I've played thief for a long while and good god does this class get a whole ton of hate compared to every other class, and it's always something that has to do with their mobility and stealth. Literally the two things that give them a chance in any competitive game mode (idk if raids & fractals count as competitive, I don't PvE as much sorry), and when they mention these type of "counters" or "nerfs" they never mention things in return that could potentially filter in the missing gap if that change would occur.
I was reading on a post earlier about Shadowstep pathing (which 4 other classes can do) and how "unfair" it was when they get away. Every Thief here knows that the pathing is our best friend while being our worst enemy at the same time (shoutout shadowstepping on some small slope and getting the "no pathing" error), and I feel like these people just have never played Thief in a competitive setting before, just only played against them. Shadowstep being the utlity skill, steal/swipe, or Shortbow 5 are literally our only mobility skills, not to mention that switching to shortbow we're earing trying to seek someone out that's in stealth or trying to gtfo and most of the time its the latter option. I can't understand why this would be something to complain about seeing as how most of the classes can catch up with the same ease except maybe guardian and necromancer (I don't know if war or engi has a shadowstep or not sorry).
Another problem I frequently see get mentioned over the years is how broken thief stealth is. Everyone wants to think of counters and nerfs that would benefit their own classes but never think of how they'd fix up thief so they'd have a way to fight "brawler style" which they can't actually do. Daredevil staff is very predictable, unless you have quickness, 7 times out of 10 you're going to miss that vault (wish they'd do something good for PvP staff, no one plays it anymore). Most people drop aoe's on our smoke field or AA on top of it which is the correct way to do that and I wish people would see that more cause its literally an actual counter that works, people throwing projectiles in random directions, spinning your character so the thief misses the backstab multiplier, not some kitten like "blight".
Thief is one squishy kitten class that only has high damage in small bursts (unless they play marauder then its the other way around), stealth, and mobility. It literally brings nothing else to the table I believe, correct me if i'm wrong. I can't understand why a person would feel resentment towards a class that literally has to flee to survive because they can't fight against your one trick pony/bunker build/high condi pressure class and I've been seeing this same anger for years on this forum, the subreddit, and in-game. I know the problems I brought up aren't ALL of them but they're just the main ones I see alot.
Also rework trapper runes, those darn trapper builds... 🙂
