Thief gets so much hate that's is honestly frightening.

[MrForz.1953]

13 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Every second you have to waste is more added to your team's complaints and your ineffectiveness. That's just a fact. That's the price you pay as a thief. 

You don't have to kill a thief to render them ineffective - which, apparently, is the point that triggers most players. 

I should have pointed out that my time spent is strictly in WvW, I don't think I've touched sPvP in years.

[Teratus.2859]

6 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

 

I think it’s appropriate in the way you describe it, that is “harassment” in the tactical sense. The question is whether that amounts to “harassment” in the psychosocial sense. ANet has a duty to reduce or mitigate the latter, whereas it seems they’ve designed Thieves to be masters of the former. It could be that the potential conflation of the two is reason enough to redesign the profession, but being denied kills and being forced into unwanted combat in WvW seem to me like legitimate consequences for stepping onto the field.

Well the simple example to prove the point is so:
Lets give all classes the same amount of stealth access and mobility as thieves.

Now if we did that I'd wager most thief players would be outraged, calling it unfair yada yada.
We've even seen small examples of this in the past with Mesmers and even Rangers whom have also had the ability to abuse the combo of stealth and high mobility, everyone complained about it, especially thieves.

Point is that just highlights that high mobility combined with excessive stealth regardless of the class using it makes a class essentially broken.
Even more so when the "counterplay" that some classes get against stealth is utterly useless against stealth.
Rangers, Necros and Guardians all have very little access to reveal but cannot utilise it to actually de-stealth a player like other classes can, making it effectively useless.. more so when thieves even have the ability to remove reveal these days too.
Reveal also has a very short effect time too which again makes it almost useless because thieves have so much mobility they can just run away and wait for it to expire and go back to harassing their target.

CC's have stunbreaks, condi's have cleanses, even minions can be eradicated instantly by transform skills.
Stealth has no real counterplay, and that's why people hate it so much.. they see is as a cheap mechanic and many will agree that it is.
And people hate thieves in particular because they can abuse it so frequently.. and because they are the only class that can abuse it this way, which just makes them insufferably annoying to fight in virtually every single encounter you have with them.
They literally take the fun out of the competitive game for a lot of people.

Edited October 13, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Teratus.2859]

6 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

Well it's debatable how "earned" a kill against an (in terms of class based fighting strength) objectively weaker opponent really is. It's more that they're mad because they didn't get the kill they feel entitled to.

Imagine if every player you were about to kill just vanished and ran away.. wouldn't that be annoying?

Well that's what a lot of people deal with in most encounters with thieves 🙂
 

6 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

It is also the way A-Net wants them to fight as the developers seem to be quite adamant about pushing thief into these niche rolls and the point here is that if the roamer can keep the other player(s) busy than he / they wont be able to go for the objective so at least in theory it does serve to help the team however there are several major issues with it and the game doesn't even acknowledge this as contribution if the thief doesn't get a kill.

The mobility alone is more than enough for them to play harasser and be very good at it.
The stealth on top is basically a middle finger lol

If they had just the mobility then the class would warrant improvements to other areas that it both needs and imo deserves.
It's potential is wasted because of one bad and cheap mechanic it has way too much access to.

[Teratus.2859]

6 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

I don't mean to be rude here, but this is totally the wrong mindset for WvW. 

 

You're not entitled to a kill. You didn't earn the kill if he got away. You don't earn the kill on an ele if you fail to stop them running to a tower, and you don't earn the kill by downing someone 1v2 and then failing to stomp. You earn the kill only when they are dead, anything else is stopping short. This applies just as much to the thief as to his target. 

 

Harassment by definition is not just unwanted and persistent attacks but it also has some aspect of illegality to it, either through breaking a rule or denying someone their rights.

You agreed to be a target for anyone not on your team when you entered a WvW map, just like the thief did.

You're not entitled to your personal space inside your objectives in WvW.

You're not entitled to go about your business without someone trying to stop you in WvW.

You don't have the right to run to your group without fear of attack in WvW.

