Guild Wars 2

@DeceiverX: Do you really consider a 30 second cooldown to be a hard-counter to Backstab? Do you think Aegis/Blind, which can be removed by Backstab (which has no cooldown and costs 0 initiative) only to be swung again immediately after (and given the 1/2 second cast time of Backstab, can be done between Blind pulses in blinding fields like Well of Darkness (I’ve been Backstabbed in the middle of my WoD by it being spammed, and the first time it happened I almost did a double-take)) are actual hard-counters as well? I don’t even know what to say to that, honestly. It just sounds like you’re producing a canned response to a discussion you want to sidetrack without actually having.

And those are pretty good questions regarding what you’re doing against a Thief in the heat of battle. You execute them all properly, and you’ll probably mitigate that Backstab before having to do it all properly again. What is the Thief doing in the meantime? Well most of the time, all he/she has to do is run up to your side/back and press their button repeatedly until it lands.

You’re in risk/reward territory now, and that’s a big problem people have with the builds that go for Backstabs. And acting like all you can do is auto-attack after not having initiative is a bad joke. You speak about how the opponent has to have all of this knowledge about how a Thief moves, works, and must react accordingly, but the Thief just runs around spamming CnD and #1 without having any other options.

You also didn’t understand my analogy at all, and I’m not sure how to explain it to you. It was about how “fragility” is used in arguments for Thief balance, when a slew of active defenses make the idea of fragility and tankiness more complex than “if you hit a Thief multiple times they’ll die”. It’s unfair to the game mechanics to ignore all of its mechanics and laser focus on one small detail as the basis for an argument.

What I find most interesting, though, is that you specifically want changes made to certain mechanics around conditions in order to “inhibit such styles of play”. The only way to deal with conditions once they are applied is to use traits/skills. Otherwise, why not learn what is applying them, figure out the choreography for it, and dodge/blind/otherwise mitigate the application of the condition. Why does someone else’s style of play need to be inhibited? Aren’t you arguing against inhibiting your style of play, even though Backstab/Stealth has seemingly been a specific subject of distaste since the dawn of GW2 time?

Why is learning to read/counter Condi usage much different than learning to read/counter an invisible person’s movement/actions at the risk of losing 40%+ of your life to an ability that you have to potentially try to deal with 4 seconds later?

I think whiffing an attack should be penalized. Against some of the meta builds, if the enemy randomly dodges for seemingly no reason and I miss my Plague Signet transfer, I’m almost guaranteed to lose. I don’t really have sympathy for those not willing to deal with/overcome risk, which includes anyone who would immediately swap builds out of one they enjoy because they have to put a bit more thought into their Backstab timings and might have to incorporate an alternate weapon set to diversify their playstyle.

Do you truly believe something like simply losing stealth but NOT getting the Revealed debuff after using a skill that doesn’t land for damage while in stealth would be that debilitating?

Oh also, I think it goes without saying that stealthing off of walls in particular is ridiculous and has no reason to exist.

Stealthing off of walls is ridiculous and was removed at some point, only for it to return for no apparent reason.

I find the complains about condis and thieves very similar as people are frustrated by overwhelming condi pressure and stealth (and backstabs) respectively. People are annoyed, so people complain. Even though anyone can do well against condi specs or thieves if they put in some effort.

I don’t see spamming backstabs in stealth really as much of a problem. The animation and aftercast for backstab lasts about 1 second, so you generally have about 3 attempts to successfully land a backstab after stealthing, unless you used utilities to extend your stealth duration. If you just spam the #1 button without trying to look for a window of opportunity, you’re far more likely to land a frontstab and deal only half the damage, which in most cases isn’t enough to pressure opponents at all. You’re also far more likely to have taken a considerable amount of damage before having done any damage yourself because a good opponent will have punished you for staying in melee range for that long. For example, I’ve had situations where I overcommited trying to backstab an elementalist and I had taken far too many air autos by the time I had landed my backstab. As I exited stealth he had already dealt more damage to me than I had done to him, and he immediately had the upper hand while I was revealed.

So yeah, in my opinion the risk for spamming backstabs is already there. Leaving stealth for having your backstab dodged is not a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s really neccessary either.

I would only do two changes:

• No combo field giving stealth.
• Stealth doesn’t stack.
• Special handling Shadow Refuge: You stay invis while inside. Once it ends, you got 3 more seconds.

Carighan.6758:

• Special handling Shadow Refuge: You stay invis while inside. Once it ends, you got 3 more seconds.

No one would ever take shadow refuge again. They would just take blinding powder to get 3-4 seconds immediately rather than wait in a circle that says “Spam AoEs and cleave attacks here while I try and evade.” That would be such a horrific change to that ability…

godz raiden.2631:

Carighan.6758:

• Special handling Shadow Refuge: You stay invis while inside. Once it ends, you got 3 more seconds.

No one would ever take shadow refuge again. They would just take blinding powder to get 3-4 seconds immediately rather than wait in a circle that says “Spam AoEs and cleave attacks here while I try and evade.” That would be such a horrific change to that ability…

So you’re saying the heal, the extra 5 seconds of stealth, all of the bonuses that can be traited into being in stealth, and the ability to throw it down at range to potentially save an ally from being stomped across a fight wouldn’t at all be worth it because the only part that matters to you is the 10+ seconds of stealth you can sit in after the SR AoE wears off?

How much do you think one utility should be able to do?

Cogbyrn.7283:

godz raiden.2631:

Carighan.6758:

• Special handling Shadow Refuge: You stay invis while inside. Once it ends, you got 3 more seconds.

No one would ever take shadow refuge again. They would just take blinding powder to get 3-4 seconds immediately rather than wait in a circle that says “Spam AoEs and cleave attacks here while I try and evade.” That would be such a horrific change to that ability…

So you’re saying the heal, the extra 5 seconds of stealth, all of the bonuses that can be traited into being in stealth, and the ability to throw it down at range to potentially save an ally from being stomped across a fight wouldn’t at all be worth it because the only part that matters to you is the 10+ seconds of stealth you can sit in after the SR AoE wears off?

How much do you think one utility should be able to do?

It should do the exact amount it does now.

Cogbyrn.7283:

godz raiden.2631:

Carighan.6758:

• Special handling Shadow Refuge: You stay invis while inside. Once it ends, you got 3 more seconds.

