Guild Wars 2

Traps should reveal stealth. Anything that needs to be triggered by an enemy walking over it should reveal stealth.

There aren’t any counters or debuffs except for AC carts to reveal stealth. Most MMOs have ranger archetypes that have some sort of skill that reveals stealth.

Why hasn’t this mechanic been brought to guild wars 2 yet except for arrow carts.

Because the only defence thieves get is stealth?

I don’t think you realize how vital stealth is to thieves. It’s as important as a pet is to the ranger. We can try to build outside of the pet/stealth, but in the end we will utilize it because it is a core mechanic to us. Traps do reveal stealth, they tell you where the enemy is. If you can’t put together a trap being triggered and a stealth player being the culprit well there is no hope in helping you.

The entire Thief profession needs to be re-evaluated and re-designed. It is ANet’s fault that the Thief is so bad since they decided that something as incredibly powerful as Stealth would be their ONLY defense mechanism. It’s bad since they can’t take that away really—Thieves would all die then for the most part. Therefore, Thieves get crazy huge error margins and excessive forgiveness due to Stealth shenanigans. You can’t decloak them, they can maintain it forever if done properly—THEY CAN RESET FIGHTS. No profession should be allowed to reset a fight at will.

Yes, Stealth needs to be heavily nerfed (a way to reveal Stealthed opponents—or at least Thieves—would work), but in exchange, Thieves would probably need new ways to defend themselves. In general, the class is just poorly designed.

@NinjaEd.
Kill pet, and Ranger hasn’t it anymore. Every profession has some “Jolly” skills or NPCs to rely on, yet these all can be made pointless by other players, while there is no help against Stealth.

NinjaEd.3946:

Because the only defence thieves get is stealth?

I don’t think you realize how vital stealth is to thieves. It’s as important as a pet is to the ranger. We can try to build outside of the pet/stealth, but in the end we will utilize it because it is a core mechanic to us. Traps do reveal stealth, they tell you where the enemy is. If you can’t put together a trap being triggered and a stealth player being the culprit well there is no hope in helping you.

Thief is not the only profession that can use stealth. Engis can stack stealth, and mesmers have stealth as well.

Even with the patch the pet is still useless when it comes to defense. ALso, thieves don’t use stealth for defense, they use it for offense. The examples of which skills should reveal stealth would not hinder a thief from using stealth defensively.

If you are a thief and can’t handle being debuffed then there is no hope in helping you.

NinjaEd.3946:

Because the only defence thieves get is stealth?

Thieves also got loads of teleporting skills e.g. shadowstep, infiltrator’s strike/shadow return, infliltrator’s arrow. And they got access to evade e.g. shadow assault, flanking strike, disabling shot. So you can get both teleportation and evade without even spending an utility skill slot for that. Thieves even got block: Nine Tailed Strike. Besides any profession can dodge.

But I agree with the original poster and some others: stealth in overall is a broken game mechanism, because it lacks hard counters (no see invisibility etc). This goes for all professions who have access to stealth. And the ability enter stealth all the time in a setting like WvWvW is just a prime example of bad game design. Thief profession requires a complete overhaul.

Pip.2094:

@NinjaEd.
Kill pet, and Ranger hasn’t it anymore. Every profession has some “Jolly” skills or NPCs to rely on, yet these all can be made pointless by other players, while there is no help against Stealth.

while there is no help against Stealth…. other than hitting them…

Those skills that have buttons that counter them have it because otherwise those skills wouldn’t have any way to counter them, stealth is already countered by player experience and even at times pure dumb luck, sure its not the “lol I remove your buff and now the fights back to me being generally stronger than you in most ways” but it also doesn’t require a specific build to do so or generally any changes in your character other than how you play vs them

That is basically the whole reason why thieves are really strong in hotjoin and stomping news and uplevels in WvW but in high level tournement play and big zerg battles they become one of the weaker.

Dasorine.1964:

That is basically the whole reason why thieves are really strong in hotjoin and stomping news and uplevels in WvW but in high level tournement play and big zerg battles they become one of the weaker.

