Guild Wars 2

D/P can’t complain about it while D/D can. Ultimately demanding such nerfs the wrong build.

I’d also really like to see whoever it was claiming that they used to play D/D full glass play a D/D thief build like that these days. I’ve been trying to get a handle on my matchups for over a year now with a full glass build and have problems against a lot of classes, meanwhile my necro and guard are godmode characters, war is generally effective against everyone, and my full berserker longbow/longbow swap ranger usually has an easier time against most other characters than my hyper-glass thief.

Also… the comment about condi ticks removing stealth? Are you serious? Near-spammable AOE condi from eles, wars, guards, rangers, mesmers, necros, and engis would break the class to the point if ever implemented even a ton of non-thief players would leave because that kind of balance is so sloppy people would lose all faith in the company.

ReesesPBC.4603:

Shockwave.1230:

ReesesPBC.4603:

Shinjo.6092:

ReesesPBC.4603:

I would agree with that except from the opposite perspective not all classes can attack from stealth so easily, outside of having help from a thief/mesmer. And to add to that their attacks aren’t specialized in stealth either. And even further that thieves don’t have to be in stealth to remove aegis just like other classes.

As with your discussion with shinigamith.7120, I think the point you’re missing is what happens when a thief is already in stealth. Stealth doesn’t come for free; you either have to blow half your initiative pool or a utility on long cd. And continuing Shockwave.1230’s point, do you think it’s fair to have to continue to spend initiative in order to remove blind/aegis when every other class gets it for free, after making that sacrifice? You’re right, other classes don’t have specialized attacks in stealth. But that only makes his point stronger because you end up losing a lot more than the other classes for coming out of stealth.

Yes, that’s what I’m advocating which is; when people want to knowingly counter play stealth with blocks, or worse aegis, that they shouldn’t be punished for doing so.

And for when the thief is already in stealth I do support the suggestion that it should cost at least 1 initiative per backstab. This can be altered to occur only when they are blocked or missed but if there is no aegis or block up then the BS can be free as usual. The suggestion is to prevent spam and encourage more skillful play as others have mentioned. If a thief knows there’s aegis or blocks up they can wait and regen their initiative (1 per 3/4s if i’m not mistaken) before initiating again as compared to the person who is blocking or put up aegis will be coming out much more behind in terms of skill CD. For example: engineer gear shield block is a 20s (untraited AFAIK) CD vs a thief who CnD’d would have a net loss of 2-3 initiative if they just wait it out. So still the person blocking comes out behind in that situation.

For the receiving end, it’s no fun playing as a guardian/etc to have put aegis up (72-90s CD) to prevent a BS when it can be stripped without consequence in stealth from that one attack, repeatedly.

PS whatever that weird forum error is, is really messing up replying.

The suggestion to prevent spamming in stealth is counter intuitive, the only way to counter aegis, blinds, and blocks is to spam them away regardless of whether or not you are in stealth.

The suggestion is still to punish thieves for using stealth whereas every other prof gets to deal with these things for free, even if they are in stealth.

The suggestions is only for backstab and block/aegis, other skills are questionable.

Yet that would mean that blocking and aegis themselves are also counter intuitive if they are meant to block damage but can’t because of the above mentioned issues. Meaning to say, why block at all and waste CD and opportunity when it won’t matter in the end since you’ll still end up getting hit by what you were trying to block in the first place without consequence to the attacker?

Stealth doesn’t guarentee a backstab vs blinds and blocks. It would be good experience for you to try D/P thief for a dozen pvp matches to understand how important backstabs are at making thief viable with dagger.

People like to bash on thief without trying to play as thief vs solid players. They don’t understand that dagger thieves don’t have sustain vs damage and have to be inflicting damage faster than they take it in order to be viable.

Penalizing backstab vs blinds and blocks just puts dagger builds further behind the 8 ball than they already are, and leaves sword builds as a better option overall since profs like warrior, guardian, mesmer, and ele can chain blinds, blocks, and invulns to help nuetralize backstab. As an aside I find it ironic that there is so much stealth hate, when sword builds don’t use stealth in combat and are better all around builds than dagger builds.

And ironically people are citing SA as a reason stealth is unbalanced, a traitline almost no thief in PvP invests into anymore because it’s hardly any good there.