No one would ever take shadow refuge again. They would just take blinding powder to get 3-4 seconds immediately rather than wait in a circle that says “Spam AoEs and cleave attacks here while I try and evade.” That would be such a horrific change to that ability…

So you’re saying the heal, the extra 5 seconds of stealth, all of the bonuses that can be traited into being in stealth, and the ability to throw it down at range to potentially save an ally from being stomped across a fight wouldn’t at all be worth it because the only part that matters to you is the 10+ seconds of stealth you can sit in after the SR AoE wears off?

How much do you think one utility should be able to do?

The healing isn’t enough to get you through a smart player’s burst or condi spam within the shadow refuge. Ever play a thief vs a condi engi? Shadow refuge is the best thing ever for them. Just spam a bunch of aoe condis on in the refuge and then double tap shield 4 skill and knock them out anyway. Congrats, you just made SR a completely wasted utility. Necros can do the same thing with fears. Warriors can do the same thing with hammer. Guardians can do it with greatsword. Eles can do it if they time skills properly as the thief is showing down a refuge. Hell even other thieves can do it if they run scorpion wire and time the skill right. Shadow refuge isn’t a broken utility. The only thing broken here is that people see a refuge go up and just give up. Hint: Thief is still there. Even easier to find actually since he’s confined within SR unless he wants to willingly give up an stealth traits while becoming revealed. Btw, thinking that shadow refuge is some sort of amazing anti-stomp or stomping tool is just flat out wrong. The only reason that works is because the average skill of the players in this game is pretty… pretty poor. AoE CC and condi spam still work, as do cleave attacks. Shadow refuge is perfectly fine as it is.

This thread is going down that road that all these threads go. You know, the one where half of us think thieves should be nerfed with 0 compensation so they become wanna-be warriors, and the other half of us who laugh at those awful suggestions and tell you why they would be bad for the balancing of this class.

@Cog

Regarding SR:
The healing only affects you if you trait 30 in SA for it. In WvW it’s fairly viable, but SA setups are considered to be one of the most laughably bad builds in sPvP. SR is useful, and yes it can save stomps, but so can applying a blind to the stomper, which is just as easy to do as D/P with a heartseeker + BP. Or CC. I mean, hell, my ranger can prevent a stomp every 12 seconds from 1500 range away. I can make my pet go and res people while I still DPS. Does that make the ranger OP? I’ll be gosh-golly-darned if it does.
“But those are for special situations.” So? So is preserving SR to use on an ally fairly far away to attempt to prevent them from getting stomped on.

Honestly, unless you’re SA, the skill is actually rather underwhelming since it already gives an indicator as to exactly where you are to be targeted heavily for AoE’s and condi bombs.

Regarding your response:

And yes, A 30-second CD skill is a hard-counter. Signet of might is on 25 and is a hard counter to blocks by making your blocks unblockable. You use it to secure something. M/S war also has another block with a counterattack. So now you’ve avoided two stabs. If you dodge rolled, you just avoided all three. Now you can bull rush -> pommel bash -> shield bash -> hammertime and literally 100-0 the thief in one rotation. If a stab thief is doing THAT much damage to you, then you can deal just as much back while they’re stuck CC’ed. I’ve had this happen to me many times in re-tries in WvW with warriors and other classes after getting the jump on them the first time and getting off my stab. And I guarantee you that my stab numbers are way higher than 99%+ of the thieves out there (see attached screenshot of hitting level 80 guardian earleir), yet I still get wrecked when good people 1v1 with the intent on focusing on me. Why? Because counterplay is how you beat thieves. And it’s not hard. Just because you get the jump on you and get spiked hard by someone with 900 toughness doesn’t mean the given class is overpowered. Every class. I mean EVERY SINGLE CLASS has a hard counter to backstab. It’s a matter of whether or not players choose to consider roaming and thus building around surprise bursts or choose to zerg and thus do not need to which defines the success of the player. My thief has a weakness. I have zero condition cleanse. But you don’t see me complaining about conditions being OP (aside from P/D torment thief). If I get bombed and focused, I die. I run from necros and mesmers. I don’t even try most of the time. That’s just how this kind of stuff works.

And I’m referring to condi thief almost exclusively. Have you ever fought a fast one? I personally know I am capable of applying 14 torment in less than 2 seconds, lasting almost 14 seconds, every 15 seconds. They blow your cleanse by applying 8 bleeding via Sneak attack. DoT healing cleanses were designed to inhibit this kind of junk. P/D Condi thief has the highest access to torment in the game, and there is little out there which can cleanse torment, despite there being so many DoT heals. P/D shadow shot also has no casting animation and with instant teleports can allow for chaining extremely quickly. These builds have fallen into cheese category much more so, especially recently with people picking up on them, than stab thieves.

And yes, I do see it as too debilitating. Why? Because a thief will land CnD, whiff stab to an evade if the target is good, or any other form of defense (guard’s aegis, ele’s crit resistance while in earth, blind spam, etc.), and then be forced out of stealth to then do it AGAIN. Now the thief has literally burned 100% of his initiative, assuming he even lands the next CnD. Good players will already have forced the stealth effect to have expired. Now bad ones can force it off and then roll for a second CnD whiff and put the thief at 0 initiative. 0. No skill use, and depending on how dedicated to stabs they are (like myself), 0 utilities, elites, or trait activations. Dedicated stab thieves (intent on maxing stab damage) often have nothing left to use after the stab. Forcing them to sit idle for several seconds with no form of fighting back is just a terrible idea.

If anything, all this would do would be encourage more blindspam builds and the condi P/D builds with insane torment access, and kill the assassin-D/D stab style and build altogether.

Ision.3207:

Shockwave.1230:

I am always curious why ppl complain about thieves in WvW. I’d appreciate if the complaints came with addition context such, as 1v1, 5v5, zergVzerg, and any additional environmental context that’s relevant.

In general I get the feeling people are upset about 1v1 situations where their build isn’t setup for a dual and a thief’s is, so additional context would be helpful.

Also stealth doesn’t allow contesting of points unless someone is somehow exploiting a bug.

Shock, you have just summed up the entire issue. Bravo.

In essence, this, and only this, is the reason for the endless QQ about stealth/clones. The entire stealth mechanic is basically a “one-venue pony” so to speak: WvW solo or small group roaming. In all other venues the stealth mechanic is at best average, and often a poor trait-line choice.

BUT, but … you have to remember the psychology involved here. When you die to a NPC or even a WvW zerg blob, it has little impact or meaning — but when a player dies (or is frustrated by his opponent being able to easily disengage) to another real-life player – for many, especially adolescents, they take it very personal. The Rage/QQ against stealth is not new, and can be found in every single MMO that has a class that specializes in stealth. In this respect you simply have to take the QQ with a grain of salt, and ignore it mostly.

