to kill.

I haven't played in a while but last time i played thief D/P got nerfed and i could have sworn S/D got nerfed too.I kinda lost interest in pvping since.

Ever since i decided playing rogue as main pvp thing, i don't wanna do anything else now, so if i can't play rogue i don't want to play pvp.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:In PvP/WvW, thief feels relatively weak because the class is largely incompatible with excessive powercreep of other professions. It's not so much been nerfed but everything else made so strong that the windows to exploit the weaknesses of an opponent are much smaller and much harder to punish than before. DE with malicious attacks makes D/P backstab extremely easy to one-shot-kill someone. DJ has little counterplay being an unblockable ranged nuke. Most of what the thief currently does just involves some kind of cheese and safe play.True. That's why I can't take players like MUDse (who promotes thief in a very excessive way) seriously. He plays cheesy gank/oneshot builds that are not fun to fight against. People like him kill the fun of others. The game should not be designed for the needs of such players.

This line of thinking is just wrong and is the reason why Thief is losing its identity. The one-shot-kill claim is also dishonest.

Thief is about playing unfairly, being cheesy, ganking, surprise attacks, and trickery. That is what the profession is all about. Taking that away is taking the profession's identity.

At the current state of the profession, it can not do one-shot-kill like it used to. Yes Backstab really hurts and DJ is unblockable but in order to generate enough damage boost Deadeye needs to engage their target to build up Malice. That is hardly what you would call one-shot-kill since it requires many shots to setup the target for a kill. There are many opportunities to build up a counter or to reposition yourself for the upcoming Malicious attack. There is no excuse for not being situationally aware and for failing to do so, that's no one's fault but yours.

Also, the Malice mechanic is no different that the GW1's Assassin's 1-2-3 attack requirement. Just as the Assassin need to use Lead and Off-hand attacks before the big hitter Dual attack, DE is required to use other skills before the big hitter Malicous attack. In other words, this game design already existed in GW1 this is why DE is the Assassin class of GW2.

Now if you are playing a Thief and another Thief beats you, they are not being cheesy (your definition of cheesy) or anything since you are also using the same profession. All options to build a better Thief is available to everyone and losing to another Thief only means that your build needs improvement. You also need to acknowledge that player skills creates gap between players and guess what? ...ArenaNet cannot nerf those. So even if you and another Thief are using the exact same build, chances are one of you is going to lose by either player skill alone or simply luck.

If your real goal is for the improvement of the Thief profession, it would be best to look at things objectively rather than basing it on what happened to you or to many bad players. Even if ArenaNet buff the Thief in order to make mediocre players feels like they are actually doing something great, it would mean players like MUDse will aso get buffed. The point is, you claim that the "game should not be designed for the needs of such players" but they cannot make changes for you and not for him if both of you aer using the same Thief Profession. That kind of sentiment is not productive in improving the Thief. That to me it sounds like you are advocating for more nerf against a profession that, up to this point, is nothing but a second thought.

If you believe that there is a way to buff the Thief for the mediocre players and not also buff good players, feel free to suggest that solution to ArenaNet because it seems like they have no idea how to do that. The reality of GW2 is, not everyone can play Thief nor can handle Thief when playing other professions and that is not a bad thing.

@lkilian.1854 said:

@NuhDah.9812 said:

@lkilian.1854 said:I think Thief is in a very good state in PvP. Both core acro S/D and D/P, are viable, but you have to know the pros and cons of each build, and choose the one that better fits your playstile. It has a practically exclusive role in PvP (which I find incredibly fun, a thousand times more entertaining than just one-shoting people), and several tools to help your team and obstaculize your enemies.

In WvW it is slightly worse, and the rise of assassin's signet D/P builds are a little sad to me, because it favors a mechanically less complex combat, but it has it's spot. I think that the problem is not only that here thief is a little underperforming, but other classes are absurdly strong for duels, allowing to destroy thieves if they manage to land only a few attacks. Thief is still really decent in WvW tho.

In PvE, thief is very mediocre. You can still pull some good numbers (i've had people telling me to not bring daredevil/deadeye, only to shut up when the boss was killed and I was a significant amount of dps over directly stronger professions in terms of damage). It also brings nice cc and some utility with the new stolen skills.

