Guild Wars 2

Stealth um there is just no real counter except the hope of landing aoe damage which usually there using stealth to get out of the area.

Why is there no counter to this?

I have no clue not even a skill from maybe even one profession that can counter this.

Players say that stealth is not a problem but really they are just stealth users themselves.

I have seen certain stealth users that are really good able to fight 2-3 opponents alone.

Im not saying there opponents are bad or anything but stealth with a good player makes even another good player without stealth have real trouble in a duel even lose most of the time.

Why is stealth not considered a boon? I bet if it was a removable boon it would make sense.

Telling me stealth is required for the profession? I feel that they feel that way cause of the fact their using berserkers. You might even tell me you expect me to fight without stealth as a thief or mesmer? I have been in and seen fights with thieves that have actually fought and won without stealth. There wasnt spectate at the time so I could never check their build out.

Mesmers they already got a truckload of mechanics that makes them one of the most dominate professions. I have already had my share of mesmers that are ridiculously powerful with stealth and a whole lot of other stuff their capable of depending on their build.

Make Ranger’s Pets useful. They have the ability to ‘sniff’ out a stealthed player, if traited for it.

AOE = dead stealth player

Arrow Cart = Destealthed and dead stealth player

Back up 10 steps = destealthed player (by the time he gets to you)

Move away from smoke fields that allow thieves to stealth = no stealth for stealth player

Immobilize = stuck in 1 spot stealth player

Spin attacks = stealth player who has to run away

Stand in an AOE field = stealth player takes damage just to get to you

There are literally dozens of ways to counter stealth, being lazy and asking for a nerf is unfortunately the most used method.

Make all incoming damage remove stealth. Problem solved.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

AOE = dead stealth player

Arrow Cart = Destealthed and dead stealth player

Back up 10 steps = destealthed player (by the time he gets to you)

Move away from smoke fields that allow thieves to stealth = no stealth for stealth player

Immobilize = stuck in 1 spot stealth player

Spin attacks = stealth player who has to run away

Stand in an AOE field = stealth player takes damage just to get to you

There are literally dozens of ways to counter stealth, being lazy and asking for a nerf is unfortunately the most used method.

All of these work against people who aren’t stealthed too. In fact it’s harder to do area damage and spin on people who are stealthed (since you don’t know where they are).

Edit: The ‘counter’ to stealth is to avoid CnD. D/P doesn’t have such a counter.

Roll a thief and go into SPvP, make a build that has no stealth and don’t use weapon based stealth abilities, now try to play as a thief with out ANY stealth… you will certainly have fun being a sub par warrior.

Stealth is OP only when you aren’t willing to put in the work required to counter it.

Only way I see stealth as “OP” is shadow refuge, which kind of relies you either having AOE bomb potential or a knockback.

While this isn’t a problem for other professions, I’m limited as a Mesmer

I play a lot of MOBA games such as Dota 2 and HoN, so every time I fight a thief in this game, I always think to myself “Man, wish I could buy a gem for this.”
(Note: Gem is an item in Dota 2 that can be bought to see invisible players, but when you die you drop it on death, so any team can pick it up)

While I am not advocating for an item that can be bought to counter stealth (as this probably would not be the correct answer to it), I would like to see an effective “counter” to it. The options we have now are not true counters to it.

I guess my suggestion would be a utility/weapon skill that allowed the user to see stealth users for a limited time.
How this would effect the meta, I honestly do not know.

Sunflowers.1729:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

AOE = dead stealth player

Arrow Cart = Destealthed and dead stealth player

Back up 10 steps = destealthed player (by the time he gets to you)

Move away from smoke fields that allow thieves to stealth = no stealth for stealth player

Immobilize = stuck in 1 spot stealth player

Spin attacks = stealth player who has to run away

Stand in an AOE field = stealth player takes damage just to get to you

There are literally dozens of ways to counter stealth, being lazy and asking for a nerf is unfortunately the most used method.

All of these work against people who aren’t stealthed too. In fact it’s harder to do area damage and spin on people who are stealthed (since you don’t know where they are).

Edit: The ‘counter’ to stealth is to avoid CnD. D/P doesn’t have such a counter.

Stealthed players can’t attack or damage you, doing so unstealths you. That is why those counters are very effective against stealth players because they can’t stop you from doing any of them unlike normal players.

