Guild Wars 2

To begin, let me say that I do not play Thief.
Any suggestions I offer will thus be necessarily vague. I am hoping to attract Thieves tired of being pigeonholed into Berserker’s stats and wanting more diversity in roles other than as a bursty, DPS roamer. At the same time, I would still like to see Thieves in the role, just with other glassy professions, like Elementalist and Mesmer, which are being pushed out of the meta right now because of Thief.

This is a thread pursuant to several other threads on the Balance forum right now, where many have already been created – and more, it seems, are being created by the day:

• Thieves driving away damage dealers
• Oh dang another Stealth thread
• Stealth Backstab no risk high reward
• Mug and CnD suggestions
• Revealed on Blocks
• Stealth Balancing

I would like to think that it is clear by now that Stealth and interactions of other classes with Stealth outside of Thief is a very underdeveloped mechanic. For some classes, Stealth can be easily countered due to AOE spam, autoattack chains, and so on. For others, it is nigh impossible. At the same time, Thief derives much of both its frontloaded damage from Stealth openers and its survivability from Stealth. The end result is that Thief is quite Stealth dependant (or, if S/x, Evade dependant), while being extremely good at shutting down other Glass cannon professions. In the mean time, tanky DPS (Bruiser) or Bunker builds have an extremely easy time against Thief.

The aim of this thread is therefore to brainstorm changes that let professions other than Thief into the DPS roamer role without obsoleting Thief, whilst also increasing Thief’s role in Bunker busting – by increasing backloaded damage, and decreasing frontloaded damage.

• To be succinct, make Stealth a Boon to increase play and counterplay with other classes than Thief.
• Give Thief a new role in Bunker busting
• At the same time, tone down Thief’s capabilities in shutting down Glass cannon roamers so that Thief can coexist with other professions in the same role

Now that the preamble is over, let’s begin. I’ll start with reposting my post from the other thread .

I’ll be digging through other threads to see if I can find people bringing up consequences of my proposed changes.

MonMalthias.4763:

The problem with Thief is that it’s a little too good against other Glass cannons, hence pushing them out of the meta (Elementalist, Mesmer), whilst being only middling or outright inferior against tougher builds like Condi-bunkers or just Bunkers in general.

• Part, but not _all of the problem can be traced back to Critical Damage. Most GC builds run little to no toughness, so getting hit by a Thief hurts. A lot. You can easily start a fight at 50% HP as a GC against a Thief, and then you’ve got small windows of opportunity to turn the fight around. Against D/P, you have to interrupt/CC the re-Stealth. Against S/D, you have to hit a clutch CC, or wait for when they try to burst, then counter.

• Outside of these windows of vulnerability; there is little opportunity for other Glass Cannons to counter-engage. Stealth remains difficult to counterplay for some classes, laughably easy for others. The solution is to build tanky DPS so you live longer to see more windows. But that leads to the original problem – other glass cannons are out-competed.

The solution is not going to be easy, but it’s going to involve the following:

• Moving some of the utility Thieves get from Stealth into other areas. Condition cleanse, Crit chance, that sort of thing.
• Making Stealth a Boon; thus giving skills with Boon Hate additional utility against Stealth. Mesmers in particular would have their matchups improved markedly by this one change.
  • Most importantly removing Stealth as a Boon should not inflict Revealed. With counterplay must come counter-counterplay – the Thief should be able to re-stealth after hitting Boon Hate. Obviously things like hitting people while Stealthed should still inflict Revealed.

• As for things like Backstab, the whole Stealth Opener thing should be revised to be just that: an Opener. Damage should not be frontloaded into Backstab. Instead, large (I’m talking 5, 10, 15 stacks) of Vulnerability should be inflicted. Snares like Cripple or Immobilise optional. (maybe through Traits)
  • Thief weapon sets should then be rebalanced to put more damage into the other skills. Overall damage output over time should be increased. Thief shouldn’t be a one-shot wonder, but something that hits harder and harder the more you can’t get them off your back.
  • This has the effect of making Thief less effective against other Glass Cannons as the window of counter-engagement has now increased. This also makes Thief more effective against Tanky DPS builds (assuming damage output over time is also increased)

Too many weapon sets rely on only 2-3 out of the 5 possible attacks because too much has been loaded into 1 skill whilst others are left weak because buffing them would make the weapon set OP.

