tl;dr below
A stealth inexperienced player friendly change would be to have some kind of ‘Hit?!’ indicator popup over the caster/attackers head if they only hit stealthed enemies with skill 1. It’s effectively the same thing as noticing your auto attack chain trigger except 2 major differences. 1) It’s presented in a more noticeable way, and 2) it would let skills not in a chain indicate a hit as well. Though I would like to see this still limited to skill 1 of any weapon set, except for kits (because bomb kit and grenade kit are aleady super forgiving vs stealth).
If such a change was implemented, it’d be important to hide the amount of damage done, as well as have the UI pop be in a static location, not over the head of the stealthed enemy that was attacked. To add more counterplay, the ‘Hit?!’ could be implemented so that it only triggered when you hit only stealthed enemies, so that it’s hidden if you cleave a stealthed and non-stealthed enemy. This gives stealthed players an option to take a cleave hit without the enemy knowing they did so. For example a mesmer eating it with one of their illusions, or a thief eating a hit with a rockdog. For more counterplay options it’d be nice not to show the hit indicator when a hit connects vs a block or invulnerability.
There are two other changes that make sense to do that have nothing to do with stealth.
1) Implement a config option to fire projectiles parallel to the ground when the camera is between certain angles, if we’re measuring angles perpendicular to level ground and 0 degrees is straight down while 180 degrees is straight up, then it would make sense that between angles 30ish degrees and 95ish degrees that projectiles be fired forward parallel to the ground. Again, as config option in the menu settings, please.
2) Add some kind of non-target way to deal the damage for skills that require a target, specifically skills Flame Strike, Arc Lightning, Blood Curse Chain, and Spatial Surge. As a random example, for spatial surge when it’s targeted it behaves as is, but when it’s not targeted it applies the shortest range damage to a small area in front of or around the player. Spatial Surge and Arc Lightning obviously do multiple hits, so maybe it would make sense in this kind of rework to reduce those hits to a single or couple hits. Devs choice obviously.
This is a straight buff to lessening the amount of awareness being required to fight against stealth, as well as a straight buff to any weapon skill 1 that wasn’t an attack chain. Tracking with skill 1 is important enough, that I feel this is a fair solution, since not all weapons have it.
tl;dr
I know from experience stealth isn’t noob friendly to fight against, so making all weapon slot 1 skills (except kits) trigger a ‘Hit?!’ indicator as a way to help track stealth similarly to any auto attack chain seems super fair to me. It also doesn’t require a nerf to the stealth mechanic.
I feel like not being able to track stealthed players with skill 1 is a legimate complaint, and should be available on every mainhand weapon. These are just some potential implementations I’ve thought of that don’t involve more revealed, and don’t inolve nerfing stealth, and don’t involve making the stealthed players exact location known. I’m sure you devs could refine this.
Sylvari Elementalist – Mystree Duskbloom (Lv 80)
Norn Guardian – Aurora Lustyr (Lv 80)
Mia A Shadows Glow – Human Thief (Lv 80)
