Guild Wars 2

One of the major issues I have with stealth currently, is the complete lack of feedback when successfully landing a hit on an invisible opponent. It’s all fine and good swinging your weapon around when your enemy has turned themselves invisible, but it’s also incredibly unsatisfying attacking thin air with no indication as to whether or not your attacks are doing anything.

On numerous occasions I’ve been fighting Thieves (or Mesmers) with a decent stealth uptime and I’ve been swinging my sword around trying to get lucky hits but thinking I’ve done nothing. Suddenly I would have a downed Thief or Mesmer appear at my feet where my attacks had actually landed. It’s not a particularly fun way to engage in battle and I think the distinct lack of visual clues that your hitting a stealthed opponent is what’s really lacking.

For that reason, I suggest the addition of a visual clue for when an attack lands on a stealthed opponent. This will be good for two reasons: 1) it allows people to effectively follow a breadcrumb trail to a stealthed opponent, rewarding those who persist in their efforts to route out their invisible foe and 2) stealth would therefore require much more finesse to use correctly and would need to be accompanied by decent evasion and spacial awareness in order to not reveal ones location.

It was just a thought.

Any stealth nerf is a good nerf!

stealth needs no nerfs, stealth needs a buff in its mechanics and adequate good counter methods for the other classes to balance it out.

Examples:
Like rangers pets being able to auto detect stealthed enemies, if they get too near to them.
Eles have already their massive AoE spells which should be the only class able to damage stealthed thiefs, anything else shouldn’t be able to damage them while in stealth
Thiefs just follow other thiefs into stealth changing into the shadow realm to follow their opponents giving stealth some kind of new visialization effect once activatign stealth, that the environment around you will get a light bluish blur effect or so, so that you can see a difference from beign in stealth or not, other than just seeing your character being invisible. That shoul be the visual thing with your enemies, but the player self should see their thiefs in somek ind of shadow realm environment effect.
Engineers could easily place towers or mines which can detect stealthed enemies, if they get too near to them
Warriors could have a shout, that can detect hidden enemies in front of them
Necromancers could place an environmental spell as ground target, which lets undead hands hold stealthed enemies, if they run over that AoE Mark
Mesmers could place a glamour spell, that detects stealthed players around the memers by activation of the skill or some kind of mantra, which adds to 2 spells some kind of detection effect…
Guardians could receiv under one of their virtues, I’d say justice a new effect, that if they have this active on themself, that they have as long its active onthemself a new boon called “True Sight”, which auto detects every 10 seconds stealthed players in near

This maybe together with some optimized trait effects or better utility skills and it would be no problem to increase the duration of stealth skills and adding other benefitial trait effects to the stealth system ect.
i’ve seen already better stealth systems, than GW2 has, and the system here could be alot better, if class balancing wouldn’t lack in good counter methods. Counter methods are everything that is needed to balance such a simple feature, like Stealth.

I wouldn’t like to see a nerf to stealth per se, just something to make it that little bit more fun to fight against. If you’re going to make me fight invisible players, at least try and make it interesting. For example, fighting another Mesmer with full clone deployment can be a real mind kitten at times, but at least I get to play a game of “spot the Mesmer” to make it fun to combat. With stealth there’s nothing like that, it’s basically swing your weapon around like a well-armed and very violent headless chicken, hoping your attacks are landing.

I can’t be the only one who finds swinging their weapon around attacking thin air to be a really rather rubbish way to play the game.

I’d be fine with something VERY subtle, like a faint sound effect.

Or have the damage numbers pop.

I would support almost any stealth nerfs atm.

@Orpheal
Considering each player has all of 3 utilities to choose, I’m not sure requiring them to have anti-thief utils equipped in order to fight them is really a fair solution. If it was a side-effect added to current, somewhat lackluster skills, I could get behind that!
For ex: Add it to guardians’ orb of light, so when it pops it reveals thieves in a 400 radius around it.

Imo it should be a visual effect since there are already a lot of sound effects during a fight.

