Guild Wars 2

Aza.2105:

Cygnus.6903:

This is a thief nerf.

therefor, it should never be implemented without significantly buffing thief survivability options out of stealth. D/P and D/D would become unusable instantly otherwise.

IMO, stealth is not a problem right now.

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

Ever played warrior? this is zerker stats without any buffs or traits. With 30 in defense and dolyak singet they get 2,8k armor thats almost as much as full bunker on theif.
The theif is the SQUISHIEST profession.
Elementalist at least have access to protection and some strong healing skills.
You know what happens if a theif fail a dodge? he go splat.
there is nothing more risky than going zerk on theif.
I killed lots of theives its all about timing.
You must be one of those who dont even dodge when fighting thieves.

Aza.2105:

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

That is funny. No, thief has very little “mitigation”. Mitigation is a lessening of severity. What thief has to rely on is “Avoidance” but the difference here is that mitigation works all of the time while avoidance doesn’t. If avoidance fails, thieves suffer the full effects of the attack and must deal with it.

You take full damage in stealth and still suffer from conditions. The visual effect is what keeps you from getting hit so long as the enemy isn’t competent. Yes you can remove 1 condition every three seconds while in stealth but guess what, that’s the best we get.

Warrior can remove all conditions in 40 seconds or 3 in ~6 seconds, even get near immunity to a few. They got blocks, invulns, plenty of passive HPS, a utility that buffs vitality and toughness on top of having the highest base Health and armor the game provides. They can even take advantage of Superior Runes of the Soldier for even more mitigation.

And Warriors have been nerfed once… once. Why should every other profession be any different?

Zacchary.6183:

Aza.2105:

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

That is funny. No, thief has very little “mitigation”. Mitigation is a lessening of severity. What thief has to rely on is “Avoidance” but the difference here is that mitigation works all of the time while avoidance doesn’t. If avoidance fails, thieves suffer the full effects of the attack and must deal with it.

You take full damage in stealth and still suffer from conditions. The visual effect is what keeps you from getting hit so long as the enemy isn’t competent. Yes you can remove 1 condition every three seconds while in stealth but guess what, that’s the best we get.

Warrior can remove all conditions in 40 seconds or 3 in ~6 seconds, even get near immunity to a few. They got blocks, invulns, plenty of passive HPS, a utility that buffs vitality and toughness on top of having the highest base Health and armor the game provides. They can even take advantage of Superior Runes of the Soldier for even more mitigation.

And Warriors have been nerfed once… once. Why should every other profession be any different?

You don’t think removing yourself from vision and making yourself unable to be targeted is a lessening of severity? Stealth is a form of mitigating pressure, and therefore damage.

Are we making balance decisions based on number of times nerfed without any context? That seems like a recipe for success.

I also like your assumption that any competent player will just continually apply damage to a stealthed Thief. If anything, that implies the Thief is incompetent. I remember a Thief once Shadow Refuge’d me because I was being pressured by 5+ players. Once I was stealthed, avoiding them was easy to the point of me feeling bad. For a second or two they continue to hit me, then I turned. Then they didn’t hit me anymore.

#finesse

Thieves can mitigate damage if they so choose. They generally spec high dps then cry that they are fragile, lol.

tom.7468:

Aza.2105:

Cygnus.6903:

This is a thief nerf.

therefor, it should never be implemented without significantly buffing thief survivability options out of stealth. D/P and D/D would become unusable instantly otherwise.

IMO, stealth is not a problem right now.

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

Ever played warrior? this is zerker stats without any buffs or traits. With 30 in defense and dolyak singet they get 2,8k armor thats almost as much as full bunker on theif.
The theif is the SQUISHIEST profession.
Elementalist at least have access to protection and some strong healing skills.
You know what happens if a theif fail a dodge? he go splat.
there is nothing more risky than going zerk on theif.
I killed lots of theives its all about timing.
You must be one of those who dont even dodge when fighting thieves.

Those stats are meaningless. You do know that even with 3.6k armor you will still eat a 4.5k+ backstab right? That’s almost half of guardians base hp.

Translation: There isn’t much difference in terms of mitigation between the three different armor tiers. Also, according to you logic Elementalists have more surviability than thieves do because they have protection. Funny.

P.S

Awesome story about how you killed thieves. Everyone who tries to defend the class have these magical stories how easy it is but other people just do not know how.

Zacchary.6183:

Aza.2105:

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

That is funny. No, thief has very little “mitigation”. Mitigation is a lessening of severity. What thief has to rely on is “Avoidance” but the difference here is that mitigation works all of the time while avoidance doesn’t. If avoidance fails, thieves suffer the full effects of the attack and must deal with it.

You take full damage in stealth and still suffer from conditions. The visual effect is what keeps you from getting hit so long as the enemy isn’t competent. Yes you can remove 1 condition every three seconds while in stealth but guess what, that’s the best we get.

Warrior can remove all conditions in 40 seconds or 3 in ~6 seconds, even get near immunity to a few. They got blocks, invulns, plenty of passive HPS, a utility that buffs vitality and toughness on top of having the highest base Health and armor the game provides. They can even take advantage of Superior Runes of the Soldier for even more mitigation.

And Warriors have been nerfed once… once. Why should every other profession be any different?

This is a good post to show the results of living in denial. You try to make it entirely about a totally different class in order to prove your point why thief doesn’t have broken mechanics.

What thief stealths and just sits in the same place? Once they stealth is the enemy has to play a guessing game with the direction they might of went. Are you suggesting that players are (or should be) psychic? And that by some divine power everyone should be able to intuitively feel where the thief is while stealth?

Aza.2105:

Zacchary.6183:

Aza.2105:

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

That is funny. No, thief has very little “mitigation”. Mitigation is a lessening of severity. What thief has to rely on is “Avoidance” but the difference here is that mitigation works all of the time while avoidance doesn’t. If avoidance fails, thieves suffer the full effects of the attack and must deal with it.

You take full damage in stealth and still suffer from conditions. The visual effect is what keeps you from getting hit so long as the enemy isn’t competent. Yes you can remove 1 condition every three seconds while in stealth but guess what, that’s the best we get.

Warrior can remove all conditions in 40 seconds or 3 in ~6 seconds, even get near immunity to a few. They got blocks, invulns, plenty of passive HPS, a utility that buffs vitality and toughness on top of having the highest base Health and armor the game provides. They can even take advantage of Superior Runes of the Soldier for even more mitigation.

And Warriors have been nerfed once… once. Why should every other profession be any different?

This is a good post to show the results of living in denial. You try to make it entirely about a totally different class in order to prove your point why thief doesn’t have broken mechanics.

What thief stealths and just sits in the same place? Once they stealth is the enemy has to play a guessing game with the direction they might of went. Are you suggesting that players are (or should be) psychic? And that by some divine power everyone should be able to intuitively feel where the thief is while stealth?

Well said.

Since day 1, thief class has been and still is in denial and blaming players/classes for everything, for all faults.

Victim Playing> Thief

- Withholding wrongdoing
- Countering any wrongdoing
- Ridiculing any exposure of the truth
- Diverting the truth
- Blaming the truth for everything that goes wrong
- Accusing the truth for not knowing how to play their class
- Belittling/Humiliating truth bearers
- Name Calling: anyone who disagree with their views and ideas.
- Undermining the truth; ’it’s "L2P ’ or ‘noob’
- Refusal To Accept Responsibility
- Denial Of The Truth

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

P Fun Daddy.1208:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

It’s atleast some balance in this completely unbalanced game. I would rather take a rock paper scissors balance than what we have now.

Aza.2105:

Zacchary.6183:

Aza.2105:

This is a very misleading. You are asking for thief survivability to be buffed for compensation. But what you don’t realize is that a zerker thief has the highest survivability out of any zerker class, this includes the heavy classes like warrior and guardian as well.

The question is how can that be? Stealth and blinds. Not being hit is the best form of mitigation. If stealth was nerfed the compensation is for thief players to pick up a defensive trinket like cleric, soldier etc if they want to survive. This is what every other class has to do, why should thief be any different?

That is funny. No, thief has very little “mitigation”. Mitigation is a lessening of severity. What thief has to rely on is “Avoidance” but the difference here is that mitigation works all of the time while avoidance doesn’t. If avoidance fails, thieves suffer the full effects of the attack and must deal with it.

