Guild Wars 2

Kadin.2356:

DanSH.6143:

No one likes fighting stealth-builds because there simply nothing you can do about it.

No one likes to admit that they are too lazy to learn how to do something about it. I didn’t understand myself until I actually rolled a thief. Thief is only OP against the ignorant.

D/P there’s nothing you can do about it. They can roll zerker, and do massive damage with a single hit before setting it all up again. It’s one thing to say they’re easy to defend against when they can guarantee almost a single evade everytime they get revealed. Due to the fact that it’s 3 seconds, that one evasion guarantees lack of damage dealt to them. And if you’re a defensive build, you will never be able to kill them because of the fact that they can easily take you down in 5 attacks.

It’s one thing to say you can easily block them, but 90% of the time when you’re fighting a thief you were caught off guard, meaning you weren’t ready to begin with. You may not even have any blocks on you or anything that can counter them ready. I don’t mind fighting a zerker, but I’m sorry, a zerker who can stealth every 4 seconds? That’s not fun and completely unbalanced, since the stealth pretty much nullifies the risk of a zerker build. If they’re running Shadow Refuge, Smokescreen, and Blinding Powder, that’s 3 stealths they can get in that they had to go to utilities for…but they should not be able to spam stealth constantly with a 2 move combo from range, nobody should.

Ryu you need to stop spouting the lies here.

Counter play against D/P thieves is there. In fact D/P is easily countered since the 12/10 patch.

I see you are in ZoD and that helps me understand your stance. I’ve literally watched thieves on my server destroy groups of ZoD…I’ve also seen a well put together groups of 15 wipe your entire map presence.

Please understand that at higher skill levels stealth isn’t OP in the least

No, D/P is not easy to counter. I’ve tried every so called counter to D/P’s stealth, none work because of the fact that as long as that Black Powder goes down, there’s nothing you can do to stop the stealth. And once in it, while it’s obvious where they’re going to strike, it doesn’t change that any and all of your defenses against it are on a cooldown. You could stop 2 Backstab attempts and then be screwed because all your defenses are on cooldown for the next 20+ seconds. Stealth on D/P is OP, and there is no guaranteed counter, no way to stop it. I play thief, I love it, I don’t want it to be nerfed into the ground…but I won’t deny that the accessibility to stealth on D/P needs a serious change.

RyuDragnier.9476:

No, D/P is not easy to counter. I’ve tried every so called counter to D/P’s stealth, none work because of the fact that as long as that Black Powder goes down, there’s nothing you can do to stop the stealth. And once in it, while it’s obvious where they’re going to strike, it doesn’t change that any and all of your defenses against it are on a cooldown. You could stop 2 Backstab attempts and then be screwed because all your defenses are on cooldown for the next 20+ seconds. Stealth on D/P is OP, and there is no guaranteed counter, no way to stop it. I play thief, I love it, I don’t want it to be nerfed into the ground…but I won’t deny that the accessibility to stealth on D/P needs a serious change.

I counter BP + HS quite often…

Also, don’t forget you can drop a channeled skill on them before they stealth and the game will let you magically follow their every move until your channel completes, perhaps even resulting in downing them.

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

RyuDragnier.9476:

No, D/P is not easy to counter. I’ve tried every so called counter to D/P’s stealth, none work because of the fact that as long as that Black Powder goes down, there’s nothing you can do to stop the stealth. And once in it, while it’s obvious where they’re going to strike, it doesn’t change that any and all of your defenses against it are on a cooldown. You could stop 2 Backstab attempts and then be screwed because all your defenses are on cooldown for the next 20+ seconds. Stealth on D/P is OP, and there is no guaranteed counter, no way to stop it. I play thief, I love it, I don’t want it to be nerfed into the ground…but I won’t deny that the accessibility to stealth on D/P needs a serious change.

I counter BP + HS quite often…

Also, don’t forget you can drop a channeled skill on them before they stealth and the game will let you magically follow their every move until your channel completes, perhaps even resulting in downing them.

Only channeled skills I know of that we thieves have is P/P #3 and Dagger Storm (which is useless unless you’re fighting multiple enemies).