There has to be some kind of counter. You can counter anything in the game but stealth which makes it really strong. It should not be a huge nerf though since thiefs need stealth to be effective.

Not gonna lie that shadow realm visual effect seems really cool, but when your like me who goes into stealth every 3 seconds, your screen going from negative to normal and back will get annoying

Auesis.7301:

I’d be fine with something VERY subtle, like a faint sound effect.

A faint sound effect would be cool, but I think an accompanying visual effect would help for all those times when the sound bugs out in WvW or when some sound effects are drowned out by others.

I’d want to see a very subtle visual effect though. Something that’s easily missed if you’re not looking out for it and definitely not a sort of “here I am, come kill me” partial reveal.

If it were completely impossible to detect hits on stealthers i’d be against this idea. However, you can already detect stealth hits on classes whi have a chain attack auto. When it chains, you’ve hit.

The problem with this is that not every class and weapon set has chain attack autos, and it requires looking at the interface to pull off.

I’m behind some kind of visual cue, but only if it’s non-locational. Hitting a thief with an AoE shouldn’t pinpoint the stealther down to the nanometer (and all melee weapons are AoEs of a sort) as that makes it actively too difficult to effectively stealth. Put down necro wells and suddenly the thief can’t choose to approach or travel through the area. Whip out a flamethrower of grenade kit and stealth is completely useless. Heck, swing a greatsword and hit once and you’ll never stop hitting, even if the hit was at the very edge of your strike.

Just a little sparkle or something above your character’s head, or maybe a screen-edge flash similar to conditions would do the trick. This gives equal access to stealth hit feedback to everyone while not completely removing the thief’s ability to choose to soak a little damage while stealthed.

No, thieves shouldn’t get a stealth nerf. I could barely 1v10 people.

Instead, they should get a buff so I can 1v20.

^Don’t encourage the Dev’s. They way they’ve treated Thief’s, you’ll probably get it

For the now made useless in WvW Ranger, I’d like is our pet’s having the ability to always detect pray. Think about it, sense of smell and sound, they really should.

Now we’re talking about a skill making Rangers useful again. Meanwhile giving stealth finally it’s first Achilles’s heal.

But why do you want to nerf stealth? It’s the only mechanic thieves have, with it nerfed they will be useless. You want thieves to get nerfed because they whoop your butts in pvp, but have in mind any change you apply to that class with affect pve aspect of the game as well.

vove.2768:

It’s the only mechanic thieves have

Never mind them having Initiative.

Cronstintein.7182:

Or have the damage numbers pop.

^this and culling fixes are all that i accept needs changing about stealth

gimmethegepgun.1284:

vove.2768:

It’s the only mechanic thieves have

Never mind them having Initiative.

and steal and dual weapon skills

Nerf duration and buff detection … any form of detection although damage numbers and, especially, a slight ripple would fix the problem.

No profession should realistically be invisible more than a few seconds at a time. Stealth is a broken mechanic by design and almost impossible to balance.

PopeUrban.2578:

Whip out a flamethrower of grenade kit and stealth is completely useless. Heck, swing a great sword and hit once and you’ll never stop hitting, even if the hit was at the very edge of your strike.

Surely even with the damage ticker a half decent thief could simply dodge out of the way. Dodge + stealth is powerful.

Maybe allow the thief to use initiative for dodging once their stamina is empty.

Actually that would be awesome, ninja jump, ninja dodge, ninja dodge again, scamper, pew, pew, pew, ninja dodge.

Stealth classes ruin every good pvp game. Thief and his stealths are just ridiculous. In other games they cant use stealth while in combat and they have only ONE with long cd. That is what we need here.

vove.2768:

But why do you want to nerf stealth? It’s the only mechanic thieves have, with it nerfed they will be useless. You want thieves to get nerfed because they whoop your butts in pvp, but have in mind any change you apply to that class with affect pve aspect of the game as well.