You're not entitled to not be sieged, jumped on or laughed at when you die, even though I consider that poor sportsmanship and I don't do it personally. 

About the only thing that I'd consider that DOES come under the term harassment is salty/rage whispers, because that's deliberately circumventing the system to do something you're not supposed to do and it's done specifically in order to grief someone. So if you whisper me you can expect a block after I finally stop laughing at you. Every other form of behaviour that the thief or any other roamer may exhibit is in fact in line with the rules of the game, rules that you agreed to when you entered the map. 

 

So yeah, feel free to siege me and dance on my corpse if you want to. Just don't be surprised if you get hunted for the next few hours, because those are the rules that we all agreed to. 

It's competitive in general, not just WvW.
And it also affects PvE as well since balance tends to hit both modes, to this day thieves still get shafted in some group content because other classes are simply better at everything.

There are times where a no win situation is in effect, it's quite common for thieves in fact which is why they run so much.
But the point isn't so much the earned kill, it's the initiation of combat.
Virtually all other classes in the game choose to enter combat and are pretty much committed by that decision so should the battle not go their way they have a high likelyness of death and low chance of escape.

Thieves are not bound to this standard and the most annoying part of this is the fact that thieves initiate almost every single encounter they end up in in the first place.
It's like a bully who goes around picking fights by slapping people in the face and then runs away before you get the chance to retaliate.
Stuff like that would kitten anyone off and rightly so, so the hate is justified if you ask me.

Personally i'd rather see the class become an actual scrapper and something to fear in combat which is what rogue classes should be.
But thieves are more akin to a fly that just won't go away and just makes everyone enraged to the point they want to fill the chat with the kind of toxic comments that even you mention.

I won't argue that such comments are a bad thing, but I will say that the main reason you get them is because you are kittening people off to the point of raging in the first place.. so if it is such a regular occurrence for thief players and from the many many posts i've seen over time that does appear to be the case then at least some blame has to be put on the common denominator for.. triggering.. that kind of behaviour in the first place.
That in no way absolves the toxic comments or anything though.

[Teratus.2859]

5 hours ago, Graeaw.6329 said:

Yeah man, I mean it's so annoying when I go through the trouble of separating someone from their zerg, dismounting them, downing them, only to be forced to disengage because some white-knight buddy comes to their help before I could claim the kill.

I earned it !!!

See this is something that thieves are good at and should be good at.

I don't have any problem with this kind of tactic and these are well earned kills.
Wouldn't it be great if you could also down and kill the white knight buddy too?

Probably could if the class was better attuned to being a scrapper instead of a run away harasser.

[Arewn.2368]

It's pretty simple. Being invisible is fun to play, but not fun to play against.

The high mobility exacerbates this.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

22 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Well the simple example to prove the point is so:
Lets give all classes the same amount of stealth access and mobility as thieves.

Now if we did that I'd wager most thief players would be outraged, calling it unfair yada yada.
We've even seen small examples of this in the past with Mesmers and even Rangers whom have also had the ability to abuse the combo of stealth and high mobility, everyone complained about it, especially thieves.

Point is that just highlights that high mobility combined with excessive stealth regardless of the class using it makes a class essentially broken.
Even more so when the "counterplay" that some classes get against stealth is utterly useless against stealth.
Rangers, Necros and Guardians all have very little access to reveal but cannot utilise it to actually de-stealth a player like other classes can, making it effectively useless.. more so when thieves even have the ability to remove reveal these days too.
Reveal also has a very short effect time too which again makes it almost useless because thieves have so much mobility they can just run away and wait for it to expire and go back to harassing their target.

CC's have stunbreaks, condi's have cleanses, even minions can be eradicated instantly by transform skills.
Stealth has no real counterplay, and that's why people hate it so much.. they see is as a cheap mechanic and many will agree that it is.
And people hate thieves in particular because they can abuse it so frequently.. and because they are the only class that can abuse it this way, which just makes them insufferably annoying to fight in virtually every single encounter you have with them.
They literally take the fun out of the competitive game for a lot of people.