• Underutilised skills should be reworked to provide Thief with more sustain i.e. Life Steal is an underlooked mechanic on Thief, but as a Protection/Toughness ignoring source of damage, Life Steal on Thief can be looked at as a way for Thief to counter bunkers.
• The aim is to enable Thief to stay engaged with an enemy for longer while being less dependant on, but no less assisted by, clutch Blinds/Dodges

TL:DR: The aim should be to:

• Make Thieves less time-starved, or “one shot wonders”. Thieves should be dealing damage, but it should not be all frontloaded from Stealth.
• Make Thieves less dependant on Stealth overall to deal their damage. Thieves should deal their damage just like everyone else – Revealed. They just require the tools to be able to do so like everyone else instead of using Stealth as a crutch.
• Clutch Blinds and Evades should still be an outstanding feature of the class, but must promote a skill floor like being conditional on dodging actual attacks, or actually hitting, or dealing bonus damage to target after target misses attack due to Blind.
• Squishy GCs should have their window of counter-engagement against Thieves extended, whilst Tanky DPS or Bunkers have theirs decreased i.e. through Vulnerability stacking or Toughness ignoring damage i.e. Life Steal.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Thief currently has one role on a team right now: Roamer. As a roamer, you are relegated to certain tasks. In the case of the thief, they have 3 big ones.

1) They are in charge of creating uneven numbers in a fight. As an example, with their burst potential (D/P) they can easily support home node, and the home defender, from being invaded by 2 opponents. They jump on one target, spike him down or sit on him if you’re an S/D thief (props if your home defender brought him down to 50% health), and you can easily force one of the opponents to or close to downed state. Making the fight a lot easier to deal with. The good opponents will realize that something like this is the role of the thief and will be better prepared for it (keeping their eyes peeled while pushing far, and good communication with the team). If a thief can’t land that initial burst (at least for D/P), things have a potential to go downhill real fast, for reasons I will explain later.

2) They are also relegated to guarding other team members from any hard counters they might run into. One example is necro vs engi. Necro will always win against an engie if the necro knows what they are doing. A thief can show up, however, and ruin their day to save the life of the engie. Another example is another thief: i.e. thief vs. thief. One of the best ways of stopping a thief from forcing uneven numbers is to send your own thief at him.

3) They also decap far node quickly. This is the key factor to matches in order to generate a snowballing effect. You can’t just sit on two nodes and hope to win in this game – it’s just not possible. You could get 19 kills in the game and hold two nodes, and the match will still be a pretty close game by maybe 50 to 100 pts. This also can be very risky, however as you don’t want your team to die on mid because of your antics at far node – more so if your journey to far node is impeded by a home defender because you will be wasting your time fighting that thing. Regardless, smart quick decapping (i’m not even talking about full capping here) is critical to establishing a solid lead over the other team.

The biggest drawbacks to thieves are their lack of sustain (less so for S/P or S/D) and lack of being able to actually contest points because of stealth (only for the case of D/P, but S/D and S/P aren’t a class to just sit on a node like warrior). Contrary to popular belief, thieves are pretty terrible in 1v1’ing things. Many matches are lost in soloque because a thief thinks its their role to solo push far all match, only to ether sit on his kitten doing nothing because he is constantly disengaging, or dieing on node trying to contest it. If a thief blows all his utility skills (shadow refuge being the critical one) and you’re still in control of the fight, then you almost guaranteed your win. Thieves have absolutely no sustain (to a lesser extent regarding S/D and S/P). So much so that there are certain matchups that they will, or rather should, not touch without some type of team support (1 other guy will do, most of the time) simply because it’s ether just too risky or you’ll be serving your team better doing something else. So Thieves, as other classes designed for burstyness like mesmers or eles, are not really OP. Thieves are just simply outshining all other burst classes right now as they have the best mobility and a bit better survivability than the other two. Burst damage is pretty much equal across all boards.