No no no. I don’t want to see stealth massively nerfed. I just want it to be made more interesting for the person combating it. This doesn’t just affect Thieves, this affects all of us due to skills like shadow refuge, mas invis and veil. If there was some sort of visual effect when a person in stealth takes damage then it allows all of us to prepare for an attack from an invisible opponent. It means we can react in intelligent ways to an incoming attack from stealth and it also means stealth must be used in accordance with good spacial awareness. Most solo thieves would not be affected by a change like this because most solo thieves will be kiting outside of their opponents attack range before jumping in for an attack. But, if the thief is careless and I land lots of attacks from a melee weapon whilst they are in stealth, then they deserve to be ‘noticed’ without the use of my damage channel. And just make mobs not react to the visual effect when taking damage in stealth in PvE, if it’s really an issue.

I just feel like stealth as it stands now feels half-baked and isn’t as fun to deal with as it could be.

As I see here we have a typical case of *hurt to deal with. On one side people spam requests to nerf thieves, on the other hand people spam requests to buff them due to being superunderpowered in pve and during leveling phases, making them (one of the) hardest professions to level.

Who is right? I guess none of the above. Thieves are very skill dependent class, you have to push button fast and have to know which skill to execute next, as they are more squishie than light armor wearers they heavily depend on stealth and evades. So what they have stealth and initiative if you can take them down so fast?

Where thieves shine is 1v1, I don’t know, maybe it’s just easier for them in 1v1 fights. When I play pvp with my warrior I got no problems with thieves, when I play my conditionmancer sometimes it is hard and I die, but this is a sign for me “you have to get better” not “kittening thieves, they’ve should got nerfed”.

That’s all, I wonder how many people who wants the nerfs plays pvp with 80lvl thief actually. Personally I think elementalists are more op, so what now? Nerf them as well so I won’t have to learn how to counter them?

Have torches give that reveal effect to adjacent foes. It could be quite an interesting mechanic. I’m not sure if the torch environmental weapon has its own consumable, but this would give it another use.
I know this is along the lines of Orpheal’s idea, but it could be a solution. Ideally, the stealth mechanic on its own should be fun to fight against.

Thiefs being “OP” is not the problem (which they aren’t anyway imo).

The problem is stealth has no counter. Everything else in the game has a counter.

Here are some examples:

D/D bunker (yes, the “OP” build has counters) → boon removal, burst damage, lots of immobilize/stun/knockdown

Shatter mesmer (again, yes there are counters for this build)→ kill illusions with AoE, look for special abilites only players are able to cast, “ping” who the real mesmer is, dodge if illusions might shatter

Conditionmancer → lots of condition removal/heal, high HP, mobility to disengage if needed

100b warrior → mobility, stun break, protection, Shocking Aura, Frost Aura

and so on…

When it comes to stealth there is nothing you can do. Once a thief/mesmer is stealthed you can only wait until the enemy attacks you and maybe prepare in some way (for example get protection and hope the enemy will hit you while the buff is up).

If the enemy decides to walk away you can’t do anything about it.

If he attacks you you can TRY to dodge it (which would be pure luck since you can’t see him) or get some sort of protection BUT it’s still a waste of time for you since you can’t do anything to attack the enemy.

There is no pop up which says you just successfully hit a stealthed enemy. The game simply lacks feedback here. We don’t want the stealth to break if we manage to hit them but at least let the damage pop up or let us know in another way. As long as this does not happen we can only waste our AoE skills and hope to hit them at least once.

If we can’t see the enemy at all we can’t fight them and that’s what makes stealth frustrating to deal with.

=> No huge nerf needed but players need feedback if they just hit a stealthed enemy. Otherwise it’s as close to god mode as you can get in this game.

There is a reason why you can counter it in any other PvP oriented game.

Look, stealth is not magic. the moment a thief takes damage they should be revealed and have a “wounded” debuff that prevents furthur stealth (exept for the healing stealth) for 15 seconds.

Make them use stealth tactically rather than just spam it the way all thieves currently do. They should have to think about when to use stealth, not just use it the moment anyone hits them.