In general, thief is pretty weak right now, but there's a pretty big kitten going on asking for unreasonable stuff and making "panic threads". Thankfully, some posts actually give good suggestions and information about the actual state of thief.

In my opinion about PvE, Anet needs to focus on buffing the thief on it's single-target damage dealer role and give this profession a few supporting tools, (the new stolen skills are basically what I mean, but I think we could have this recently added aspect of thief more explored in depth) so we are not just edgy stabbers, but also a resourceful class that can pitch in in other stuff than damage.

Yeah, S/D thief I think is one of the few builds that can deal reliably if used skillfully with mirages, but D/P DrD has a harder time with it, and you will be able to beat them only if they do some serious mistakes and it's very reliant on how well you use the shortbow. Just to clarify that quote you mentioned I was talking about D/P drd there along with the endurance nerfes talk and all. As I understand you were talking about the more cheesy builds that you can do 1 shots with backstab from stealth, as for me I was talking about the previous meta which I really can't say it's really a 1 shot. Most of the professions get themselves some defensive passive to prevent 1 shoting so I very rarely find that absolutely defenseless pray nowadays. Funny enough if there was someone in that category it's usually another thief, lol. Regarding what you said about firebrands support builds in WvW I find that while other profession have a hard time getting them down, I am mostly able to down them without much effort and if there are some bunker types that really want to fight back I can stall them forever. or if you wan't it the other way around, they can stall me forever if I play either D/P or P/P... Oh well, you can't have them all.

S/D is in a good place in the current meta which is a melee killer in my opinion and if you don't get tones of dmg immunity uptime like various warrior specs or you don't have the kiting potential with port and evades the S/D has, melee-ing is very dangerous and lot of times suicide dues to the amount of circles you can get around most of professions. Oh, I forgot about the perma evade condi thief specs, but I'm not going to go there... And then there's the Deadeye... one shot ranged gameplay that relies on stealth... still not sure on how to feel about those... it's like people found some form of applied gameplay for it and it sometimes work, but I still think that it's a spec that's not very reliable when it comes to going against skilled players...

@Geiir.7603 said:

@"Rezok.2709" said:A big part of the problem is that thief is the rogue / assassin class of this game, and they tend to be the most hated. It is frustrating to fight someone who can stealth and shadowstep away and basically always keep the fight at his terms. Furthermore it is a bursty class, and everyone hates getting one shot. Previous history of thief have had them quite OP and I think Anet is a bit afraid to venture too far into that again. And as a thief main I agree, we should not get buffed, it would make us too strong, but other professions needs to be nerfed. It is a problem that thieves can't overstep a line where they become the untouchable one shotters, so other professions pretty much need to follow thieves in terms of power, but right now they have surpassed thieves.

The thing is that the ability to pick and chose engagements is the most powerful ability in any game.

If ClassX had perfect Engage/Disengage it would win or draw every fight. Which means from the other players perspective the fight is "Heads I lose, tails I draw". It is simply not a game the other play would want to engage in.

It doesn't matter if it is 99% Draw and 1% Win for ClassX, the other players still won't like the design. Thief's core design runs into that problem.

@Xae.7204 said:

@Geiir.7603 said:

@"Rezok.2709" said:A big part of the problem is that thief is the rogue / assassin class of this game, and they tend to be the most hated. It is frustrating to fight someone who can stealth and shadowstep away and basically always keep the fight at his terms. Furthermore it is a bursty class, and everyone hates getting one shot. Previous history of thief have had them quite OP and I think Anet is a bit afraid to venture too far into that again. And as a thief main I agree, we should not get buffed, it would make us too strong, but other professions needs to be nerfed. It is a problem that thieves can't overstep a line where they become the untouchable one shotters, so other professions pretty much need to follow thieves in terms of power, but right now they have surpassed thieves.

That is not exclusive to Thieves, though.

If ClassX had perfect Engage/Disengage it would win or draw every fight. Which means from the other players perspective the fight is "Heads I lose, tails I draw". It is simply not a game the other play would want to engage in.

It doesn't matter if it is 99% Draw and 1% Win for ClassX, the other players still won't like the design. Thief's core design runs into that problem.

That's not the reality of it though. Combat in GW2 can hardly be compared to a coin flip. Thieves blunders more than you think and it's not noticeable only because Thief players have learned to cover their mistakes. That blunder often times means the Thief loses.