As it stands, the only reason you really want to take mesmer is for portal. snip for length But access to portal is the only reason why you would want to bring mesmer.

The reason why mesmer has a harder time is more likely because the overall meta has hit them harder than the thief class. Their build options are pretty limited, if they wish to spec for providing the most for the team, in comparison to thieves probably because they are forced to bring certain skills in order to just survive. For example, you can’t really run anything but Mass Invis on a mesmer because you need lyssa runes and the shortest cooldown (90 secs) is mass invis. Condi nukes arn’t the only problem, they also don’t have as easy of a time dealing with things like warriors or S/D thieves. In short, mesmers have to yell “help me!” more than a thief does.

Eles are just in a terrible spot altogether right now because anything can deal with an ele very easily, though originally you would take them because of the added team support that they offered. AoE boons and heals in their hay-day were very valuable to the team. Now we have spirit rangers who heal for 420 each second.

I like the general approach you have going on. Provided it’s done right, this kind of diversification would be great. It’s just a shame that I doubt any of it would ever become reality.

• I feel that Chicago Jack’s post is important because it summarises why Thief is outcompeting Mesmer and Elementalist
• At the same time, it is clear that Thief has few other roles to fill. Arenanet’s philosophy of “play how you want” as seemingly fallen to the wayside.
• Certainly, Mesmer and Elementalist can be brought up to compete with Thief, but I feel that this is a dangerous precedent that could lead to power creep. As an Elementalist, I feel that the class is alright as it is, it’s just that trait lines outside of Water need some condition management, some utility CDs could be lower, but overall without Thieves being so dominant in the matchup, Elementalist could have a role. Same for Mesmer.

Now, as for making Stealth a Boon:

• This would change the Thief vs Mesmer matchup significantly. Mesmer has many Boon rips, and Thieves do not frequently run with many boons, so it is very likely that Thief becomes visible if Mesmer can land its rips.

• Making Stealth a Boon would also have a lot of flow-on effects with Boon Hate skills and utilities on other classes. In particular, HGH Engineer with Acidic Elixirs and/or Throw Mine and Well Necromancer.

• Other professions like Elementalist would also have to receive some form of Boon Hate that fits into a roaming DPS build.

• The point is to make interactions of other classes with Stealth a lot more accessible; thus, by making Stealth a Boon, more skills can interact with Stealth without introducing a Hard Counter that inflicts Revealed like Sic’em for Ranger. At the same time, Boons would also have more interaction rather than simply playing around them as many classes have to do so right now.

• Obviously, Thief dependance on Stealth for both survivability and damage should have to be decreased as a result in the face of more direct counterplay against Stealth.

• By making Thieves more visible, backloaded damage and survivability have to be increased while retaining the flavour of Thief’s clutch Blinds and Evades.

• With increased backloaded damage, Thieves are more viable against Bunkers when their initial burst cannot delete a target. This gives them a new, no less vital role.

Unforeseen, well, now seen consequences

This is a great example of something that was not immediately apparent to me when thinking up this idea:

Sarrs.4831:

MonMalthias.4763:

Anyway, my idea of making Stealth a Boon seemed to be well received, but I don’t play a Thief myself, so I’ll make a new thread (amongst a million others calling for nerfs to Stealth) and hopefully there will be some Thieves that are sick of being pigeonholed into Berserker’s amulet and 1 role (DPS Roaming) to fully flesh out some buffs to Thief that would make it more of a bunker buster and less potent against other glass cannons.

One thing that I’d be worried about would be Signet of Inspiration becoming a pseudo-Mass Invis, but that’s really a minor concern. I don’t think SoI is particularly popular in the meta at the moment, anyway.