For the thieves that thena sk how they would pve…pve thieves have been dealign with resetting mobs on stealth for months…this is why most of them have dual pistols or the shortbow for open world pve…no reliance on stealth.

Apply x number of hit that a thief can receive during stealth. This counter decreases when the thief receives non-conditional damage, and if this number reaches 0, the thief should be revealed.

Also, if possible, faint footsteps.

Nerf? No. I dont think so.

codiac.5642:

PopeUrban.2578:

Whip out a flamethrower of grenade kit and stealth is completely useless. Heck, swing a great sword and hit once and you’ll never stop hitting, even if the hit was at the very edge of your strike.

Surely even with the damage ticker a half decent thief could simply dodge out of the way. Dodge + stealth is powerful.

Maybe allow the thief to use initiative for dodging once their stamina is empty.

Actually that would be awesome, ninja jump, ninja dodge, ninja dodge again, scamper, pew, pew, pew, ninja dodge.

That’s a neat idea, but really, imagine a situation where you’ve got damage numbers or some other locational hit indicator.

You lay down a series of necro wells, ping> thief location pinpointed for a hit. Ping> next hit.

After the first hit you have the option to dodge, sure, but you’ve only got two dodges, three with some investment in the acrobatics line.

Your other mobility skills are all mutually exclusive with dealing damage. No mobility utility does damage, and mobility based weapon skills cost initiative.

I believe everyone should know they hit something. However, I don’t believe it should be functionally impossible for a thief to walk through someone spamming 1 with a flamethrower. We commonly save those dodges specifically for dodging big attacks or to create distance, stealthed or not, and we don’t magically get more dodges when we stealth. We need them to fight, and a large part of stealth is having the ability to reposition without using them, or having a quick break from a fight to recharge the endurance we rely on a bit more than other classes to mitigate damage, as we have no real defensive boons and bottom tier HP.

Knowing you hit is the state of the game now, and as a thief I can tell the difference between, say, a warrior that knows how to stealth detect wih his chains and one that does not. The smart warrior will get that chain hit with his auto and immediately hit the area with a nice heavy attack or some CC. He’ll then immediately start sweeping the area in all directions to get another ping to see if his CC landed and stuck. He’s rewarded for ferreting out my general location, but he actually has to work to pinpoint my exact location. This makes stealth viable in that I can juke the guy a bit without wasting a dodge that I’ll need when stealth wears off to survive and actually fight the guy. At the same time, he can counter that juke by using wide AoE and cone swing mechanics, and force me to use it anyway.

A precise locational indicator would mean that literally every time you’re hit in stealth you MUST use a dodge. This means even the lowest damage AoE is completely off limits, which too greatly limits one of the primary uses of stealth as a positioning tool, and more importantly, makes stealth completely useless as a mid-fight positioning tool against all melee and heavy AoE sets.

You shouldn’t have to stare at your #1 skill to detect if you hit a stealther, and every class and spec should have the same ability as chain melee users do to reliably know “hey, I hit an invisible guy” so they can attempt the big hit or have a general idea where to drop AoE.

However, countering stealth shouldn’t be as easy as hitting once and then lasering the spot, and stealthers should have the option to risk running through low damage AoEs and taking that damage in stead of wasting endurance and abilities while under effects of stealth.

DeWolfe.2174:

^Don’t encourage the Dev’s. They way they’ve treated Thief’s, you’ll probably get it

For the now made useless in WvW Ranger, I’d like is our pet’s having the ability to always detect pray. Think about it, sense of smell and sound, they really should.

Now we’re talking about a skill making Rangers useful again. Meanwhile giving stealth finally it’s first Achilles’s heal.

Thief is useless.

Made useless in WvW.

Simonoly.4352:

On numerous occasions I’ve been fighting Thieves (or Mesmers) with a decent stealth uptime and I’ve been swinging my sword around trying to get lucky hits but thinking I’ve done nothing. Suddenly I would have a downed Thief or Mesmer appear at my feet where my attacks had actually landed.

