Thieves can trait and select weapons to gain permanent Stealth duration. This allows thieves to avoid detection in recently lost keep/towers. Thieves wait under Stealth until attackers leave and then go kill the lord bypassing the siege war and any chance for PvP.
Fighting against profession which has access to Stealth is annoying. Basically you will be reacquiring your target over and over again = fighting against your user interface. Any game mechanic that allows player to tamper with opponent’s UI should not be in this game.
There are tons of threads complaining about thieves this and thieves that. I believe the root is the invisibility part of Stealth. If you can’t see what opponent is doing you must know all its tricks and behaviours to understand the fight.
To balance things thief profession has been plagued by a long line of nerfs. In its current sorry state thieves are not regarded viable for big fights. In small scale fights they are that annoying last opponent that got away. 1v1 they are bound to chain-resetting the fight until target runs out of cooldowns.
Invisibility in WvW context is simply too powerful game mechanic to balance.
Suggestion
Remove invisiblity from Stealth in WvW. Instead stealthed opponents appear as transcluent.
Sulkshine – Mesmer
This won’t hurt [Much]
Ring of Fire
The inability to target the enemy is just as annoying even if you know exactly where he is. Unless you are a staff necro that’s most of your skills he is immune to.
To put it in a few words, the thief is a +Zerk warrior with stealth abilities every 1 to 2 seconds. This needs to change!
In the current state, the thief has privileges. The thief not only can gain stealth at any time, but he can also move at any speed he likes.
For that reason I like to refer to them as +Zerker warriors with invisibility. But why +Zerker warriors? Well, the reason is obvious, the thief can deal damage as high as +7k in a SINGLE strike with backstab.
Noone, in this game can deal that crazy amount of damage in a single strike but the thief.
Not even warriors can deal +7K with a single strike. The only way to deal that crazy damage is to channel 100 blades for 3.5 seconds. By the time that skill gets to 3.5 seconds the opponent has already gotten out of the attack. It only works for NPC that just stand in front of you and don’t move.
Anyone who uses the words “permastealth” and “combat” in the same sentence clearly has never played a Thief.
Also, you talk about stealth and lords, and then your suggestion is transparency? Stealth does not drop aggro in PvE, so changing it in any way because of PvE mobs isn’t exactly a valid argument.
If your server mates are so blind that they miss the obvious black powder fields inside your keep….. The problem isn’t the thief, it’s the intelligence of your server mates and friends. And anyone that plays with sound can hear them a mile away. Those who choose to play without sound are not permitted to complain about it.
I dare you to try and hide as a thief inside a keep or tower in tier 1.
I play all the things 80. Pew Pew Pew. Killin joor commanders.
4 Warriors, 3 Rangers, 3 Mesmers, 2 Engineers, 2 Guardians, and Necro, Thf, Ele
-Beastygate Beast Milk, OG BG Veteran Native
Anyone who uses the words “permastealth” and “combat” in the same sentence clearly has never played a Thief.
Also, you talk about stealth and lords, and then your suggestion is transparency? Stealth does not drop aggro in PvE, so changing it in any way because of PvE mobs isn’t exactly a valid argument.
Permastealth is for the hiding bit – to avoid any combat with human opponents.
The tactic (I would imagine) for killing the lord is to kill a guard, stay in stealth long enough to recover or completely reset the fight. Then re-engage to kill another guard, recover/reset. And finally kill the lord, too.
Stealth not dropping aggro allows you to keep the lord in combat while you recover. You only need to out-damage his self-heals.
Stealth is non-issue in PvE. NPCs don’t get annoyed. And nobody cares if someone is able to defeat opponent that does not learn, adapt or change tactics. Just press buttons in same order you pressed thousand times before and you get exactly the same result.
Sulkshine – Mesmer
This won’t hurt [Much]
Ring of Fire
If your server mates are so blind that they miss the obvious black powder fields inside your keep….. The problem isn’t the thief, it’s the intelligence of your server mates and friends. And anyone that plays with sound can hear them a mile away. Those who choose to play without sound are not permitted to complain about it.
I dare you to try and hide as a thief inside a keep or tower in tier 1.
I dare any player in the keep listening duty to come highlight the fun aspect of it.
Sulkshine – Mesmer
This won’t hurt [Much]
Ring of Fire
lawl at last comment
i was hit for 22,200 damage last night by a pair of thieves
one hit me for 9k the other for 13k
it took a fraction of a second
Wait… you’re arguing over balance when you lost a 1v2?