You take full damage in stealth and still suffer from conditions. The visual effect is what keeps you from getting hit so long as the enemy isn’t competent. Yes you can remove 1 condition every three seconds while in stealth but guess what, that’s the best we get.

Warrior can remove all conditions in 40 seconds or 3 in ~6 seconds, even get near immunity to a few. They got blocks, invulns, plenty of passive HPS, a utility that buffs vitality and toughness on top of having the highest base Health and armor the game provides. They can even take advantage of Superior Runes of the Soldier for even more mitigation.

And Warriors have been nerfed once… once. Why should every other profession be any different?

This is a good post to show the results of living in denial. You try to make it entirely about a totally different class in order to prove your point why thief doesn’t have broken mechanics.

What thief stealths and just sits in the same place? Once they stealth is the enemy has to play a guessing game with the direction they might of went. Are you suggesting that players are (or should be) psychic? And that by some divine power everyone should be able to intuitively feel where the thief is while stealth?

I think he was just trying to point out some misconceptions you brought up and provided counterpoints to them as examples.

Also I highly doubt he is in denial. His (extremely lengthy) post history shows he knows way more about thieves than what players give him credit for. In fact, alot of his more non-trolly posts about thieves got alot of thumbs so I can only assume that he knows what he is talking about.

How I would fix stealth:

• Stealth does not stack anymore. (but it can still chained by using a stealthing skill in stealth)
• Activating a skill unstealths. Not attacking, not hitting, activating. The revealed debuff is only applied after a successful attack, however.

The first one is just to prevent stealth stacking to abnormal durations via smoke fields. If you want to be stealthed for more than 3-6 seconds, time your stealthing cooldowns.

The second one is to prevent mesmers from casting phatasms in stealth or thieves from spamming backstab until it finally hits. Both get one chance to fire off one skill and if that wasn’t successful, they can still re-stealth if a CD is available. Revieled apllies only on hit and can maybe reduced to 3s again.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

It’s atleast some balance in this completely unbalanced game. I would rather take a rock paper scissors balance than what we have now.

I wouldn’t, 0/10 wouldn’t recommend.

I still think the main issue is its in-combat effectiveness

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Feedback-In-Combat-stealth/first

This is my perspective of the situation, I am a hardcore PvPer (includes WvW and SPvP). Note that I main an elementalist and have spent +1300hrs on him in SPvP and WvW. I’ve also spent 50-100 hours on every other class, but only in SPvP for the most part.

I’m going to share my personal opinion of thief, coming from the perspective of an elementalist for the most part.

Thieves can be quite tricky to deal with, due to their options for an abundant amount of stealth and/or evasive maneuvers. I’ve fought quite a few thieves which thought very highly of them selves, using a wide variety of weapons and builds. In my opinion stealth can not be pin pointed as the soul problem to the unfair advantage a thief may have over you. Things really start getting quite overwhelming when their stealth mechanic is combined with mobility.

Thieves are far too mobile IMHO for the amount of stealth they are allowed to have.
I believe the right course of action to take would be to limit the amount they can stealth by adding a longer “revealed” debuff timer, by how much? I’m not sure, it surely needs to be tested so the thief class doesn’t become trash.

Certain mobility and stealth options on thief should cost more initiative, by how much? Well that requires some testing. These skills IMO should have more initiative added or be slightly altered:

1.) Infiltrators strike (Cost 3 initiative). Allows thief to shadowstep to target and then bail by shadow returning on command. Up the initiative and compensate.

2.) Heartseeker (Cost 3 initiative). Allows thief to run off to cover quite quickly after using cloak and dagger. It also allows the thief to gain a fair amount of stealth when combining this skill with black powder. Up the initiative and compensate.

3.) Cloak and Dagger (Cost 6 initiative). I think 6 initiative is quite enough. So instead perhaps we could see the skill take an additional 1/4th of a second to cast? This way if you’re really lookin out for it, you may be able to dodge it. The skill only shows a slashing motion of the left arm, you’d really have to be looking for it.

4.) Shadow step (Utility). IMO there should be a small delay between shadow step and shadow return.

5.) Infiltrators Arrow (Cost 6 initiative). This skill is usually used to cover a lot of ground, IMO the skill should cost 8 initiative so that the skill may not be used consecutively as much. (with a pool of 15 initiative in mind)

In conclusion, If we take away some of thief’s mobility and stealth we have to give them something in return. If the thief was revamped so the opposing player had a larger window of opportunity to hit the thief before the thief could go back into stealth, I’d think its fair that the thief class was compensated by giving them something along the lines of a larger HP pool and more damage on other skills besides the few opening stealth attacks that are already really powerful.

Anet should nerf warrior before they fix anything with thief and also anti stealth shouldnt be given to warrior at this point which makes warrior even more op

At least I can kite a warrior to a degree.

Heartseekers which hit for 4-5k and are spammable with a lovely attached gap closer make it a little unfair.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Cygnus.6903:

Julie Yann.5379:

Cygnus.6903:

Have you even thought about what making bs cost 3-4 init would do to a thief that does play well? CnD, backstab, be left with 2 init for your troubles. Have fun auto attacking.

People always suggest such incredible overnerfs.

How is that different than any other class that has actual cool downs on their skills and have to auto attack while they wait for them come of CD? True that 3 or 4 might be too much, but there should be a cost to spamming your skills. At the moment ther isn’t.

it is different because the other class can use their skills without having to spend initiative.. ANY class other then thief has at least 10 skills available to them, weapon only. Whereas with this suggestion, if the thief uses cnd for instance, then backstabs, he would have two autoattacks and maybe one more low init cost skill available. The other class would still have eight.

thief has a weapon swap too, duh. But every attack other then auto and stealth attacks costs initiative.

So you’d have to invest more heavily into your weapon “cooldowns” in order to get a burst of damage + the avoidance of stealth. Failure has consequences and might make you have to use a utility in order to be safe, or maybe weapon swap to have other options available given the circumstances.

That doesn’t sound reasonable to you? Why not, exactly? Would you rather they removed Initiative, put CnD and Black Powder on 25-30 second cooldowns, and gave you the potential to use all of your weapon abilities? I dare you to say yes. I dare you to claim that spending your cooldown resource on only the best abilities you have is suboptimal to having long cooldowns on them and needing to switch weapons.

You seem to forget 2 key things about initiative.

1. its a global weapon skill resource. You swap weapons at 2 initiative, you’re still at 2.

2. Every weapon skill is aimed at being balanced if it is spammed. Only skills that don’t see this are some #3 skills (a.k.a dual wield skills). Reason I say this is their damage output/condi durations are generally longer, but look at headshot duration, body shot durations, the cripple duration on disabling shot, etc. Either the skill is laughably easy to avoid if spammed, doesn’t have any significant effect when spammed or is far too expensive to spam.

You can’t honestly think that giving thief cooldowns on their weapon skills in its current state would be at all balanced for them, you’d just thrash the class. Missing a CnD is punishing enough, as is being interrupted from a bps+Hs combo. You’re only asking for an unreasonable nerf because its different and not because its broken.

BobbyT.7192:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

It’s atleast some balance in this completely unbalanced game. I would rather take a rock paper scissors balance than what we have now.

I wouldn’t, 0/10 wouldn’t recommend.

The game is RPS already though. You bring Removal to beat Conditions. You bring Stability to counter Control. You bring Blocks/Blinds to counter Direct Damage. It’s all just a more complicated version of RPS. You can try to fill as many countermeasures into your build as you can and then use them correctly or you specialize in one thing.

Stealth is the one mechanic in the game that has hardly any direct counter. Sic ‘Em is the only skill that can directly apply Reveal on an enemy and it’s not even that good of a skill.

NinjaEd.3946:

You seem to forget 2 key things about initiative.

1. its a global weapon skill resource. You swap weapons at 2 initiative, you’re still at 2.

2. Every weapon skill is aimed at being balanced if it is spammed. Only skills that don’t see this are some #3 skills (a.k.a dual wield skills). Reason I say this is their damage output/condi durations are generally longer, but look at headshot duration, body shot durations, the cripple duration on disabling shot, etc. Either the skill is laughably easy to avoid if spammed, doesn’t have any significant effect when spammed or is far too expensive to spam.