Making Stealth a Boon is a paradigm changing alteration that has many flow-on effects – Signet of Inspiration being one of them. Boon Corruption also, has unforeseen consequences. Questions that would have to be asked (and possible answers) follow:

• In the case of Skills, Traits and Utilities that share Boons, would Stealth be shared along with them?
  • Answer: I think in this case, yes. Care should be taken however, to only share the last application of Stealth, rather than the total current duration. This is in order to prevent Stealth stacking through Blast Finishers getting double duration when shared. By sharing only the last application – and most applications of Stealth do not exceed 3-5 seconds – this makes a clutch Boon Share play an important role in setting up spikes and denying Stomps, whilst not being over powered.

• In the event of Boon Corruption, does Stealth become corrupted to Revealed?
  • Answer: Making Stealth become Corrupted to Revealed would make Well of Corruption and Corrupt boon a hard counter to Thief Stealth (and other Stealth sources). I myself don’t like hard counters, so I believe Stealth should be the exception in this case. Instead, Stealth becomes Corrupted to 5 stacks of Vulnerability such that Thief (or others) have the opportunity to Re-stealth. The Vulnerability ensures that any incoming AOE to the area now that the Thief’s position has been compromised will be very deadly. Alternatively, Weakness could be applied, to prevent Thief from being able to re-engage until Weakness has been cleansed.

Auesis.7301:

I like the general approach you have going on. Provided it’s done right, this kind of diversification would be great. It’s just a shame that I doubt any of it would ever become reality.

One can always hope.

Introducing new roles to Thief

Right now, there is only one god that Thieves worship, and its name is Damage. Damage from Stealth, Damage after an Evade chain, Damage while Evading, Damage damage damage. This is not to say that Thieves shouldn’t deal damage, merely that damage should not be the only thing Thieves can do.

Thieves are very good at blowing up squishy Glass cannons. The window for counter-engagement for glass cannons against a Thief playing, say, D/x is to watch for the Stealth, anticipate when the Back Stab is coming, then counter-engage. Or, if the BS has gone through, then it is by preventing the re-stealth. Against S/x, it is a matter of trying to survive until the Thief switches from harassing to trying to burst, then countering with your own burst. In both scenarios, the Glass cannon has to play perfectly. If a window is missed, it is death for the defending glass cannon.

Conversely, for tanky DPS and Bunkers, Thief needs a 2v1 to be able to do anything at all. Bursting into Aegis or Protection means that Thief must run away or face death. Thief’s role in teamfights is to stay at the periphery until a low target of opportunity presents itself, then go in for the cleanup. Yet Thief should also be able to be built in such a way as to participate throughout the entire fight, applying escalating pressure to Bunkers that culminate in a Down.

As a non-Thief, I have little idea as to how this can be accomplished. So: how would the community achieve this? Just putting it out there.

That’s a reaaaaly long winded way to say you got ganked and are upset.

Making stealth a boon would only make the issue of theives perma-stealthing worse. Most classes cant boon-rip, and even those that can its not exactly easy to land such skill on someone who you cant see, and even if you do it might no even remove stealth, and even if it does, these skills (like well of corruption or null field) are on long CDs.

Then on the flip side you can have thieves who can run +50-100% boon duration and suddenly they can EASILY be perma-stealth. PU mesmers would also become somewhat rediculous since mesmers aleady often run with high boon duration.

I read most of it and I’m wondering what the point of this thread is besides trying to get your own bad idea across.

Thieves are fine as they are now and in truth are UP compared to the rest of the classes in this game. I play just about every class (not a thief yet) and I have YET to run into problems vs thieves in ALL aspects of the game.

sPvP, WvW, PvE, etc. no problems w/ thieves…..scratch that I have a problem w/ them in PvE in that they take up a slot that could be used for a good class.