The bottom line is that some players, especially those that like to roam in WvW, believe that they have some kind of “right” not to be frustrated, and since stealth and clones do just that, many (not all) re-act like frustrated children, ie, they throw a “forum tantrum”. By the way, this is NOT true of everyone, as there are many folks that do just fine in WvW solo/small group roaming on non Thief or Mesmers classes. In fact, many of them specialize in killing thieves/mesmers. But that won’t get you anywhere in these discussions; because a 16-year old tantrum thrower that just got stomped 3 strait times trying to 1v1 a thief with his PvE build, he does not want to hear it.

The frustration can be explained empirically. Also, I wonder if you know why WvW is filled with thieves and warriors. It’s rhetorical.

DeceiverX.8361:

@Cog

Regarding SR:
The healing only affects you if you trait 30 in SA for it.
…

My thief has a weakness. I have zero condition cleanse. But you don’t see me complaining about conditions being OP (aside from P/D torment thief). If I get bombed and focused, I die. I run from necros and mesmers. I don’t even try most of the time. That’s just how this kind of stuff works.
…

And I’m referring to condi thief almost exclusively. Have you ever fought a fast one? I personally know I am capable of applying 14 torment in less than 2 seconds, lasting almost 14 seconds, every 15 seconds. They blow your cleanse by applying 8 bleeding via Sneak attack.
…

Dedicated stab thieves (intent on maxing stab damage) often have nothing left to use after the stab. Forcing them to sit idle for several seconds with no form of fighting back is just a terrible idea.

SR has a base heal, according to the Wiki, and me testing it in-game. I’m not saying it’s a large heal, but it’s still an aspect of the ability.

I don’t know what you intended to get across with your Thief’s weakness to conditions. I’m not complaining about SR because I specifically do not build to fight against it. I’m just poking it to see if it needs to be absolutely everything it is after the response to Carighan’s idea.

I’ve fought multiple Condi Thieves. The ones that do well are the ones who keep the Condi pressure medium-low, because those that spike them all at once get them all back. I bring 3 ways to deal with condis in my build because I have to. It’s a little silly to assume everyone only brings 1 cleanse, but maybe that explains why everyone always complains about conditions.

To be frank, a dedicated stab build that has a single point of failure sounds like the terrible idea. If I built solely around Life Blast, then argued balance around my ability to cast them consistently in a fight, would that be a fair approach? Maybe one-dimensional builds should be punished when their one dimension is appropriately countered, instead of having multiple outs to try try again.

I just think the stealth duration on Shadow Refuge is over the top. I was having a duel in an sPvP arena with a Thief once, and he popped Shadow Refuge on me. I was seriously starting to think that maybe that meant the duel was over before he appeared and attacked again. Doubt had time to creep into my mind that we weren’t fighting anymore, and it was an arena where we were specifically supposed to be fighting with no escape.

Also, a ranger cannot reliably stop a stomp from 1500 range. Stability counters that. Stealth will negate any stomp that is incoming with 100% effectiveness, requiring cleave/AoE. I don’t know why you can’t acknowledge how strong that is.

I should mention that I don’t see Shadow Refuge as a skill which should conceptually be a source of stealth, as in, used for the stealth.

It’s a refuge-skill, something used defensive. It happens to double as the Thief’s rezz skill btw (if you ever wondered why Thieves don’t have one, it’s because SR is so kitten good at rezzing players). It also heals and makes you invisible for the duration.

In return for removing the stacking stealth, I’d increase the radius by ~25%, healing by 25% and heal-scaling by 50% to facilitate it’s defensive use.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I just think the stealth duration on Shadow Refuge is over the top. I was having a duel in an sPvP arena with a Thief once, and he popped Shadow Refuge on me. I was seriously starting to think that maybe that meant the duel was over before he appeared and attacked again. Doubt had time to creep into my mind that we weren’t fighting anymore, and it was an arena where we were specifically supposed to be fighting with no escape.

Also, a ranger cannot reliably stop a stomp from 1500 range. Stability counters that. Stealth will negate any stomp that is incoming with 100% effectiveness, requiring cleave/AoE. I don’t know why you can’t acknowledge how strong that is.

So a thief used a utility skill that practically begs for you to bomb on top of it and your first thought was, “Oh… I guess we’re finished?” That seems rather silly haha. Expect the thief to show up again near full health for round 2. Or you could, you know, try and counterplay him while he’s giving you a very obvious area to dump aoes on him. It’s not the thief’s fault, or SR’s fault, that you began to doubt that you were still fighting the thief, it was your misunderstanding of how to fight against thieves. Remember everyone, if a thief stealths near you, he’s still near you, and he probably still wants to kill you.

I have a serious issue with you saying stealth = 100% effectiveness in stopping stomping. It’s as if half the people who play this game have never bombed a downed person before. If you see SR go up over a downed enemy, you should still know exactly where that downed player is, and if the thief is trying to res him you could get 2 for the price of 1. If you don’t have any cleaves or aoes to enable yourself to pressure enemies off of downed opponents, then i’m seriously wondering what kind of builds some of you are running.

Carighan.6758:

I should mention that I don’t see Shadow Refuge as a skill which should conceptually be a source of stealth, as in, used for the stealth.

It’s a refuge-skill, something used defensive. It happens to double as the Thief’s rezz skill btw (if you ever wondered why Thieves don’t have one, it’s because SR is so kitten good at rezzing players). It also heals and makes you invisible for the duration.

In return for removing the stacking stealth, I’d increase the radius by ~25%, healing by 25% and heal-scaling by 50% to facilitate it’s defensive use.

I don’t think you want that change to SR. SR aoe blinds when blast finishers are used on it. So now you have a huge combo field that heals the thief significantly. Even without the stealth, the thief just made any melee fight against him impossible within his refuge. If that change were made I would just throw my refuge on top of anybody trying to melee me and spam shortbow clusterbombs point blank for aoe blinds while dealing damage.

Actually please make this change, I would love to weave trick shots between clusterbombs on multiple opponents trying to melee me in a SR while blinding them and healing to full health within 2 seconds.

godz raiden.2631:

Actually please make this change, I would love to weave trick shots between clusterbombs on multiple opponents trying to melee me in a SR while blinding them and healing to full health within 2 seconds.