D/P can only reliably cloak using blinding powder + heartseeker, which costs so much ini to use that you can only do the combo twice even with ini increasing traits. Plus it only has a range of 900 and doesn’t break immobilize. So you can easily counter it as well.

Stealthed players, however, can still move around avoiding area damage almost completely. This doesn’t even take into account targeted abilities which are completely useless against someone who has stealthed.

The reason that these are ‘counters’ to Thieves isn’t because stealth somehow makes you more vulnerable to them, it’s simply because we have low hp and few stun breakers. They are not, however, counters to stealth

Also, most D/P thieves will take +2 initiative on stealth, allowing for near constant BP-HS spam. I use HiS and Blinding Powder as well for even higher uptime, and there’s almost no situation which I cannot easily access stealth (except during revealed, of course).

The new AC skill show that there are means in the game to remove stealth but such skills must be a hard to land skill. Maybe a means of making the ranger’s traps remove stealth?

They should just use one of the balances every other game with stealth employs, instead of using none of them.

Take a tip from TF2:

1. Stealthing and unstealthing is not instantaneous.
2. Getting hit while stealthed will show numbers.
3. You have to be fully uncloaked to attack someone. (This may already be the case, but dat rendering)

I’m a thief and I hate the implementation of stealth in this game. You’re so bound to it. The balance problem won’t get a solution until they completly remove or change it radically.

I played lots of games and this is the most lazy stealth mechanic I’ve ever seen in a big title. I kill people before they realise what’s going on and same goes for enemy thives.
If I want to run away from a fight, I leave whenever I want and again vice versa for enemy thieves.

Lets compare mechanics to other games.
-I dont need to be behind enemey to be able to go stealth
-nobody can see me even if I’m dancing infront of thier nose
-stealth skills works from every angle, going behind just gives some bonus for some.
-no speed, regen, defence etc loss while in stealth

At least put a transparent vision of the stealthed thief when they are in close range and infront of enemy. (sadly like WoW)

Going stealth should have advantages and disadvantages at the same time. It must be a tactical move. Right now it punishes nothing. So logicaly its much better to go stealth whenever avalible. Thats how I used to play my thief. 2 stealth utility, 1 stealth from healing and a dagger in off hand. Cheesy…

Also look how the game works with it:
-Use stealth to blind enemy
-Use stealth to regen initative
-Use stealth to remove conditions
-Use stealth to regen health
-Use stealth to immobilize enemy
-Use stealth to apply bleed stacks
-Use stealth to interrupt
-Use stealth to %100 crit
-etc etc

The game screams that go stealth as much as possible yet they put a reveal debuff to fix the issue!!! Nonsense imho.

Sunflowers.1729:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

AOE = dead stealth player

Arrow Cart = Destealthed and dead stealth player

Back up 10 steps = destealthed player (by the time he gets to you)

Move away from smoke fields that allow thieves to stealth = no stealth for stealth player

Immobilize = stuck in 1 spot stealth player

Spin attacks = stealth player who has to run away

Stand in an AOE field = stealth player takes damage just to get to you

There are literally dozens of ways to counter stealth, being lazy and asking for a nerf is unfortunately the most used method.

All of these work against people who aren’t stealthed too. In fact it’s harder to do area damage and spin on people who are stealthed (since you don’t know where they are).

Edit: The ‘counter’ to stealth is to avoid CnD. D/P doesn’t have such a counter.

D/P, well, they hit #5, now you know exactly where they’re gonna be after the HS, and their Init regen takes a windup before it kicks in (#5 + #2 is painful on the Init)… sure they can just go find a place by their lonesome and stack stealth but to what purpose?

I have no problems dealing with the average thief in WvW with my Guardian when they use stealth. More often then not they will die or run away. For those that are really good at playing a stealth thief I have one surefire counter, I log in my thief and go stealth as well. Once you are aware of what it takes to play a d/d stealth thief it is quite easy to counter 90% of them. Of all the classes (and I play them all and have 5 different class level 80s currently) the stealth thief is the most difficult to play as your timings have to be right on the mark to be good at it. If your timing is off as a stealth thief you usually end up dead.

stealth is a defensive utility, like evades and blocks

gw2 is the only game (?) that allows you to swing a huge sword around hoping you’ll kill someone in stealth, it’s usually easy to predict where the person is, if you’re having trouble with stealth then it’s your playstyle that’s the issue

They aren’t invisible when they can affect you, so it doesn’t need any more counters.