Thieves at the moment control the 1v1 scene, they’re only threatened by condi mesmers/ PU mesmers.
while s/d and s/p are at the top of the chain, d/p is very close to it.
No point denying it.
Go to the 1v1 servers and see for yourself. For any pvp player that watches 1v1 fights it’s pretty clear what’s OP and what’s not.

And again. Note: even if all of my suggestions would go through stealth would still be extremely viable, but considering after testing at least some of the suggestions wouldn’t go through, it’s safe to say it wouldn’t have a huge impact on thieves. it would definitely won’t lead to thieves constantly being perma-revealed.

So… the non-heavy stealth evade thief builds are the top dogs, so we should nerf stealth? Wat?

Azukas.1426:

Counter play against D/P thieves is there. In fact D/P is easily countered since the 12/10 patch.

I think you need to check up on “easy”. And “realistic” while you’re at it. :P
Also, “PvP” vs “1v1”. And how they differ in balance. Because it has to be one hell of a daring Thief who attacks her target while the target is relaxed, attentive and able to focus. Also stupid, because there’s no reason to attack in that situation, Thieves are much better off baiting and waiting for a better moment.

So the big question remains: “How can we make stealth fun to play, play against, give survivability, not be too spammable”

First lets list some good and bad things about the current stealth mechanics:

Bad things:

• Stealth grants a hard to counter offensive ability
  (It takes least skill to hit backstab, it takes a lot of skill and resources to counter)
• It takes no skill to enter stealth
  (Black powder + leap)
• Ability to reset fights

I think stealth should either take skill to be used for offensive builds. Or should only offer defensive abilities when its so easy to get.

• Cloak and dagger + backstab is fine.
• I think Heartseeker should change into an evade backwards roll after being used.
  so #1 Heartseeker > #2 Backflip
  This makes HS less spammable and less able to stack stealth but giving primary dagger more defense.
• When a stealth attack is blocked it should knock back the stealth attacker instead while not revealing him. This gives the other player a chance to counter backstab on a high skill level.

(I’ve played thief since beta. I like the thief, and never stopped playing it. I want to win back respect for the thief and have equal fun playing with or against this class!)
PS: I can’t edit posts in Safari for some reason, my post gets reposted instead, which is the reason I deleted my old post.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

• Stealth grants a hard to counter offensive ability

• It takes no skill to enter stealth
  (Black powder + leap)

Depends on the profession you’re fighting as. Professions with good aoe or lots of cleave aren’t effected as much as single target ranged attacks. It’s harder to deal with in larger open areas (WvW) than smaller nodes (PvP).

While 5,2 doesn’t take a lot of skill to perform… I counter bp->hs every single day. A lot of of thieves freak out and don’t seem to know what to do when you deny stealth and have just ripped away 9 Ini (heavy price to pay when it is countered). Some classes have a much harder time Vs it… while others have an easier time. Overall I find it pretty well balanced on thief.

Having a knockback on block would reward the player for bad play. They had their opportunity to stop the thief from entering stealth. They had the opportunity to reposition to make it harder/impossible to backstab. Why should they get another easier way of countering it at that point with a block that cc’s the thief?

Aberrant.6749:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

• Stealth grants a hard to counter offensive ability

• It takes no skill to enter stealth
  (Black powder + leap)

Depends on the profession you’re fighting as. Professions with good aoe or lots of cleave aren’t effected as much as single target ranged attacks. It’s harder to deal with in larger open areas (WvW) than smaller nodes (PvP).

While 5,2 doesn’t take a lot of skill to perform… I counter bp->hs every single day. A lot of of thieves freak out and don’t seem to know what to do when you deny stealth and have just ripped away 9 Ini (heavy price to pay when it is countered). Some classes have a much harder time Vs it… while others have an easier time. Overall I find it pretty well balanced on thief.

Having a knockback on block would reward the player for bad play. They had their opportunity to stop the thief from entering stealth. They had the opportunity to reposition to make it harder/impossible to backstab. Why should they get another easier way of countering it at that point with a block that cc’s the thief?

Some classes have less counters against backstab and even less to prevent thiefs to enter stealth. I don’t have a lot of problems facing a D/P thief, but in a group fight they still randomly backstab stealth away. And its hard to keep track on something thats invisible.

