Guild Wars 2

I can’t agree with perma stealth. It is fine as it is. Else, stealth would have a much bigger cooldown, and couldn’t be used in combat. That just grants the surprise attack, not the constant stealth in and out during combat

I’m not getting any answers on the idea of it being PvE-only but I continue to hear the objections that caused the thought. Most of you seem concerned that this would negatively affect PvP. What if it didn’t affect PvP at all?

This game does not put all PvE content and PvP content in the same box as it is now. A level 2 character can jump right to the Heart of the Mists and receive an instanced level 80 to play with that has max unlocked skills, is handed gear, and is able to configure their traits. This is a separate instance of your character. It keeps your character’s appearance but that build will not transfer back into PvE. You don’t leave the Mists and suddenly become level 80. If the game can, and is intended, to make this logical break in order to convenience players who are not able to patiently wait until they have legitimately reached level 80, learned level after level how to play that class, and earned decent gear before being able to jump into PvP then why can’t we take advantage of that going the other way? Why can’t there be some abilities that focus on PvE play?

I am convinced that the vast majority of cries for class balancing always come from a PvP focus. I just don’t run into people complaining that someone they teamed up with in PvE was too effective and that some of their abilities should be restricted, removed, or reworked because it just wasn’t fair for the monsters. There are always two ways to look at this as well because asking for limitations on someone else’s character are probably motivated by concerns about your own character’s abilities. If all players could always detect stealth with 100% success this completely negates any advantage stealth would provide. Then, because of adding this 100% detection ability to other classes, everyone would laugh at a character using stealth because this is no advantage. Again, ALL of this only matters in PvP.

If you take the question into PvE the issue of balance for such an ability is to be measured against the abilities of mobs. There are mobs and NPCs now who have significant stealth durations. The assassination mission in the Order of Whispers quest against the Dredge allows the player to go stealth for an indefinite amount of time because of the NPC’s ability to grant that. So far this is obviously the only perma-stealth I’ve experienced (I also play a Warrior) but it is in the game.

I have been thinking about this and the way that long-duration stealth would bother me is limited to PvP. This is not because of the actual ability. It’s because I consider asking for the ability in order to achieve an advantage in PvP suspect. I did not originally react this way to the topic or its idea because it was explicitly stated that this was a non-combat ability. Then I weighed various statements from the players’ answers back and forth and have realized I would object to this as either a combat ability or an ability available for PvP reasons.

Therefore my answer is now reflecting that. If it doesn’t do anything in PvP or WvW and it has no combat effect then I am for it. I personally think this can be done. I think it would be a great thing to add for a few of the classes for PvE and role-playing reasons. ZhangoSqu, I believe you should drop any part of the request aimed at PvP or WvW. It is my projection that a significant improvement in player reaction would occur from editing the suggestion to remove this. You may even want to edit the topic title to “Add Longer Duration PvE-ONLY Stealth”. I’d also request that you extend the feature list to include ideas for other classes that would benefit from its implementation. The idea being Thief-centric and having a PvP effect appears to be what is generating so many negative impressions. I’d like to see your idea succeed. Just need to present it in a way that makes it clear this is not about griefing and I think being inclusive of a few other classes makes it seem more generous.

Daenji.5280:

…

Sorry, didn’t want to quote the entire post.

That being said, I did read it; admittedly I began skimming toward the end. Regardless of that disclaimer, I think you’re right in your assessment. The majority of the negative reactions appear to be from the view point of PvP. Like your previous post suggested, making this an Elite skill instead of a professional skill for PvE environments would give more flexibility to its implementation and the balancing.

I’ll go through the original post and edit it, taking into consideration your suggestions (and others that I have not yet caught up with).

Thanks for the feedback, Daenji!

I am playing a thief and honestly, I like not having a permanent stealth in PvE or PvP. With the way stealth works and the way player stories are sometimes, having that stealth in PvE means skipping all the mobs to get through the personal story, or at least attempt to, and if you die on the boss, wait to come out of combat to use the perma stealth and attempt again, or fight your way back through every mob in the instance. Don’t even need to go into why this would be bad in PvP, not to mention it would make getting the world completion stuff entirely to easy as you could just bypass anything that isn’t a fight without ever going noticed.

I would just like to say that there have been a lot of great points made against the inclusion of a longer duration stealth ability. Particularly for PvP game play. ArenaNET has likely evaluated this as an option as posts earlier suggest and purposefully removed it. Hopefully, if this is the case, they did so after considering and evaluating all possible options regarding it. If they did not however, this suggestion may still have merit in being discussed.

I’ve updated the initial post to hopefully be a little less objectionable from a PvP stand point. I also still think that it should possible to balance the skill against other classes and make it work, but that may just be misguided optimism.

Regardless, everyone who has posted in support of or in objection to the idea have provided a lot of critical responses; especially in objection to how the skill could be abused in PvP. I hope you all continue to provide valuable feedback to other ideas and suggestions throughout the forums!

Thanks!