Ur example of giving all classes stealth and how most thieves would complain is gbage and literally tells me not to bother reading the rest as ur clearly clueless and shouldn't be posting. A better and more fitting example would be if we gave all classes access to stealth and mobility to match thieves(although with mobility creep that's happened over last few years most classes arnt far behind thiefs mobility anyway) and while doing so we give thief the extra hp/armor, blocks, barriers, invulnerability skills, healing and any and all of the defensive potential that classes who aren't designed as burst hit and run playstyle and give those to thief, then see if thieves complain. To answer of course they would because ud be handing out thieves identity as a class to other classes.

[Zacchary.6183]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:57 AM, Teratus.2859 said:

denial of a kill that you earned several times over

You only earn a kill when you actually kill them. Nobody in this game is going to just stop moving after hitting 25% hp and say "Ya got me! Oh well gg".

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

2 hours ago, Arewn.2368 said:

It's pretty simple. Being invisible is fun to play, but not fun to play against.

The high mobility exacerbates this.

I enjoy the mind games, and I know I'm not the only one here. Don't be so hasty to call your subjective opinion to be everyone else's.

[ASP.8093]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:57 AM, Teratus.2859 said:

It's the constant denial of a kill that you earned several times over

People in this game love to connect with a single fat attack or stun-and-burst combo and then proclaim that the job's done and the only reason their opponent is still alive is OP cheater build stuff.

[Axl.8924]

Game wouldn't be fun if every person could do the same thing. Having classes who are good at different things is the spice of life as long as each one succeeds in a area enough.

 

 

[Teratus.2859]

12 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

People in this game love to connect with a single fat attack or stun-and-burst combo and then proclaim that the job's done and the only reason their opponent is still alive is OP cheater build stuff.

One shot builds are equally cheap and ruin the competitive game as well.

The competitive element is diminished when one party just exploits cheap mechanics to almost guarantee an instant win or in the thiefs case, almost guarantees they cannot loose.

People play competitively to fight and beat each other, that's the whole point.
Theives do not provide that experience, therefore it is unrewarding and a waste of time even fighting them in the first place.
They're a lot like all the trash mobs most people want to skip over when they run dungeons etc.. only you can't see them most of the time and they don't give you a choice not to fight them lol

[Teratus.2859]

17 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Ur example of giving all classes stealth and how most thieves would complain is gbage and literally tells me not to bother reading the rest as ur clearly clueless and shouldn't be posting. A better and more fitting example would be if we gave all classes access to stealth and mobility to match thieves(although with mobility creep that's happened over last few years most classes arnt far behind thiefs mobility anyway) and while doing so we give thief the extra hp/armor, blocks, barriers, invulnerability skills, healing and any and all of the defensive potential that classes who aren't designed as burst hit and run playstyle and give those to thief, then see if thieves complain. To answer of course they would because ud be handing out thieves identity as a class to other classes.

Interesting choice of words calling it an "identity" 

You're basically admitting by saying that, that the excessive access to the stealth mechanic is all this class is good for.
When I say that stealth holds this class back, that's exactly what i'm talking about.

Unless something is done to change Stealth in Gw2, preferably to limit it's accessibility in active combat (which is far better than removing it entirely or bloating all the other classes with enough reveal to counter it.)
Then the Thief can never really be more than the annoying class everyone hates because it has way to much access to a cheap and easily exploitable mechanic with no decent counterplay.

[saerni.2584]

Stealth has counter play. Mostly it comes down to what your enemy is running and whether you have the built in capability to match them.
 

For example, ranged capabilities are a good way to put pressure on someone who pops out of stealth. Not having ranged options you need to have teleports ready to engage. If you are fighting someone with high damage spikes from stealth then you need to focus on staying mobile and using your mobility to kite when they try to spike you. Outside of a few specific attacks most of the damage is actually a chain that you can avoid with the right combination of mobility and your utilities. That of course leads into a counter attack after a second or two and their burst (usually supported by temporary boosts) goes down to normal and they are vulnerable. You can also look for them to burn a Shadowstep to chase you and when it expires put on the pressure with stuns because they burned two whole stun breaks. That means they are over extended and much easier to pin down. 