I fully agree that thieves are not that strong profession in high level tournament play, but I guess only <1% of GW2 players ever do that form of play. Anet unfortunately designed the profession more or less into one trick pony: huge burst and dps, not much utility. But the biggest issue is the game mode: pvp is about holding points and you cannot contest a point while being in stealth. And one of the other reasons for thieves being weak is the lack of skill. The thief profession promotes easy kills by few simple key press combinations. That is why for example in pve you often hear that thieves suck, BUT if you get a really good thief in your party, he certainly does as much damage as a warrior and isn’t dying.

I think it is a common fallacy that thieves are weak in zerg play. At least in euro tier #1 thieves are very common in zerg battles. Typical thief strategy is to spam daggerstorm and then make U turn towards own troops. Thieves can provide the highly needed blast finishers by demand by simply using shortbow #2, clusterbomb. That skill is also the highest damage range 1200 AoE skill in the game, which can be spammed every few seconds. In zerg fights thieves do stealth stomps all the time and flank the sides and rears looking for weak victims. If the enemy grou kitten cattered, thieves can enter the enemy group without much any risk of dying due having easy access to shadowstep and stealth.

As a Thief I’m inclined to agree with the OP, I think that each profession should be able to “knock” a thief out of stealth with at least one ability.

What I’m thinking is that Revealed should become a duration stacking debuff applied by traps, knockdowns, combo fields, and by the thief attacking from stealth, each applying Revealed like any other condition and removable/diminishable by certain thief abilities/traits.
That being said the duration of the Revealed debuff should then be cut down to 1.5 seconds per stack with a max of 25 stacks or 35.5 seconds.

While I’m sure there are many possible pitfalls to this idea I believe it would be easier to balance both in pvp and pve than the current system and would add a more strategic aspect both to using stealth and defending against it.

Pip.2094:

@NinjaEd.
Kill pet, and Ranger hasn’t it anymore. Every profession has some “Jolly” skills or NPCs to rely on, yet these all can be made pointless by other players, while there is no help against Stealth.

Kill pet, you just wasted 10+s killing the pet. Guess what, ranger has another pet. Ranger just got buffed for swapping pets. By the time that pet dies, new ranger pet will almost be ready to say hi. Btw, you don’t like stealth, then aoe and don’t leave yourself wide open.

Deniara Devious.3948:

If the enemy grou kitten cattered

I’d like to solve the puzzle.

Is it:
If the enemy group….
is…
scattered?!

Okay now where’s my prize :P

Most people are forgetting a key element is classes. Thieves are very OP in WvW. While regularly in pvp i’ve seen gaurdians, engineers, mesmers, warriors, and rangers beat thieves. Sure they’re hard to fight in WvW but you will always have a theif buster build in your party. My engineer friend does and he kills theives with ease. Im a mesmer and with the idea of the explode on death clones can make theives easy to fight. Simply because when the c/d of of a clone they hurt themselves bad. Sure they need to be nerfed and some ways to do that would add an ability to characters but they still can be killed.

randomfightfan.4091:

Deniara Devious.3948:

If the enemy grou kitten cattered

I’d like to solve the puzzle.

Is it:
If the enemy group….
is…
scattered?!

Okay now where’s my prize :P

Got a price! Where can I send the cookies?

That is the actually exactly what I wrote there and I can still see that in the edit window, but for some reason Anet forum system mangles it into that.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Dasorine.1964:

That is basically the whole reason why thieves are really strong in hotjoin and stomping news and uplevels in WvW but in high level tournement play and big zerg battles they become one of the weaker.

I fully agree that thieves are not that strong profession in high level tournament play, but I guess only <1% of GW2 players ever do that form of play. Anet unfortunately designed the profession more or less into one trick pony: huge burst and dps, not much utility. But the biggest issue is the game mode: pvp is about holding points and you cannot contest a point while being in stealth. And one of the other reasons for thieves being weak is the lack of skill. The thief profession promotes easy kills by few simple key press combinations. That is why for example in pve you often hear that thieves suck, BUT if you get a really good thief in your party, he certainly does as much damage as a warrior and isn’t dying.