You can’t honestly think that giving thief cooldowns on their weapon skills in its current state would be at all balanced for them, you’d just thrash the class. Missing a CnD is punishing enough, as is being interrupted from a bps+Hs combo. You’re only asking for an unreasonable nerf because its different and not because its broken.

I didn’t say Thieves should have cooldowns on their abilities, I just put it into perspective. Did you not read my post within the context of the post I responded to? It was seemingly “woe is me” about the Initiative system and how “punishing” it is. Yours has a bit of that spin as well. Are you not recognizing the power of being able to focus solely on your most powerful weapon abilities/combos?

And I disagree. Missing a CnD is not nearly punishing enough. Dodging it is more a matter of guesswork at the timing than reacting to any animation, because there basically is no animation and it’s a .5 second cast time. The “standard” for dodgeable-but-fast abilities seems to be about .75 seconds. Skull Crack for a Warrior is .5 seconds, but it has a really bright flash when it swings, and the stark visual trigger helps your reaction time. CnD is a subtle arm movement. You can also chain it with Steal, instantly putting you right next to your target to make it extra easy.

So an opponent consistently ruining your CnD is most likely more a matter of you using it at the exact same time in a fight than them actually reacting to it. You know what’s more punishing than missing a CnD? Mis-dodging a CnD. My Endurance pool absolutely cannot tolerate waste against a Thief, and often the abilities I have to dodge (CnD, Backstab, etc.) have no tell and are basically guesswork.

Oh, and if I DO successfully guess a Backstab dodge, do you know what happens? I often just get Backstabbed at the end of my dodge roll. Are you truly arguing that’s good, balanced behavior?

That aside, you miss a CnD for whatever reason and what do you do? Well, you can use a utility to disengage in some way. All you have to do is buy what, maybe 6 seconds? Tops?

Maybe condition durations are balanced in case the ability is spammed, but the ability to use something like BP+HS (which, interrupting is nearly impossible as well because BP blinds its target. More dodging guesswork.) regularly couldn’t have been part of their balance considerations. Not with Backstab doing as much damage as it does.

Then again, now that I think about it, I’m not sold that cooldowns would completely thrash the class. Re-tune some condi durations to account for the ability not being spammable anymore, and suddenly you have to think about some things. Do you want more options to go back into stealth? Then maybe you roll with D/D and D/P to give yourself an out in case you miss CnD. You still have all of your utilities that stealth, you can still start a fight with Steal + CnD to almost guarantee it landing, Backstab still has no cooldown.

To me, it sounds like you’d just have to try a little bit. I actually might give my Thief more play-time if they do something like that, though considering all of the traits/etc. that have gone into Initiative regen balance, there’s no way they will. I’m yet to be convinced that it would do anything but shine a spotlight on the Thieves who are actually competent at GW2.

i think, the problem with stealth for THIEF is that it hardly allows for effective counterplay. the fact that they have High mobility/stealth/Crazy damage is often too much on a “no recharge” class. solution? allows some type of counter play by modifying stealth itself. how? they are many ways to allow stealth to become more tactical .
1- make stealthed characters have a very slight blur while moving (as in stealthed units in Sc2). or at least some visual cues that, if a player is very careful, could pick up and use to locate the stealthed unit. while immobile, you are totally invincible.
2- maybe turn stealth into a boon, that way it could be removed by more skills.
3- make stealth to get cancelled when character takes a certain % of damage while in stealth.
or something like that…

BurrTheKing.8571:

BobbyT.7192:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

It’s atleast some balance in this completely unbalanced game. I would rather take a rock paper scissors balance than what we have now.

I wouldn’t, 0/10 wouldn’t recommend.

The game is RPS already though. You bring Removal to beat Conditions. You bring Stability to counter Control. You bring Blocks/Blinds to counter Direct Damage. It’s all just a more complicated version of RPS. You can try to fill as many countermeasures into your build as you can and then use them correctly or you specialize in one thing.

Stealth is the one mechanic in the game that has hardly any direct counter. Sic ‘Em is the only skill that can directly apply Reveal on an enemy and it’s not even that good of a skill.

You remove my conditions, I will re apply them, you block one of my attacks I got another one coming, you break or prevent me from going stealth, we’ll I’m boned.

Thing is stealth already counters itself will reveal, so why want more?

BurrTheKing.8571:

BobbyT.7192:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

It’s atleast some balance in this completely unbalanced game. I would rather take a rock paper scissors balance than what we have now.

I wouldn’t, 0/10 wouldn’t recommend.

The game is RPS already though. You bring Removal to beat Conditions. You bring Stability to counter Control. You bring Blocks/Blinds to counter Direct Damage. It’s all just a more complicated version of RPS. You can try to fill as many countermeasures into your build as you can and then use them correctly or you specialize in one thing.

Stealth is the one mechanic in the game that has hardly any direct counter. Sic ‘Em is the only skill that can directly apply Reveal on an enemy and it’s not even that good of a skill.

Yeah, but it’s not like one class has the rock, one other the paper. All classes have all three parts, just some classes have more rocks, papers and scissors than other classes have.

BobbyT.7192:

BurrTheKing.8571:

BobbyT.7192:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

P Fun Daddy.1208:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Rangers are the ones who should have a large set of anti-stealth mechanics.
Thiefs => Stealthed Assassins
Rangers => Tracker

But rock paper scissors balance isn’t any fun

It’s atleast some balance in this completely unbalanced game. I would rather take a rock paper scissors balance than what we have now.

I wouldn’t, 0/10 wouldn’t recommend.

The game is RPS already though. You bring Removal to beat Conditions. You bring Stability to counter Control. You bring Blocks/Blinds to counter Direct Damage. It’s all just a more complicated version of RPS. You can try to fill as many countermeasures into your build as you can and then use them correctly or you specialize in one thing.

Stealth is the one mechanic in the game that has hardly any direct counter. Sic ‘Em is the only skill that can directly apply Reveal on an enemy and it’s not even that good of a skill.

You remove my conditions, I will re apply them, you block one of my attacks I got another one coming, you break or prevent me from going stealth, we’ll I’m boned.

Thing is stealth already counters itself will reveal, so why want more?

Because it’s a totally one-sided mechanic. In other games with stealth things are done differently, such as being perma-invis but once you attack re-entering stealth is difficult. With stealth on some specs, mostly Thief, have such high access to stealth that either the class has to change or you have to give players a way to disrupt it. Since players who play a class generally dislike direct nerfs it seems more positive to give the other classes options to at least disrupt them for a few seconds.

Grimreaper.5370:

Snip

As a thief player I will now share my opinion in regard to the changes you have suggested here:

1.) In the last round of balance changes this ability was nerfed to give Infiltrator’s Return a cast time which allows counterplay to the skill. The best part was that addition of a window to interrupt the 2nd cast of this skill hurt sword mainhand builds enough to scare people away from s/x weaponsets even more. You also need to keep in mind Infiltrator’s Return costs 2 initiative as well. That means the full rotation of skill uses 5 initiative, now just 3, and the condi cure component/distance creator for this weaponset is able to be interrupted. There is the ability to already counterplay this skill, it does not need additional ini costs at the moment in my opinion.

2.) No reason to punish D/D thieves because D/P thieves can use HS combined with BPS to stealth. I agree something needs to be changed for the D/P weaponset, but I’d hate for that change to destroy D/D in the process. Also this has been stated before: HS spammers are not truly dangerous, whether they are spamming the ability on you, or spamming it to escape. If they have enough ini left over to use 4 or more Heartseekers to get away, then they probably didn’t hit you much at all (at least not hard). If they’re spamming Heartseeker, you’re facing a bad thief.

3.) I think CnD is fine as is. It has a pretty high intiative cost associated with it which is made even more significant because it requires you to hit a target in melee range. CnD also already has a 1/2 cast time, which is long enough to noticed and interrupt. I mean, it’s pretty obvious a D/D thief, or a P/D thief will try and CnD on you if he’s next to you without a reveal debuff, so that gives you a chance to counter play and evade/block/interrupt the skill and waste that 6 ini. You honestly don’t have to look for the skill as much as you have to know simply when the thief will be using it. It’s not as hard as you make it out to be.

4.) Giving Shadowstep the IS/IR treatment would possibly just push thieves even deeper into stealth reliance. You’ll be seeing thieves without the instant stealth Blinding Powder utility taking it more often, that’s for sure. Making a 50 second cooldown utility (and one of the thief’s few stunbreaks and condition removals) extremely open to interrupts just doesn’t seem right. Compare that to the easy mode utilities or other classes, and it seems even more unjust. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Shadowstep.