Right now a block just extends your lifetime for half a second without really doing anything against your 1 spamming invisible friend…
About that skill matter, thief should in that case not use backstab on a blocking foe. Heck even if he does, he will not be revealed. In stealth the initiative is all on the Backstabbers side. He could stealth and do absolutely nothing but watching his foe dodgeroll autoattack trying to avoid the incoming BS.

Imagine this getting implemented, the thief has to actually time his backstab and watch his foe. Or wearing him down before attempting insta kill.

I agree that in some cases especially 1v1, the thief has to play with skill. And a knockback could be fatal. Perhaps weakness instead of knockback would be better for both group and 1v1 situations.

Aberrant.6749:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

• Stealth grants a hard to counter offensive ability

• It takes no skill to enter stealth
  (Black powder + leap)

Depends on the profession you’re fighting as. Professions with good aoe or lots of cleave aren’t effected as much as single target ranged attacks. It’s harder to deal with in larger open areas (WvW) than smaller nodes (PvP).

While 5,2 doesn’t take a lot of skill to perform… I counter bp->hs every single day. A lot of of thieves freak out and don’t seem to know what to do when you deny stealth and have just ripped away 9 Ini (heavy price to pay when it is countered). Some classes have a much harder time Vs it… while others have an easier time. Overall I find it pretty well balanced on thief.

Having a knockback on block would reward the player for bad play. They had their opportunity to stop the thief from entering stealth. They had the opportunity to reposition to make it harder/impossible to backstab. Why should they get another easier way of countering it at that point with a block that cc’s the thief?

Yes, its nice to have a spamable root/interrupt…but most of us don’t have that. We get one chance and thats it for 15+ seconds on most other classes. Thats assuming any of that hits with the stupid amount of kittening blind spam coming from d/p thieves. Pistol 5 pulses blind every second (completely kittening kittened idea btw), stealth pulses blind every 3 seconds (also dumb kittening trait), and black powder shot itself blinds since its a 100% projectile finisher (GJ there anet). I mean, I’ve never balanced an MMO in my life, but stuff like D/P thieves and healing signet are pretty obvious they need to be changed.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

RyuDragnier.9476:

No, D/P is not easy to counter. I’ve tried every so called counter to D/P’s stealth, none work because of the fact that as long as that Black Powder goes down, there’s nothing you can do to stop the stealth. And once in it, while it’s obvious where they’re going to strike, it doesn’t change that any and all of your defenses against it are on a cooldown. You could stop 2 Backstab attempts and then be screwed because all your defenses are on cooldown for the next 20+ seconds. Stealth on D/P is OP, and there is no guaranteed counter, no way to stop it. I play thief, I love it, I don’t want it to be nerfed into the ground…but I won’t deny that the accessibility to stealth on D/P needs a serious change.

I counter BP + HS quite often…

Also, don’t forget you can drop a channeled skill on them before they stealth and the game will let you magically follow their every move until your channel completes, perhaps even resulting in downing them.

Only channeled skills I know of that we thieves have is P/P #3 and Dagger Storm (which is useless unless you’re fighting multiple enemies).

True when speaking of thieves, yes, however going up against D/P is all about being on the offensive vs defensive. I’ve experienced that being on the defensive is the disadvantage here. I got caught by a D/P and immediately had to go on the defensive. I could prolong my life but then I made a mistake and was running out of choices due to initiative cost, I made another mistake and boom.. dead.. Later found him again and we traded offense/defense a few times until finally turned the tables, pressured him into the defensive, messed up his BP+HS, and downed him.

I do hate fighting D/P just because we stalemate eachother a lot but it’s still very much beatable, just not instantly.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

“How can we make stealth fun to [..] play against"

Impossible.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

“How can we make stealth fun to [..] play against"

Impossible.

Already fun. I enjoy high risk hide-and-seek.

Zero Day.2594:

So, kind of curious…
What new roles will these changes bring to WvW thief?
And what are the current role(s) that the WvW thief has?
(nvm spvp, as the issue with capping… Plus majority of QQ’s come from WvW players)

No one thinking high-level enough to answer?
The problem is STEALTH and ONLY STEALTH…. everything else is not concerning…?

Maugetarr.6823:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

“How can we make stealth fun to [..] play against"

Impossible.

Already fun. I enjoy high risk hide-and-seek.

