Guild Wars 2

I’ve never seen a ‘stealth counter’ that I couldn’t easily find a workaround for as a thief based on cursory experience playing it. The fact that these ‘counters’ get results simply proves that thief promotes unskilled play.

Coldtart.4785:

I’ve never seen a ‘stealth counter’ that I couldn’t easily find a workaround for as a thief based on cursory experience playing it. The fact that these ‘counters’ get results simply proves that thief promotes unskilled play.

so does every other class…

Cynz.9437:

Aza.2105:

SoulSin.5682:

Kravick.4906:

I swear, its like this in every MMO with this class archetype. If they can’t kill everything with impunity and get away with it scott free, then its unbalanced and everyone needs to be nerfed or their class needs to be buffed. Classes like this have always promoted unintelligent game play.

More like every MMo with this class. People never learn how to counter it.

Because there isn’t one. Spam aoe and hope that the character in stealth is dumb enough to sit in the aoe isn’t a counter.

There is plenty of counters to stealth. The issue is not with stealth mechanics, the issue is with pve spoiling players so they get used to fight NPC toe to toe and mash their 1,2,3,4,5 and see target drop so they expect the same from fight vs thief, except stealth requires you to actually use some brain and predict what thief will do next or where he would go. Most people are also too lazy to even bother learning how to do it.

This doesn’t even make sense, the game is designed around watching the animations of your target and then making a choice what to do next. Stealth negates that entirely. When a target is stealthed you do not know what they are going to do. Predicting and guessing is very different than actually knowing by watching the character.

A character in stealth is at a complete advantage when it comes to this, they can see what you are doing and going to do, but you can not see them. It really has nothing to do with pve, that is just a very poor excuse to try to downplay valid posts about the stealth mechanics.

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Aza.2105:

SoulSin.5682:

Kravick.4906:

I swear, its like this in every MMO with this class archetype. If they can’t kill everything with impunity and get away with it scott free, then its unbalanced and everyone needs to be nerfed or their class needs to be buffed. Classes like this have always promoted unintelligent game play.

More like every MMo with this class. People never learn how to counter it.

Because there isn’t one. Spam aoe and hope that the character in stealth is dumb enough to sit in the aoe isn’t a counter.

There is plenty of counters to stealth. The issue is not with stealth mechanics, the issue is with pve spoiling players so they get used to fight NPC toe to toe and mash their 1,2,3,4,5 and see target drop so they expect the same from fight vs thief, except stealth requires you to actually use some brain and predict what thief will do next or where he would go. Most people are also too lazy to even bother learning how to do it.

This doesn’t even make sense, the game is designed around watching the animations of your target and then making a choice what to do next. Stealth negates that entirely. When a target is stealthed you do not know what they are going to do. Predicting and guessing is very different than actually knowing by watching the character.

A character in stealth is at a complete advantage when it comes to this, they can see what you are doing and going to do, but you can not see them. It really has nothing to do with pve, that is just a very poor excuse to try to downplay valid posts about the stealth mechanics.

Yes, you do need to watch your opponent but if you happen not to dodge attack in many cases you can just mitigate the dmg. It gets very obvious in lv 49-50 fractals where you see people getting killed a lot because they are so used to facetank and don’t dodge when they should be. I am sadly not kidding, i see warriors and guardians getting dropped a lot by very obvious things and squishy classes usually end up being the ones rezzing them.

Yes, being stealthed has it’s advantages, but stealth does come at high costs too, people keep forgetting it.

Cynz.9437:

Yes, being stealthed has it’s advantaged. but stealth does come at high costs too, people keep forgetting it.

What kind of high cost? Can you elaborate?

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Yes, being stealthed has it’s advantaged. but stealth does come at high costs too, people keep forgetting it.

What kind of high cost? Can you elaborate?

CD, initiative costs, revealed debuff, no protection, no stability, no invulnerability, no perma regen, no extra toughness, lowest HP pool in game, low healing, position requirement, lack of cleave, lack of team utility, lack of stuns and fears, lack of defensive mechanics like shelter, reflect walls etc etc.

Shockwave.1230:

I still have an open question as to how the Thief would be equally compensated for a significant straight nerf like this.

No one thinks about that when they’re QQ"ing for a nerf…
Yeah I kind want to hear what kind of compensation the thief would get in terms of survivability, should this nerf go through…
Aza, got any ideas?

Cynz.9437:

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Yes, being stealthed has it’s advantaged. but stealth does come at high costs too, people keep forgetting it.

What kind of high cost? Can you elaborate?

CD, initiative costs, revealed debuff, no protection, no stability, no invulnerability, no perma regen, no extra toughness, low HP pool, low healing, position requirement, lack of cleave, lack of team utility etc etc.