Just look at the screen when you are playing and you’ll be fine.

Stealth has a counter. When it runs out, you come out of stealth.

I can’t believe people are complaining about the fake ‘stealth’ in this game. It’s useless as it only lasts a few seconds. Stealth, in this game, is a sad, sad joke.

AirWick.1769:

Players say that stealth is not a problem but really they are just stealth users themselves.

Elementalist here. Stealth is not a problem.

Unless I’m watching Netflix and thus not paying attention.

Nerf Netflix.

The large majority of thieves get their main stealth from Cloak and Dagger. All you need to do it dodge it and they don’t get stealth. That is your counter.

Shadow refuge = deathtrap. AoE bomb/pull/push(I love trolling thieves with guardian bubble shield #5)

Which only leaves blinding powder and hide in shadows, really.

Other than that, there is a small percentage of thieves who use D/P, which I hate because you can’t counter their stealth. Only balancing issue I think the thief has is D/P

Guardians have a decent counter with Binding Blade, you can pull them right to you even if they are stealthed, so you have at least a split second where you know exactly where they are and you or a teammate can land something. No stealth thief was able to get away from me in WvW at all unless they managed to move out of range.

Guardians also have a few other skills like Shield of Wrath and other defensive abilities that can protect them from a stealthed thief.

And shield #5 is an awesome skill to push them away from their field and reveal the thief.

Any decent thief will see a Guardians GS 5 or Shield 5 coming, and dodge. When I play my thief, I can dodge three times consecutively within my Refuge, which covers nearly the entire duration that I’m forced to remain in it. What gets me most is the Mesmer’s pull on Focus, since it is ranged.

I find a Thief’s stealth pretty balanced. It really only takes one good move on your part to kill a thief, or if they are tankier, to send them running. D/P, though, is ridiculous at the moment. Permanent stealth is horrible. On my thief, I don’t have time to wait after I stealth. I have to attack for the bonus damage, get another CnD ready(using initiative), blow a utility skill, or back away. I have a matter of seconds to decide and execute, but with D/P, I have all the time in the world.

The only real way I have found to killing these guys is to throw my body into the way of their heartseeker, to reveal them, which is rather tough to do.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

They should just use one of the balances every other game with stealth employs, instead of using none of them.

Take a tip from TF2:

1. Stealthing and unstealthing is not instantaneous.
2. Getting hit while stealthed will show numbers.
3. You have to be fully uncloaked to attack someone. (This may already be the case, but dat rendering)

It’s OK to make the Stealth in GW2 similar to TF2. And let’s include those little facts that you forgot :
- everyone is stuck playing in first person mode
- a thief melee dagger attacks instantly kills anyone he hits on the back

Then play a thief so you can understand the general workings of stealth. After you know how thieves use stealth, adjust your gameplay and use situational awareness.

You can still hit a thief in stealth if you know what path they are going to take.

As an engineer, whenever I see a thief go in to stealth I use Static shield. 99% of thieves get stunned, the other 1% lose there stealth before my Static shield is over.

100% of thieves then get poison dart volley to the face.

I think stealth should be like warriors frenzy. When player uses stealth they take 50% more incoming damage and once stealth is over get 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds that can’t be removed.

Well Thief stealth has a counter: Being the most fragile profeasion in the whole game. Low tier HP and mid tier armor (armor tier means nearly nothing compared to HP tiers) makes him the weakest profession except for Eles… only that Thief has absolute zero access to protection, blocks (not counting underwater) and invulnerabilities. The only ways a thief can use to survive is dodging a lot and using stealth. If you manage to use any of the many counters mentioned in this thread you’re destroying him.

They also are the less versatile profession in the whole game. Eles have nearly as many weapon skills a thief has combining every weapon in just a single weapon. That’s how versatile thief is, so they tend to be really predictable.

