Guild Wars 2

I was thinking about post this on game bugs forum, but since it would be useless I don’t.
I reported this several times during my permanence in GW2.
Since the release there is this problem.
So at the start I said: “It’s fine, they will fix it later.” Never happen.

The problem is for everyone that are using stealth skill.
I recorded a short video where you can see what I’m talking about.

Now that I have created a thief character I can see this more frequently than before.

Mesmer as thief is affected by this as well as everyone that use stealth or that are stealthed by others.

I mean, we are all agree that AoE have to damage while in stealth, but I can’t really understand how and why someone can catch you with a targeted skill and follow you even if you dodge, evade, move.

So, why?
Mystery

I will be that guy and say that Guild Wars 2 Stealth is already ridiculously OP.

It’s not a mystery at all if you do a bit of googling, and yeah mesmers are seeing this too.

Just to clarify you are talking about when in stealth the Life Steal skill is hitting you with damage correct?

I believe Life Steal skill is a channeling and they will finish their duration when you enter stealth to reduce the damage from them you will want to block or evade.

The reason for this is purely a code logic issue. Currently there is nothing stopping someone from continuing a channeled skill if the target goes in to stealth during that channel. Only Anet may know how easy this is to fix. I suspect that it would require the game to check a boolean 30+ times per second.

Have you guys ever seen a really good stealth thief in WvW? No joke 20+ people can’t kill this guy.

Now, he’s not killing anyone himself, but it’s pretty ridiculous to watch him bounce around and constantly invis while dozens of people scramble around. Pretty impressive actually.

The problem is that stealth doesn’t seem to break targeting. On my mesmer I can go into stealth and still be tracked and hit by projectile users, casters, etc even though I’m supposed to be invisible. With the very short stealth time periods mesmers have this greatly damages using stealth as a form of misdirection or avoidance. It’s very annoying.

@anzeketh yes, as Xenon said all the channeled skills actually do this.
Life Steal was just an example.
I run a condi build with settler amulet to stay alive enough to explain this properly in the “video”.
I don’t understand why… I mean, you can be hit by AoE damage while in stealth, but I really found unfair or just stupid that channeled skill can follow something that they cannot actually see, doing a lot of extra damage for a 1800-2000 armored toon.
You need to go out of range instantly, extra dodge that you need to save to limit the damage, not always able to do it, and it’s another of the preoccupations when you play with someone that knows his/her fact.
Even iPhantasm that does a lot, a lot of damage are able to catch you, as channeled skill too.
I have more experience with mesmer generally, but playing a thief this problem is even bigger.

I guess the question is this confirmed a bug? I could see some argument for this to be “Working as designed” I honestly don’t know.

I could see someone argument that yes it is working as designed. But then I can also see a argument that it is not.

anzenketh.3759:

I guess the question is this confirmed a bug? I could see some argument for this to be “Working as designed” I honestly don’t know.

I could see someone’s argument that yes it is working as designed. But then I can also see a argument that it is not.

They’ve flat out said in a thread that it’s working as intended. Which is bullkitten, but meh. I’ve gotten nailed after Cloak and Dagger more times than I ever should, because a target followed my dodge roll. This is mostly a PvE issue for me, but it’s still annoying as hell.

This is entirely as intended and I’ll explain why, assuming that you’re talking about channeled skills.

A channeled skill needs to have a valid target when it is started and then deals damage at time intervals for the duration of the skill. This is immediately weaker than instant skills that have the same targeting requirement but deal all damage instantly. Moreover, the channel skill can be interrupted at any time, the user often needs to be static, and can’t use other attacks, change weapons, or get auto-attacks during the channel. That’s all much weaker than an instant skill that can do damage on the run, without interrupts, without delay and leaves the user free to do anything else afterwards. If you want to defend against a channeled skill then don’t use stealth, blind, aegis, or a short evade as these are not full counters. Use an interrupt (daze, knockdown, fear, stun), series of side dodges, or a big movement skill to exit range.

Stealth isn’t a counter to everything, any more than block, blind or an interrupt. Some skills need different counters to others. Use interrupts to counter a channeled skill.

Ya channelling skill are a weakness when you stealth. And even if I find that pretty annoying while i’m playing my thief this is not a reason to change it. I’m pretty annoyed when someone kill me, that’s not a reason to nerf everything that kill me.

Stealth is already powerful, either on Thief or Mesmer. Some say its even OP right now. Not sure about that, its more that people don’t know how to play against stealth in most case, but that’s just my opinion. So I don’t see why they should change that particular thing. If they do, stealth will become more powerful that it already is, maybe too powerful since you could use stealth to basically block any channelling skill, that would be really powerful when you figure out how to use it.

