Guild Wars 2

( sorry my english is far to be perfect ^^ )
First, to clarify, its not any kind of QQ, because i play a thief too, and i enjoy the stealth mechanic. And i want to be as impartial as i can.

But actualy, i see dozen of dozen thief condi spam stealth.
Which mean -> stealth -> spam condi -> stealth to avoid any kind of possible targeting so damage -> spam condi -> repeat until your target die.

basicly ALL thief i saw playing that pretty OP build was only killed if there was at least 4-5 player chassing him ( and even like that most of them always avoided to be killed )

Its totaly OP because stealth !
You one have left somes AoE (very easy to avoid when stealthed ) or somes melee weapon attack (but no need to say that you will, as thief, NEVER stay close to your target to be hit… )

Add to that, the health regen + condi clean = impossible to kill especialy as OP condi spam bunker.

Only possible solution is to have stealth counter to be able to break the stealth cycle and so be able to correctly play against the thief rather than just endure that until you die.

You are forgetting that the only reliable access to extra heals and condition removal for thieves are -on stealth-, terrible design but there we are.

If you nerf stealth without adjusting that with say, I dunno.. some form of GM trait in acro that deals with conditions, maybe? You’re just stripping the thief of its ability to defend itself.

Luranni.9470:

You are forgetting that the only reliable access to extra heals and condition removal for thieves are -on stealth-, terrible design but there we are.

If you nerf stealth without adjusting that with say, I dunno.. some form of GM trait in acro that deals with conditions, maybe? You’re just stripping the thief of its ability to defend itself.

I was really hoping that the new GM trait for acrobatics would be another way to remove conditions. Instead, they opted to put an awful stability trait tied to reveal (thus stealth) into the trait tree that is most used by non-stealth builds. I was pretty unimpressed with the lack of the logic that went into that trait lol.

Honestly, all the people that complain about stealth (especially about thieves) need to look at thief traits and ask why thieves use stealth so much. It’s required in the majority of thief builds just to survive long enough to do some damage, that’s why. Before asking for counter mechanics to stealth, players should be asking for changes to thief that would make non-stealth builds more viable.

Also, not sure if I misread the OP’s post, but did he claim thieves can’t be killed by condi bunkers? lolwut?

So now u gonna complain about condi on thiefs, what u expected after the nerf from some guys.Maybe u should ask Anet to unnerf the 10% damage , so then u can complain about our thief damage instead of condi damage.
If u cant take a condi thief , that means u should roll a thief 1st , learn it do some pvp and then u would know how to defeat one.

Learn to Dodge C&D and you win… Practice allot, play the profession to learn it.
All of the above takes work and time to achieve but it is worth it.

Complaining on forums and asking for nerfs will not make you a better player…

If you were an athlete and this one guy runs faster then you what do you do?
Train harder to get better and faster or do you ask someone to break his legs?!

Because right now you are asking A-net to break thieves legs… :’(

Luranni.9470:

You are forgetting that the only reliable access to extra heals and condition removal for thieves are -on stealth-, terrible design but there we are.

If you nerf stealth without adjusting that with say, I dunno.. some form of GM trait in acro that deals with conditions, maybe? You’re just stripping the thief of its ability to defend itself.

Yeah, as it is, stealth in combat shouldn’t even be there if there’s no way to force visibility. The counter-play to stealth is more through technicality then actual function. In my view, thieves need to be stealth-countered better in general (well, any stealth actually), with more natural resilience added to compensate. As you say, survivability through stealth to the degree it exist is shoddy design. You can’t take away the stealth from a thief without killing it as a class without compensation. I think a higher HP pool could be a start. It might also be that with all there is on ArenaNet’s plate right now, the amount of re balancing thieves would need if stealth were globally changed—not nerfed—would be to much for ’em at this time.

There’s a lot of “QQ” and “Counter-QQ” (as equally annoying to me), but at the end of the day both are still legit player community point-of-view, but one thing I feel is more objective, that there’s some mechanics in this game kinda run amok, because while they were originally sane and sensible choices for any class’ builds, as time goes on, most of the playerbase gravitate to those certain things in a way that can wildy change the very core of the game’s gameplay, making those aspects show themselves for what they are. Then the game becomes one big wad of “press these buttons NOW and hope the attacks along side others cause every condition at 15-25 stacks, and stunlock the entire enemy to oblivion while the exact same thing happens to your side”.

In summery, the combat system has proven overly-convoluted in general, and any changes to global functions as stealth will cause rewrites to the code of certain classes that would chain-change the gameplay itself to wildly. The game has it’s balance in some way, and setting the ‘infamous Dev-favoritism’ aside, the effort to almost redoing the combat with changes leading to more changes, don’t count on STEALTH (not thieves in particular) to be rebalanced any day soon…

Be angry and disgruntled by the game as I, play it when in the mood, don’t play it when not in the mood. While I dislike ANet’s judgement a lot of the time, they DO have more to worry abut them most seem to think… Guess it’s a matter of time. These things in these games take years… …

Ryu.1368:

Luranni.9470:

You are forgetting that the only reliable access to extra heals and condition removal for thieves are -on stealth-, terrible design but there we are.