So stealth need a nerf so you can down a thief/mesmer not only on numerous occasion, but always? >.<

PopeUrban.2578:

codiac.5642:

PopeUrban.2578:

Whip out a flamethrower of grenade kit and stealth is completely useless. Heck, swing a great sword and hit once and you’ll never stop hitting, even if the hit was at the very edge of your strike.

Surely even with the damage ticker a half decent thief could simply dodge out of the way. Dodge + stealth is powerful.

Maybe allow the thief to use initiative for dodging once their stamina is empty.

Actually that would be awesome, ninja jump, ninja dodge, ninja dodge again, scamper, pew, pew, pew, ninja dodge.

That’s a neat idea, but really, imagine a situation where you’ve got damage numbers or some other locational hit indicator.

You lay down a series of necro wells, ping> thief location pinpointed for a hit. Ping> next hit.

After the first hit you have the option to dodge, sure, but you’ve only got two dodges, three with some investment in the acrobatics line.

Your other mobility skills are all mutually exclusive with dealing damage. No mobility utility does damage, and mobility based weapon skills cost initiative.

I believe everyone should know they hit something. However, I don’t believe it should be functionally impossible for a thief to walk through someone spamming 1 with a flamethrower. We commonly save those dodges specifically for dodging big attacks or to create distance, stealthed or not, and we don’t magically get more dodges when we stealth. We need them to fight, and a large part of stealth is having the ability to reposition without using them, or having a quick break from a fight to recharge the endurance we rely on a bit more than other classes to mitigate damage, as we have no real defensive boons and bottom tier HP.

Knowing you hit is the state of the game now, and as a thief I can tell the difference between, say, a warrior that knows how to stealth detect wih his chains and one that does not. The smart warrior will get that chain hit with his auto and immediately hit the area with a nice heavy attack or some CC. He’ll then immediately start sweeping the area in all directions to get another ping to see if his CC landed and stuck. He’s rewarded for ferreting out my general location, but he actually has to work to pinpoint my exact location. This makes stealth viable in that I can juke the guy a bit without wasting a dodge that I’ll need when stealth wears off to survive and actually fight the guy. At the same time, he can counter that juke by using wide AoE and cone swing mechanics, and force me to use it anyway.

A precise locational indicator would mean that literally every time you’re hit in stealth you MUST use a dodge. This means even the lowest damage AoE is completely off limits, which too greatly limits one of the primary uses of stealth as a positioning tool, and more importantly, makes stealth completely useless as a mid-fight positioning tool against all melee and heavy AoE sets.

You shouldn’t have to stare at your #1 skill to detect if you hit a stealther, and every class and spec should have the same ability as chain melee users do to reliably know “hey, I hit an invisible guy” so they can attempt the big hit or have a general idea where to drop AoE.

However, countering stealth shouldn’t be as easy as hitting once and then lasering the spot, and stealthers should have the option to risk running through low damage AoEs and taking that damage in stead of wasting endurance and abilities while under effects of stealth.

This sounds like a balance issue. If thieves used half as much energy to dodge they’d have twice as many dodges up their sleeve and they’d recover a dodge in half the time, and it would even fit the meta for the class.

I would love to see the data set on WvW. I wouldn’t be surprised is Arenanet is tracking class population, equipment, kills to death ratio’s, siege and supply used per class, and pretty much everything that transpires in WvW.

From my experience in T1, it appears Thieves have been a high population class with an innately high k/d ratio. To balance the classes, I still believe the Ranger should be the Thieves antagonist. In an RPG setting, whom better right?

There’s not a complete lack of feedback.

If you have a sequenced skill (e.g.: Most #1 in mele weapons) if you hit an invisible opponent, the sequence will advance.

It’ll be nice if they were partially revealed for at least 1/4 of a second, when hit but a direct attack (not AoEs), though.

Genesis Notch.1905:

Apply x number of hit that a thief can receive during stealth. This counter decreases when the thief receives non-conditional damage, and if this number reaches 0, the thief should be revealed.