It works also on insta skills, all the ranged class are able to catch you for 1 or 2 hit after the stealth if they are throwing their bullet while you’re going stealth.
There is a mix of bug and something that “works as designed” so in the end everythings work as designed. Problem solved.

It’s bad designed in my opinion because if they put stealth in the game this should work as stealth, enemies shouldn’t hit something that they cannot see with targeted skills.
I mean, if while I’m going stealth my character is stricken by something in the initial trajectory of the arrow/bullet and I don’t move then it’s my fault. But we have always 1 extra random hit or 2 even on ranged insta skills.
I mean is stupid that the opponent is able to round itself and follow you around with the channeled skill even if in front of him there’s nothing. It makes no sense.
I played several MMO and I never found a design like this. It’s incredible.
What Stooperdale say it’s true, it’s what I usually do, but this design makes me crazy.

Nothing more satisfying than my Kill Shot being the doom of any annoying Stealth thief. One of the few perks to using a rifle.

Draknar.5748:

Have you guys ever seen a really good stealth thief in WvW? No joke 20+ people can’t kill this guy.

Now, he’s not killing anyone himself, but it’s pretty ridiculous to watch him bounce around and constantly invis while dozens of people scramble around. Pretty impressive actually.

hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahaaha

yeah because the most important thing in WvW is to use 20 people to kill 1 single thief.

hahahahahahhahahahaha

and i wonder why this forums is worst every day.

Xenon.4537:

I suspect that it would require the game to check a boolean 30+ times per second.

Wait what? Ever heard of events? All they need to do is have the channel skill subscribe to a stealth event of the target. When the target goes to stealth, stop the channel skill.

I think what you have misread is – that Thieves get Invulnerability and not invisibility- Though its kitten close.
Without a target to hit on perma- invis thieves- you can hope to hit with aoe the thief- you will go into cool-downs while the invisible thief just laugh at all the failed location of the spells…

In this case its very clearly that the channeled spell hit you before you became invisible.- thus continuing that spell.—— should you become immune to one of the few downed spells that necro has at his disposal? you could just interrupt it. move out of range.
Should a power that is so kitten easy to have constant popping make you invulnerable to enemies- more than thieves already are?—- Kittens no.

Xenon.4537:

The reason for this is purely a code logic issue. Currently there is nothing stopping someone from continuing a channeled skill if the target goes in to stealth during that channel. Only Anet may know how easy this is to fix. I suspect that it would require the game to check a boolean 30+ times per second.

I can’t look into the code of course. But checking a boolean 30+ times per second is always a bad thing. For this kind of stuff they tend to use something like an observer pattern. The observer pattern is a very known pattern so I wont go into detail much.

E.g. (dumbed down since of course stuff will be probably way more complicated)
2 Instances of Character lets call them Object X and Object Y.
When a skill get’s used by Object X on Object Y. The channeling of the spel will start running. At this point Object X registers itself at Object Y (Object Y will have a reference to Object X). Now that Object Y has a reference to Object X, we can say that when using a stealth skill. Object Y will update the state of the skill of Object X into “cancelled”. And then the skill would be cancelled.

The Observer pattern is commonly used for solutions where you would need an Object to constantly request for the status/state. For in your example you could register Object Y in Object X. And then during the casting of the spel check if Object Y is in stealth or not. But that’s generally seen as a bad practise.

Anyway, back on topic:
I hope stealth will get removed, I’ve a problem with skills that offer a very limited amount of counters. People for some reason dont seem to understand, that when playing a thief you have the option to get into or out of the fight with a single press on the button. Any class that has all the options available to disengage/engage against other classes are imbalanced in my opinion.

e.g.
I’m a thief, dragon rank and all that 1337 stuff. I’m playing against other players of the same level. This means I can expect to win the good matchups, lose the bad ones and 50/50 on the others. Now I got the option to Capture point A. The enemy player defending there runs a common build which I know I can win. I as thief now know I will capture point A. While disregarding the positions of the enemy team. Why? Cause I know that when I engage I will win that fight and capture A. When someone else joins in the fight I get in a 1vs2 and I will stall. Giving advantage over the other points on the map cause we have more players. Except stalling I also got the option to go in Stealth and run away. This will give us a brief moment where we got an advantage at the other points (2 players at A) and I got safely away and can move on or even wait till I can try capturing point A when the 2nd player has left.

The fact that as a thief, you can disengage at your pleasure and can’t get caught by 2 players. Gives you so many options when capturing points. I sincerely hope stealth will be given more counterplay when new weapons are going to be added…

Hmm, people who don’t think that stealth is already rediculous enough.

Stealth is not invulnerability, and does not cancel channeled skills just as nothing else cancels channeled skills except a stun. If you want to stop these skills, you stun your opponent the same way every other class has to, then you stealth.