The best part about your argument is that you are using a sPvP argument to justify your WvW argument. Sorry but that’s not going to fly w/ anyone who is semi intelligent. Everyone knows Evasion thief builds >>> stealth builds

In fact there is a significant reason Anet targeted evasion builds more so than stealth builds in the Dec patch. Don’t buy into the propaganda that these pro thieves spout because the 3 spam builds, as I like to call em, are significantly more powerful than the stealth builds.

I believe you need to play a thief for a significant time in all game modes then reevaluate your suggestion.

a bit offtopic, when the game was released anet said the stealth gets weaker when the guy is damaged. What happened to that? It doesn’t really get weaker by dmg does it?

Paulie.6215:

That’s a reaaaaly long winded way to say you got ganked and are upset.

No, not really. As an Engineer on most builds I have pretty good matchups against Thief. Offhand Shield shuts down Thief, Bomb/Nade laughs at Thief. The only build that is weak to Thief is decap or bunker Engineer, which I don’t play.

As an Elementalist, it’s pretty kitten difficult. I don’t have autoattack chains to progress to tell me that I’m hitting the Stealthed thief, no Blocks, no Aegis. Arcane Shield is a really bad skill against Thief, before you bring that up, because it presumes that I know the precise moment a Thief will Backstab. If the Thief re-stealths, I’m dead. Against S/x Thief, the only good matchup I have is playing Scepter/X, because it’s the only set fast enough to burst out the Thief before the evade chain begins.

In terms of WvW arguments justifying an SPVP argument, I don’t see where that’s coming from. I don’t mind Stealth based Thieves in WvW as the inflated stats let me survive long enough to counterpressure.

My point is that Thief far outcompetes other DPS roamers, and that outside of Stealth and Evade spam, Thieves don’t have much else going for them. They are extremely time-starved and front loaded. I have yet to see a Thief perform well on any other stats bar Berserker or on any other role bar DPS roamer.

Surely some build diversity could not go amiss?

You will also note that I do not intend for Thief to be nerfed in such a way that it is simply replaced by the Elementalist and Mesmer that it replaced; merely for all 3 to be possible, viable options with their own strengths and weaknesses.

MonMalthias.4763:

• In the event of Boon Corruption, does Stealth become corrupted to Revealed?
  • Answer: Making Stealth become Corrupted to Revealed would make Well of Corruption and Corrupt boon a hard counter to Thief Stealth (and other Stealth sources). I myself don’t like hard counters, so I believe Stealth should be the exception in this case. Instead, Stealth becomes Corrupted to 5 stacks of Vulnerability such that Thief (or others) have the opportunity to Re-stealth. The Vulnerability ensures that any incoming AOE to the area now that the Thief’s position has been compromised will be very deadly. Alternatively, Weakness could be applied, to prevent Thief from being able to re-engage until Weakness has been cleansed.

I’m not sure whether I agree, at least on Corrupt Boon. Corrupt Boon would not be possible to practically land, as it is a purely targeted ability. For Corrupt Boon to land properly, it would need to begin casting before the thief enters stealth, and the necro would need to not be blinded. I’m not sure how strongly the well necro:thief matchup would be changed by this, either; could make it into a hard ‘ur ded’ if it lands, but I dunno what the current situation is.

Changing this would also change how mesmer:necro matchups play out.

Cufufalating.8479:

]Then on the flip side you can have thieves who can run +50-100% boon duration and suddenly they can EASILY be perma-stealth. PU mesmers would also become somewhat rediculous since mesmers aleady often run with high boon duration.