Also, if possible, faint footsteps.

Doesn’t sound viable. Thieves don’t stealth long enough to warrant it. Any prolonged stealth with the exception of Shadow Refuge is the result of regular restealthing.

codiac.5642:

This sounds like a balance issue. If thieves used half as much energy to dodge they’d have twice as many dodges up their sleeve and they’d recover a dodge in half the time, and it would even fit the meta for the class.

Six dodges in a row is a balance issue in and of itself. There’s a reason vigor is sparsely awarded and only grants a 50% regen to endurance. It still doesn’t solve the problem of being REQUIRED to dodge any time you take damage in stealth to remain so. It doesn’t solve the problem of completely disallowing the option to tank through aoes to preserve cooldowns and initiative.

Let’s not forget that you don’t have to be a thief to stealth. You’re also screwing up mesmer self-stealth and all ally/combo granted stealth in the process. For other classes, stealth is even more useful when they can get it and you’re removing a large part of WvW tactical play.

The system works extremely well as is for people that know how to use it. The existing system of non-locational feedback only needs to be made more obvious and awarded to every class/spec. Chains flipping on a stealth hit was unintended, but serves as a really good and fair balance for both the stealther and the attacker as much as channels not breaking on stealth is an unfair and unbalanced counter for the stealther while rewarding the attacker too greatly.

If you have traits that can give you boons on critical hits, that can also tell you you’ve hit something, even if you don’t see it.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Simonoly.4352:

On numerous occasions I’ve been fighting Thieves (or Mesmers) with a decent stealth uptime and I’ve been swinging my sword around trying to get lucky hits but thinking I’ve done nothing. Suddenly I would have a downed Thief or Mesmer appear at my feet where my attacks had actually landed.

So stealth need a nerf so you can down a thief/mesmer not only in numerous occasion, but always? >.<

Haha. Nice try, but not quite the sentiment intended when you bear in mind the context of the rest of my post. This isn’t about establishing a straight up nerf for stealth, but making it more interesting and ultimately more rewarding for everyone combating it.

Anyway, this thread is healthy and there’s been some decent suggestions and arguments above.

Runiir.6425:

Look, stealth is not magic

Actually, in GW2 stealth is magic, Denial magic to be precise, the same type mesmers use (which is why they can also stealth and teleport).

Really nice to finally have a good conversation abouth stealth instead of the QQ I saw in other threads. So far I really liked some of the ideas on how to improve the situation.

To everyone arguing back and forth, Have no fear stealth people that have no issues with it because you have learn to play against it. Developers have already specifically said they will not play the nerf game after the debakul of the spirit ranger, so no whack a mole.

To the players that think that stealth is just OP and needs to be nerfed
Developers have already specifically said they will not play the nerf game after the debakul of the spirit ranger, so no whack a mole.

Actually you can tell if you hit a stealthed target. Your character animation change for every landed swings. No need to nerf it or w/e. Also, putting numbers would reveal exact positioning, wich would be a nerf.

So, quick problem as an engy. Stealth = nearly undetectable. We have one attack on one kit that has minimal range which can be used to detect by chain. While many builds run toolkit for the 3 second block, not all do. The only one that has arguably worse -detecting- skills than us is the elementalist (though dagger 1 fire may reveal based on disappearance of the flames). My proposition is simply let stealth break on crowd control.

Most aoe cc’s are easy to avoid (electic field, big ol’ bomb, ring/line of warding, etc), and direct hit cc’s would require the enemy to be right in front of you. Either way, it seems fair to at least make stealthers think about where they’re going while in stealth, rather than just walking through the enemy and spinning around for a backstab (which I’ve done before for the lolz).

Honestly, stealth right now stands as the best escape mechanic, even on an engineer, as becoming completely untrackable is much more useful than being invulnerable for a few seconds (tiny stomps not withstanding).

if you have something like heal on damage signet on you see heal when you hit stealth.