5.) You can only rapid fire 2 Infiltrator’s Arrows (3 if deep in Trickery) at the moment due to the 6 ini cost of it. The range is 900, but rarely will a thief get the full potential out of that due to terrain glitches or just having to use it so swiftly to dodge some incoming AoE damage that they are more likely to only get 500-700 range out of it. If a thief “spams” this ability he’s doing no damage to you, so it’s not threatening. It’s no different as an escape from a GS S/warhorn warrior when it’s all said and done (and those warriors are actually even more mobile than thieves!).

I can understand why thief mobility can appear to be overwhelming, but if you take the time to play a thief yourself and understand the risks that are innately embedded in the class, I think you’ll realize why thieves have access to both mobility and stealth options. The mantra of many thieves is, “The defense is a good offense” for a reason. It’s because their defensive options are all about active maneuverability and positioning and causing panic through stealth. Thieves can’t just pop aegis or put on protection at free will, so they have to be more reactive. If you take away that reactive playstyle, not only will you make thieves just as boring to play as the average warrior build, but you’ll probably make the class weak enough to not be worth playing at all.

You do state in your conclusion that you think it would be fair to give thieves a higher HP pool and more damage on other skills other than stealth attacks. However, with the ini system that you seem to dislike because of its “spammable” nature, are you really sure you’re alright with adding damage onto other skills? Would you really be okay with a thief spamming a hard hitting Deathblossom on you after hitting you with Basilisk Venom? Or will you and others come to the forum after a buff like that and say “X weapon skill is too strong because it only costs X amount of ini?”

BurrTheKing.8571:

Because it’s a totally one-sided mechanic. In other games with stealth things are done differently, such as being perma-invis but once you attack re-entering stealth is difficult. With stealth on some specs, mostly Thief, have such high access to stealth that either the class has to change or you have to give players a way to disrupt it. Since players who play a class generally dislike direct nerfs it seems more positive to give the other classes options to at least disrupt them for a few seconds.

First of all, please stop comparing GW2 stealth to stealthing in other games. It’s not like it is in other games for a reason. It’s something called creativity and originality, and those two things are selling points for anything in the entertainment industry. That’s why stealth isn’t the same across all games in the MMO genre. Stop using that as a discussion point.

Secondly, it’s not a totally one sided mechanic. Judging by your refusal to take advice from thief players in this thread, I would say you simply choose to see it as a one sided mechanic. By your definition of “one sided” I could also say blocks/damage immunities/condi immunities are also one sided mechanics. That doesn’t make them overpowered and each of those have counterplay to them (some have even less counterplay than stealth does mind you).

I’m going to quote you here, “it seems more positive to give the other classes options to at least disrupt them for a few seconds”

Every class has those options. They are called interrupts, blocks, and evades. You, and players like you, need to realize there isn’t supposed to be a counter once thieves are in stealth. The counter stealth is prevention. There’s a reason vaccines exist. It’s to prevent a virus from spreading in the first place, not a solution after a pandemic starts. Did that thief just throw down black powder shot? Better prevent him from stealthing with an interrupt. Did you fail the interrupt? Better have a block/invulnerability/basic positioning understanding and dodging available.

There is counterplay to stealth mechanics, you just have to be willing to see them and use them.

My favorite line from these posts :
“The thief is the squishiest class.” or “My thief is so squishy…”
No. You’re in the Medium armor class, not the light armor class. That is what’s knownas a fact. Think it’s hard surviving now? Take an Ele in PvP, any weaponset your little heart desires, and then see how “squishy” you are when you have lowest life, lowest armor, and no stealth/auto-survive, not to mention all of a sudden you won’t do much damage either. Tell yourself L2P as all your old thief brethren just pwn you all day.

Thief squishiest class, lol, by basic definition just sooo wrong.

All of the suggestions posted are pseudo-counters. There is still no reliable way to avoid the situation of a Thief being able to stealth just before getting downed and then using the downed stealth to be able to revive for free. There’s also the ability to stealth for excessive periods and essentially reset the fight. If they use Shadow Refuge at around 25% health unless you have a way to fear them or knock them out there’s not much you can do. I’ve used Skull Crack and Flurry to lock them down but even then at 25% they get a free Blinding Powder which allows them to buy even more time.

There are unblockble skills, and most pure immunity skills I would agree don’t offer counterplay but they also last for a very short duration and have lengthy cooldowns. I do think being able to stomp while affected by a 100% immunity skill like Mistform or Elixir S shouldn’t be a thing however, you can strip Stability but not those. Specified Immunities hurt highly specified builds but they still remain weak to w/e they don’t counter and popping multiple at once leaves you very vulnerable after.

Stopping a Black Powder Stealth is not as easy as you make it sound. When the Thief uses it they also blind their target. If you evade you have a VERY short window to interrupt them. If that you do get blinded you have almost no time to clear it and interrupt. If you don’t have a ranged interrupt then you have to use it in the field before it pulses or you’ll miss. As a Warrior you have to make them first use a stun breaker/shadow step, then pop zerker stance and lock them down then kill them before they can stealth again because otherwise they’ll just heal up and start everything over. It’s doable but the fight takes longer than fighting a tanky Guardian and the Thief can recover after goofing up where the Guardian can’t.

Since I’ve had to listen to “Play as a Thief (I actually have) and you’ll understand” so often I’m going to put this forward: If you haven’t played against a Stealth-Heavy Thief as a non-Thief class please do so. It’ll give you some insight as to why people hate fighting it so much. D/P is especially dull to fight seeing as it’s even worse than Warriors when it comes to using one combo over and over. At least Warrior’s combos are highly telegraphed.

BurrTheKing.8571:

All of the suggestions posted are pseudo-counters. There is still no reliable way to avoid the situation of a Thief being able to stealth just before getting downed and then using the downed stealth to be able to revive for free. There’s also the ability to stealth for excessive periods and essentially reset the fight. If they use Shadow Refuge at around 25% health unless you have a way to fear them or knock them out there’s not much you can do. I’ve used Skull Crack and Flurry to lock them down but even then at 25% they get a free Blinding Powder which allows them to buy even more time.

Since I’ve had to listen to “Play as a Thief (I actually have) and you’ll understand” so often I’m going to put this forward: If you haven’t played against a Stealth-Heavy Thief as a non-Thief class please do so. It’ll give you some insight as to why people hate fighting it so much. D/P is especially dull to fight seeing as it’s even worse than Warriors when it comes to using one combo over and over. At least Warrior’s combos are highly telegraphed.

You can’t aoe? I mean the thief is downed, best they can do is teleport once and it isn’t going far. If you can’t figure out what slot the block goes in there is no point in giving you toys then.

Many people have, there are only 2 stealth heavy classes btw. Also you can’t look at just how you play or just how others play, you have to look at both. Can’t speak for all since I don’t have a record of their play time, but I’m not undefeated on my thief, I’ve died and died a lot. Advice can come from the enemy’s perspective, as in they explain what others have done to counter them in w/e it was they were trying.

You should really open your eyes to the (viable) advice that’s been given not just in this thread but of the hundreds that swim in these forums. There is plenty to go around from both stealth users and non-stealth users. Thief is no more unbalanced than the rest, we all have class mechanics that are often abused (except rangers poor rangers).

godz raiden.2631:

3.) I think CnD is fine as is. It has a pretty high intiative cost associated with it which is made even more significant because it requires you to hit a target in melee range. CnD also already has a 1/2 cast time, which is long enough to noticed and interrupt. I mean, it’s pretty obvious a D/D thief, or a P/D thief will try and CnD on you if he’s next to you without a reveal debuff, so that gives you a chance to counter play and evade/block/interrupt the skill and waste that 6 ini. You honestly don’t have to look for the skill as much as you have to know simply when the thief will be using it. It’s not as hard as you make it out to be.

Debatable. A half-second is potentially fine if it’s a very obvious animation, but CnD is not obvious. Also, the second half of the argument gets back to, in my opinion, the key flaw of the class’s design:

Guesswork.

