Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if this has been suggested before, but here I go:

I’ve noticed some interesting discussions regarding Thief and stealth. This specifically pertains to the idea that some have mentioned that you can’t hit a Thief when they are stealthed. Most of you realize this is false, as you can, but the fact that it’s difficult to know where a Thief is and impossible to know if you are indeed hitting them. I’ve seen many suggestions to AoE the location where you think a Thief is. Although they have argued once more that it’s impossible to know if you are hitting the Thief and that if the Thief has half a brain he wouldn’t be anywhere near the AoE field.

I stand a bit on the middle ground on this issue, and definitely can see both perspectives being justified as a long time Thief player.

So I come to this, a suggestion. How about there is some sort of reward to those who use foresight to predict a Thieves movement? Something that distorts the stealth of the Thief when hit by direct damage. Similar to a Spy using the starting invisibility watch in TF2, that when hit makes them slight visible, but does not break stealth. This would encourage intelligent movement within stealth, and still allow the Thief to be able to pull off stealth attacks such as Bacstab, (MH Dagger), Surprise Shot (Short Bow), and Sneak Attack (MH Pistol).

The exceptions would be condition damage does not cause distortion of stealth, only direct damage. I’m not sure about channeling skills, they might be too strong against Thieves in this situation as they already follow through in stealth and if it is a long duration channeling skill, then the stealth would be pointless. However, this could argue it forces the Thief to think carefully before stealthing.

I hope I did a decent job explaining the basic concept. I am open to criticism, additional suggestions, and respectful discussion.

Wow, this is the first suggested stealth change that isn’t horrible, good job.

Making them work like the spy class in TF2 is actually a great idea. This wouldn’t absolutely break/destroy the class like so many other changes would, and would actually make thief game play kind of fun, since you’d have to factor in the fact that you have to avoid attack while in stealth to come back and do additional damage.

This is a win/win as far as I’m concerned – the thief stealth mechanic remains practically untouched, they can do still their damage in all builds, but there’s a new mechanic would allow people to catch the thief as he runs around stealth for 3, 5, or even 15 seconds if he’s careless.

One thing you forgot is that using any weapon that can combo, (melee weapons) will continue to combo when hitting a thief in stealth, therefore telling you are succesfully hitting them. almost every class can do this.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Probably tough to impliment but a way, like OP said, to reward you for actively trying to smoke out the theif, and a way to put some actual skill and forethought into how and when a theif uses stealth. And how they behave while in stealth. None of this “lol see ya later bro” mindset. +1

As a long time Thief player I clicked on this and expected to kitten all over you, but it is a decent idea and should be looked at. It isn’t going to hurt the skilled thief in terms of using stealth and make the bad ones either quit or try to get better.

I would like to see a trait maybe that would decrease the chance of this “distortion effect” by like 30% or something. This would help with Tanky builds and Burst wouldn’t bother with taking it as it would hurt DPS.

first of all thieves are already squishy as fudge, but with this suggestion you want thieves to DIE? if get hit? this suggestion is really terribad in my opinion, imagine you’re in a team fight when someone hunts you down, and you go stealth and got hitted, now they can see your shadow and follow you til you die, this is pretty much stupid idea.. unless they want our thieves to be like GUARDIANS..

EvisceratriX.1750:

first of all thieves are already squishy as fudge, but with this suggestion you want thieves to DIE? if get hit? this suggestion is really terribad in my opinion, imagine you’re in a team fight when someone hunts you down, and you go stealth and got hitted, now they can see your shadow and follow you til you die, this is pretty much stupid idea.. unless they want our thieves to be like GUARDIANS..

Well as a Thief. I never go in a straight line. Don’t be predictable and this suggestion wouldn’t be a problem.

All I’m saying is its time to stop giving them the upper hand. Give us a MF legitimate stealth countering mechanic, screw all this shooting in the dark. STEALTH HAS NO IMPLEMENTED COUNTER what is so hard to understand about that

but then again, good teams WILL ALWAYS TARGET THIEVES, always keep that in mind.. not all teams are idiots who will just let you spam clusterbombs and backstab someone, and by this means you’ll pretty much be useless if you die 100x in a match.

It takes ONE person to harass a Thief. Punishing with two people takes a few seconds. And even if you just burn their Shadow Step, their incentive to kill becomes significantly lower.

I like this idea a lot. Would force us thieves to be more crafty about where we move when we stealth, and hopefully could bring a much needed tissue to the tears of some of the forum goers these days.

Personally, I don’t see why direct damage shouldn’t completely break a Thief from stealth. I have no sympathy for any sort of “struggle” it would be to break out of combat/LoS and stealth up.

However, I’d take this solution as an alternative. Anything is better than the irritating game of chance it is right now.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Personally, I don’t see why direct damage shouldn’t completely break a Thief from stealth.

Because the game isn’t, as built, balanced around it. Thieves need to have access to stealth to execute stealthed attacks and benefit from stealth traits. Making stealth break on hit would make stealth extremely difficult to achieve, just due to how easy it is to hit stealthed players as-is, especially when they’re using stealth offensively.

As for the OP’s idea, I’m of the same mind as when people say “let numbers show up in the air when you hit a stealthed target”. I agree, but I think it should be limited to critical hits as a way to reward crit synergy and allow some specialization towards fighting stealthed targets. You already know when you hit a stealthed target via the combat log and possibly attack chains or on-hit procs, the idea here is to reveal the location of your target above and beyond just knowing that a hit connected, which I think is a good role for crits to fill. As a bonus, it also automatically ensures condition damage doesn’t cause the revelation effect, since conditions cannot crit.

Stealth already has several inbuilt counter-plays and I feel that they are sufficient.

Channeled attacks (pinpoint the stealther as good as revealing them ever would)

AoE (Zones out the thief. Stop dropping AoEs somewhere else and start standing in them to burn away the stealth timer.)

PBAoE+Dodge (the counter button for all burst builds)

The way the thief is designed is to rely on a combination of stealth and mobility as their only survival options. Thieves only have any sort of defensive traits or buffs in relation to either stealth or mobility, one stability (on a channeled elite which they can not use while stealthed) and no access to defensive boons outside of stolen skills (which are highly situational)

Yeah, you fight a thief, and if it goes poorly a good thief can often escape the failed attack. This is by design as the thief doesn’t have the tools to stick it out in a prolonged fight.

That said, a basic “flash of reveal” would have the same overall effect as combo chaining or the combat log does already, and leave the way stealth counterplay workes largely unchanged. I support the basic idea of a “flash reveal” on hit simply because it would make stealth counterplay more intuitive for players who don’t understand how stealth works without actually changing how stealth works.

Raijinn.9065:

All I’m saying is its time to stop giving them the upper hand. Give us a MF legitimate stealth countering mechanic, screw all this shooting in the dark. STEALTH HAS NO IMPLEMENTED COUNTER what is so hard to understand about that

Can we take away weapons from warriors too? It makes them too strong.

What I mean is thieves are balanced around being able to vanish and you not know where they are, it’s intended behavior.