 

I also think too many people think "wait for them to naturally come out of stealth" should be a viable tactic, sometimes by suggesting all damage coming from stealth should be severely reduced. Which is not really people looking for counter play as much as a free kill.

 

 

[Kolly.9872]

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Interesting choice of words calling it an "identity" 

You're basically admitting by saying that, that the excessive access to the stealth mechanic is all this class is good for.
When I say that stealth holds this class back, that's exactly what i'm talking about.

Unless something is done to change Stealth in Gw2, preferably to limit it's accessibility in active combat (which is far better than removing it entirely or bloating all the other classes with enough reveal to counter it.)
Then the Thief can never really be more than the annoying class everyone hates because it has way to much access to a cheap and easily exploitable mechanic with no decent counterplay.

When back in the days Acrobatcs SD was meta, everyone was complaining about that. I guess people complain on everything they don't understand 

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

On 10/13/2021 at 8:03 PM, Teratus.2859 said:

It's competitive in general, not just WvW.
And it also affects PvE as well since balance tends to hit both modes, to this day thieves still get shafted in some group content because other classes are simply better at everything.

There are times where a no win situation is in effect, it's quite common for thieves in fact which is why they run so much.
But the point isn't so much the earned kill, it's the initiation of combat.
Virtually all other classes in the game choose to enter combat and are pretty much committed by that decision so should the battle not go their way they have a high likelyness of death and low chance of escape.

Thieves are not bound to this standard and the most annoying part of this is the fact that thieves initiate almost every single encounter they end up in in the first place.
It's like a bully who goes around picking fights by slapping people in the face and then runs away before you get the chance to retaliate.
Stuff like that would kitten anyone off and rightly so, so the hate is justified if you ask me.

Personally i'd rather see the class become an actual scrapper and something to fear in combat which is what rogue classes should be.
But thieves are more akin to a fly that just won't go away and just makes everyone enraged to the point they want to fill the chat with the kind of toxic comments that even you mention.

I won't argue that such comments are a bad thing, but I will say that the main reason you get them is because you are kittening people off to the point of raging in the first place.. so if it is such a regular occurrence for thief players and from the many many posts i've seen over time that does appear to be the case then at least some blame has to be put on the common denominator for.. triggering.. that kind of behaviour in the first place.
That in no way absolves the toxic comments or anything though.

Well, yes, thief does suffer in PvE because of it's design choices. While it annoys me that it has never really had a meta PvE spec I can overlook that because I enjoy what the class does offer more than I miss what it lacks. 

See the parts of your post I underlined. You're not actually complaining about the initiation of combat, you're complaining about the resolution of combat and the difference in how thieves experience that resolution to everyone else. The only reason to complain about this is if you have the underlying assumption that you deserved the kill when the thief got away - no, you clearly didn't deserve the kill because you didn't do what was necessary to secure it, if you did then the thief would be dead at your feet.

I don't need thief to be more of a scrapper as I can already do that with two of my builds, both of which are boon builds by the way. The main problem with 90% of the thief playerbase is that they are stuck in the PvE DPS mentality or the PvP decap mentality so they limit their build choices for no particularly good reason. There is also the issue is that if a build is good against other classes it likely suffers vs other thieves depending on whether or not it uses shadow arts, if you're only planning on making one build for your thief then SA D/P daredevil simply gives you the most utility in a single build but because everyone and their dog runs that build it means that it is easily countered and forced off by experienced players. WvW is a whole new ball game if you're willing to think outside the box a bit and invest in the class heavily through legendary armor and multiple build templates, but pretty much the only people that go through with that are dedicated thief mains, and that's a pretty small group.