Uh huh. Because right now Shadow Refuge heals you to full health in 3 seconds?

godz raiden.2631:

*So a thief used a utility skill that practically begs for you to bomb on top of it and your first thought was, “Oh… I guess we’re finished?” * That seems rather silly haha. Expect the thief to show up again near full health for round 2. Or you could, you know, try and counterplay him while he’s giving you a very obvious area to dump aoes on him. It’s not the thief’s fault, or SR’s fault, that you began to doubt that you were still fighting the thief, it was your misunderstanding of how to fight against thieves. Remember everyone, if a thief stealths near you, he’s still near you, and he probably still wants to kill you.

I have a serious issue with you saying stealth = 100% effectiveness in stopping stomping. It’s as if half the people who play this game have never bombed a downed person before. If you see SR go up over a downed enemy, you should still know exactly where that downed player is, and if the thief is trying to res him you could get 2 for the price of 1. If you don’t have any cleaves or aoes to enable yourself to pressure enemies off of downed opponents, then i’m seriously wondering what kind of builds some of you are running.

That wasn’t my first thought. Please, please, please read. I ran over and used Unholy Feast, then dropped Enfeebling Blood on it. I don’t like downing Thieves in SR, because too often I’ve seen them self rez before they come out of stealth. Running in concentric circles guessing at where they down-stepped to is not my idea of fun counter-play, and even when I do that I don’t necessarily find them. I see them running away 15 seconds later. So yes, once SR was finished ticking, the Thief was gone. I just stood there looking around, watching behind obstacles to see where he would show up, and part of me truly wondered if he just ran out of the central fight area. It was an anecdote on the perception of the ability from someone fighting against it.

And my request for you to please read stands for the beginning of your second paragraph.

If someone is in the middle of stomping a downed player, and that downed player goes into stealth, the stomp fails.

Are you refuting that? I honestly don’t care that the stomper can then go into cleave mode, or drop AoEs, or whatever. None of that matters, and I even said it. I simply said that a stomp is directly and 100% countered by stealth. A stomp. That is, the act of stomping to secure a downed-state kill. Stealth makes it so the stomp does not land.

Your overreaction about Carighan’s follow-up observation really makes me question where you’re coming from. You think a 25% increase in the base heal (which is ~1500, so that goes up to ~1850 or so), and a 50% increase in the healing scaling (which is currently .9, so it goes up to 1.35) would make it so you can la-la-la around doing Cluster Bombs, and suddenly it’s OP and you want the change? At 300 healing from traits, you’d get ~2255 health over the duration of the entire Shadow Refuge with his change, by my calculation.

Why don’t you do your weave trick with it how it is now? It’s still a dark field. I thought taking away the long stealth made it useless, but suddenly it sounds like it has multiple different potential uses even without a long-duration stealth.

You guys know projectile finishers through dark fields give lifesteal, right? Pretty easy to heal up fast in a combo field that gives you healing per second, healing on your projectiles, acts as a blind field so anybody meleeing (the example I used) is blinded almost the entire time. Heck, you can equip signet of malice just make the healing even more insane.

Also, I have tried this trick before, and as the healing is now with it, it works pretty well, especially against multiple targets. Oh the healing! It’s wondrous and hilarious. Increasing the healing power in the refuge would lead to complaining somewhere along the line, I promise. Oh, what’s really fun btw, is you steal from a warrior, and use the whirl finisher for even leeching bolts. There’s actually a lot of neat tricks you can do with the combo field as it is, which is the real reason I don’t think nerfing the stealth on it and buffing the healing component is the right way to go.

Also Cogbyrn, just because you “don’t like downing thieves in SR” doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a utility that does what SR does. “I don’t like it” should never be justification for a change. If they rez before they come out of stealth, it’s because you didn’t hit them while they were downed enough times. Stealth or not, you can still drop aoes where you suspect they are. If you pay attention to them, it’s pretty easy to guess where they will be.

You act like I, as a thief main, don’t understand how annoying SR can make fighting a thief, even a downed one. I thought it was awful for a while, then I learned how to fight thieves more efficiently and through practice and experience found it easier and easier to locate downed theives, stealthed or otherwise.

If a thief tries to backstab me and I use an actual smart tactic and BLOCK their backstab then they should be revealed.

Why can a thief spam a super hard hitting ability like backstab on my warrior who is using shield block until it eventually lands? That requires zero skill on the thief’s part. Just spam until it lands and they have 4 seconds in stealth to spam it.

EvilSardine.9635:

If a thief tries to backstab me and I use an actual smart tactic and BLOCK their backstab then they should be revealed.

Why can a thief spam a super hard hitting ability like backstab on my warrior who is using shield block until it eventually lands? That requires zero skill on the thief’s part. Just spam until it lands and they have 4 seconds in stealth to spam it.

Thieves still have to worry about positioning behind (or beside you to a degree, which I agree is a bit silly at times) you for backstab to hit hard enough to matter. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t blocking an attack notify you that you blocked an attack? So if you see that you are blocking something that you can’t see… you can still dodge at the end of your block and completely waste the thief’s efforts. Better yet, since you’re a warrior, you can just face tank the attack as a frontstab and force him to reveal and then proceed to beat the crap out of him.

I understand Cogbyrn’s concerns since he mains a necro as far as I know. I’ve had discussions with him about thief counter play in the past, and I can at least respect him for his views because he plays a class that really has an uphill struggle against good thief players. But you’re a warrior man… I don’t mean to make this look like a personal attack but… if you’re getting 2 shot by a thief on a warrior… that’s on you bud.

I agree that a single person saying they don’t like a mechanic should undergo intense scrutiny. Why doesn’t that person like it? Are they the one employing it or fighting against it? Do other people like it/dislike it, and what are their reasons?

However, I do think perception/fun is a key element of game design, and balance extends from how the game is designed. Within the grand scheme of the game, I don’t think Shadow Refuge is unbalanced. In sPvP it has specific applications, and sitting in stealth is detrimental to your team, so it is used more for its other utility. In PvE, I don’t know of any big exploits you can use it for (since they modified Dredge especially, an even then I didn’t care because I just wanted to do the thing the proper way anyway), so whatevs.

In WvW, on the other hand, it completely kills the active pace of roaming fights. Stealth in this game, as far as I can tell from every other way it is used, is a short-duration utility to break target and re-gain the initiative in a fight. You get some other perks for being in stealth as well, but it’s always in chunks of ~3 seconds. Which makes sense to me. Then there’s SR’s stealth duration, which doesn’t make sense to me. I know the age old “WvW isn’t balanced, won’t ever be balanced, yadda yadda” sentiment is going to arise, but I really don’t see why that also means it can’t be examined/discussed at all by many folks.