Yeah, that’s probably a good time to dodge, but if you’re wrong, you’re out a dodge and you’ll probably get CnD’d at the end of the roll, then you have one less dodge to try to guess again at when the Backstab is coming. If you’re right and evade the Backstab, it’s very likely you’ll end up getting Backstabbed anyway.

That sounds OK to you? When they made Skull Crack into a half-second ability, they gave it a big flash on-swing, probably because it enables a follow-up strong burst. CnD is in a similar vein, but you can’t really see it coming. You just have to guess.

Can Thieves really not fight unless the other player is simply guessing at when to use their defensives? I’ve fought a large number of Thieves out in the open world, and really the fight seems to come down solely to my guesswork. Is it accurate? We have a fight on our hands. Is it off? I have no chance.

Is that what a fight should come down to? How well I guess? Is that what you want your class to be? How well the other person guesses?

I’m not talking about bad Thieves. I’ve fought plenty of them. One Thief didn’t have me targeted and tried to BP + HS, so I feared him mid-HS and proceeded to destroy him. It was used sloppily because it often just guarantees an escape, so why would the Thief have to try? It was just chance that he decided to not even target me which gave me a window.

It’s just really annoying design. I know exactly when an Elementalist is balling outrageous. I know exactly when a Warrior knows what he’s doing. I know exactly when an Engineer has his act together. I often know when a Mesmer is on point, though in the middle of a large fray catching someone with a shatter combo probably isn’t very difficult. I know when Necros know what they are doing. I have a pretty good idea when a Guardian is knowledgeable, but the prevalence of blocks/blinds/boons sometimes make it seem ultra basic. I even know when a Ranger is genuinely skilled (they’re out there).

Thieves though? I just know when they’re extra bad, and I know when I’m guessing. Otherwise, they’re all on a mid-range plateau of “being able to play GW2” for me. That’s how I feel. I don’t want to feel that way, but all of my roaming experience against Thieves just leads me further down that road.

I want to respect all the classes, but I don’t.

EDIT – And regarding viable advice, if you can even squeeze advice out of someone adamantly defending Stealth, it always smacks of bad design:

1. Spin around crazily/randomly. (I try to spin suddenly if I’m out of Endurance after guessing a dodge on some other thing and missing).
2. Just keep wildly swinging your auto attack (and pray it doesn’t need a target). (I do this if I have my Dagger MH out, but I recently switched to Axe, so I guess I can’t now.)
3. Randomly blow your AoE cooldowns in potential locations and hope they land. (I pull out my Staff and do this, often guessing location with Mark of Blood and dropping Chillblains/Reaper’s Mark on top of my self and standing there.)
4. Guess your dodges based on limited situational information (counting in your head or the absence of Revealed, as opposed to the presence of a boon/buff) that has nothing to do with things you can reliably see. (I do this, and failing a guess has intensely serious implications. Failing a Backstab, as we’ve beaten to death, just means you keep swinging Backstab until it lands.)

Am I missing anything? I was:

5. Use your channeled ability when you think they’re going to stealth and, in many cases, hope they don’t just walk behind you. (I recently switched to Axe MH solely for this reason, because Life Siphon just isn’t a good enough channel, in my opinion).

NinjaEd.3946:

BurrTheKing.8571:

All of the suggestions posted are pseudo-counters. There is still no reliable way to avoid the situation of a Thief being able to stealth just before getting downed and then using the downed stealth to be able to revive for free. There’s also the ability to stealth for excessive periods and essentially reset the fight. If they use Shadow Refuge at around 25% health unless you have a way to fear them or knock them out there’s not much you can do. I’ve used Skull Crack and Flurry to lock them down but even then at 25% they get a free Blinding Powder which allows them to buy even more time.

Since I’ve had to listen to “Play as a Thief (I actually have) and you’ll understand” so often I’m going to put this forward: If you haven’t played against a Stealth-Heavy Thief as a non-Thief class please do so. It’ll give you some insight as to why people hate fighting it so much. D/P is especially dull to fight seeing as it’s even worse than Warriors when it comes to using one combo over and over. At least Warrior’s combos are highly telegraphed.

You can’t aoe? I mean the thief is downed, best they can do is teleport once and it isn’t going far. If you can’t figure out what slot the block goes in there is no point in giving you toys then.

Many people have, there are only 2 stealth heavy classes btw. Also you can’t look at just how you play or just how others play, you have to look at both. Can’t speak for all since I don’t have a record of their play time, but I’m not undefeated on my thief, I’ve died and died a lot. Advice can come from the enemy’s perspective, as in they explain what others have done to counter them in w/e it was they were trying.

You should really open your eyes to the (viable) advice that’s been given not just in this thread but of the hundreds that swim in these forums. There is plenty to go around from both stealth users and non-stealth users. Thief is no more unbalanced than the rest, we all have class mechanics that are often abused (except rangers poor rangers).

Not every class has spammable AoEs and there’s also the matter of KNOWING that you downed them. If they are stealthed when you down them there’s still plenty of time for them to move. If you down them in SR you have anywhere in that circle + the teleport. If you down them with conditions after using them on the SR then they could have gone anywhere in that time frame. This didn’t used to bug me until I started encountering it more and more frequently. If it’s a Sword/Pistol Thief they can use the return on skill 2 while stealthed just before getting downed and you won’t know whether or not they did that.

This isn’t a problem with bad Theives, of which there are many, but with even a decent Thief they know how to do this.

Each class should have 2 skills that apply revealed. 1 weapon skill, 1 utility.

On ranger, we already have Sic ’Em, add it to bonfire, with revealed triggered when within 600 of the AoE.

Guardian it could be the first half of Zealot’s Flame and Hallowed Ground/Purging Flames.

Warrior could be Fear Me and Call to Arms

Necromancer could be Well of Corruption and Enfeebling Blood

Elementalist could be Glyph of Storms and Ring of Fire/Frozen Ground/Static Field/Swirling Winds (there’s others that would fit as well.)

Mesmer – I don’t play, and have no real thoughts on

Engineer – See Mesmer

Thief – Tie them into a burlap sack, add concrete blocks and toss them into a lake.

Realistically, ANY incoming damage should trigger the revealed debuff. Along with any attack from the thief that is blocked/misses.

stale.9785:

Each class should have 2 skills that apply revealed. 1 weapon skill, 1 utility.

On ranger, we already have Sic ’Em, add it to bonfire, with revealed triggered when within 600 of the AoE.

Guardian it could be the first half of Zealot’s Flame and Hallowed Ground/Purging Flames.

Warrior could be Fear Me and Call to Arms

Necromancer could be Well of Corruption and Enfeebling Blood

Elementalist could be Glyph of Storms and Ring of Fire/Frozen Ground/Static Field/Swirling Winds (there’s others that would fit as well.)

Mesmer – I don’t play, and have no real thoughts on

Engineer – See Mesmer

Thief – Tie them into a burlap sack, add concrete blocks and toss them into a lake.

Realistically, ANY incoming damage should trigger the revealed debuff. Along with any attack from the thief that is blocked/misses.

I’m not sure I would tie them to any weapon skills. Even the skills with the longest recharge are much shorter than your average utility skills. Having anything cast Reveal too frequently would totally break stealth which isn’t what I’m after. I want lesser used utility skills with longish CDs to gain some additional functionality to make them worth putting on your bar. I also think that ANY damage causing reveal would be too harsh, but I would be OK with taking a certain % of damage causing it.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Snip

You might think CnD doesn’t have an obvious animation, and to the untrained eye you’re correct. Preventing CnD doesn’t necessarily involve knowing the animation so much as it does understanding when an enemy thief will use CnD. You call it guesswork, I call it accurate prediction and critical thinking. Most classes have means of recovering if they fail to react properly to enemy through utilities and conditions applied through certain weapon skills. A player’s lack of skill in regard to reacting and predicting a thief’s CnD/stealth skills is not proper justification to nerf stealth. You even state in your post that you’re “not talking about bad Thieves.” So you admit that you just can’t fight “good” thieves. That’s not a fault of the design behind stealth. That’s you being outplayed by better players, and that’s fine. You should embrace that and learn from it, and in time (as long as you actually realize what your mistakes are) you can fix your playstyle to accommodate for your past failures. If you lose a fight solely because you failed to predict one stealth skill by a thief, then, I’m sorry to break this to you, you were destined to lose that fight to begin with. Every class has means to recover from missteps, you just have to know when and how to use them against other classes.