Valid points except the lack of team utility. Thieves have venoms but rarely use them. Every class has a weakness but that doesn’t negate the need for a hard counter to exist.

Using guardian for example, they are a boon oriented class. But there are counters in game such as boon strip and unblockable skills. All of which is necessary. If they didn’t exist guardian would just pop boons and face roll.

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Yes, being stealthed has it’s advantaged. but stealth does come at high costs too, people keep forgetting it.

What kind of high cost? Can you elaborate?

CD, initiative costs, revealed debuff, no protection, no stability, no invulnerability, no perma regen, no extra toughness, low HP pool, low healing, position requirement, lack of cleave, lack of team utility etc etc.

Valid points except the lack of team utility. Thieves have venoms but rarely use them. Every class has a weakness but that doesn’t negate the need for a hard counter to exist.

Using guardian for example, they are a boon oriented class. But there are counters in game such as boon strip and unblockable skills. All of which is necessary. If they didn’t exist guardian would just pop boons and face roll.

There is reason why not many thieves play venom builds, you can read up on thief forums if you are interested.

Guardians are not only about boons though, they have spells like shelter, reflect wall, stuns, knockback, high healing capacity etc.

Cynz.9437:

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Aza.2105:

Cynz.9437:

Yes, being stealthed has it’s advantaged. but stealth does come at high costs too, people keep forgetting it.

What kind of high cost? Can you elaborate?

CD, initiative costs, revealed debuff, no protection, no stability, no invulnerability, no perma regen, no extra toughness, low HP pool, low healing, position requirement, lack of cleave, lack of team utility etc etc.

Valid points except the lack of team utility. Thieves have venoms but rarely use them. Every class has a weakness but that doesn’t negate the need for a hard counter to exist.

Using guardian for example, they are a boon oriented class. But there are counters in game such as boon strip and unblockable skills. All of which is necessary. If they didn’t exist guardian would just pop boons and face roll.

There is reason why not many thieves play venom builds, you can read up on thief forums if you are interested.

Guardians are not only about boons though, they have spells like shelter, reflect wall, stuns, knockback, high healing capacity etc.

Thats why I mentioned unblockable skills. Reflect is good but it has limited value in non zerg fights. Guardian has no stuns, only one knockback (hammer #4), two if you count spirit weapon hammer. Their healing is high but at a severe cost of damage.

I like the idea of venom builds, but I feel the overall execution of them is poor. My point wasn’t if they were good or not but rather the ability to have team utility is there.

if you needed support for team… would you take a guardian or thief?

Coldtart.4785:

I’ve never seen a ‘stealth counter’ that I couldn’t easily find a workaround for as a thief based on cursory experience playing it. The fact that these ‘counters’ get results simply proves that thief promotes unskilled play.

found it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth_Disruptor_Trap

Cynz.9437:

if you needed support for team… would you take a guardian or thief?

That would depend on the group composition.

ens.9854:

found it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth_Disruptor_Trap

Yes, kneeling in place for 4 seconds to place an incredibly obvious trap will surely kill every thief that ever lived. If such a thing were to be done surely all thieves would have no choice but to uninstall.

That’s a veil-bomb counter. It stops invaders from concealing the nature of their charge with veil. No thief fears it. Even if they somehow get hit by it, it’s trivial to retreat and wait out the timer.

ens.9854:

Coldtart.4785:

I’ve never seen a ‘stealth counter’ that I couldn’t easily find a workaround for as a thief based on cursory experience playing it. The fact that these ‘counters’ get results simply proves that thief promotes unskilled play.

found it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth_Disruptor_Trap

Thats easy to counter. Shadowstep Heartseeker spam away til the debuff drops. Besides, it doesn’t exist in sPvP.

I’ve never actually have a stealth disruptor trap actually succeed in doing anything but making the thief use their amazing mobility to jump away across the map for 30 seconds.

Cynz.9437:

Pointless since thief entire survival is based on stealth. Add some other way of survival and thieves will stop going into stealth so much.

Thats the same argument i hear when people talk about Thieves spamming blind “its all we got”.
Or Thieves staggering mobility, teleporting and blinking all over the place “thats all we got to stay alive”
Or the boatload of evades. “yah, we need that to not die”

Thieves have more then just Stealth to stay alive, a lot more. And what the OP suggests isnt going to effect Stealth being used defensively, but Stealth being used offensively.

Terrahero.9358:

Thats the same argument i hear when people talk about Thieves spamming blind “its all we got”.
Or Thieves staggering mobility, teleporting and blinking all over the place “thats all we got to stay alive”
Or the boatload of evades. “yah, we need that to not die”

Thieves have more then just Stealth to stay alive, a lot more. And what the OP suggests isnt going to effect Stealth being used defensively, but Stealth being used offensively.