I think it is a common fallacy that thieves are weak in zerg play. At least in euro tier #1 thieves are very common in zerg battles. Typical thief strategy is to spam daggerstorm and then make U turn towards own troops. Thieves can provide the highly needed blast finishers by demand by simply using shortbow #2, clusterbomb. That skill is also the highest damage range 1200 AoE skill in the game, which can be spammed every few seconds. In zerg fights thieves do stealth stomps all the time and flank the sides and rears looking for weak victims. If the enemy grou kitten cattered, thieves can enter the enemy group without much any risk of dying due having easy access to shadowstep and stealth.

There are more than burst thieves, but I get your point. The way thieves are set up, they utilize burst better than anyone which is good, since their defence is bupkiss.

To whoever said thieves don’t use stealth as a defence, LOL. So the hundreds of people who cry when a thief stealths and leaves the fight is an example of an offence… btw if they leave the fight, which this kinda situation usually happens in spvp, it means you won the fight. Kill them or not, if they arn’t near you and assuming you’re playing conquest correctly you are getting a ppt and the thief is not.

People need to understand stealth is the only sustain a thief gets. They don’t get protection, their regen isn’t that good, no block/aegis except for spear #3, and their life pool is the lowest tier (with guardian and ele I believe) along with being medium armor. All thieves got, if they build for it, is stealth and evades which since evade negates all damage, is fairly strong but rangers can evade really well too.

Countering stealth comes down to player skill, and if they havn’t dealt with it enough, it will sting. Stealth isn’t something you spot and switch to your super mega blaster skill that freezes them for being stealth near you, you have to predict their next move which most thieves, are kittens and run straight at you with a mug+bs with BV attached. Really easy to counter, unless your wearing nothing but town clothes and a broom.

Thief isn’t hard to play. Playing a good thief is hard, and good thieves arn’t doing these things after player 2 days, same as no d/d ele is doing that good after a couple pvp encounters. Thief has 1 good role atm, which is to damage(control is meh, support is mediocre). Don’t ruin it any further… The only thing I dislike about thief’s stealth is the duration vs. the reveal. I don’t think 3 and 4 is suitable, popping in and out just seems like a trickster rather than someone who is slipping into the shadows to land a powerful stealth attack. Imo, the stealth durations should be between 5-6 seconds (excluding shadow refuge) and the reveal should be around 6 seconds. This lets thieves promote more chaos as the enemy searches for them (if they choose to linger in stealth) but also when they are revealed the enemy has more than enough time to react and retaliate. A lot can happen in 6 seconds to the squishiest profession in game. A lot…

A good first step would be to not let them stealth up while they are being hit, have to be out of combat.

bmabrey.7859:

A good first step would be to not let them stealth up while they are being hit, have to be out of combat.

Which is about as far away from what they wanted the thief and designed it to be as you could get without just removing stealth all together. (akin to asking that elementalists should only be able to use 1 element during combat)

Pip.2094:

@NinjaEd.
Kill pet, and Ranger hasn’t it anymore. Every profession has some “Jolly” skills or NPCs to rely on, yet these all can be made pointless by other players, while there is no help against Stealth.

Thief is on the lowest tier of health gain per level(leaving it with one of the lowest over all HP’s), has to be spec’d for stealth for it to be effective, and has some of the most limited build choices in the entire game. couple that with the fact that because of people complaining about them(like you guys), the thief, as a class, has been butchered with nerfs. First it was the so called “Perma Stealth” which was just culling, then it was the “one hit KO” which is actually about 5 hits that you stood still for. =/

You can use traps, AOE, crowd control, and I know of many skills that track thieves after they stealth.
Ive seen so many fights for example where people will stop attacking and walk around when a thief goes stealth. both of which are mistakes.
Stealth isnt the problem, its you. If you would give it half a second of thought, you could counter the stealth just like anything else.
The Thief complaints are getting old. l2p