Perma-stealth through CnD chaining should stop, I agree on that. In fact they were supposed to nerf it giving revealed even when not attacking, but suddenly instead they made revealed last 1 more second, which didn’t stop that combo at all and hurted all the stealth builds that used it for offense. They recently reverted it to 3 seconds for pve only, I hope they end up reverting it everywhere and killing perma stealth like their original intention.

Step 1: roll a warrior

Step 2: use the longbow burst

Step 3: if your adrenaline starts going up, the thief is standing in your AoE. Start swinging until your autoattack chain going up.

Step 3 and a half, because you can do this whenever: pop endure pain a couple seconds after they stealth to ensure that their backstab fails.

Stealth in this game (Invisibility) really could use a hard counter (eg give more skills the “Unveiling” property) sadly Anet gave thieves pretty kittenty defences so most thieves will cry and start a kittenstorm of “Hurr Durr Stealth is fine L2P”. Like this thread.

Since a lot of Thieves seem to have no idea how to use stealth as a proper form of defense, I’ll make a mini list here on how to stop the stealth ‘counters’ (which aren’t really counters)

-When you stealth, change directions. If you keep running in the same direction obviously it’s easy for people to AoE you. In fact, projectiles may still hit you if you keep running the same way. If someone is lucky enough to turn and follow you, just change directions again.

-You don’t have to run straight at the enemy. This is another sign of a Thief who fails. Stealth lasts some time, and people like to blow their defensive skills immediately. Wait a second or two, approach from a random direction and at a delayed time, and it’s much harder for them to snare/stun you while invisible. Another reason why D/ kitten o good – you can get very long durations of stealth.

-Stealth can be traited to do all sorts of things. Since it’s so easy to access, just use it to remove conditions, heal a bit, and as a sort of all-purpose buff. Then again most people know this…

-Don’t stealth after you get hit. Seriously. Why would you wait until you are at 10% hp to press blinding powder? Do it early so you never get below 50% hp. See an incoming warrior? It’s kind of stupid to stealth after he lands 100 blades. Stealth early and often so nobody can hit you in the first place, and so bleeds don’t stack too much. With the health regeneration in stealth, you can usually leave stealth with >70% hp. Again, D/P abuses this a lot.

-Don’t always think you can win. If the enemy player is more skilled/too tanky/has reinforcements, then just run away. You’re invisible after all, if you decide to fight to the death that’s entirely your problem.

-Dodge in stealth, especially shadow refuge. See a mesmer with a greatsword? Dodge. A guardian with a shield? Dodge again. Kill shot being channeled? Count to 3 and dodge. It is painfully obvious when someone wants to forcibly remove you from Shadow Refuge. Any Thief who is halfway decent will dodge those abilities (Mesmer focus pull exempted).

-Abuse chain stealthing. Whether this is CnDing off WvW mobs or just spamming BP-HS-HS-HS, it doesn’t matter. Obviously you don’t want to always do this, but there are lots of Thieves who are stuck with the ‘oh I absolutely must land this backstab’ mindset and just do dangerous things.

There are too many thieves who like to say ‘oh stealth just makes us invisible and doesn’t stop damage’. This is because they don’t know how to abuse the mechanic.

The ‘counter’ to stealth is to avoid CnD. D/P builds don’t have such a weakness, and with all that initiative on stealth, can stealth over and over again. Yes, the combo costs 9 (actually 7 with traits) initiative, but you can chain it with HiS and Blinding Powder for stealth every 4 seconds.

Lokheit.7943:

Well Thief stealth has a counter: Being the most fragile profeasion in the whole game. Low tier HP and mid tier armor (armor tier means nearly nothing compared to HP tiers) makes him the weakest profession except for Eles… only that Thief has absolute zero access to protection, blocks (not counting underwater) and invulnerabilities. The only ways a thief can use to survive is dodging a lot and using stealth. If you manage to use any of the many counters mentioned in this thread you’re destroying him.

They also are the less versatile profession in the whole game. Eles have nearly as many weapon skills a thief has combining every weapon in just a single weapon. That’s how versatile thief is, so they tend to be really predictable.

Perma-stealth through CnD chaining should stop, I agree on that. In fact they were supposed to nerf it giving revealed even when not attacking, but suddenly instead they made revealed last 1 more second, which didn’t stop that combo at all and hurted all the stealth builds that used it for offense. They recently reverted it to 3 seconds for pve only, I hope they end up reverting it everywhere and killing perma stealth like their original intention.