Question: do you even play thief? And i’m not talking here about playing just a bit, i mean took that thief to 80 and done a significant amount of the games content. If would do that you would understand why all of those tricks are necessary to even stay alive……..

Thieves have only one way to mitigate damage: not getting hit in the first place; and all those blinds (blind on stealth, offhand pistol 5# and d/p 3#), blinks (shadowstep, inifltrators arrow and sword 2#….which is already nerfed pretty badly) and evades (inbuild evade on almost any weaponset, feline grace and acces to vigor) are there for that reason.

It’s like complaining that a guardian has acces to 100% uptime protection, regen, blocks, reflects and healing or 100% vigor uptime engineers, mesmers, etc; when the entire survivability of the class is based on those things.

Pff.. just give every class the option to put a revealed debuff to target for like 10 sec (not just 4 like sic’em – it should be more ), or make the stealth as in every other game .. move speed significantly slowed while in stealth & stealth removed if getting hit / dealing damage

I don’t see other (more successful MMOs) having problem with that concept.

Sasajoe.1509:

Pff.. just give every class the option to put a revealed debuff to target for like 10 sec (not just 4 like sic’em – it should be more ), or make the stealth as in every other game .. move speed significantly slowed while in stealth & stealth removed if getting hit / dealing damage

I don’t see other (more successful MMOs) having problem with that concept.

please tell me which MMOs are those because

- stealth mehanics in other games are different, in MMOs i have played stealth was in fact permanent
- moving slow in stealth was removed in any MMOs i have played, simply because it was unfair due to positional requirement of backstab-like spells and moblity from targets

- in MMOs i have played stealth classes had way greater survivability and CC than thieves in this game, so outside of stealth they had other means to survive (including high passive evade rate, dmg immunities etc); thieves in this game might as well walk around naked since they can’t allow themself to get hit even if they build full bunker…more hard counters to stealth would just destroy the class and force people(who still would stick to class) to play perma evade build (which already got serverly nerfed).

Thieves are not suppose to stand still and take beating. Thief players are not NPC, they also should have chance to fight back and survive. Asking for ridicilous changes like this w/o any compensations just proves how little people, crying for nerf, know about the class so no wonder they want it nerfed.

I don’t see high rated players crying about stealth. They might complain about conditions, necros and what not but i have yet to see any of them complain about stealth.

Cynz.9437:

Sasajoe.1509:

Pff.. just give every class the option to put a revealed debuff to target for like 10 sec (not just 4 like sic’em – it should be more ), or make the stealth as in every other game .. move speed significantly slowed while in stealth & stealth removed if getting hit / dealing damage

I don’t see other (more successful MMOs) having problem with that concept.

please tell me which MMOs are those because

- stealth mehanics in other games are different, in MMOs i have played stealth was in fact permanent
- moving slow in stealth was removed in any MMOs i have played, simply because it was unfair due to positional requirement of backstab-like spells and moblity from targets

- in MMOs i have played stealth classes had way greater survivability and CC than thieves in this game, so outside of stealth they had other means to survive (including high passive evade rate, dmg immunities etc); thieves in this game might as well walk around naked since they can’t allow themself to get hit even if they build full bunker…more hard counters to stealth would just destroy the class and force people(who still would stick to class) to play perma evade build (which already got serverly nerfed).

Thieves are not suppose to stand still and take beating. Thief players are not NPC, they also should have chance to fight back and survive. Asking for ridicilous changes like this w/o any compensations just proves how little people, crying for nerf, know about the class so no wonder they want it nerfed.

I don’t see high rated players crying about stealth. They might complain about conditions, necros and what not but i have yet to see any of them complain about stealth.

WoW .. duh .. there you go much more successful even though old still has more players only because of better balance

Cynz.9437:

Thieves are not suppose to stand still and take beating. Thief players are not NPC, they also should have chance to fight back and survive.

I agree with most of what you said, and personally I actually have no problems with stealth. But I quote the above in wonder because I don’t actually understand it?

How does being outplayed via prediction and being revealed for a misplay = thief cannot fight back and survive? When you fail a combo you still have options to apply pressure especially if your foe is glass, although I admit a lot harder. Also even when put in awkward situations escape is still a possibility, and with proper evades and a decent amount of access to them I wouldn’t claim they are helpless or free kills, even with the proposed change.

Most of my posts in here have been about compromise and finding a balance although it can be argued it’s balanced as is, and I for one don’t want to see the class nerfed to the ground. But I would like to understand your perspective because imo I don’t think it would break the class as you seem to believe.