If you nerf stealth without adjusting that with say, I dunno.. some form of GM trait in acro that deals with conditions, maybe? You’re just stripping the thief of its ability to defend itself.

Yeah, as it is, stealth in combat shouldn’t even be there if there’s no way to force visibility. The counter-play to stealth is more through technicality then actual function. In my view, thieves need to be stealth-countered better in general (well, any stealth actually), with more natural resilience added to compensate. As you say, survivability through stealth to the degree it exist is shoddy design. You can’t take away the stealth from a thief without killing it as a class without compensation. I think a higher HP pool could be a start. It might also be that with all there is on ArenaNet’s plate right now, the amount of re balancing thieves would need if stealth were globally changed—not nerfed—would be to much for ’em at this time.
…

Thank you! Now this QQ’ing/Nerf Stealth/Add-Counter play discussions are getting somewhere… Since people are starting to realize this.

@OP
Sorry bud, it’s not a QQ thread… but it is “nerf/rework this cuz its too strong – and i dont care about anything else” thread. :P Can’t take it seriously since you didn’t even remotely mention what those two said.
Enjoy the rest of the flame wars, and other non-constructive feedback that this thread will bring just like every other thread created about this topic. In summary, the rest will be as follows:

• People supporting this and wanting a rework, without caring too much for what will happen to the class after.
• Thieves will happily tell you l2p, as they can’t take these kinds of people seriously – and see it as cries as opposed to anything legitimate.
• Someone that actually cares about this topic might (i think the blue moon happened already since those two posted) post something, that actually revolves around “balancing” and not “make it easier for me”

~peace!

The fact of the matter is, any request to nerf stealth for thief without suggesting adequate compensation for thief outside of the stealth mechanic will be, with good reason, criticized heavily by the thief community. If I use a stealth build on my thief, and my stealth suddenly becomes next to useless, then I really don’t have much left to do other than play another class.

I think too many non-thief players assume thieves “abuse” stealth because it’s way too powerful. The truth is, yes it’s strong, but we use it so much because it is really all we have. We don’t have easy access to stability, blocks, or invulnerability. Our healing is only adequate if we spec a GM in the SA trait line. Our condi removal is only decent if we at least put 2 points in the SA trait line. Come to think of it, there is one of the problems right there with the current state of thief balance. The best survival traits are all tied into one single trait line. Give us some traits that are worth their investment, or even operate correctly, in other trees, and you might see more diverse thief build that are less stealth reliant. I promise if stealth is just nerfed without compensation you’ll just see thief players roll other classes, and the thieves who stick around will just switch over to an evade based build, which non-thieves will complain about just as much (they already do on occasion).

godz raiden.2631:

The fact of the matter is, any request to nerf stealth for thief without suggesting adequate compensation for thief outside of the stealth mechanic will be, with good reason, criticized heavily by the thief community. If I use a stealth build on my thief, and my stealth suddenly becomes next to useless, then I really don’t have much left to do other than play another class.

I think too many non-thief players assume thieves “abuse” stealth because it’s way too powerful. The truth is, yes it’s strong, but we use it so much because it is really all we have. We don’t have easy access to stability, blocks, or invulnerability. Our healing is only adequate if we spec a GM in the SA trait line. Our condi removal is only decent if we at least put 2 points in the SA trait line. Come to think of it, there is one of the problems right there with the current state of thief balance. The best survival traits are all tied into one single trait line. Give us some traits that are worth their investment, or even operate correctly, in other trees, and you might see more diverse thief build that are less stealth reliant. I promise if stealth is just nerfed without compensation you’ll just see thief players roll other classes, and the thieves who stick around will just switch over to an evade based build, which non-thieves will complain about just as much (they already do on occasion).

Indeed. I already prefer to play using as little stealth as possible because I dislike “switching off” in the middle of a fight.

However with all the conditions flying around pure evasion builds really limit your gameplay and who you can and can’t pick a fight with (nothing to do with skill, just rock, paper, scissors). So if you want:

• Extra toughness on the thief – Shadow Arts line
• More condition removal – Shadow Arts line
• Good uptime on Regen boon – Shadow Arts line
• Group utility for ressing, rescuing etc – Shadow Arts line
• More heals – Shadow Arts line

Now, since you decided you need at least a few of those you have now specced full SA for max stealth spam and also been gifted with extra might stacks, superb ST damage from nowhere (if it lands) and the ability to troll people incessantly if you so desire, (or just by accident because you need to condi-cleanse/regen/save a team member).

So any outright nerf to the stealth mechanic would require pretty much rebuilding the entire class and, as already mentioned, the resources needed to do this are pretty high, as you then have to take into consideration the interaction with other classes and rebalancing from the ground up.