Often times I’ll be having an intense fight with a Thief, where he gets his burst in, I counter with some blinds, I get some channels off before he goes into Stealth via D/P or a CnD, he dodges a key immobilize, and there’s good, fast-paced back and forth. Then I get a Doom off, for example, and I’ll see him Shadowstep away and pop into SR. This sums up my reaction, every time:

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Confused-Jaguars-Fan.gif

I’ll run over and try to get an Enfeebling Blood off, maybe pop an Unholy Feast, if I’m fast and feeling in an advantageous position I’ll try to get a Life Transfer off, etc. But then everything stops. The SR goes down, I’m confident the Thief isn’t downed, and then it’s honestly the waiting game. If I had a Staff I could drop defensive marks and park inside them. Sometimes I’ll look for ambients to cheese my LF back up. Sometimes I’ll randomly take a swing through the air to see if it registers. But otherwise the whole pace of the fight slows to a crawl and it’s like “Ok, the Thief might not be within 5000 range, but I guess I’ll act like I’m still fighting”.

It just feels off to me. Also, you’ve introduced me to so many cool ways to utilize the field that have nothing to do with long-duration stealth. You want to know the sad part?

I’ve never seen a single person try any of that ever in all of my hours of roaming and fighting a large number of Thieves.

Doesn’t that feel like a waste of a potentially cool utility? Should it slice, AND dice? I take an entire utility slot to maybe apply a few seconds of pulsing blind on someone and hope they stay in a bit to get some chill, and with SR you can use it a number of ways, including a Stealth long enough to make someone wonder if the Thief is even still looking to fight them.

It honestly just rubs me the wrong way at a design level. I’m with Carighan in that I think it could be tailored to be a fun defensive mechanic without shutting a fight down entirely for a long duration. It really almost feels like Elite-level strength in an ability on a cooldown that’s only 10 base seconds longer than my Well of Darkness, which I’m ecstatic if it gives me even 4-5 seconds of respite. Different class, I know, but I just feel like Thieves don’t appreciate how good SR really is, or they do and crutch on it so hard as an escape mechanism that they can’t imagine living life without it.

Oh also, I don’t expect to have an easy time against everything. I know for a fact Thieves are going to be a tough fine, and I’m fine with it. Medi Guards are a tough fight as well with all of the block/blind chaining, and Power Engis are a slippery slope that I need to be ultra careful against if played well. PU Mesmers are a fight on a razor’s edge. On the flip side, Condi Engis and Eles who try to survive with Boon spam are a delicious treat. Many Condi Thieves I’ve fought as well seem to forget that I can send their own condi burst back to them. I spec to accommodate as many situations as well as I can at once, including swapping utilities around depending on what I’m fighting, and I understand that isn’t enough against some builds.

I just think SR could be more fun.

Well Cogbyrn, I read your most recent post, and I must admit you make some valid points and I also must admit, that the SR may be too strong. Does it provide too much stealth? Perhaps. The problem really is that we have to examine the thief as a whole when we examine a utility that we deem too strong. Why do almost thieves run SR? It’s for a lack of meaningful and even adequate other utilities really. While there is risk in using SR (Being knocked/feared/AoE bombed while inside of the refuge), there is also no other utility that gives thief a fighting edge like SR does, nor is there a trait that does it.

Look at all of the other utilities that thieves are able to use, and you quickly realize that thieves have some of the most worthless and useless utilities in the game. Honestly, deception skills and occasional signet are the only utilities that provide any use to the thief. Look at traps for example, only of them is any good (Shadow Trap), but shadowstep does half of what Shadow Trap does but you get to ground target where you move to while stun breaking, and then you get to cure some condis if you use it again.

I would be willing to go through more thief utilities in this discussion and explain why you never see thieves use them if you’d like, I think that could be a sort of eye opening experience for a lot of us, including any other thief players, and perhaps some devs if they read this thread.

But back to the main point of SR:

While I agree it is very strong when used at the right time by a good thief, I don’t think the current state of the thief could survive without it. You are right Cogbyrn, it is a crutch, but other classes have their “crutches” as well. How often do you fight a warrior not running the cleansing ire trait in WvW? Or healing signet for that matter? Honestly, come to think of it, I think the real issue is that a lot of classes don’t have a plethora of viable builds throughout the different game modes. Each class has one or two builds that are much more optimal than anything else they could run, leaving so many utilities and traits never touched (which is a shame).

So, while I disagree with you to a degree, I also agree with you to an extent as well! I do think SR could be more fun, and I would love for it to be! I just don’t think nerfing the stealth aspect of it at this time would be the right way to do it. Maybe if instead of stealth the refuge gave the thief protection per pulse, or some other boon or effect that made SR more of an arena in which the thief has an advantage for a short period of time. I guess I’m thinking somewhere along the lines of a ring of warding type skill. Basically, if you see a SR go down on a thief you’re fighting, you would have to make the decision to fight him while he’s inside it and while he’s momentarily much stronger than usual, or distance yourself from him and try to range him or something. There would be more visible counterplay to SR if it was something like this, and since the stealth would be gone from the utility, it would allow the thief to still use stealth skills within the SR to punish enemies who try to fight in the circle who are ignorant of the consequences. That would be much more fun to me, and it would fill a spot that is lacking for thieves, being access to defensive boons.

The discussion of this thread has side trailed.

It’s the only way Thieves can defend their idiocy – that and by insinuating that in the years this game has been out people haven’t learned to fight Thieves.

It doesn’t matter because perma stealth is useless in the “competitive” gamemode where you sit on a small circle all day. Since sPvP is the best and most popular mode in the game, what happens in WvW doesn’t matter.

TainoFuerte.8136:

The discussion of this thread has side trailed.

It’s the only way Thieves can defend their idiocy – that and by insinuating that in the years this game has been out people haven’t learned to fight Thieves.

It doesn’t matter because perma stealth is useless in the “competitive” gamemode where you sit on a small circle all day. Since sPvP is the best and most popular mode in the game, what happens in WvW doesn’t matter.

Yes, this is much better contribution to any form of discussion regarding the balance of stealth.

On the note of stealth being useless in sPvP but (I’m assuming this is your opinion) overpowered in WvW: That is not the thief player base’s fault. If there is something wrong there than it is the balance team’s fault, not us thieves. But thanks for pinning the blame on us, that makes us so much more willing to tolerate talking to people like you.