I think its very fun walking in a straight line, turn 180 and PW the invisible thief to death. Then interrupting him with Steal and immobilize him with infiltrators strike. Slash a few times and tadaa…

But I think the majority of the GW2 players are very annoyed by the amount of new gimmicky D/P thiefs

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Maugetarr.6823:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

“How can we make stealth fun to [..] play against"

Impossible.

Already fun. I enjoy high risk hide-and-seek.

I think its very fun walking in a straight line, turn 180 and PW the invisible thief to death. Then interrupting him with Steal and immobilize him with infiltrators strike. Slash a few times and tadaa…

But I think the majority of the GW2 players are very annoyed by the amount of new gimmicky D/P thiefs

At least you get it too. The twitch combat in GW2 is a lot of fun and playing as a thief or one of my alts against thieves is very fast paced, fun combat to me. When I’m learning a class or build it can be frustrating because I don’t remember when to use/where the clutch skills are but that’s a learning issue for me.

As for D/P, I suggested a change that someone brought to the balance forums and that I put in the upcoming balance patch thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-Black-Powder/first

Yeah I still like the idea of adding a chain nr 2 skill after Heartseeker.
Heartseeker changes to a roll backwards or something. So HS is less spammable and you can stack less stealth trough Black Powder.

The ability to stealth is fine.

But that fact that stealth also:

• Heals
• Blinds
• increases movement speed
• sets up powerful stealth attacks
• removes conditions

…is what makes it OP.

If stealth was exclusively a defensive maneuver and didn’t provide offensive capabilities it would be spammed far less.

I like the idea of a trait that gives 3 seconds of Protection when Revealed, Grandmaster Tier ofcgives 3 se

Dee Jay.2460:

The ability to stealth is fine.

But that fact that stealth also:

• Heals
• Blinds
• increases movement speed
• sets up powerful stealth attacks
• removes conditions

…is what makes it OP.

If stealth was exclusively a defensive maneuver and didn’t provide offensive capabilities it would be spammed far less.

That requires 70/70 traits points for the thief just fyi and uses 6/7 equip able traits. I’m perfectly fine with it. The only stealth that needs looking at is BP —→ HS.
9 Initiative isn’t much after the 12/10 changes and has little to no healthy counter play. There is a reason Blinding Powder has a 40sec cd: instant cast stealth.

Dynnen.6405:

Aberrant.6749:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

• Stealth grants a hard to counter offensive ability

• It takes no skill to enter stealth
  (Black powder + leap)

Depends on the profession you’re fighting as. Professions with good aoe or lots of cleave aren’t effected as much as single target ranged attacks. It’s harder to deal with in larger open areas (WvW) than smaller nodes (PvP).

While 5,2 doesn’t take a lot of skill to perform… I counter bp->hs every single day. A lot of of thieves freak out and don’t seem to know what to do when you deny stealth and have just ripped away 9 Ini (heavy price to pay when it is countered). Some classes have a much harder time Vs it… while others have an easier time. Overall I find it pretty well balanced on thief.

Having a knockback on block would reward the player for bad play. They had their opportunity to stop the thief from entering stealth. They had the opportunity to reposition to make it harder/impossible to backstab. Why should they get another easier way of countering it at that point with a block that cc’s the thief?

Yes, its nice to have a spamable root/interrupt…but most of us don’t have that. We get one chance and thats it for 15+ seconds on most other classes. Thats assuming any of that hits with the stupid amount of kittening blind spam coming from d/p thieves. Pistol 5 pulses blind every second (completely kittening kittened idea btw), stealth pulses blind every 3 seconds (also dumb kittening trait), and black powder shot itself blinds since its a 100% projectile finisher (GJ there anet). I mean, I’ve never balanced an MMO in my life, but stuff like D/P thieves and healing signet are pretty obvious they need to be changed.

It doesn’t need to be spammable, if you’re able interrupt the bp->hs that’s 9 ini. That’s a pain for the thief even with the ini changes. Even if you can’t interrupt it it’s not like you don’t have any options to reduce the incoming damage (prot/positioning/etc) or punish the glassy thief when he goes in for the backstab. If you’re able to apply pressure even before the backstab hits it’s that much easier to pressure them back once they hit you and become revealed.

The war problem isn’t just healing signet… it’s a combination of things, but healing signet is apart of that.