Reminder guys, this is about Stealth not thieves. Last I checked there is a thief class forum.

Cygnus.6903:

frans.8092:

That is something you can learn, hence why it really is a learn-to-play issue.

You can not really 100% believe this right? That would mean you are either pretty bad, or inexperienced when it comes to fighting really good thieves.

I have no problem with stealth, mainly because it is fun to play with on my thief (I main a warrior).

But stealth, in the hands of not an average, but a good player, has nothing to do with l2p on his targets behalf. Nay, it becomes completely broken in capable hands.

What I am trying to say is that you can say l2p all you want, but when it comes down to facing the better thieves, stealth is an OP mechanic.

The fact that thieves, apart from said OP mechanic, are a rather mediocre class at best, only means that thieves with less skill will get facepalmed by the likes of you and me.

What kind of logic is that rofl?

any class/mechanics can be “OP” if the player is extremely good and skillful

any class will get facepalmed with less skill/experienced except warrior which can facepalm most of noobs even u are a noob.

trust me. most of people QQ about stealth/thief op are just bad players who doesnt even understand their own classess. People who QQ about stealth/thief should post up video of them playing thief I bet they get facepalmed hard.

I apologize for those who missed the title of the post. Let me repeat it.

Suggestions-for-balancing-Stealth

It doesn’t matter if this is just a stealth thread. Stealth is one of three survival mechanic that thieves have to rely on so simply talking about stealth puts the thief profession into question.

Yeah, Mesmers and Rangers have access as well but their professions doesn’t really need it to survive in a fight. Thieves do because their condition clear and stunbreaks suck so so flat out avoiding everything is the better option.

If you really want stealth to become lackluster, then provide some compensation instead of following the footsteps of every other anti-thief.

No compensation needed. Just L2P Thief.

MidoriMarch.8067:

any class/mechanics can be “OP” if the player is extremely good and skillful

You’re not using “OP” correctly.

Anyway, I disagree with you. Stealth in itself is an OP mechanic in the right hands. There is no mechanic in this entire game that even comes close to how powerful stealth can be. Which is why I was talking about good players. Because in the hands of bads, stealth is, unsurprisingly, bad.

On topic; stealth is not something you can fix IMO. That would mean to remove the easy access to it that both thief and mesmer have, which in turn means you would have to seriously buff them both. So if you are serious about fixing stealth, try buffing thief and mesmer first. Then mostly remove stealth, and voila.

@Shakeystorm; you can’t expect a ‘fix stealth’ topic to not have any discussion on the class that uses stealth most.

How about soft counters like observing the environment? A shadow, a glimpse, or even just footsteps. It may be easy to miss but it does not break the class.

ANet will not see suggestions if it is buried in discussions. that is why the post was titled specifically so people will not misunderstand what it is for.

Cygnus.6903:

MidoriMarch.8067:

any class/mechanics can be “OP” if the player is extremely good and skillful

You’re not using “OP” correctly.

Anyway, I disagree with you. Stealth in itself is an OP mechanic in the right hands. There is no mechanic in this entire game that even comes close to how powerful stealth can be. Which is why I was talking about good players. Because in the hands of bads, stealth is, unsurprisingly, bad.

On topic; stealth is not something you can fix IMO. That would mean to remove the easy access to it that both thief and mesmer have, which in turn means you would have to seriously buff them both. So if you are serious about fixing stealth, try buffing thief and mesmer first. Then mostly remove stealth, and voila.

@Shakeystorm; you can’t expect a ‘fix stealth’ topic to not have any discussion on the class that uses stealth most.

Every thing should be OP in the right hands that means you understand the concept and use it to full capacity. I keep saying this but If I choose to go in tank trait line I better get some way to survive if not something is broken.

ShakeyStorm.7180:

Reminder guys, this is about Stealth not thieves. Last I checked there is a thief class forum.

And then you remember that stealth is a core mechanic for thieves so any discussion about balancing stealth must necessarily involve the discussion around balancing thieves.

If your thread is about stealth, your thread is about thieves, whether you choose to believe it or not. Sorry Shakey, that’s just the way it is :/

ShakeyStorm.7180:

No compensation needed. Just L2P Thief.

No changes needed to balance stealth. L2P against it.

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD9Tvfk1pjk

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