@TainoFuerte: If we’re being honest, a large array of complaints stem from ignorance, willful or otherwise. Thieves happen to have all of the most frustrating tools to play against at once (high burst from stealth, the most stealth in general, high mobility, potential evasion spam, etc.), so they receive a lot of hate. It was inevitable, and not all of it is deserved. What you see on the forums is a defense mechanic that stems from constantly being barraged by people claiming they are OP when they can’t be bothered to make a level 2 Thief for 5 minutes and watch themselves Cloak ’n Dagger to see what they are looking for.

@godz: I do know many classes are in a sorry state with regard to utility viability, and that’s a big bummer. It’s probably even more glaring when you have one utility as robust/flexible/useful kitten, then a bunch of other utilities that you put next to it and say “Why is this even an idea someone had?”. I think the years have really refined what classes need and where they need to get them, so a lot of the utilities that seem like cool toys just don’t fill the niche they need to fill.

But I digress. I actually think your idea of a pulsing Prot arena is an interesting one, and it could even provide more on-point utility for teams in sPvP. It’s an interesting thought experiment, and I appreciate you sharing. I honestly don’t know what the right answer is, and as much as I’d like to see other utilities brought up, I don’t know that a redesign like that is a very reasonable ask at this point.

And for the record, Shadow Refuge isn’t the only game mechanic I think could use some attention. Personally, I think Longbow’s F1 for Warriors was almost an oversight, or their attempt at making Longbow more desirable due to Cleansing Ire, but I think it’s over the top. Healing Signet I actually don’t have as much problem with as you might imagine, because it really isn’t that much more raw HPS than Healing Surge, and there are tiers of healing over time where Healing Surge is more healing given the time spent in combat than Healing Signet due to your ability to mitigate a burst of damage with a burst of healing as opposed to just waiting it out. I also ran Healing Signet a bit when it was first changed and I played Warrior, and it was actually really irritating to use in larger-scale fights, as I found I’d have to back up for a longer duration if I accidentally took too much damage at once.

Anyway, changing SR right now might be over the top against Thieves, which I don’t want. However, I DO believe that if SR was changed away from a long duration stealth, good Thieves would adapt and still do very, very well. Like if they took away my ability to have Spectral Armor active while in Death Shroud, I’d feel that sinking feeling of “hmmm, my survivability”, but it’s just a matter of getting used to it and getting back in the game.

But again, if SR never changes, which I have a suspicion it won’t for at least a long time, if ever, I’ll still be roaming on my Necro and dealing with it.

I wouldn’t mind SR being changed to pulsing every second for 5 seconds, providing 1 second stealth and about 400~ healing per pulse. What I’d want in exchange though, with the plenty of counterplays refuge already has in mind, is that you don’t get revealed the instant you get knocked out of it.

Maybe add some condition removal to allies to further stimulate it’s defensive use for yourself and other players. It’ll surely be less frustrating to deal with than a 16 second stealth.

Welp, since my post was regarding the topic of revealed on whiffed attacks, and I sincerely stand by it. One-dimensional builds are indeed one-dimensional, and already in many cases have their counters. My build has tons of problems, and tons of hard counters (especially necros as a whole class). The thing is, though, is that I’m okay with these and have subsequently just learned to pick my fights and study my enemies better. I can’t win a fight if my enemy is prepared for me. I don’t think this deserves to be punishable seeing as the punishment of the enemy being unprepared already exists. I have to strike when a windows opens, not just when I want to, and I think you’re overlooking that by just assuming I can pick fights with whomever, whenever. That’s the curse of one-dimensional builds, and one-dimensional builds which don’t have such problems then indeed do need to be toned down. Revealed on a whiff, however, punishes more than just the intended audience is what I was trying to say, and therefore I disagree with the notion since it just breaks something fair in order to fix something some people deem annoying or “difficult” to counterplay.

With the condi thief thing, yes, non-burst application is the best way to play. My point is that the application potential is still absurd. A condi thief can maintain 2-4 stacks of torment constantly, force you to blow your cleanses, and then pop in and apply 10 more. The potential for such application is what makes it truthfully deadly, as ultimately the fights would take too long, otherwise. Consequently, you may have a lot of condi cleanse, however simply, some classes just lack that kind of cleansing. The thief only has two utilities which can remove conditions, one of which only removes one, and the other being on a 50 second cooldown (SA removal aside). That’s another particular reason why so many players run SR and permasteath: It’s effectively the only effective mechanism thieves have to remove conditions. Thus, generally speaking, healing skills offset the damage taken from regular-damage classes. Why do the hybrid heals, initially designed to heal and remove DoT effects, not remove torment? It’s just ANet’s neglect to update the heals and was an excuse for people to spend skill points on antitoxin spray. With so much torment application, I see it as almost necessary to have the DoT-cleanse heals also remove torment, too, seeing as it’s in many regards, the condition with the highest DoT.

The SR discussion has grown and I concur with most of what’s been said. The skill is good, and yes, it IS a good skill – to the point where yes, it IS a little too powerful – however to demand it be totally nerfed is simply over the top and unfair as godz said.

I really like the prospect of changing revealed the most, in that I believe the revealed timer should be a 1:1 ratio to the time spent in stealth with a minimum duration of 2-3 seconds (undecided). While it doesn’t inherently reduce the effectiveness of resetting a fight via SR, what it does do is prevent a thief from running meta blind leap permastealth builds to keep resetting the fight and gaining the benefits from all of those stealth effects constantly. Even these, I would like to see changed, as stealth and blindness spam thieves are really the kings of frustration to fight against and offer a lot less risk in fights than non-blindspam variants. I’d also like to see blind’s timers reduced, for it’s an extremely powerful effect that should be more active than passive.

SR and the signets are good, scorpion wire situational, which is fine for swapping when sieging keeps and whatnot as OOC’ing can be easy and dragging people off walls is great, but there’s little else beyond these. Either the cooldowns feel too high or the actual abilities are too underwhelming. Consequently, the synergy a thief has with stealth and the very limited viability there is to signet builds (they only work if you’re running signet burst) puts the rest in bad-tier, and even with signet burst, these are only really useful for the might stacking, meaning you don’t actually really have utilities as much as you have on-demand might stacks every so often which if you’re still somehow alive and in combat when they expire, you get a nifty bonus of sorts.

EvilSardine.9635:

If a thief tries to backstab me and I use an actual smart tactic and BLOCK their backstab then they should be revealed.

Why can a thief spam a super hard hitting ability like backstab on my warrior who is using shield block until it eventually lands? That requires zero skill on the thief’s part. Just spam until it lands and they have 4 seconds in stealth to spam it.