CnD chaining, or simply d/p with smokefield and heartseeker for constant and endless stealth (refuge, heal and utilities for stealth are a given, ofc)

was hunting down a thief a few days ago which always attacked our castle to make it contested. he was never visible for more than a few seconds after hitting the gate, the rest of the time he was constantly in stealth. in addition, he is extremely fast while stealthed (which doesn’t really make sense while hiding and makes it hard for non-speed-sigil classes like guardians/mesmers to follow). I saw his smokefields and tried to hunt him down, but as he never attacked me he never got a debuff and could just stealth again. the only way to make him visible was by pulling/pushing him out of shadow refuge (I really love doing that, if I time it right they are usually quite disoriented), which he used from time to time, chain him and start hitting as hard as I could. since he was full PVT, I (full zerker mesmer) couldn’t down him myself before he just vanished again and only after two more people showed up were we able to finally take him out.

10 minutes later he came back and our keep was constantly contested again.

the only counter to a thief are multiple enemies? great.

while my zerker mes certainly is very powerful (only used him in wvw, didn’t try pvp so far), I die nearly immediately against a halfway decent condition player. my build has a lot of weaknesses and hard counters, as it should be. where’s the weaknesses of the perma-invisible thief? AoEs work partially, if he is smart and changes direction often you can’t predict where he is often enough to hit him hard enough. conditions are no problem as they go away in stealth. confusion is no problem as it’s weak and he doesn’t use many skills anyway.

if I interrupt or knockback/knockdown/daze/stun a stealthed enemy (whithout stability), he should become visible and get the debuff. this alone would make the situation so much better.

tl;dr: permastealth is stupid and boring. hard CC’s should break stealth and apply the revealed debuff.

no. stealth already have a counter! its called, experience!!
stealth is a class mechanic that make some class special!!
and.. they already been hit numerous times by nerf!
infact, most off the class now doesn’t even have 50% of their power from beta!
and once a “counter”, or an across the board nerf is introduced.. people will quit!!
and seeing the nature of people, there will never be an end to QQ and some other class will get the spotlight, next time!
and the nerf cycle of hell begins!! until all classes is broken into pieces..
do know, that the ones responsible for it are NOT the devs.. its you people asking for nerfs over and over again!!

Not a single suggestion here except maybe backing up when they stealth helps any ranger who doesn’t user traps. Say you’re going LB/GS like I occasionally do in wvw, if your counterattack skill is on CD only barrage is helpful, and only if they’re hiding in shadow refuge. An active
Thief would never be targetable

i will leave this here for you guys.
The spririt weapons of a guardian as bad as they are detect stealthed players.

Grounder.7381:

no. stealth already have a counter! its called, experience!!
stealth is a class mechanic that make some class special!!
and.. they already been hit numerous times by nerf!
infact, most off the class now doesn’t even have 50% of their power from beta!
and once a “counter”, or an across the board nerf is introduced.. people will quit!!
and seeing the nature of people, there will never be an end to QQ and some other class will get the spotlight, next time!
and the nerf cycle of hell begins!! until all classes is broken into pieces..
do know, that the ones responsible for it are NOT the devs.. its you people asking for nerfs over and over again!!

experience is in no way a counter to stealth, which is exactly the problem. I know where a thief is, but I can’t fight him without seeing him (targeted skills etc) and I can’t stop him from stealthing except when he uses refuge. every other stealth skill can’t be stopped because you can’t time an interrupt between a smokefield/backstab if you can’t see the enemy.

slightly off topic but the reason why stealth is too kitten powerful:
the damage dealt from stealth is also absurd. say GC duelist class vs another GC duelist class. as a mesmer, if a thief attacks me and I don’t react, I eat 1.5k from mug (much better than before the last nerf), 6.8k from CnD and then 11-14k from backstab. means I’m instadown. ok, I’m a GC, I should go down quickly. now reverse the positions:
For one thing, my damage isn’t instant and out of stealth, apart from that, I usually have to do something like this:
gs 4, gs 2, gs 3, weapon swap, sword 3, 3, 2. if the thief never dodged, and I now hit shatter, he will be down. my ‘combo’ takes about 4-6 seconds or so (mainly because sword 3 and 2 and gs 3 are rather slow) to do the same damage, all of it comes from plain sight and is easily dodgeable.
I don’t complain, I think my dmg is more than good enough, could even be reduced a bit imho because mesmers have a lot of neat tricks, but thiefs damage is absurd for the time it takes and the fact that it comes out of stealth.