Now on to your points regarding viable advice:

1.) “Spin around crazily/randomly.” I really hope you don’t actually just spin around in a small circle when you’re out of endurance like this would suggest. Rotate your defensive skills properly when you are out of endurance. When out of endurance most classes have means to fill the void in defense while their endurance recovers (blocks/immunities/invulnerabilities/blinds/other sources of evades/ even some CC can be considered defensive). Any thief who told you to spin around and try to be unpredictable is only half right. Try to move unpredictably, but don’t just spin around please. That just makes it easier for us to kill you because we know you’re clueless.

2.) “Just keep wildly swinging your auto attack.” If you have weapon with an auto attack chain, turning while hitting your auto attack and watching your animations/weaponskill will tell you if they hit them. This advice is halfway decent and it can work for a fair number of builds for most classes. You admit that you switched to axe recently and you can’t do this now. Well that’s not the thief’s fault, that’s your fault. You can’t expect every choice you make in your build to give you a 100% chance to defeat a thief, or any other class for that matter. There’s a reason some weaponsets have shortcomings in some areas and strengths in others – it’s called diversity.

3.) “Randomly blow your AoE cooldowns in potential locations and hope they land.” Or you could not “randomly” use your AoEs and use them effectively. Are you facing a D/D thief? Throw the AoEs at your feet a second after the thief stealths. Are you facing a D/P thief? Same thing really, his damage spike will come from backstab, he can’t backstab you for free if you hit him when he tries to. P/D thief? This one’s a little tricky, but you’ll have to use your AoEs to discourage him from using CnD on you in the first place. Force him to take damage if he tries to use a weapon skill to stealth off you. Use your abilities with purpose. Don’t just give up mentally when a thief enters stealth and throw AoEs out thinking “there’s no way I can beat this thief, he’s invisible and thus invulnerable.” Seriously play a thief against a good necro, I bet it’s just as frustrating as fighting a good thief as a necro (spoiler: it is).

Continued:

4.) “Guess your dodges based on limited situational information…” You may be right that failing a backstab might need some changes to make it higher risk, although with the upcoming changes to crit damage, it probably won’t need a change. It won’t be hitting as hard now, so it won’t be as big of an issue. This goes back to that thing you call “guesswork.” If you can’t correctly guess what a thief will do next, you need to better familiarize yourself with thief class and its builds. There are pretty tell-tale signs of what a thief will do next based on his positioning/current health/weaponsets. I’m going to be honest, I don’t play necro often. My necro isn’t even lvl 80 yet. I have almost no clue what a lot of necro abilities do. Sometimes I find one that is pretty tough to take down, simply because I have no idea what necro skill rotations are at times, not do I completely understand what all of their utilities do. From my perspective, I could easily cry “kitten that 10 seconds of rotated fear on me is overpowered!” but I just accept the fact that I could understand that better if I played necro more. That lack of being able to “guess” what skills a necro will use next is on me. This guesswork thing applies to more than just fighting thieves.

5.) “Use your channeled ability when you think they’re going to stealth.” I would advise not wasting channeled abilities on the faster stealths, such as CnD. If you see the thief doing his heal animation, that’s when you want to use a channeled ability. It counteracts some of the healing and it forces the thief to burn endurance to avoid damage, or the long cooldown on a utility in some cases. That’s a knowledge issue, not a stealth issue.

The phrase “guesswork” is used to specify mechanics that don’t have what I would consider reasonable tells. For Necros, you have to sort of guess when they’re going to use Plague Signet or Corrupt Boon to evade it, as well as Doom within Death Shroud. They’re powerful instant-casts, though they’re also on fairly lengthy cooldowns (except Doom, which is less lengthy), so you need to anticipate to dodge them. If you DO, it’s huge for the fight for you.

It isn’t about guessing what skills a Necro will use next, because you can often see what the Necro is doing right in front of you. You don’t have to guess that they’re Dark Pacting, you see it happen, and it’s a 1 second cast time. I don’t have to guess when a Warrior is going to Earthshaker, I just need to be prepared to dodge. You don’t have to guess when a Necro is using Life Blast, or when an Elementalist is using Burning Speed, or when an Engineer is using Pull or dropping a supply crate.

Also, you seem to think that I die in 2 hits against all Thieves, perhaps as a defense mechanism against anyone who questions Stealth. It’s easy to take the high road and mask “L2P” in a long post. I get it. I’m more critical of my own play than you will ever be of my play, and when I mis-dodge every CnD in a fight against a Thief, I rage more at myself than at Thieves.

You don’t impress me with your critiques, though your ability to dodge the discussion at hand by latching onto the surface of what I said and attempting to tear it apart is notable. I think you’ve failed at tearing them apart, considering the lack of actual substance to your responses, but the Stealth advocates will think you’ve won, so it’ll be just like a political debate in that regard.

Two more things:

1. “When out of endurance most classes have means to fill the void in defense while their endurance recovers (blocks/immunities/invulnerabilities/blinds/other sources of evades/ even some CC can be considered defensive).” I laughed. Blocks, immunities, invulnerabilities, and other sources of evades are immediately out of the question. I play a Power Necro. I can blow a 50 second utility cooldown to drop AoE blind if I bring that utility along (I may try it out), a 60 second utility cooldown + Death Shroud to mitigate a chunk of the damage (I do that regularly), and a 40 second fear Mark that I can stand in to use as proximity detection to know when to dodge (as I have to assume they dodge-rolled through it to get to my back). Those are my options, and I use two of them in basically every fight against a Thief. I suppose I could also grab Spectral Wall

2. You could cry about a 10 second fear (it isn’t quite 10 seconds, but it’s close enough for estimation), but you’ll only see it every 40 seconds, tops. I also thought combos that are easily countered with a single stun breaker were beaten to death in the month or two following release.

It isn’t about losing, really. I think that might be the point you’re missing. I lose to classes all the time. I lose to good Warrior pressure because I underestimate it and don’t cycle snares properly (or use them at the wrong time). I lose to shatter bursts from Mesmers because I missed the illusionary swordsman and get caught out of DS. I lose to Engineers because I underestimate their pressure and/or mis-time condi transfers.

When I lose to them, I think “Gah, mucked that up”. Even if I win against a Thief, I can’t help but think “This class is designed poorly”.

Cogbyrn, some of the stuff you said in that last post of yours seemed to suggest your taking things much more personal than you should have, and I apologize if you felt like I was calling you a bad necro or whatever it is I said to offend you. If you want me to say it straight to you and tell you to “L2P” here it is. Cogbyrn, you need to L2P. You want to know why I can say that to you and not feel like a kitten? Because I need to L2P in some situations against certain classes too. We all do. The solution isn’t to come on this forum and get upset when others try to help you. It’s to take what they say, apply it, and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t, ask yourself why it didn’t work and tweak it until it does work. There are plenty of necros and warriors, and players of every other class that will tell you they have zero problems dealing with thieves. Even good thieves. The reason is because they understand the class and how to properly predict their next move. Don’t get offended if you need to “L2P,” just embrace it and realize no player is perfect, yet every player (who is interested in competition) should always attempt to reach perfection, while knowing it’s not possible. (Also I don’t recall when I said you die in 2 hits against all thieves. I’m glad you don’t, since you really shouldn’t, not playing a necro at least. If you were an ele I would understand if you died in 2 hits).

I may not impress you with my critiques, but that’s a double edged sword. You, and players like you, who forum warrior trying to get thieves nerfed don’t impress us either. In fact, we find you quite adorable! Stealth advocates like myself have grown so good at this “guesswork” that you claim is near impossible vs thieves, that we can CnD off of stealthed thieves regularly. You know want to know how good thieves outplay other stealthed thieves and land CnD on invisible targets? It’s because they have graduated from guesswork school and now attend the College of Prediction and Critical, Quick Analysis (located in Rata Sum for obvious reasons). Also, I’m really not trying to turn this into a political debate, but you sure are by acknowledging it as such, so I guess that’s the road we’re traveling now. Blame yourself, not me.

1.) Okay so you play a power necro. YOUR particular build for YOUR particular class struggling to handle stealth easily is not justification to call for nerfs. You don’t have blocks or immunities? Well that’s a nice little complaint, but I don’t remember thieves forcing you not to have those things. Not tanky enough because you’re glass cannon? Those thieves that are killing you and laughing at your corpse didn’t pick that build for you. I respect your right to play how you want, but when you want another class not to be able to play viably at all because they can destroy your build with ease, well that’s just disrespectful and cowardly.