If they did this change, I would never think stealth is an annoying thief ability lol. It would make fighting and playing thief more fun. In fact, if they would make thief attacks cause them to appear when blinded or blocked and attacked, I would be even happy to see revealed be reduced to 3 sec instead of 4.

Perma Stealth is true. I can attest to that because i’ve never seen a thief, ever.

@Cogbyrn: I agree that it’s pretty bad from a broad perspective when you see that one utility shines so much brighter than everything else in a profession’s kit, but unfortunately, after nerfs in just about every balance patch to date, that’s what the thief has been dumbed down to. This of course, like you said, applies to other classes as well. I especially like your example of Warrior Longbow F1.

I stand by my belief that if SR was simply nerfed without other utilities or skills seeing compensation in some form, then the thief would be left in a pretty poor state. You’re right, good thieves will adapt, but it would remain to be seen if that adapting would actually be enough to compete with other classes that are already more viable in most settings than the thief. I agree it would be a large and time consuming task to look at every unused utility and trait when balancing thief, or any class for that matter, but that’s honestly (I believe) what has to be done at this point. I mean, when you have a whole set of utilities that see almost 0% use across the board (traps), or others that are only used in a super cheese build/small group builds in WvW (Venom share, the cheese build for this involves sharing venoms to your summoned thieves guild. I only call it cheese because I know some players would label it as such, personally I think it’s funny). I mean, thieves even have some utilities/traits that do more harm than good in most situations, but that isn’t a thief only problem. An example of this is the utility haste. While it’s great for speed stomping enemies, it also wastes a utility slot on something that would be more useful, and the fact that it reduces endurance regeneration and strips all current endurance on a class that revolves around active defense (evading and stealth), just blows my mind. It was such a lazy idea for a utility, and it wasn’t even a good one. You have to question the Anet dev who came up with that.

But yeah, thieves just don’t have a lot of viable builds right now, particularly in terms o their utilities. Regardless of weapon set and trait build, the utilities that thieves use remain pretty standard across the board, and that’s the real issue with balance for thief right now. Other classes have different builds that use different weapons, traits, and utilities/elites. Thieves are pigeonholed with their utilities, I think partially because most of their utilities provide almost zero party support. SR allows the thief a strong tool to help them survive tough fights, while also giving them some group utility in some situations. It’s literally their only utility that does this. Other classes have plenty of utilities that do this. Look at warrior for example: They have banners. They can fill their entire utility bar with banners if they chose, all to help their party out. Mesmers: Veil, portal, mass invis. Engineers: Elixir gun can provide some of the best support if played correctly, but they also have access to elixirs that gives boons and other benefits. Elementalist: Tons of combo fields and party healing/condi removals through traits and proper attunement swapping/use (so much so that they don’t necessarily need utilities for it). Guardians: Don’t think I have to go over this one haha. Rangers: Ummmm they have a pretty kitten waterfield (I don’t know much about ranger sorry, but I’m sure they could be in a better state of balance too). Necro: Can take conditions from party members, but can also provide tons of dark combo fields and corrupt enemy boons (which is arguably just as good as supplying your own party with boons; it levels the playing field a bit).

Thief: Shadow Refuge. A small AoE circle with pulsing stealth and some healing tossed in. And all it takes is one smart enemy landing a knockback or fear on you or one of your stealthed allies, and the entire purpose of the utility is negated. There aren’t many utilities in this game that offer up counter play, but SR is one of them (probably because it’s so strong). I mean heck, a warrior can run only stances if he so choose and be immune to damage, conditions, and have upwards of 10 seconds of stability and swiftness if he so chooses, all while running a glassy hard hitting build. The kicker: you can’t do anything about those stances other than wait them out. At least with SR you can try to knock the thief around, and then it’s up to the thief to counter play your counter play.

Oh btw, sorry if it seems like I was bashing on warriors or something in this post. I didn’t mean to, but when that class has access to a plethora of strong weapon skills, utilities, and traits, it makes them an easy target. Blame the devs, not us players who use warriors as examples.

Tim.6450:

Splatter Paw.7238:

All the while never doing damage cause revealed exists………

wrong, choking gas and caltrops don’t cause revealed.

Lol ok let’s duel. You get perma stealth, choking gas, and caltrops, and I get everything but stealth. Go!

Haste actually isn’t as badly designed as you make it appear. You don’t face the “Frenzy” damage penalty as everyone else does, and the endurance loss can be compensated for via trickery and signet of agility. I’ve actually used it on S/P and P/P signet builds before with fairly decent success. It’s certainly much better than most of the other utilities thief has.

That said, I’m not saying it’s particularly good, either, due to the dependence it has on using another utility. Reducing endurance regen is probably the only necessary part to keep if they were to buff it, for it would at least leave the thief functioning for two evades, and then if they chose to, use signet of agility for another two, especially now that shortbow evade spamming has been taken care of (which they need to fix the animation for as it now causes you to lose control of your character by jumping too far backwards and then creep forwards while being incapable of doing anything else).

EvilSardine.9635:

If a thief tries to backstab me and I use an actual smart tactic and BLOCK their backstab then they should be revealed.

Why can a thief spam a super hard hitting ability like backstab on my warrior who is using shield block until it eventually lands? That requires zero skill on the thief’s part. Just spam until it lands and they have 4 seconds in stealth to spam it.

When you block, backstab does ZERO damage to you. That is your reward for blocking. Why do you feel that you should get the added benefit of taking the thief out of stealth and putting him in revealed state? That’s like saying, “When I block a necro, I want it to take him out of DS and lich form”. Or, “When I block an ele, I want it to automatically put him in water attunement”. Or, “When I block an engineer, I want him to drop all his kits and his turrets should explode”. Sounds silly? So then why do you feel that just because you blocked, the thief should come out of stealth and be revealed?

You blocked the backstab and it did 0 damage to you. That’s it. It’s no different than blocking a Deathly Claws, which does 5k-7k damage and doesn’t take the necro out of lich form.

So you pressed the block button. Big whoop. It’s not like you had to be in a special state, go behind the person all within a 4 second window to block it. Heck, you don’t even have to be facing the person to block. You just hit the block button, and suddenly you’re almost completely immune to everything the thief can throw at you. You don’t think that’s enough?

To be perfectly honest, blocks SHOULD pull a thief out of stealth if their attack is blocked. Though I also believe that a suggestion somebody made a while back should come into play…you get ONE chance for your stealth attack during a stealth. If it fails, it turns back into the auto-attack. Meaning if you backstab and the opponent dodges it, you’ve lost your backstab for that stealth duration. You’ll have it back when you stealth again though. It makes it far more different for thieves because there’s a chance of failure now for that burst attack, and also encourages playing smart instead of “lolstealthbackstabspam”.