A good Thief will have no problem adopting such a combination.

Lishtenbird.2814:

The margin of plausibility is a subject of eternal debates. However, there are things which people consider normal (like being able to hit holograms, or being able to bleed and poison steel golems, or being able to create clones of flesh and blood), and there are things which they don’t. The stealth tracking is considered as the latter by many people. If you ask me, I’d say that using channeled tracking as a counter to stealth is pretty much similar to countering Shocking Aura with Mirror of Anguish – both work, both give benefits to user, both defy logic, and the only thing that differed (and made it fixed eventually) is noticably higher numbers.

Lishtenbird.2814:

When you go into stealth, it’s only natural that you shouldn’t be tracked by Aetherblade’s lightning or a Toxic Assasin’s long-cast arrow. It is a game design flaw (one of those “lazy solutions” of early stages IMO, just like Temporal Curtain, which I BTW would call “ignorant”), and the fact that many people consider it a bug is not a coincidence but a consequence.

I haven’t been playing PvP for that long but I’m already sick and tired of this so-called “mechanic”. Just yesterday I got knocked off skyhammer by a ranger after stealthing, and got tracked and killed by someone’s projectile after using Deception at the last moment and stealthing.

I do not have problems with thieves being thieves – stealth is a part of their mechanic; I do not want my staff projectiles to track and hit them when they’re in stealth either. Countering the fact that some classes are better vs AI and some are better vs humans with a lazy game mechanic is simply selfish; there’s zero common sense in getting stealthed, blinking and then still being hit by someone’s channel.

The most correct way of stealth working:

• You start a channel.
• Target stealths.
• You continue channel and fire.
• If the target is still in the place where you last saw it, your channel hits (similar to AoE).
• If it’s not, your channel misses.

A lazy but ok solution which takes into account the current game engine:

• Skills miss if target is stealthed when the “hit” event is triggered (works both for channels and bouncing projectiles).
• Multi-hit channels (Spatial Surge, Arc Lightning etc.) gets interrupted without triggering any on-interrupt effects if target is stealthed when the “hit” event is triggered.

They should perhaps fix this while nerfing stealth by 50% duration. Thieves built around stealth are a cowards class.

If they fix this I hope stealth get’s a nerf on the graphics. With that I mean stealth should not make you invisible but more like Predator invisible. Stand still and you blend in to the background, move and you will have a harder time to blend in. Target will still not be able to be targeted and channelings will loose the target but if the players has a keen eye he/she can se the enemy and track him/her.

SoLeciTO.3490:

Draknar.5748:

Have you guys ever seen a really good stealth thief in WvW? No joke 20+ people can’t kill this guy.

Now, he’s not killing anyone himself, but it’s pretty ridiculous to watch him bounce around and constantly invis while dozens of people scramble around. Pretty impressive actually.

hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahaaha

yeah because the most important thing in WvW is to use 20 people to kill 1 single thief.

hahahahahahhahahahaha

and i wonder why this forums is worst every day.

Slowing down your enemy is a big plus in WvW. That is why Commanders usually say to not chase enemy player or stop at sentries, because it slows your zerg down, and by that time, your enemy could’ve already captured a tower, or a keep.

So, yes. Having a Thief that can slow down 20 people from a zerg is really good.

So keep spam your ’’hahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha’’ and feel clever about it.

hobotnicax.7918:

Thieves built around stealth are a cowards class.

I haven’t written this on the forum ever and I hope I never will again, but: LOL.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

If they fix this I hope stealth get’s a nerf on the graphics. With that I mean stealth should not make you invisible but more like Predator invisible. Stand still and you blend in to the background, move and you will have a harder time to blend in. Target will still not be able to be targeted and channelings will loose the target but if the players has a keen eye he/she can se the enemy and track him/her.

Similar to the way friendly stealthed players are displayed. I always liked this concept and even thought of traits which could make it work; I think this is a nice concept, but I’m afraid at this stage it may result in a massive outrage.

It “ridiculously OP” in your opinion but you don’t get the point. I’m not talking about to make a sort of invulnerability while in stealth, never asked this, neither something concerned to this.

I don’t care as well as 50% reduced damage while in stealth, it’s another point.

I’m just saying that in my opinion is really bad designed that channeled skills, iPhantasm and 1 hit skill are able to follow something invisible to the enemies/mobs eyes for several seconds.
It makes no sense at all. It’s bad from an aesthetic point of you, it goes against nature of stealth itself. It’s stupid and a kind of laughing balance to make stealth not too powerful.

So as someone suggest, it’s probably better to change this fact, making people tracked by feet on the ground or something, add new stats as dexterity for more evade, nerf damage, no damage while in stealth or whatever, even remove stealth from the game if necessary instead of keep going on with this sort of stuff.