both classes can flee with stealth, except thief can stealth a lot more often and longer (assuming a GC thief doesn’t trait for stealth, otherwise he’d have permastealth). mesmer has clones. this is a mechanic which experience really beats: an experienced player knows which is the clone and which the mesmer.

right now thief is an annoying troll class at best because of stealth. stealth should be nerfed heavily and other weapons buffed so we see more variety.
I’d love to encounter more s/p or even s/d thiefs, they usually are a lot more fun to fight (though they kill me more often than a d/d thief) because if they win, I made a mistake or just wasn’t good enough, which is just the way it works. and not because I didn’t expect an invisible enemy to instadown me in less than a second.

Don’t allow them to heal while in stealth. They nerf healing for eles in mist form. I understand its different but stealth is just over abused. And fighting someone and getting them to about 10% of there health and then invs you aoe and miss them and they reappear full health. Healing should reveal them.

I would gladly agree to stealth changes as soon as we get double the HP, access to defensive boons, and a damage increase so that we are on par with other damage classes that don’t have stealth.

Stealth is currently the only reason a thief can survive more then 2 seconds in any given situation, nerfing or changing stealth in any way must be accompanied by an increase in defense and HP or no one in the game will ever use a thief again.

Stealth is fine.
Everything is fine.

Want to know the counter to ANYTHING in this game? Don’t get hit. Just because some people die to certain things doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to counter it. People need to get over things and stop complaining so much. But we’re humans. All we do is complain.

Also legendary weapons are too hard to get. plz put dem in vendors for 5g cause its unfair. thx

The only forms of cc that reduce the ways a thief can enter stealth is daze and stun. With daze, they are still free to perform dodge rolls. These do not stop skills with 0 cast times (ie Blinding Powder). It also doesn’t prevent passive ways to enter stealth from triggering.

Upon entering stealth they lose a contition and then lose another every 3 seconds while in stealth so if they time it, they will lose two contitions as a minimum. They can heal a large chunk of their hp pool back. A couple of their skills have added effects of removing 3 contitions (not one of three but all three) in addition to the primary effect of the skill (ie. withdrawl and Roll for Inititive).

Look at the first one. It’s a healing skill so the primary function is to heal. In addition to healing it also acts as an evade and removes three movement affecting conditions.

Then there is the second. Its primary function is to replenish some inititive (since inititive is the thief’s form of ‘CD’, no other class that I know of has a skill that will take their weapon skills off CD instantly), but it will also remove three movement affecting cc’s.

As for immobilize, this is even further made useless by the fact that it can’t stop the use of skills and any ‘teleporting’ skill (ie shadow step) will allow the thief to break free and be no where near the spot.

Let’s not forget that many CC skills require having a target selected.

AoE. Much of the damage applied by AoE is over time and each tick is spaced by a few seconds. A thief can instantly close the distance to a target, do the burst and then vanish again while only taking 2 ticks worth of AoE.

A build has been presented on the thief section of the forum that uses evade as the primary means of surviving in a fight. This is where thieves should be going. Not stealth. One thing that would both help the build presented and give stealth a much needed nerf is to give acrobatics the +toughness and +healing instead of shadow arts.

As for a counter, all rangers would need is a key bind that allows us to target our pet’s target. Set your pet to passive and tell it to attack the thief. Every time the thief comes out of stealth, the pet retargets and runs after. All we would have to do is watch for our pet and when we see them run, press the keybind. This also works on mesmers since the pet doesn’t get fooled by, or have their target switched to, the mirrors.

[[After re-reading this post, I realize I’m basing most of this on very limited PvP experience and request that the contents be taken with a grain (or a pile) of salt]]

Honestly, I don’t know why people have issues with stealth. Most professions have a ‘block’ mechanic. If you’re fighting a thief and they stealth, 9 times out of 10 they’re probably gonna position themselves behind you for a strong opener. Block. Either they will avoid hitting you to prevent the block repercussions or they’ll hit you anyways, you’ll block and probably damage/knockback/daze/stun/whatever your profession does.