See the part of your post I bolded. The other day, I went to an upgraded camp and fought a soulbeast inside the camp for over 5 minutes after killing 2-3 people just outside the camp. The soulbeast repeatedly kited out when on low health using the CC from the camp guards to stop me from following, and eventually the people I killed came back with a couple others and the 5-6 of them killed me by clouding and denying me cover through LoS while two soulbeasts killed me from a distance. I then get a whisper telling me I'd been reported by someone in that group (I presume the ranger I was fighting in the camp), with no reason or explanation why. I didn't abuse OOC at all during the fight, only dropping combat once because the ranger decided to kite at the same time I did. If I was playing a soulbeast or a holosmith nobody would have even bothered whispering me after that fight, let alone report me for apparently not dying fast enough. That is the kind of hate that the OP is talking about and that is indirectly referenced in your comments; people tend to blow a vein when a thief kills you or refuses to die and provide their lootbag on command, when other classes doing the same thing wouldn't have made those same players bat an eye. 

On 10/13/2021 at 7:28 PM, Teratus.2859 said:

Well the simple example to prove the point is so:
Lets give all classes the same amount of stealth access and mobility as thieves.

Now if we did that I'd wager most thief players would be outraged, calling it unfair yada yada.
We've even seen small examples of this in the past with Mesmers and even Rangers whom have also had the ability to abuse the combo of stealth and high mobility, everyone complained about it, especially thieves.

Point is that just highlights that high mobility combined with excessive stealth regardless of the class using it makes a class essentially broken.

This is just plain wrong. The conclusion that thief level stealth and mobility is OP does not follow from your argument, because again, that's not what you're actually talking about. I have no issue with another class being as fast as a thief or having as much stealth as a thief when considered in a vacuum, but what you're talking about is adding thief level mobility and stealth to another profession on top of what it already has. Of course it would be OP if you were fast and stealthy as a thief but durable and sustainable as a scrapper, but that doesn't prove that thief level mobility and stealth is OP on it's own.  

Edited October 15, 2021 by Jugglemonkey.8741

[Arewn.2368]

22 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

I enjoy the mind games, and I know I'm not the only one here. Don't be so hasty to call your subjective opinion to be everyone else's.

I think it's quiet obvious that my post presented a general statement, not an absolute rule.

Don't be pedantic.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

6 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Interesting choice of words calling it an "identity" 

You're basically admitting by saying that, that the excessive access to the stealth mechanic is all this class is good for.
When I say that stealth holds this class back, that's exactly what i'm talking about.

Unless something is done to change Stealth in Gw2, preferably to limit it's accessibility in active combat (which is far better than removing it entirely or bloating all the other classes with enough reveal to counter it.)
Then the Thief can never really be more than the annoying class everyone hates because it has way to much access to a cheap and easily exploitable mechanic with no decent counterplay.

By identity I mean that the rogue archetype which is thief in gw2 always is designed as a class that's glassy, burst and relies on mobility and stealth for defensive purposes. If u gave every class stealth, high burst and high mobility in every mmo ud be removing the point of the rogue in that game as why wouldn't u pick a high mobility tanky bruiser if it also had rogues access to stealth lol, u wouldn't ever because ud be handicapping urself. 

[Tails.9372]

46 minutes ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

the rogue archetype

In itself is very diverse and stealth is actually something only associated with a small portion of it (namely "assasins", "burglars", "ninjas" and "pickpockets"), mobility however is universal but looking at the class design I have to assume that A-Net doesn't fully understand why that is.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

I think a lot of this debate centers around different win conditions.

If the win condition is getting a kill, then yes, killing a decent thief isn't easy.  At the same time, skill and numbers being equal, thieves generally have less kill-power than most DPS/dueling builds.  To secure a kill, they generally have to expend more resources and play more skillfully than their opponent.  ("Thief is a high skill floor/infinite skill ceiling class.")  Stealth and mobility don't kill anything.  They just help avoid being killed.  ("Thieves excel at running from fights.")  If the thief is running away, he or she isn't killing you either.  If they reset, you usually, but not always, have a chance to reset as well.