And just watched that “why stealth needs a nerf” video… the person hardly stealthed at all… spent far longer unstealthed than stealthed, the fact that the enemies didn’t kill him is far from the fact that he stealthed now and then to re-position or escape…

Orpheal.8263:

stealth needs no nerfs, stealth needs a buff in its mechanics and adequate good counter methods for the other classes to balance it out.

Examples:
Like rangers pets being able to auto detect stealthed enemies, if they get too near to them.
Eles have already their massive AoE spells which should be the only class able to damage stealthed thiefs, anything else shouldn’t be able to damage them while in stealth
Thiefs just follow other thiefs into stealth changing into the shadow realm to follow their opponents giving stealth some kind of new visialization effect once activatign stealth, that the environment around you will get a light bluish blur effect or so, so that you can see a difference from beign in stealth or not, other than just seeing your character being invisible. That shoul be the visual thing with your enemies, but the player self should see their thiefs in somek ind of shadow realm environment effect.
Engineers could easily place towers or mines which can detect stealthed enemies, if they get too near to them
Warriors could have a shout, that can detect hidden enemies in front of them
Necromancers could place an environmental spell as ground target, which lets undead hands hold stealthed enemies, if they run over that AoE Mark
Mesmers could place a glamour spell, that detects stealthed players around the memers by activation of the skill or some kind of mantra, which adds to 2 spells some kind of detection effect…
Guardians could receiv under one of their virtues, I’d say justice a new effect, that if they have this active on themself, that they have as long its active onthemself a new boon called “True Sight”, which auto detects every 10 seconds stealthed players in near

This maybe together with some optimized trait effects or better utility skills and it would be no problem to increase the duration of stealth skills and adding other benefitial trait effects to the stealth system ect.
i’ve seen already better stealth systems, than GW2 has, and the system here could be alot better, if class balancing wouldn’t lack in good counter methods. Counter methods are everything that is needed to balance such a simple feature, like Stealth.

Big no to stealth counters. Agree with op though, a visual clue to tracing a stealthed opponent would be nice and acceptable. Stealth reveals would downright trash thieves into an abyss and no one would play them in spvp anymore or pve or wvw (because mobs get our player spells, so stealth reveal for them too)

Personally, I think stealth needs a slightly longer duration base (2-3 seconds) and a longer time between stealthing (3-4 seconds). I like the appearing/reappearing act but having to completely rely on it as opposed to picking the right moment to strike isn’t very friendly or exciting. Just feels off having to spam stealth so frequently (if you’re glass cannon thief).

a thief is my main char and while learning how to play the class i have also learned another thing..how to ENCOUNTER one.I am bored of people whinning about thieves cause in the end i believe most of them just dont know how to face them..i also have other chars and whenever i have a thief as an opponent i know what to do and and sometimes i win sometimes not but i dont kitten about it…also noone that i know who is really skilled in pvp has ever cried about thieves…

I’ve had no major problems facing thieves going to stealth with my flamethrower – I just have to spread the flames for a few seconds and I’m doing more than they are. Even more so if they’re slowed down or immobilized, in those cases I can just laugh at their invisible burning faces.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Not gonna lie that shadow realm visual effect seems really cool, but when your like me who goes into stealth every 3 seconds, your screen going from negative to normal and back will get annoying

Stealthing every 3 sec is just as annoying lol

@NinjaEd

Hard Counters to stealth are the absolute only solution to balance Stealth and allow for the devs to buf stealth at the same time making it more fun to play as also for other players more fun to play against thiefs, because of having a real chance to stop thiefs, before its too late, so that also thief players must be more cautious, once they go into stealth…

