ive played a lot of thieves. I had 2 super decked out ones. Before the warriors got super hp past 40, it was easy killing them. After that, it became a lot harder, since you would take a warrior to gushing and not hit him once after the backstab, and he would proceed to bash/cranial/pincher. You took a felar warrior to gushing but he had 1200 hp to start, so gushing for him was 600 hp. Thats nearly as much as you, as a thief, had.

Dual stabbing an axe spec, you better kill him or be damn close, unless hes got very sucky gear in which case, you can just trip. Ive stabbed cloud warriors before for 600-700 hp and nearly died to them after that.

I do agree with you however, it was brute force...But nowhere near a warrior (with steal ). Just about all classes tooled you if you took them in a straight up fight. SHaman, paladin, warriors, invokers etc. You had to be clever and sneaky as well as an opportunist.

Also if you landed one sick backstab, the person would just flee and quaff, while you wait for the lag to wear off...