If the win condition is defending/capturing an objective, thieves are at a decided disadvantage since stealth prevents capture, they're not tanky or sustainy enough to camp nodes, and they lack mass-target AOE pressure, so they have no choice but to employ a single target, hit-and-run, in-and-out, bail if things go wrong playstyle.

What we're left with is thieves excel at precisely one aspect of one win condition--not dying.  They aren't particularly great at securing kills (others do it better with less effort).  They aren't very useful for pursuing objectives.  ("Thief is not a zerg class.")  So what people are really complaining about, objectively, is their subjective annoyance with not being able to kill the thief, while ignoring the fact that avoiding death is the one and only thing thief does well.

[ASP.8093]

1 hour ago, Twilight Tempest.7584 said:

I think a lot of this debate centers around different win conditions.

If the win condition is getting a kill, then yes, killing a decent thief isn't easy.  At the same time, skill and numbers being equal, thieves generally have less kill-power than most DPS/dueling builds.  To secure a kill, they generally have to expend more resources and play more skillfully than their opponent.  ("Thief is a high skill floor/infinite skill ceiling class.")  Stealth and mobility don't kill anything.  They just help avoid being killed.  ("Thieves excel at running from fights.")  If the thief is running away, he or she isn't killing you either.  If they reset, you usually, but not always, have a chance to reset as well.

If the win condition is defending/capturing an objective, thieves are at a decided disadvantage since stealth prevents capture, they're not tanky or sustainy enough to camp nodes, and they lack mass-target AOE pressure, so they have no choice but to employ a single target, hit-and-run, in-and-out, bail if things go wrong playstyle.

What we're left with is thieves excel at precisely one aspect of one win condition--not dying.  They aren't particularly great at securing kills (others do it better with less effort).  They aren't very useful for pursuing objectives.  ("Thief is not a zerg class.")  So what people are really complaining about, objectively, is their subjective annoyance with not being able to kill the thief, while ignoring the fact that avoiding death is the one and only thing thief does well.

I think this is a great analysis, though I would add one thing: thief is one of the better classes for turning downed enemies into dead enemies, which is critical for roamers trying to engage larger groups outnumbered. (Mesmer and Engineer are both notably good at it, too.) That's a big part of the class' functionality and identity and also something I wouldn't want to see changed.

[Teratus.2859]

11 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

By identity I mean that the rogue archetype which is thief in gw2 always is designed as a class that's glassy, burst and relies on mobility and stealth for defensive purposes. If u gave every class stealth, high burst and high mobility in every mmo ud be removing the point of the rogue in that game as why wouldn't u pick a high mobility tanky bruiser if it also had rogues access to stealth lol, u wouldn't ever because ud be handicapping urself. 

Ranger and Engineer are both rouge types as well, one of which figured out how to gain significant access to stealth, less than thief but still a fair amount more than they originally had.
And that was nerfed into the ground very very quickly because of how many people complained about it.

A decision I actually agree with for the record, it made Rangers just as broken and cheap as thieves, even though they had less mobility.
Stealth and always stealth is the problem mechanic here.

As I keep saying it's too broken, too cheap and it doesn't have enough counterplay as I pointed out before with the kitten near useless reveal mechanic.

Other defensive mechanics can be gotten around far more easily with things like unblockable which all classes have far more access to than reveal.
Stuns and MIC's can be broken with stunbreaks and condi cleanses which again way more access to.

Stealth doesn't have that, it's only counter is reveal and there are only 10 class skills in the whole game that can cause it, two of which are self inflicted by Deadeyes and another two that cannot even be used against a stealthed player to reveal them.. and these particular two are the only access their entire professions get to this mechanic.

Add to that other defensive mechanics don't take you out of sight and remove your target lock.
Don't leave you wondering if the enemy is going to come up behind you or has just ran away and you're now wasting time waiting for an attack that was never coming.
It's even more annoying and cheap than invulnerability phases.
At least you can see an enemy that won't take damage and prepare your next move accordingly.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Teratus.2859]

17 hours ago, saerni.2584 said:

I also think too many people think "wait for them to naturally come out of stealth" should be a viable tactic, sometimes by suggesting all damage coming from stealth should be severely reduced. Which is not really people looking for counter play as much as a free kill.