When I think on a Stealth System, then I’ve always to think on the game series of Metal Gear Solid, a game where you have to try to be unseen all the time if you are very good at this. Where the game is full of mechanics that can detect you, be it guards, be it cameras, be it dogs or whatever
This spirit of “stealthing” is it, what GW2 really needs to get some real fun to play thiefs, where using Stealth should be most likely a strategetic maneuver and not something, with that you can instantly kill opponents unseen in basically 1-2 seconds or so.
When been in stealth, a thief should not receive damage, because if you can’t target them, they can’t be attacked directly. So thiefs should receive only indirect damage from environmental sources as like elemental AoE spells, because these don’t require to target the thief directly.
Thats one point, in which stealth could get buffed/fixed, once the other classes would get their hard counters against Stealth.
The other point is the lousy duration time of stealth, which should get improved together with the movement speed while being stealthed. It should work more like the stealth worked in the wintersday snowball fight minigame, That stealth was just perfect in duration and movement. It was just slightly longer and allowed increased movementspeed, without having to waste trait points for that.

With the kind of hard counters I’ve suggested here earlier, the game would just make alot more fun for both sides. Thief players as like their pray..err their opponents I mean hehe xD Every game mechanic needs counters. if a game mechanic has no counters, then its automatically a broken unbalanced mechanic. the best example for that were in GW1 the spirit weapon buffs. players had no ways to debuff these buff effects, because these spells didn’t wirk like normal enchantments. People couldn’t remove them, what made the mechanic behind it kind of overpowered.
The same is it with Stealth now here… people have no hard counters against stealth..they can just hope only if they spam AoEs, that they hit that way the thief good enough to bring them down, before they could land their deathly hit(s) first.

Thats imo not the way how players should solve the stealth problem for themself.
More intuitive gameplay would be, that an opponent tries to find out, where the stealthed thief is and tries to detect them with their hard counter skills. This would just make more fun.
If the ranger’s pet could auto detect stealth thiefs due to superior smell and sight abilities, then would have to be thiefs alot more cautios towards stealthing rangers, if their pet is in their direct near…

If engineers could place towers, that can detect stealth thiefs and place mines, with the same effect, also thiefs would have to be alot more cautious then.

Thiefs already have to be cautious against eles, as their AoE spam can quickly kill a thief, they are basically yet the only class with their hard counter in the game.

If Warriors could use their shouts to detect thiefs, it could be their chance to catch the thief in an outright dangerous situation, as being detected that way could result in a kind of weaking debuff to the thief…

The possibilies for hard counters are there, so why hasn’t Anet used them is the real question!! There should be no visual clues to trace down a thief.. when you are invisible, then you are invisible. point
However, as a kind of hard counter from an ele, it would be ok.. for example an earth ele using a skill, that can create a huge Dust Explosion making stealthed thiefs, which run through this dust cloud temporarly slightly visible.
Or an Ele, which uses the healing rain skin, that stealth thiefs which run through the area where it rains, become slightly visible as the rain reveals basically their bodies, because even when being invisible, the physical mass is still there and should react to environmental effects like dust, rain and so on …

For that to grasp, you’ve to see just only the movie “Hollow Man”
For those, which can remember on that old movie ^^

http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/h/o/l/hollow-man-l-homme-sans-ombre-2000--33-g.jpg

You do get a clear indication of whether or not you’re hitting a stealthed target. If your 1 attack chain is progressing, you hit them. If it’s not, you didn’t. I have found this to be sufficient when fighting thieves as a thief myself.

If stealth needs a change, this isn’t it.

Orpheal.8263:

The possibilies for hard counters are there, so why hasn’t Anet used them is the real question!!

Because the moment you put hard counters against a profession in game you basically remove the use of that profession.

If they went hard counter route they’d have to put one in for everyone so that it basically comes down to “who can use their hard counter first” in pvp.

It won’t happen and tbh it really doesn’t need to happen, stealthing thieves aren’t that hard to go against and its no where near as over powered as people state, sure its annoying but then so is elementalists zipping around or rangers sniping from a distance and such.

A so-called “hard counter” against one profession MUST create a domino effect, otherwise you’re making that profession useless. If every other profession has a very specific anti-Thief ability, then the Thief and other professions must also have a very specific set of anti-“x” abilities too. I’m fairly sure nobody wants that. If I wanted to play a rock/paper/scissors game like that, I’d play rock/paper/scissors.