DeceiverX.8361:

Haste actually isn’t as badly designed as you make it appear. You don’t face the “Frenzy” damage penalty as everyone else does, and the endurance loss can be compensated for via trickery and signet of agility. I’ve actually used it on S/P and P/P signet builds before with fairly decent success. It’s certainly much better than most of the other utilities thief has.

That said, I’m not saying it’s particularly good, either, due to the dependence it has on using another utility. Reducing endurance regen is probably the only necessary part to keep if they were to buff it, for it would at least leave the thief functioning for two evades, and then if they chose to, use signet of agility for another two, especially now that shortbow evade spamming has been taken care of (which they need to fix the animation for as it now causes you to lose control of your character by jumping too far backwards and then creep forwards while being incapable of doing anything else).

You’re right, it’s not that bad of a utility, but then again, if you have to compensate for the negative impact of it through the use of other utilities and traits, then it’s kind of a reach to call it a utility, don’t you think? My real point was that haste, as a utility, provides quite a lot of negative consequences, especially when compared to just about every single other thief utility skill. Why take haste and run the risk of getting jumped immediately after you activate it and getting shut down, when you can run shadowstep and quickly relieve pressure from yourself and confuse your enemy? That all being said… I would still take haste over a trap any day haha. I think you’re judgement is pretty good though, that if they were to change this utility they should remove the endurance removal but keep the reduction in endurance regeneration. This leaves a consequence to the utility for the benefit it provides, while not making the consequences so insanely negative that it’s only useful in select few situations.

and they never win 1v1 fight.

Sadly the thief is more and more like the assassin from the PWI were they are perma stealth and op and that is what ruined the game and i hope that they not end like that all thief’s and no class diversity

I thought they fixed that thing where you could perma stealth using cloak and dagger off walls, seems not.

Anyway I agree that stealth is forgiving and offers low risk/high reward most of the time paired with Shadow Arts traitline. It’s more of an issue with D/p thieves in wvw who are actually quite easy to counter, yet it’s the one set where all skills are useful along with the blinds and access to stealth where you don’t need to land a cloak and dagger.

I know ppl will argue the init cost is a risk if you get blocked/evaded/interrupted, but there are plenty of ways to upkeep init for another leap finisher through black powder, or other utilities to stealth, evade or shadowstep away.

I am talking about wvw where a lot of builds are out of whack though, S/D that is not meta, is hard to master and not much of a problem with those less experienced with that set.

I recall it only being doable on castle doors and for some odd reason, supply stations. Other than that, I don’t recall being able to do it recently. I’ve just been assuming this is what the OP has been referring to.

RyuDragnier.9476:

To be perfectly honest, blocks SHOULD pull a thief out of stealth if their attack is blocked. Though I also believe that a suggestion somebody made a while back should come into play…you get ONE chance for your stealth attack during a stealth. If it fails, it turns back into the auto-attack. Meaning if you backstab and the opponent dodges it, you’ve lost your backstab for that stealth duration. You’ll have it back when you stealth again though. It makes it far more different for thieves because there’s a chance of failure now for that burst attack, and also encourages playing smart instead of “lolstealthbackstabspam”.

So blocks should reveal a thief? Not a bad idea actually, so long as dodging a warriors attack gets their weapon stuck in the ground, immobilizing them for 4 seconds, blocking a necro causes them to lose life force, blocking an engi’s grenade causes it to bounce back on them etc etc

MightyMicah.7451:

Tim.6450:

Splatter Paw.7238:

All the while never doing damage cause revealed exists………

wrong, choking gas and caltrops don’t cause revealed.

Lol ok let’s duel. You get perma stealth, choking gas, and caltrops, and I get everything but stealth. Go!

That link in your signature just made me laugh so hard…………. So true it’s uncanny

Shemsu.8721:

RyuDragnier.9476:

To be perfectly honest, blocks SHOULD pull a thief out of stealth if their attack is blocked. Though I also believe that a suggestion somebody made a while back should come into play…you get ONE chance for your stealth attack during a stealth. If it fails, it turns back into the auto-attack. Meaning if you backstab and the opponent dodges it, you’ve lost your backstab for that stealth duration. You’ll have it back when you stealth again though. It makes it far more different for thieves because there’s a chance of failure now for that burst attack, and also encourages playing smart instead of “lolstealthbackstabspam”.

So blocks should reveal a thief? Not a bad idea actually, so long as dodging a warriors attack gets their weapon stuck in the ground, immobilizing them for 4 seconds, blocking a necro causes them to lose life force, blocking an engi’s grenade causes it to bounce back on them etc etc

You’re overreacting, it’s not like we thieves don’t have a massive easy way to get into stealth whenever we want. If anything it gives a counter to the people who spam stealth constantly, and doesn’t effect the other thieves who use it sparingly and play smart with dodges, teleports, and evades.

I can only imagine how meditation guardians would be near impossible to defeat with a dagger mainhand thief. Good ones are incredibly hard as it is already.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Shemsu.8721:

RyuDragnier.9476:

To be perfectly honest, blocks SHOULD pull a thief out of stealth if their attack is blocked. Though I also believe that a suggestion somebody made a while back should come into play…you get ONE chance for your stealth attack during a stealth. If it fails, it turns back into the auto-attack. Meaning if you backstab and the opponent dodges it, you’ve lost your backstab for that stealth duration. You’ll have it back when you stealth again though. It makes it far more different for thieves because there’s a chance of failure now for that burst attack, and also encourages playing smart instead of “lolstealthbackstabspam”.

So blocks should reveal a thief? Not a bad idea actually, so long as dodging a warriors attack gets their weapon stuck in the ground, immobilizing them for 4 seconds, blocking a necro causes them to lose life force, blocking an engi’s grenade causes it to bounce back on them etc etc

You’re overreacting, it’s not like we thieves don’t have a massive easy way to get into stealth whenever we want. If anything it gives a counter to the people who spam stealth constantly, and doesn’t effect the other thieves who use it sparingly and play smart with dodges, teleports, and evades.

You’ve actually go it backwards. Stealth spam builds already build around the principal of revealed and simply build around being able to last long enough while revealed and to get more stealth acquisition. Ultimately, blocking and dodging attempts will be wasted before stealth/blind spamming thieves run out of stealth. All this does is more heavily counter limited-use stealth/blind thieves, which are already very fair builds to play against and have their own, often longer cooldown rotations than most other classes.