2.) I wasn’t “Crying” about a 10 second fear. But thanks for using a term like that to try and make this personal. I was simply using and example and bringing me down to your level of misunderstanding, while showing you how a real player who wants to better himself handles the situation. What you should have taken from that was: Godz Raiden doesn’t come to the forums to ask for nerfs to any classes because when he loses to them he blames how he played the fight or his own lack of knowledge of what was used by his opponent in the fight. Not: Godz Raiden gets beat by terrormancers lulz what a crybaby. Sorry for trying to empathize with you. You are right though about the stun breaker thing. You’d think people wouldn’t use those builds because they are so easily countered, but then you remember not all classes are created equal, and thieves have some of the most situational stun breaks and no stability outside of a 90 second elite skill. Funny how CC kinda ruins a thief’s day, but we don’t come on the forum asking to remove fears from necros. that would just be rude of us!

There’s a common theme in your paragraph about you losing to classes all the time: Underestimation. Maybe your problem is less game balance related and more of a psychological impairment. Sorry that you don’t feel that beating thieves is rewarding, but for everyone who thinks like you, there is someone who feels nothing but pride when they beat a good thief. Your problem is that you don’t want to admit that thief players can be good. You think they can just walk up to you stealth and down you in a few seconds or something. It’s not that easy. Any thief player will you that. Well… that’s not true… it is that easy against people who have no idea how to predict what a thief will do…

No need to apologize. The tone of most every attempt at Stealth defense is that the person advocating for changes is bad and needs to learn how to deal with it. I see it as a major design flaw. You also aren’t trying very hard to counter with good recommendations. Do you think I believe for 1 second that a Thief is going to back up off of me if I use Chillblains? Or Mark of Blood? Do I want to stop them from using CnD, or should I use the utility to stop them from Backstabbing? If you had reasonable recommendations to make for the general population, you could have scrapped my list and made them. It would have both made me look like an idiot (I’d love to look like an idiot and realize I’m doing something wrong at a fundamental level) and helped drive the defense of the current implementation of Stealth and a Thief’s ability to enter it into a land where we have new defensive techniques to hash out.

For example, what are the tell-tale signs of a Thief’s next action in your opinion? Feel free to add to this list:

D/D Thief: Standing next to you + no Revealed = Going to CnD
Approaching from a distance + just gained all boons = Going to Steal + CnD

P/D Thief: Creates a bit of distance + no Revealed = Going to BP + HS

Stealthed Thief: ~3 seconds passed = Going to make a move

Shortbow Thief: Probably wants to spam Evasion before leaving an area

To address a few more points in your post succinctly:

I’m arguing from the perspective of my class. I think Stealth is implemented poorly in general, but people saying a blanket “use blocks/invulns/evades to counter” makes me laugh, because it’s like they assume every class gets them. The whole Necro class doesn’t get those things, it has nothing to do with my build.

So you can CnD stealthed targets regularly. Is that off of other Thieves who just stand at your back waiting for Stealth to almost be finished before stabbing? That has nothing to do with dodging Backstab, and the problem still remains of dodging it still leaving you open for another Backstab. I’ve hit stealthed Thieves with Life Blast before, which you may not even know is possible in the game.

I don’t want Thieves nerfed, I want Stealth to be an infrequent utility with Thieves getting other tools to compensate. Alternatively, I think the Stealth-specific #1s should be utility-only abilities, like Sword’s. None of this huge-burst nonsense. I’ve always advocated for changes to the class that enable them to be effective with multiple weapon sets outside of Stealth.

I run Cav/Zerk with a focus on LF regen and chill with my style/weapon sets. It can do a lot of damage, but played correctly it isn’t exactly glass cannon. Played incorrectly it is.

You said: “From my perspective, I could easily cry “kitten that 10 seconds of rotated fear on me is overpowered!”” I used your word. Don’t blame me for the words you use.

Underestimation is because I find 1 truly good player who shows me the class’s capabilities in a sea of mob-roamers/players learning. It has nothing to do with the psychology of it and everything to do with the infrequency. It’s always a learning experience that I enjoy.

CC ruins a Necro’s day too. Necro is also arguably the worst class at stomping in the game, making any 1vX situation a nightmare from the start, and the only reliable stability/stomp we have is on a 180 second cooldown, unless you spend 30 trait points into a line and then sac a Grandmaster on Foot in the Grave. Which I might try in a build.

I do realize I’m not perfect. The only thing in the game I consider voicing against is the current implementation of Thieves with Stealth. It isn’t even Thieves in general. By and large, I think S/P Thieves are fine, and one destroyed me the other day since I wasn’t really sure how to handle it yet (again, never see it). I just really think it’s poorly designed.

Coghbyrn, What about Life Transfer and Tainted Shackles when they stealth? The animation may not show it but it hits (if proof look at your life force).

Tim.6450:

Coghbyrn, What about Life Transfer and Tainted Shackles when they stealth? The animation may not show it but it hits (if proof look at your life force).

Correct, those also work, and I use them. Actually, I’ve been meaning to test if Tainted Shackles will actually attach to a stealthed target, or if it has to be on before they stealth. They’re 40 second cooldowns though, so either you use it to punish their attempt at escaping pressure, or you’re applying pressure that may not bear any real fruit.

I’ll happily list all of the things I do to combat stealth. Perhaps if we turn the conversation towards what certain classes can do to combat stealth, we can steer more towards an analysis on whether or not the effort required to combat stealth is balanced vs. the effort required to enter stealth (effectiveness of the entry mechanism and frequency) and the potential from being in stealth.

Perhaps we’ll find that certain classes could really use an option to reveal from Stealth considering their lack of options, which lends itself to the OP as well. I don’t necessarily think Warriors need it, honestly (sorry Burr), but who knows.

I find Mesmer stealth to be better implemented than Thief stealth, and far less annoying to deal with.

To me, Thief stealth implementation commits the classic MMO design error of granting a significant damage bonus to some attacks when stealthed (pretty much every weapon auto except short-bow and sword get a massive damage increase); which lends itself to “kill the enemy before they can react” game-play which is not exactly fun for the victim, and usually results in the classes with that particular mechanic getting balanced so that that are completely reliant on it to the point all other styles are moot.

(Another point of comparison: DAOC Shadowblade vs a spear+beast specced Hunter. The first was heavily stealth reliant for DPS and survival; many complaints on both sides abounded. The latter used stealth as tool but was not nearly as helpless when it didn’t work. I never heard much if any complaint about spear+beast Hunters being lopsided fights.)

Which is kind of crappy for multiple reasons if you sit down and think about it. Why the GW2 devs decided to make that error that the GW1 devs avoided especially irks me given that there is also decades of history in MMO’s that shows how badly such implementation skews everything else.

Play a thief and you know how to kill them. Reveal shouldn’t be a skill or condition like they did in Sic’ em.

Overkillengine.6084:

I find Mesmer stealth to be better implemented than Thief stealth, and far less annoying to deal with.

To me, Thief stealth implementation commits the classic MMO design error of granting a significant damage bonus to some attacks when stealthed (pretty much every weapon auto except short-bow and sword get a massive damage increase); which lends itself to “kill the enemy before they can react” game-play which is not exactly fun for the victim, and usually results in the classes with that particular mechanic getting balanced so that that are completely reliant on it to the point all other styles are moot.

(Another point of comparison: DAOC Shadowblade vs a spear+beast specced Hunter. The first was heavily stealth reliant for DPS and survival; many complaints on both sides abounded. The latter used stealth as tool but was not nearly as helpless when it didn’t work. I never heard much if any complaint about spear+beast Hunters being lopsided fights.)

Which is kind of crappy for multiple reasons if you sit down and think about it. Why the GW2 devs decided to make that error that the GW1 devs avoided especially irks me given that there is also decades of history in MMO’s that shows how badly such implementation skews everything else.