Actually, the biggest problem with stealth is not the stealth itself, it’s the traits, which boost stealth.
The problem is, especially on the thief class, that there are way too many traits, which promote staying in stealth for ages.
A simple solution would be just making those traits a bit more bursty.

Let’s give some examples:
Shadow’s Embrace – Remove conditions while in stealth; 1 cond per 3 seconds
becomes: Remove two conditions when entering stealth

Fleet Shadow – Move faster while in stealth; +50% move speed
becomes: Gain super speed for 4 seconds when entering stealth

Patience – Periodically gain initiative while in stealth; 1 per 10 seconds
becomes: Gain 2 initiative, when attacking from stealth

etc.
Such changes would promote active play instead of sitting in stealth and waiting for things to unfold.
I’m actually not that sure about Shadow Rejuvenation and Patience, because honestly, there should still be something, which benefits from staying in stealth, but I love the idea of making the condi removal a bit more active.

MrAmputatoes.6031:

Dee Jay.2460:

The ability to stealth is fine.

But that fact that stealth also:

• Heals
• Blinds
• increases movement speed
• sets up powerful stealth attacks
• removes conditions

…is what makes it OP.

If stealth was exclusively a defensive maneuver and didn’t provide offensive capabilities it would be spammed far less.

That requires 70/70 traits points for the thief just fyi and uses 6/7 equip able traits. I’m perfectly fine with it. The only stealth that needs looking at is BP —-> HS.
9 Initiative isn’t much after the 12/10 changes and has little to no healthy counter play. There is a reason Blinding Powder has a 40sec cd: instant cast stealth.

I think you’ll see a standard 0/30/30/10/0 build covers all of that with…

• Shadow Rejuvenation (alternatively Shadow Protector)
• Cloaked in Shadows
• Fleet Shadow
• Backstab or Sneak Attack
• Shadow’s Embrace

…and that’s a fairly common build with D/D. D/P obviously doesn’t need Cloaked in Shadows and commonly replaces it with something else.

But let me reiterate. The best way to go about this isn’t to straight-up nerf Shadow Arts. It’s to make stealth a purely defensive move with little/no offensive capabilities.

This means no more Backstabs and Sneak Attack, at last not in their current form.

Instead Backstab could be a skill that chains requires some setup or chains from a different ability. The same could be done to Sneak Attack. These abilities don’t need to be nerfed or removed, they just shouldn’t performed from stealth.

Currently:
You want to pressure your enemy —-> go stealth for Backstab / Sneak Attack
You want to relieve yourself of pressure —-> go stealth for condition removal/healing/blinds etc.

Ergo —→ stealth is always the best option

Future:
You want to pressure the enemy —-> stay and fight him
You want to relieve yourself of pressure —-> use stealth to avoid damage/heal/cleanse etc.

Ergo —→ when to pressure and when to retreat are tactical decisions.

Only thing that should change with stealth is: if an attack is missed/blocked/invuled it should break stealth.
And just maybe reduce AOE stealth durations

Dee Jay.2460:

I think you’ll see a standard 0/30/30/10/0 build covers all of that with…

• Shadow Rejuvenation (alternatively Shadow Protector)
• Cloaked in Shadows
• Fleet Shadow
• Backstab or Sneak Attack
• Shadow’s Embrace

…and that’s a fairly common build with D/D. D/P obviously doesn’t need Cloaked in Shadows and commonly replaces it with something else.

But let me reiterate. The best way to go about this isn’t to straight-up nerf Shadow Arts. It’s to make stealth a purely defensive move with little/no offensive capabilities.

This means no more Backstabs and Sneak Attack, at last not in their current form.

Instead Backstab could be a skill that chains requires some setup or chains from a different ability. The same could be done to Sneak Attack. These abilities don’t need to be nerfed or removed, they just shouldn’t performed from stealth.

Currently:
You want to pressure your enemy —-> go stealth for Backstab / Sneak Attack
You want to relieve yourself of pressure —-> go stealth for condition removal/healing/blinds etc.

Ergo —-> stealth is always the best option

Future:
You want to pressure the enemy —-> stay and fight him
You want to relieve yourself of pressure —-> use stealth to avoid damage/heal/cleanse etc.

Ergo —-> when to pressure and when to retreat are tactical decisions.

Ill reply to this soon, had a reply. Then phone died.