Let me tell you, you’re not supposed to be winning 1v2s. At least not against equal opponents.
i agree, “invisible” should be ‘translucent’
or, if a thief takes any type of damage in a fight, they should visibly bleed all over the place
And then you would have to give a damage boost to their regular damage and revamp all of their stealth skills.
If you’re going to fight a thief, use things like Immobilizes and stuns. And count. Because it’s really not that hard to figure out that a Thief is going to try to achieve Stealth as often as possible. Time an immobilize or a stun to that and you’ve got yourself a dead thief.
Thieves are OP in solo or small group encounters in WvW. On the bright side a perma-stealth thief is pretty obvious, so just leave them to it unless you’re playing a profession with infinite AE … and even then it can be tedious.
Good news though! I guarantee that once my Thief reaches level 80 the profession will be nerfed into the ground the following week. =)
let me put this into perspective. your problem isn’t the thief. it’s the guy that uses his dagger/pistol combo to permastealth. a legit dagger/dagger thief is not op or horrible in any way. it’s just the dagger/pistol’s smoke/leap combo that makes them op. that is where your problem lies.
No thief can ‘hide’ forever, the ones you are talking about are the d/p thief’s that spam black powder and stay in stealth the entire time and you can see the white circles laying around the floor to know if one is playing that game or not.
I agree it’s pretty cheap how they can do that, a cool down on black powder would destroy the spec. Maybe force thief’s to be revealed if they don’t attack after stealthing like they do if they attack, this way a thief can’t avoid attacking on purpose to spam stealth all day long with blackpowder + heartseek and using refuge too.
Could just buff the tower lord/amount of guards to prevent a thief from easily soloing.
Thieves can trait and select weapons to gain permanent Stealth duration. This allows thieves to avoid detection in recently lost keep/towers. Thieves wait under Stealth until attackers leave and then go kill the lord bypassing the siege war and any chance for PvP.
Fighting against profession which has access to Stealth is annoying. Basically you will be reacquiring your target over and over again = fighting against your user interface. Any game mechanic that allows player to tamper with opponent’s UI should not be in this game.
There are tons of threads complaining about thieves this and thieves that. I believe the root is the invisibility part of Stealth. If you can’t see what opponent is doing you must know all its tricks and behaviours to understand the fight.
To balance things thief profession has been plagued by a long line of nerfs. In its current sorry state thieves are not regarded viable for big fights. In small scale fights they are that annoying last opponent that got away. 1v1 they are bound to chain-resetting the fight until target runs out of cooldowns.
Invisibility in WvW context is simply too powerful game mechanic to balance.
Suggestion
Remove invisiblity from Stealth in WvW. Instead stealthed opponents appear as transcluent.
here is a better solution: turn the black powder smoke combo field into a dark combo field. it would change it from stealth to lifesteal, which would add more variety to the thief and also remove permastealthing. permastealthing only works cause stealthing replenishes itself when cloaking, so lifesteal would not be spammed.
I don’t understand the problem with stealth. It seems perfectly fine to me. Each class has their unique characteristics that give them an advantage in certain situations. It would be silly if all classes were equal in all situations.
Thieves are supposed to excel in solo or small group roaming. Other classes are supposed to excel at larger group fights. This is not a problem, this is good design.
I don’t play thief, but it seems like if you take away their stealth, they become very easy to kill.
To me, true balance isn’t that all classes can beat all other classes in a 1v1. True balance is that all classes can be beaten by at least one other class. Some other games I play will say something like “class a” is strong vs “class b”, but weak vs “class c”. A real life example from Medieval times would be the knight. Knights would tear regular infantry to bits, but a pikeman could usually beat a knight. Balance.
Anyone who uses the words “permastealth” and “combat” in the same sentence clearly has never played a Thief.
Also, you talk about stealth and lords, and then your suggestion is transparency? Stealth does not drop aggro in PvE, so changing it in any way because of PvE mobs isn’t exactly a valid argument.
Permastealth is for the hiding bit – to avoid any combat with human opponents.
The tactic (I would imagine) for killing the lord is to kill a guard, stay in stealth long enough to recover or completely reset the fight. Then re-engage to kill another guard, recover/reset. And finally kill the lord, too.
Stealth not dropping aggro allows you to keep the lord in combat while you recover. You only need to out-damage his self-heals.