Stealth PU Mesmer >>>>>> Stealth Thief

Cogbyrn.7283:

Lots of stuff

Hi cogbyrn

I main a d/d thief and solo roam in wvw most of the time. Just wanted to say that power necros are one of the hardest builds for me to fight. it often doesnt matter if i land every single cnd and backstab, the power necro would most likely end up doing more damage to me (percentage wise) than i do to him/her.

on the flipside, if i mess up and let the necro chain fear on me, its over. 100% hp to down in less than 4 seconds. By no means do i build super glassy. I run around with around 19k hp most of the time (with guard stacks) and almost 2.5k armor. obviously its a LTP issue for myself, although often i still find myself tempted to bite my keyboard when i get downed after 1 or 2 mins of hard fighting with a power necro only to be downed instantly due to a single mistake.

Although you say your fed up with fighting using ‘guesswork’ against thieves and dealing with their burst, i would like to counter and say i’m fed up with losing control of my character for long durations of time and dealing with necro burst :P.

unpopular opinion i think power and condi necros have the advantage when fighting a stealth heavy d/d or d/p thief. unless the thief is running the full burst rawr rawr signet build, they would not be able to down a power necro in a single rotation. on the other hand, a power necro can down even a semi-balanced thief in one rotation.

emi

@emi: What are your utilities, exactly? Do you bring any stun breaks at all? If not, I don’t know what to tell you. Assuming so, use it after the Death Shroud fear, Doom. It’s when the Reaper appears above the Necro’s head. If he’s chaining fear, he wants to end in DS so he can LB. The animation for Reaper’s Mark on the Staff, which I’m assuming he’s using to initiate the fear chain, is unique. The staff is stabbed forward instead of using an arm movement. The cast time is 3/4ths of a second as well, so you have time to dodge it if you want to try.

If he’s using Staff, he has only 1 weapon set that is for damage. If it’s Axe MH, dodge the channeled ability. If it’s Dagger MH, dodged the immob (when he lifts his hand way up in the air and holds it. 1 second cast time). If he starts chaining LB, break LoS/target/range. DS takes half the normal direct damage, and the min cooldown is 7 seconds. If you can get him to drop DS because he’s losing too much LF by maintaining, you have a good window for burst damage.

The key, though, is that any CC chain can be countered by a stun break. The key is using it at the right time.

Note that none of this is guessing what the Necro will do next. You see what he’s doing every step of the way. You’re watching it happen and playing accordingly. Even an educated guess against a Thief is still a guess, and incorporating guesswork as part of counterplay is hardly counterplay at all.

I might even be OK with it if, as mentioned several times, dodging a Backstab didn’t often lead to just being Backstabbed at the end of the dodge roll. My reward for guessing correctly is a cool 6-7k damage? Not a fan.

And I disagree that Stealth Mesmer >>>>>>>>>> Stealth Thief, even though I think PU is a bit silly.

Emi.4152:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Lots of stuff

Hi cogbyrn

I main a d/d thief and solo roam in wvw most of the time. Just wanted to say that power necros are one of the hardest builds for me to fight. it often doesnt matter if i land every single cnd and backstab, the power necro would most likely end up doing more damage to me (percentage wise) than i do to him/her.

on the flipside, if i mess up and let the necro chain fear on me, its over. 100% hp to down in less than 4 seconds. By no means do i build super glassy. I run around with around 19k hp most of the time (with guard stacks) and almost 2.5k armor. obviously its a LTP issue for myself, although often i still find myself tempted to bite my keyboard when i get downed after 1 or 2 mins of hard fighting with a power necro only to be downed instantly due to a single mistake.

Although you say your fed up with fighting using ‘guesswork’ against thieves and dealing with their burst, i would like to counter and say i’m fed up with losing control of my character for long durations of time and dealing with necro burst :P.

unpopular opinion i think power and condi necros have the advantage when fighting a stealth heavy d/d or d/p thief. unless the thief is running the full burst rawr rawr signet build, they would not be able to down a power necro in a single rotation. on the other hand, a power necro can down even a semi-balanced thief in one rotation.

emi

I honestly think the problem necro players have with thieves doesn’t stem from stealth mechanics, but just the inherent mobility advantages thieves have over necros. It’s easy for necro players (such as Cogbyrn, sorry for calling you out again buddy) to ask for nerfs against stealth, but that won’t honestly make them any easier for them to kill thieves. I agree with you Emi, that necros actually do have an advantage fighting thieves for the most part. A solid power necro build can down a thief even faster than the thief can down the necro, and condi builds… well us thieves know how infuriating that can be to fight. And yes, being chain feared can be the final nail in the coffin during a fight that has lasted long enough for a thief to use his one (sometimes two) stun breaker(s) already.

I think necro players who complain about thieves using stealth don’t truly understand how easily their class can actually kill thieves (even when they are stealthed). AoEs, conditions, and crowd control effects are the three most effective ways to deal with thieves, and Necros have an abundance of access to them.

My real question to Cogbyrn is this:

If you were to nerf stealth for thieves in some way, what would you give thieves as compensation? As it stands, 9/10 thief builds rely on stealth just to have enough condition removal and hp regen to remain viable. Nerf our stealth without compensation, and the thief class will be forced into the trash can, and if that’s what you truly want to see done, I think the problem isn’t imbalance between classes, but you’re own personal vendetta against a mechanic that you refuse to understand.

If you try to maintain a conversation by assuming the worst about a person, the conversation will never go anywhere. You assume I just want to nerf Thieves into the ground to make them easy kills. At that point, our ability to have a discussion has been killed. If you are really interested in hearing an answer to a question, why are you framing it in an inflammatory way and attempting to put me under the interrogation spotlight by assuming guilt?

Is it because I think that having to react to something you can’t see and have no way of seeing in the game is an inherently flawed design? Not necessarily just that, but having to react to it because otherwise I take a huge burst of damage? And not just that, but if I react to it properly and evade, it’s likely I’ll just get hit by it after finishing the dodge anyway?

In your opinion, these are all perfectly fine mechanics?

You say I refuse to understand it in one hand while I come up with ideas for understanding it. I’m laying what I know bare as often as possible, while you’re hiding behind posts that simply take digs without actually giving information. I’ll go into very elaborate detail on what to do against a Power Necro and what he’ll try to do to counter you if you’d like. My response to Emi was just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll do everything in my power to help you understand exactly what you’re up against, because if you’re at “chain fearing is killing me”, then you’re at a fundamentally flawed level.

Power Necro is a really strong build in small-scale even fights and large-scale fights in general. The kicker is that everything they do is visible and allows you to react to stimulus, instead of lack of stimulus.

Imagine being pitted in a game against a player where you have to press a button somewhere between 2 and 4 seconds with a .75 second forgiveness after it turns off. The other player has to press a button within .75 seconds of it turning on. Whose success rate will improve over time? The one who trains his reflex to react to the button turning on, or the one guessing based on an internal clock as to when he needs to press the button? Will you submit to him being the more skilled player?

It isn’t that simple in a game like GW2, but that’s where I think Stealth is mechanically flawed.

As to your question, I’m not going to answer it, because you’ll simply pick it apart without providing any substance. Go ahead and just quote a piece of this post and claim yourself the victor. I don’t care. I’m mainly combing for someone who wants to have an actual discussion on it or provide real insight into situational tells that I keep hearing about, besides the ones I already listed based on weapon set/revealed status above.

And if you want me to help you understand Power Necro, I’ll be more than happy to. I only wish the same could be said for Stealth Thieves.

You can always play a stealth thief, Cogbyrn. Best way to understand something is to be one yourself.

if a ranger can hit a thief with sick em …. that 4 sec of denied stealth can quickly mean there death …

and i think it stacks to . so if 2 rangers hit u with sick em …. lol u feel like a helpless thief.

anti stealth is so strong vs thieves.

lol not many people use the anti stealth traps . but if u hit one it is ridiculous.

any utility u have slotted that uses stealth becomes useless and the thief just breaks down.

it is like forcing a cool down on utilities the thief never used ….
if they r in shadow arts they can no longer remove conditions
u break the class essentially

yolo swaggins.2570:

You can always play a stealth thief, Cogbyrn. Best way to understand something is to be one yourself.

Are you that loathe to have a conversation about it? I know I can play one. I actually jumped back on a low-level Thief I have to watch it CnD from various camera angles in order to implant an appropriate visual cue that I can piggyback off of for more accurate dodging. I think the cast time is too short and the animation is too subtle given how strong of an ability it is, but that doesn’t mean I’m not trying to adapt to the situation at hand.

I come to the forums to have discussions. If you don’t want to have a discussion, what are you doing on a forum?