Sasajoe.1509:

Cynz.9437:

Sasajoe.1509:

Pff.. just give every class the option to put a revealed debuff to target for like 10 sec (not just 4 like sic’em – it should be more ), or make the stealth as in every other game .. move speed significantly slowed while in stealth & stealth removed if getting hit / dealing damage

I don’t see other (more successful MMOs) having problem with that concept.

please tell me which MMOs are those because

- stealth mehanics in other games are different, in MMOs i have played stealth was in fact permanent
- moving slow in stealth was removed in any MMOs i have played, simply because it was unfair due to positional requirement of backstab-like spells and moblity from targets

- in MMOs i have played stealth classes had way greater survivability and CC than thieves in this game, so outside of stealth they had other means to survive (including high passive evade rate, dmg immunities etc); thieves in this game might as well walk around naked since they can’t allow themself to get hit even if they build full bunker…more hard counters to stealth would just destroy the class and force people(who still would stick to class) to play perma evade build (which already got serverly nerfed).

Thieves are not suppose to stand still and take beating. Thief players are not NPC, they also should have chance to fight back and survive. Asking for ridicilous changes like this w/o any compensations just proves how little people, crying for nerf, know about the class so no wonder they want it nerfed.

I don’t see high rated players crying about stealth. They might complain about conditions, necros and what not but i have yet to see any of them complain about stealth.

WoW .. duh .. there you go much more successful even though old still has more players only because of better balance

i come from wow and balance there is crap compared to gw2 actually

it has more players because of legacy, old grafics that run on any computer, wow is addicting and has huge content

pvp community there however been getting smaller and smaller due to crap balance, i dare to say that since wrath probably half of pvp community quit wow

@Daishi: the problem is that people want flat nerfs to stealth… the issue with stealth as said many times is that it is about only mechanic together with dodge that thieves have for survival; thief entire toughness tree is based around stealth…condi removal, dmg, regen, mobility to certain extend all tied to stealth… if you add flat nerfs to stealth w/o compensation you might as well delete the class

to make comparison just to make clear how silly the proposed change is: every time any class swings their weapon around and every time attack gets blocked, misses or doesn’t hit anything, the player should lose protection, invul, regen and toughness for each strike… does it sound ridicilous? yes it does, so does the proposed change

furthermore, let’s assume anet does nerf stealth and decides to add buffs to make up for it… the problem is, they would have to buff thief survival to warrior level then… at that point you might as well play warrior though

Cynz.9437:

@Daishi: the problem is that people want flat nerfs to stealth… the issue with stealth as said many times is that it is about only mechanic together with dodge that thieves have for survival; thief entire toughness tree is based around stealth…condi removal, dmg, regen, mobility to certain extend all tied to stealth… if you add flat nerfs to stealth w/o compensation you might as well delete the class

to make comparison just to make clear how silly the proposed change is: every time any class swings their weapon around and every time attack gets blocked, misses or doesn’t hit anything, the player should lose protection, invul, regen and toughness for each strike… does it sound ridicilous? yes it does, so does the proposed change

First of all, suggested change is not a flat nerf to stealth but a situational nerf to offensive stealth mostly in the case if the stealthed attacker is spamming autoattack on a temporarily invulnerable target. Like another poster said before, this change is not going to affect defensive stealth at all.

Second, your comparison does not make any sense… an actual comparison could be for example a mesmer trying a simple burst (sword 2 + shatter), if the opponent activates his invulnerability at the right time in addition to negating all the damage the mesmer will have his high damage skill on cooldown and lost all of his clones. Another comparison could be a warrior using his burst skill and losing all of the damage and the whole adrenaline bar to a well timed blind. What you seem to fail to see is that there is no cooldown for backstab or iniative cost, the thief does not get punished for attacking an invulnerable target with a very high dps skill like all the other classes are (for other classes the high dmg ones are usually #2-#5).

Reducing current stealth duration by suggested min 0.5s duration for each attack failing to invulnerability is not in any way going to make the thief useless.. the way I see it all the skilled thieves already time their attacks by looking at the opponent before acting, they do not spam the backstab on the enemy while the invulnerability is active to not give away their position. This change would however slightly increase the skill level required for backstabbing and promote skillful play, which to me seems reasonable considering the possible over 8k backstabs.

We already lose 1+ second for using a stealth based attack that fails to apply.

Attack animation > aftercast > repositionning is what it’s called.

muscarine.5136:

We already lose 1+ second for using a stealth based attack that fails to apply. Attack animation > aftercast > repositionning is what it’s called.

Well backstab activation time is 1/4 seconds, aftercast around the same and there isn’t much repositioning happening if the thief is autoattacking with backstab and besides you can move during the attack/aftercast, even with the lowest possible stealth duration of 3 seconds which is basicly spammable it’s possible to backstab 3 times.

If this change is made after losing 0,5s to an aegis for example, you will still have at least 2 tries to backstab. If you spam backstab on a 3s invulnerability though you will get revealed before the invulnerability ends which to me seems reasonable.