Pretty simple solutions for these;
For Thieves, remove Meld with Shadows, and maybe move Boon Duration up into Shadow Arts
For Mesmers, remove the Stealth duration portion of Prismatic Understanding

I see some remaining issues to sort with a stealth boon, though I like the idea overall:

• What is the inverse? Is Revealed a condition (which can then be cleansed)? Important for corrupt boons and necromancers in general, and really, only Revealed <→ Stealthed would make sense. This also means that Necro Wells can turn Revealed into Stealth, an interesting idea.
• Would Stealth be a boon which random boon systems such as Mesmer SoI, Sigil of Luck or Lyssa heal can give you? Would all-boon effects like Lyssa or the Guardian ability include it?
• With boon duration affecting it and condition duration affecting revealed, will the +40% / -40% food finally be nerfed to be on-par with other 100-stat foods?
• Mesmers can spread boons via SoI. Boons can stack to 5x their base duration. To not artificially add complexity for no gain in depth, Stealth would need to comply with these mechanics. This means a group of Mesmers can stack each other to 30s stealth easily. They can also spread this to a raid, at least partially.

All solvable problems, but important to work on.
I like the general idea tbh, it makes things more easily understood for newcomers, too. Boons, and conditions. That’s it.

Cufufalating.8479:

Making stealth a boon would only make the issue of theives perma-stealthing worse. Most classes cant boon-rip, and even those that can its not exactly easy to land such skill on someone who you cant see, and even if you do it might no even remove stealth, and even if it does, these skills (like well of corruption or null field) are on long CDs.

Then on the flip side you can have thieves who can run +50-100% boon duration and suddenly they can EASILY be perma-stealth. PU mesmers would also become somewhat rediculous since mesmers aleady often run with high boon duration.

The point is to introduce more interaction of Stealth with other skills without being a hard counter to Stealth like Sic’em inflicting Revealed. Boon Hate is a concept that should also be introduced to more classes, to be sure.

As for Boon Duration affecting Stealth, that’s an interesting point you bring up and it’s certainly another unforeseen consequence. With Boon Duration being tied to Acrobatics it might not be too bad. Such a problem might not be resolvable without introducing a maximum number of times Stealth can be stacked. That said, “perma stealth” Thieves deal no damage. As for PU Mesmers, the issue has always been that they could remain in stealth while attacking with Phantasms. Making Phantasm attacks negate (not Reveal) Stealth on the Mesmer would also ensure that Perma Stealth Mesmers deal no damage.

I mean, it’s either this, or introduce more skills like Sic’em that strip Stealth (Inflicting Revealed optional) directly. I think making Stealth a Boon would allow more latitude when designing skills without introducing more hard counters to Stealth in the game; whilst letting players defend actively by burning cooldowns instead of dodging pre-emptively or spamming AOE in the general area. Play, counter-play, counter-counter play.

Carighan.6758:

I see some remaining issues to sort with a stealth boon, though I like the idea overall:

• What is the inverse? Is Revealed a condition (which can then be cleansed)? Important for corrupt boons and necromancers in general, and really, only Revealed <-> Stealthed would make sense. This also means that Necro Wells can turn Revealed into Stealth, an interesting idea.

I’d love for Necro Wells to be able to turn Revealed into Stealth. It would give the Necro+Thief duo an entirely new dynamic to play around, or Necro+Stealth Mesmer.

As for Revealed being a condition that can then be cleansed, absolutely. Thief upon being Revealed should be able to burn a Condition cleansing cooldown to be able to Re-stealth. Play, counterplay, counter-counter play. I think overall though, Thief needs to have some of its utility shifted from Stealth into other areas, like Condition Transfer or Lifesteal providing some additional sustain against Condi-tanks. Thief should be able to Bunker-bust just like Mesmer or Condi Engi or Warrior (Although Warrior does everything right now, so maybe that’s a bad example)

Carighan.6758:

• Would Stealth be a boon which random boon systems such as Mesmer SoI, Sigil of Luck or Lyssa heal can give you? Would all-boon effects like Lyssa or the Guardian ability include it?

I think in this case Signet of Inspiration should not include Stealth as part of its random Boons table, nor should Lyssa Runes (which are already extremely strong). SoI in particular would be too random to be reliable and needlessly complicate Boon Sharing Mesmer. Guardian shouldn’t get Stealth, for sure.