As far as thieves stealthing to run away … yeah, it’s annoying. It’s basically a waste of time if they get a free escape whenever they like.

There’s a possible solution which hopefully doesn’t break the mechanic too much. Apply a 1 second cripple if damaged while stealthed. I think un-stealthing someone when they get damaged is too much. Spam AoE and stealth is worthless. Cripple allows them to keep moving and stay hidden, but it adds a risk to stealth, primarily while fleeing.

Another option would be to do to stealth what they did to Ride the Lightning. If you attack a player out of stealth, your cooldown is normal. If you do not attack a player out of stealth, your cooldown is doubled. This forces players to use stealth more as a combat mechanic instead of a mobility/escape mechanic.

Another possible solution might be to make the stealthed player give indications as to where they are. Maybe footsteps on the ground appear, so players paying close attention could still figure out where they are (just like players fighting VS a mesmer can still find the real one if they’re looking close).

The concept of a 1-button complete removal from combat has always bugged me, however after WoW I don’t have much to complain about here. Stealth here is short and bursty, it’s not a permanent invisibility. If they make no changes, I will be fine with it.

Also here is how to counter stealth. Play a class with stealth. Wherever you go to avoid the combat, that’s most likely where they will go. The best way to counter a class is to play it yourself and figure out how people kill you. I have no problems with thieves as a non thief because I’ve played a thief before.

When they stealth I have a very good idea which way they will run based on what’s going on around them. Follow them and kill them.

TL;DR: Do not complain about stealth if you haven’t played a stealth class. If you have you’re just bad at pvp.

Sadly, I find most threads like this stem from the simple lack of understanding or lack of knowledge of whatever it is the post is crying about. In this instance, it’s stealth.

“Players say that stealth is not a problem but really they are just stealth users themselves.”

Really? I play ele primarily and I don’t have an issue with it. Of course, I also play a thief, so I know how it works.

I really recommend playing every profession. It helps you understand each one’s strengths and weaknesses. (I’m not talking a full blown level 80 with exotics and map completion here.) This understanding will help you grow on your ‘primary’ character – how to handle other professions as foes, how you could better synergize with their skills when teaming, etc.

“But I dont like ‘x’ class type” I don’t like them all necessarily, but spending some time on each one for the knowledge it gives, I feel, outweighs the simple ‘but I don’t wanna’ mind set. I don’t like melee, suck at it generally, yet I love and excel at thief. Go figure. You never know, going outside your comfort bubble may introduce you to something you really like, in addition to improving your understanding of how (and why) things work.

There are many counters use them. This MMO infact has the easiest to counter stealth class of any MMO. You can hit them in stealth… lol Other games had 1 min + stealth or perma stealth until you attack.

And dont mention the “perma stealth” troll build, it can not kill.

PearlGore.7419:

There are many counters use them. This MMO infact has the easiest to counter stealth class of any MMO. You can hit them in stealth… lol Other games had 1 min + stealth or perma stealth until you attack.

Other games had also 50-75% movement speed and kick out of stealth if damaged …

(ideas, some borrowed from other posts)

• reduce movement speed to 50% and maybe with GM level trait 75%
• any damage (including conditions) should kick out from stealth
• profession(s) with stealth detection capabilities (skill, pets, …)
• much bigger CD on all stealth skills (like 10+s not 3-4) in combat, permanent stealth out, also if stealthed in combat it will not get out till revealed
• no healing/use utilities in stealth like elementalists and engineer
• subtle effects to indicate where stealthed character may be
• minimal range from other characters required to be in stealth (~150), everything below and stealthed character becomes visible

Implementing some of the above will give more balanced approach and real counters to the stealthed characters. Also as “compensation” for it thief’s should get more evade and other means to avoid getting hit.

If I needed to choose I’d go for adding (replacing) one utility (Sic ‘Em) on ranger to enable it’s pet to hunt down and kick out of stealth and to put stealth abilities in ~10s CD. That will not require any other changes (nerfing or buffing) and rangers will have to reserve one utility slot for it if they want to hunt thief’s. It will nicely go in the same direction as boon hate added to counter bunkers.

edit: added CD part to last paragraph

Rusha.4725:

I’m a thief and I hate the implementation of stealth in this game. You’re so bound to it. The balance problem won’t get a solution until they completly remove or change it radically.