Wile.5024:

muscarine.5136:

We already lose 1+ second for using a stealth based attack that fails to apply. Attack animation > aftercast > repositionning is what it’s called.

Well backstab activation time is 1/4 seconds, aftercast around the same and there isn’t much repositioning happening if the thief is autoattacking with backstab and besides you can move during the attack/aftercast, even with the lowest possible stealth duration of 3 seconds which is basicly spammable it’s possible to backstab 3 times.

If this change is made after losing 0,5s to an aegis for example, you will still have at least 2 tries to backstab. If you spam backstab on a 3s invulnerability though you will get revealed before the invulnerability ends which to me seems reasonable.

did you ever try to fight vs high ranked team as a thief? this all works fine and good as long as target stands still and doesn’t use any spells, CCs etc.

P.S. hello forum mods

The OP suggestion doesnt make sense, same with some posters here.
Make revealed state longer and call it a day. Force thieves to adjust to the higher skill floor.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The OP suggestion doesnt make sense, same with some posters here.
Make revealed state longer and call it a day. Force thieves to adjust to the higher skill floor.

Why exactly it doesn’t make sense? Please give at least some reasons for your opinion instead of just saying this.

Imo increasing revealed state even with 1 sec would have a much greater impact, and it would affect every thief regardless of their skill lvl. The idea behind this topic was to penalize the backstab spammers and make well timed blocks/invuls a bit more rewarding, not to give a flat nerf to stealth.

Wile.5024:

Stand The Wall.6987:

The OP suggestion doesnt make sense, same with some posters here.
Make revealed state longer and call it a day. Force thieves to adjust to the higher skill floor.

Why exactly it doesn’t make sense? Please give at least some reasons for your opinion instead of just saying this.

Imo increasing revealed state even with 1 sec would have a much greater impact, and it would affect every thief regardless of their skill lvl. The idea behind this topic was to penalize the backstab spammers and make well timed blocks/invuls a bit more rewarding, not to give a flat nerf to stealth.

YOU still didn’t give ANY good reasons why thief should be penalized on first place… they are already penalized by lowest survivability in game and fact that they HAVE to build almost full glass to do any kind of dmg…

playing thief is very unforgiving, if you don’t believe me, go roll a thief and play vs high ranked team; unless you possses amazing skills like Caed, Jumper and co. you won’t do jack against those teams or anyone with brain or cheese build

The problem with nerfing the offensive potential of stealth is that dagger mainhand builds heavily rely on backstab for their damage. Currently it can already be hard enough to land it against skilled players. What I’m talking about is players anticipating your backstab, moving around a lot, evading, spamming AoE around them while also using blocks/blinds. The difference between skilled and lesser skilled warriors for example is that the latter will wait around for you to exit stealth, while the former will spam his attacks, suddenly use their hammer stun or knockback, which can easily turn the momentum of the fight in their favour when you get CCed and exit stealth without having landed a backstab, while having taken a good amount of damage.

Such players will be near impossible to fight if you put instant reveal when your backstab misses/gets blocked. Not to mention that thieves can’t really do much damage at all if their backstab doesn’t land.

Cynz.9437:

Pointless since thief entire survival is based on stealth. Add some other way of survival and thieves will stop going into stealth so much.

I assume you mean in pve since in pvp thats more than enough, so in that case:
Dodge dodge (steal or use death blossom spam) dodge dodge dodge (use either signet or roll, by now your initiative is back on 14 if you used it up on death blossoms) – you were just immune to all damage for 8-11 seconds.

You can´t rework stealth without reworking the thief as a whole. The mechanic how stealth works is so stupid since it´s fire and forget. There is no depth at all to it, no nothing. In other games stealth is a tool where you have to use choose wisely when and how to use it. A clever thief can just hit, vanish, wait until your blocks, blinds etc run out, hit again, rinse, repeat. And if things turn bad for the thief, he just disappears and leaves, low risk high reward.

Cynz.9437:

YOU still didn’t give ANY good reasons why thief should be penalized on first place… they are already penalized by lowest survivability in game and fact that they HAVE to build almost full glass to do any kind of dmg…

I and other posters gave plenty of reasons why it should be penalized; every other class in the game is penalized with cooldowns, low effect of aegis/blind, stealth outlasting invuls, low cooldown of stealth skills compared to defensive skills, lack of opportunity cost, promoting skillful play… these seem like good reasons to me.

If by “survivability” you mean stuff like face tanking damage, then yes they might be the worst class at that but if that’s what you want to do with a thief, you’re doing something wrong. Defences for the thief come mostly from shadowsteps, evades, blinds and ofc stealth used defensively and there are a lot of each… I might as easily argue that it’s the class with most survivability as they can easily disengage from combat.