That said, Boon sharing effects should include Stealth as part of the table. However, care should be taken to only take the last applied duration of Stealth to be shared to prevent “doubling up” on Stealth Duration (i.e. 6 Blast finishers into Smoke Field, Signet of Inspiration → 18 seconds x 2 → 36(!!!) seconds of Stealth). Taking the last applied duration only when most Stealthing effects only have a duration ranging from 3 to 6 seconds would limit any additional duration gained to only an extra 3-6 seconds – hardly significant.

Carighan.6758:

• With boon duration affecting it and condition duration affecting revealed, will the +40% / -40% food finally be nerfed to be on-par with other 100-stat foods?

This was brought up by someone else in the thread. I think in this case the solution would be to introduce EITHER a maximum duration Stealth may be increased by Boon Duration by coding in an exception to the Boon Duration calculations; OR by limiting the maximum number of stacks of Stealth that may be applied before the duration can then only be increased by Boon Duration.

Carighan.6758:

• Mesmers can spread boons via SoI. Boons can stack to 5x their base duration. To not artificially add complexity for no gain in depth, Stealth would need to comply with these mechanics. This means a group of Mesmers can stack each other to 30s stealth easily. They can also spread this to a raid, at least partially.

All solvable problems, but important to work on.
I like the general idea tbh, it makes things more easily understood for newcomers, too. Boons, and conditions. That’s it.

I answered this before. In this case, an exception would have to be coded for Boon sharing effects such that only the last applied duration “tick” is shared.

Stealth as a Boon would make mesmers hard counter stealth with nullfield and force even more S/P in spvp, and thanks to the copying of Boons mesmers have a thief mesmer team could get insane uptimes of stealth, have fun finding the tief mesmer team in sm castle….
I do not think you want that.

Reveald being a cleansable condition is not a good idea because of chainable stealth combos you would get even more of open from stealth and repeat combos than now.

Black Powder>HS>BS>cleanse>repeat or CnD>BS>cleanse>repeat (imagine a guardian doing the cleanse for you…)

Sensible ideas MonMalthias. +1.

I like the general idea it’d make stealth a bit more readily available, and quite a lot more strategic as both stealth but also it’s negation could be countered in various ways.
It’d also be interesting to see what this does to Mesmers (me being one), and to Veil and Mass Invis in particular.

MonMalthias.4763:

Paulie.6215:

That’s a reaaaaly long winded way to say you got ganked and are upset.

Against S/x Thief, the only good matchup I have is playing Scepter/X, because it’s the only set fast enough to burst out the Thief before the evade chain begins.

Stopped reading right there

I really like that idea.

• Stealth is a boon, which gets corrupted to Revealed
• Revealed is a condition, which gets converted to Stealth
• Both don’t stack, their max stack limit is 1.

pmnt.4067:

I really like that idea.

• Stealth is a boon, which gets corrupted to Revealed
• Revealed is a condition, which gets converted to Stealth
• Both don’t stack, their max stack limit is 1.

I would be very careful about converting Revealed to Stealth, for Well of Power in particular.

Null Field.

Arganthium.5638:

Null Field.

Precisely. Mesmers taking Null Field will be able to un-Stealth Stealthed enemies (but not Reveal them). The Stealthed opponent can then choose to disengage to try to re-Stealth OR choose to engage now without having to worry about being unable to disengage with Stealth later on. Play, counter-play, counter-counterplay.

Azukas.1426:

MonMalthias.4763:

Paulie.6215:

That’s a reaaaaly long winded way to say you got ganked and are upset.

Against S/x Thief, the only good matchup I have is playing Scepter/X, because it’s the only set fast enough to burst out the Thief before the evade chain begins.

Stopped reading right there

Maybe I’m just bad at D/D Elementalist, but I swear that the only times I’ve had victories against Sword Thieves have been when they’ve tried to move in for the attack, I land a nice Updraft or Earthquake, and then proceed to delete them from the face of Tyria with Scepter Fresh Air Burst. Am I supposed to approach the fight differently then? Because according to you I should.