Naturally since they can't see them, they can't target them and most of the time they can't de-stealth them.

What do you expect them to do? spam all  their useful skills and hope they manage to wing the invisible player? 
Hardly, with the mobility thieves get access to on top of stealth it's virtually effortless to avoid that kind of thing and you just screw yourself over.
 

[Teratus.2859]

16 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

Well, yes, thief does suffer in PvE because of it's design choices. While it annoys me that it has never really had a meta PvE spec I can overlook that because I enjoy what the class does offer more than I miss what it lacks. 

Outside of stealth I do to, even though it's all diminished because of stealth.
Hence part of the reason it annoys me so much, thief could be so much better than it is.
But so long as the stealth spam pvp playstyle continues to be the norm, thief is always going to suck at anything else.

16 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

See the parts of your post I underlined. You're not actually complaining about the initiation of combat, you're complaining about the resolution of combat and the difference in how thieves experience that resolution to everyone else. The only reason to complain about this is if you have the underlying assumption that you deserved the kill when the thief got away - no, you clearly didn't deserve the kill because you didn't do what was necessary to secure it, if you did then the thief would be dead at your feet.

You're putting way to much on me saying "earned kill"
I don't care so much about the kill, I win and loose fights all the time in WvW and the only time I get annoyed is when I have to deal with annoying thieves exploiting annoying and cheap mechanics, or in rarer cases being one shot by some troll build I had no chance to defend against.
At least the one shot stuff happens rarely, thieves abusing stealth is the norm.

If thieves fought me and killed me in fair combat I wouldn't care, and i've had some good and fun fights with a couple of thieves this way in the past.. though these types of fights are rare with the class.

But the fact that most of them always run away after picking the fight in the first place, constantly spam in and out of stealth and make it nearly impossible to actually fight them kittens me and many many others off to the point where we don't even want to fight/play with them anymore.
And that's largely the point, we don't have a choice in the matter.
But that usually wouldn't be problem, it's the nature of competitive games and we all understand that.
Except that what makes it a problem is the fact that thieves and only thieves do have that choice while nobody else does.
They can harass everyone, but nobody can harass them.. and that is why you get so much toxicity in the chat, it's the only way people can retaliate most of the time.
And while I don't approve or condone it, I do understand why it happens.

16 hours ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

This is just plain wrong. The conclusion that thief level stealth and mobility is OP does not follow from your argument, because again, that's not what you're actually talking about. I have no issue with another class being as fast as a thief or having as much stealth as a thief when considered in a vacuum, but what you're talking about is adding thief level mobility and stealth to another profession on top of what it already has. Of course it would be OP if you were fast and stealthy as a thief but durable and sustainable as a scrapper, but that doesn't prove that thief level mobility and stealth is OP on it's own.  

Again I point to the Ranger gaining all that stealth in the past.
Ranger doesn't have the mobility access of thief nor did it have the stealth access but it was still ruthlessly complained about and nerfed just because of the new stealth.
Again I agree with this nerf.

Even if you were to nerf other classes down to give them that access people would still complain.
People also used to complain about Mesmer back in the day because that too had a fair bit of stealth which combined with illusions made it equally if not more annoying than thieves.

The fact that thief is regarded as criminally underpowered, lackluster and desperately needing buffs while still being thee most hated and annoying to fight class in the game is proof enough of how OP the stealth mechanic is.
Mobility is fine and if thief just had that and was buffed up to make it a better fighter then most people would not hate on them so much.
Stealth is and always has been the reason people hate this class.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Teratus.2859

[Fat Disgrace.4275]

On 10/14/2021 at 6:52 PM, Zacchary.6183 said:

You only earn a kill when you actually kill them. Nobody in this game is going to just stop moving after hitting 25% hp and say "Ya got me! Oh well gg".

Yup, some people just alt f4 lol