The way I see thief played well is when they wait for an opportunity and then strike. Especially with the zerk builds it’s supposed to be a high risk – high reward class where you jump in, deal the damage and then retreat. You’re not supposed to stay next to the enemy and spam backstab if the enemy is invulnerable, and yes you should be punished for it.

Okaishi.8320:

The problem with nerfing the offensive potential of stealth is that dagger mainhand builds heavily rely on backstab for their damage. Currently it can already be hard enough to land it against skilled players. What I’m talking about is players anticipating your backstab, moving around a lot, evading, spamming AoE around them while also using blocks/blinds. The difference between skilled and lesser skilled warriors for example is that the latter will wait around for you to exit stealth, while the former will spam his attacks, suddenly use their hammer stun or knockback, which can easily turn the momentum of the fight in their favour when you get CCed and exit stealth without having landed a backstab, while having taken a good amount of damage.

Such players will be near impossible to fight if you put instant reveal when your backstab misses/gets blocked. Not to mention that thieves can’t really do much damage at all if their backstab doesn’t land.

You make some good points on how to try to counter stealth but spamming AoE isn’t rly an option to some classes, most classes need a target to cc like that and aegis/blind don’t offer much protection. For the warrior I can think of shield stance and endure pain which you should already be waiting out before going in for the backstab. Also thieves do huge damage even without the backstab (heartseeker, clusterbomb to start with).

Imo this change would not change skilled lvl play almost at all, but help even out the situation where often less skilled players get rewarded for spamming backstab without almost any risk to the thief. And again, I never said anything about an instant reveal… All the time been talking about a minimum 0.5s reduction to current stealth duration on failing a backstab!

It doesnt make sense because no other class is penalized for using their profession mechanic, nor should they.
Increasing revealed state is the same as reducing stealth by 0.5 sec every time the thief misses/is blocked/evaded for using a stealth attack in effect. I dont mind going up against a thief being stealthed for 9+ sec if he cant do it every 3 sec. That is what makes no sense to me.
Oh well it costs a lot of initiative to do that. Uh, no. Unless you spam 2222 good thieves can remain stealthed for a big duration of the fight.

Stand The Wall.6987:

It doesnt make sense because no other class is penalized for using their profession mechanic, nor should they.
Increasing revealed state is the same as reducing stealth by 0.5 sec every time the thief misses/is blocked/evaded for using a stealth attack in effect. I dont mind going up against a thief being stealthed for 9+ sec if he cant do it every 3 sec. That is what makes no sense to me.
Oh well it costs a lot of initiative to do that. Uh, no. Unless you spam 2222 good thieves can remain stealthed for a big duration of the fight.

Stealth isn’t a thief mechanic, other classes like engi, mesmer and ranger have access to it. So its not exclusive. Thief’s class mechanic is initiative and initiative does not affect it like it would affect other classes with weapon cooldowns.

Since guardian is a boon oriented class, should boon strip and unblockable attacks be removed from the game?

Remake Stealth mechanic, then Thief will be adjusted.
(e.g. buff other thief mechanics again)

See also: Guild Wars 1 Assassin
Guild Wars 1 does not have Stealth mechanic,
Obviously Anet does not know how to make a balance Stealth mechanic.
LoL.

(Reposted from the other thread about Stealth and Stealth counters)

When I encounter thiefs and attack, they simply stealth, hit me once or twice when I can’t see them and I am down. My toons are not glass cannons ( ranger, guardian). I know AOE can help if it hits the area the thief is in. Is one solution to be geared as a glass cannon and try to one shot them first. I am quite frustrated with this mechanic and would appreciate any ideas to counter this.

Maesk.8753:

Aza.2105:

The moment Anet introduces a predator for stealth is the moment the thief population will be culled.

Maybe because that would actually destroy the class. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but a large majority of thieves sustain/utility comes from stealth. By reducing the thieves ability to stealth, you’re also reducing their access to almost everything.

Tom.8029:

How is an effective way of dealing with something not a counter to that something?

If you play rock paper scissors with someone and they keep using rock, a way to deal with that rock is to use paper. Thus paper COUNTERS rock.

Unless you mean something that automatically removes stealth. If you play Ranger, you can use “Sick ’em” to reveal them for 4 seconds. That’s really it.

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Tom.8029:

When a thief uses stealth, you have a few options:
1) Use something that protects yourself.
2) Use something that punishes the thief for hitting you.
3) Anticipate a strike while they’re in stealth and dodge.
4) Use an AoE that damages the thief and stand in it.

Although these are effective means of mitigating a thief’s frontloaded attacks, they can still not be considered specific counters against stealth since I could also use these techniques against other classes that do not utilize stealth.

And pre-emptive usage of these actions if you are aware that a thief is nearby is still playing by the thief’s rules and relies mostly on luck or on the thief’s mistake or lack of experience.