I played lots of games and this is the most lazy stealth mechanic I’ve ever seen in a big title. I kill people before they realise what’s going on and same goes for enemy thives.
If I want to run away from a fight, I leave whenever I want and again vice versa for enemy thieves.

Lets compare mechanics to other games.
-I dont need to be behind enemey to be able to go stealth
-nobody can see me even if I’m dancing infront of thier nose
-stealth skills works from every angle, going behind just gives some bonus for some.
-no speed, regen, defence etc loss while in stealth

At least put a transparent vision of the stealthed thief when they are in close range and infront of enemy. (sadly like WoW)

Going stealth should have advantages and disadvantages at the same time. It must be a tactical move. Right now it punishes nothing. So logicaly its much better to go stealth whenever avalible. Thats how I used to play my thief. 2 stealth utility, 1 stealth from healing and a dagger in off hand. Cheesy…

Also look how the game works with it:
-Use stealth to blind enemy
-Use stealth to regen initative
-Use stealth to remove conditions
-Use stealth to regen health
-Use stealth to immobilize enemy
-Use stealth to apply bleed stacks
-Use stealth to interrupt
-Use stealth to %100 crit
-etc etc

The game screams that go stealth as much as possible yet they put a reveal debuff to fix the issue!!! Nonsense imho.

I completely agree, as a thief since beta I would much rather just not have stealth and get a buff to our condition removal and survival in general. Stealth is WAY too emphasized right now. I want to be an assassin from GW1 and S/D is the closest thing I can get.

But….. Stealth is the only means for a thief to have some survivablility. Unless they buff us to be more survivable somehow, removing stealth would make us the weakest class by far.

Buy a vision ward from the store, Its only 125g and is good for countering champions such as Akali, Evelynn, shaco.

warchanter.9574:

Don’t allow them to heal while in stealth. They nerf healing for eles in mist form. I understand its different but stealth is just over abused. And fighting someone and getting them to about 10% of there health and then invs you aoe and miss them and they reappear full health. Healing should reveal them.

The thing is, to get that, you need a few things:

• Hide in Shadows
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation
• TONS of Healing Power

That already limits you a lot, since Hide in Shadows has a 30 second cooldown and Shadow’s Rejuvenation requires 30 points into Shadow Arts. And no, you do not heal fast enough with Shadow’s Rejuvenation alone.

Now, Healing Power comes with the following combinations:

• Healing Power / Power / Toughness
• Healing Power / Precision / Vitality
• Healing Power / Toughness / Condition Damage
• Toughness / Boon Duration / Healing Power
• Vitality / Condition Damage / Healing Power

Notice that there is no combination with Healing Power and two damage modifiers. No Condition damage with Precision, no Power with Precision. This means that a Thief who specs for Healing Power lacks damage.

Also, regaining health in stealth means that you’re not dealing damage, unless it’s conditions.

Thus, the only spec available is a P/D bleed spec. And let me tell you, the damage those guys do in comparison to a full berserker Backstab thief is weak.

My point is that you cannot get both damage and massive stealth regeneration.

Rusha.4725:

Also look how the game works with it:
-Use stealth to blind enemy
-Use stealth to regen initative
-Use stealth to remove conditions
-Use stealth to regen health
-Use stealth to immobilize enemy
-Use stealth to apply bleed stacks
-Use stealth to interrupt
-Use stealth to %100 crit
-etc etc

The game screams that go stealth as much as possible yet they put a reveal debuff to fix the issue!!! Nonsense imho.

That’s called synergy and you SHOULD want to be stealthed. It’s the Thief class for crying out loud; you hide and you steal. If you’re not doing either of those things, maybe a class change is in order.

The idea is that you can’t be stealthed ALL the time but when you do, it has to be fulfilling. If you remove all the synergy that you just listed, the class would just be a poor-man’s fighter that can go invisible for 3 seconds once in a while.

As a thief, I love the reveal mechanic.

Food for thought: Most (if not all, with the exception of Cloak and Dagger of course) stealth skills have 30+ second cooldowns.