Stealth is non-issue in PvE. NPCs don’t get annoyed. And nobody cares if someone is able to defeat opponent that does not learn, adapt or change tactics. Just press buttons in same order you pressed thousand times before and you get exactly the same result.
If the lord is in combat, so are you… so you can’t regen either.
The only build that can allow long term stealth is dagger/pistol with traits picked specifically for maximum inint regeneration at the cost of all else. Any thief who wants to stay stealthed must a) not hit ANYTHING and b) use every single init point they have to do so. This means that a thief using this tactic can open combat with 3 to 4 init points, this means they get one heartseaker OR one shadow shot (only if they time it such that they get their bonus 1 init per 10s to come up while they are waiting for the stealth to wear off). If they want to backstab, they cap at 2-3 init and can only do one heartseaker.
That’s it.
Staying in stealth long term represents a MAJOR commitment in build and init. It also requires not a small amount of skill to pull off (seriously, try doing it in the mists, see how long it takes you to be able to reliably stay stealthed for 30-60s it usually takes for a tower to clear, or 2-3 min for a keep.
Anyone who uses the words “permastealth” and “combat” in the same sentence clearly has never played a Thief.
Also, you talk about stealth and lords, and then your suggestion is transparency? Stealth does not drop aggro in PvE, so changing it in any way because of PvE mobs isn’t exactly a valid argument.
Permastealth is for the hiding bit – to avoid any combat with human opponents.
The tactic (I would imagine) for killing the lord is to kill a guard, stay in stealth long enough to recover or completely reset the fight. Then re-engage to kill another guard, recover/reset. And finally kill the lord, too.
Stealth not dropping aggro allows you to keep the lord in combat while you recover. You only need to out-damage his self-heals.
Stealth is non-issue in PvE. NPCs don’t get annoyed. And nobody cares if someone is able to defeat opponent that does not learn, adapt or change tactics. Just press buttons in same order you pressed thousand times before and you get exactly the same result.
If the lord is in combat, so are you… so you can’t regen either.
The only build that can allow long term stealth is dagger/pistol with traits picked specifically for maximum inint regeneration at the cost of all else. Any thief who wants to stay stealthed must a) not hit ANYTHING and b) use every single init point they have to do so. This means that a thief using this tactic can open combat with 3 to 4 init points, this means they get one heartseaker OR one shadow shot (only if they time it such that they get their bonus 1 init per 10s to come up while they are waiting for the stealth to wear off). If they want to backstab, they cap at 2-3 init and can only do one heartseaker.
That’s it.
Staying in stealth long term represents a MAJOR commitment in build and init. It also requires not a small amount of skill to pull off (seriously, try doing it in the mists, see how long it takes you to be able to reliably stay stealthed for 30-60s it usually takes for a tower to clear, or 2-3 min for a keep.
Have you really been capturing towers and keeps like that? Screenshot or it didn’t happen.
Sulkshine – Mesmer
This won’t hurt [Much]
Ring of Fire
Noone, in this game can deal that crazy amount of damage in a single strike but the thief.
Not even warriors can deal +7K with a single strike. The only way to deal that crazy damage is to channel 100 blades for 3.5 seconds. By the time that skill gets to 3.5 seconds the opponent has already gotten out of the attack. It only works for NPC that just stand in front of you and don’t move.
Noone, in this game can deal that crazy amount of damage in a single strike but the thief.
Not even warriors can deal +7K with a single strike. The only way to deal that crazy damage is to channel 100 blades for 3.5 seconds. By the time that skill gets to 3.5 seconds the opponent has already gotten out of the attack. It only works for NPC that just stand in front of you and don’t move.
In fact, Backstab is rather weak when it comes to damage. It’s just a 2.4 coefficient, which is kinda puny compared to 3.0 of Eviscerate/Final Thrust, 3.25 of Kill Shot or 5.5 on a full 100b.
In fact, Backstab is rather weak when it comes to damage. It’s just a 2.4 coefficient, which is kinda puny compared to 3.0 of Eviscerate/Final Thrust or 5.5 of a full 100b.
And thieves have to set it up before they can use it. :D
In fact, Backstab is rather weak when it comes to damage. It’s just a 2.4 coefficient, which is kinda puny compared to 3.0 of Eviscerate/Final Thrust or 5.5 of a full 100b.
And thieves have to set it up before they can use it.
Yehp, all the ones I listed were relatively fast skills to utilize for high damage (minus Necro/Ele, I don’t really play them and didn’t want to scour through damage co-efficients).