Tom.8029:

Furthermore, we’re talking about how to deal with stealth, not that it is a broken mechanic and should be fixed. There are other threads for that, go complain there.

You guys are just being extremely cynical and quite annoying honestly.
Part of this post are for all of you. I don’t feel like quoting. Marcarus, I hope I helped in some way. Good bye.

Looking over this thread it’s clear that there are entirely too many people having knee jerk reactions to stealth, whether on one side (to have more counters) or the other (react and counter). There’s a reason for this, and the reason is this:

Stealth may be fun to play with, but it is unfun to play AGAINST.

Would you not agree that your list of things to do when an opponent enters Stealth are soft counters at best, and that you yourself have acknowledged that the only “hard counter” is Ranger’s Sic’em? (Let’s talk PvX here, and presume that revealing traps are not available in S/TPVP)

Stealth is unfun to play against because:

• It puts the burden of skill on the defender (By that, I mean that whatever you do, is playing on the Thief/Mesmer/Engineer’s terms when they enter Stealth)
• For thieves in particular, Stealth openers are impossible to punish and are especially frustrating on the receiving end
• For everyone else, losing your target and then being unable to read your stealthed opponent’s animations can be devastating in a game where lots of gameplay is centred around reading animations

Note that I haven’t passed judgement on Stealth one way or another. But this thread highlights a 2 particular problems with Stealth in its current implementation:

1. Only 1 class (!!!) out of 8 has a hard counter to Stealth (Ranger Sic’ em)
2. Stealth, put simply, is annoying at best, and frustrating at worst, to fight against. (PU Mesmer and “permastealth” Thief in particular)

The answer to this would therefore be to distribute more Stealth hard counter utilities to all the classes (Including Thief). If Stealth is to be a mechanic, just as Protection, or Blocks, or Aegis, or Invulnerabilities, then more skills should interact with the mechanic outside of Thief – even if Thief is the one that derives the most utility and survivability from Stealth.

The second problem is significantly more difficult to attack.

How does one make Stealth – by definition a mechanic of obfuscation – fun to play against?

Rezzet.3614:

defensive stuns/dazes usually last 1 second whereas stealth lasts 3+ seconds

so no i wouldnt call them effective counters or counters at all when thieves can keep spamming #1 while stealthed break your defenses and still land a backstab

I’d just like to point out this post in particular that I feel highlight most player’s frustrations when fighting a Thief that uses Stealth and Stealth openers.

In my opinion Thief stealth openers are up there with the most toxic plays in game, along with Warrior Healing Signet, Necro Signet of Spite, PU Mesmer and full GC, all-in, Fresh Air S/x Elementalist – these builds all have little to no counterplay to them, and fighting them is all too often a binary question of whether one has the correct build or worse, profession or not at the time. It’s a game of rock-paper-scissors and leaves the burden of skill entirely out of the equation.

The proposals I’ve seen for introducing counterplay and actual thought to Stealth and Stealth openers so far are:

1. Making failed Backstabs reduce a 0.5-1 second of the duration of Stealth (Probably the most straightforward, puts burden of skill more on Thief, but doesn’t address the frustration of playing against Stealth openers)
2. Adding another soft counter to Stealth by making damage inflict Revealed (Favours AOE heavy classes like Staff Necro, Engineer and again, leaves certain classes out in the cold like non-Staff/GS Mesmer)
3. Making finishers in Light Fields inflict Revealed (Again, makes Guardian a Thief hard counter)
4. Making certain combos that allow Thief to enter Stealth outside of Utilities impossible (i.e. removing Leap finisher on Heartseeker OR making the damage of Heartseeker apply BEFORE Stealth so if Thief hits, it is Revealed)
5. Making Backstabs on Block or Aegis Reveal the Thief (I don’t like this because it literally turns Guardian into a Thief hard counter while leaving most other classes out in the cold)
6. Reworking the Stealth opener concept, buffing Thief survivability outside of Stealth (The most open-ended and non-constructive proposal I’ve seen, because it’s almost never followed up with concrete ideas)

The fact that so many proposals exist all along different lines is a clear indicator that Stealth is a mechanic that has been poorly implemented, and with the resurgence of Thieves in PvP (First S/D, now D/P) and the ongoing “problem” of an excess of Thief roamers in WvW, it’s a issue that needs to be looked at sooner rather than later.

Ok its not their mechanic, but most thieves rely on it like it was.
Happy?

I just think they need to add more skills that reveal thieves.

There are a few already such as Sick Em, but if each class had a method for applying this that did not impinge on their build I think it would greatly improve the mechanics of fighting thieves.

I have an awesome suggestion.
Do more champion trains and train 1 spamming. Skilled 1 spam helps against stealthed thieves a lot!
Just don’t tell anyone I told you that.

As far as which professions need the most player skill to succeed with, thief is already towards the top, probably second to eles, so I see no reason why they should be harder to play.

With that said, it would make sense to me if a thief became revealed after striking a blocking target.

Stx.4857:

As far as which professions need the most player skill to succeed with, thief is already towards the top, probably second to eles, so I see no reason why they should be harder to play.

With that said, it would make sense to me if a thief became revealed after striking a blocking target.

Whenever you see lots of flies you know there is crap nearby. Thief is the class you see in the most abundance when it comes to roaming and solo ganking. Why? Are you going to lie to yourself and say that these players purposely picked the hardest class to roam with? No, you know that would be a lie. The reality is they picked thief because its the easiest class to roam and solo gank with. That has the least amount of risk involved.

You can apply this logic to can be applied to any aspect of the game.

Aza.2105:

Stx.4857:

As far as which professions need the most player skill to succeed with, thief is already towards the top, probably second to eles, so I see no reason why they should be harder to play.

With that said, it would make sense to me if a thief became revealed after striking a blocking target.

Whenever you see lots of flies you know there is crap nearby. Thief is the class you see in the most abundance when it comes to roaming and solo ganking. Why? Are you going to lie to yourself and say that these players purposely picked the hardest class to roam with? No, you know that would be a lie. The reality is they picked thief because its the easiest class to roam and solo gank with. That has the least amount of risk involved.

You can apply this logic to can be applied to any aspect of the game.

Uh no, that’d be Warrior at this point. You only see so many solo Thieves in WvW because they have no where else to go, in most cases. Poor at zerging and have a stigma against them in PvE, roamings the only place they can somewhat stand out.

Dual.8953:

Aza.2105:

Stx.4857:

As far as which professions need the most player skill to succeed with, thief is already towards the top, probably second to eles, so I see no reason why they should be harder to play.

With that said, it would make sense to me if a thief became revealed after striking a blocking target.

Whenever you see lots of flies you know there is crap nearby. Thief is the class you see in the most abundance when it comes to roaming and solo ganking. Why? Are you going to lie to yourself and say that these players purposely picked the hardest class to roam with? No, you know that would be a lie. The reality is they picked thief because its the easiest class to roam and solo gank with. That has the least amount of risk involved.

You can apply this logic to can be applied to any aspect of the game.

Uh no, that’d be Warrior at this point. You only see so many solo Thieves in WvW because they have no where else to go, in most cases. Poor at zerging and have a stigma against them in PvE, roamings the only place they can somewhat stand out.

And maybe that’s the problem, maybe there needs to me development on non stealth builds for use in pve and zerging.

Thief still takes the cake in terms of PvP in the form of ganking squishies and going for backcaps as Stealth allows them to evade interception, while Shortbow and other Shadowsteps grant them unparalleled mobility unseen since the days of 15 second CD 1500 range RTL Elementalists.

As a class, I’d say that Thief is doing very well to keep Elementalist pushed out of the meta. Watching Blu’s shoutcasts, it’s the exception to see Ele, while Thief is part of the roster for nearly every team now for Shadow Refuge’s down state control, and for its extreme mobility.

That said, it’s probably more an issue of Ele being quite bad right now than Thief being OP. But one does have to question whether or not the complete absence of Staff Ele in high level PvP is not at least partially due to Thief (And Necro).

Anyway, back on topic. As others have said, Stealth openers are frustrating to play against. Causing Revealed when Backstabbing into a Block may well be acceptable, but I do think it still leaves classes other than Warrior, Kit Engineer and Guardian out in the cold – and those 3 have been classes that have been seeing regular play at the top level. Making Stealth openers harder against those classes isn’t going to be doing much shifting of the meta.

In my opinion, the design of Thief should be looking to de-emphasise the Stealth opener as the frontloader of damage. Instead, Backstab could be made to inflict good amounts of damage – I won’t give numbers – and also inflict a large amount of Vulnerability – say, 15-20 stacks. This has several effects:

1. Damage isn’t frontloaded so defenders don’t start off the duel down 40% HP – less
2. The Backstab mechanic could also be made to return (3-5?) Initiative on a hit, and cost 1 initiative on a miss. This punishes mindless players while rewarding players that hit their window with an extra bit of initiative. (*Optional, but something should be there to promote smart play. Feel free to come up with something better)
3. Since damage is no longer frontloaded into a Backstab, Arenanet now has latitude to buff the other weapon skills (!!! Important!!!)
4. The Vulnerability stacks would then not only allow a Thief a good damage advantage, but also Team utility in bursting down the target. On the defender’s side, getting hit with a Backstab is no longer as devastating; but you WILL die if you don’t start playing defensively and blowing your defensive cooldowns