Guild Wars 2

I understand that the culling bug is difficult to fix, and you guys have tried. However, it’s giving thieves huge benefits right now as they can perma stealth because of it. At what point do you plan to adjust stealth cool downs in wvw to compensate for the culling bug benefits that thieves get, or do you even consider that an option?

Thank you.

Yeah, it’s really annoying trying to fight the invisible man/woman… wish they could fix the issue already – it should be priority number 1.

Avigrus.2871:

Yeah, it’s really annoying trying to fight the invisible man/woman… wish they could fix the issue already – it should be priority number 1.

If they cannot fix it, then they need to quickly increase stealth cooldowns significantly. I know several people leaving the game because of thieves effectively getting perma stealth iin wvwvw,

Columba.9730:

Avigrus.2871:

Yeah, it’s really annoying trying to fight the invisible man/woman… wish they could fix the issue already – it should be priority number 1.

If they cannot fix it, then they need to quickly increase stealth cooldowns significantly. I know several people leaving the game because of thieves effectively getting perma stealth iin wvwvw,

Lol come on its not that bad. I know no one leaving because of it. Lol

I’m not going to leave the game because of it but I sure avoid wvw like the plague except for when the monthly resets.

The problem seems to further be enhanced by how the game renders characters (fading in). Imo, they need to address one of two things.
1. Remove the fade so that players suddenly appear. (May not fix the issue entirely, but it will reduce what the player perceives as stealth.)
2. Change stealth so that all it does is remove target and apply the ally stealth visual to enemies. The issue I see with this is that aoe will be an even stronger counter to stealth.
I don’t see why nothing has been done, aoe stealth a zerg and they all have this bug giving them a very distinct advantage.

the main problem is culling. it gives thieves practically permastealth in wvwvw. highest dps, perma stealth and best mobility all on one character is highly imbalanced.

I did have a problem with thieves and culling, until I picked my own thief back up and started WvWing on it. After some theory crafting and play time, I’ve come to the conclusion that even without culling, a thief will still have complete control over when the fight begins, and when the fight ends.

I figure that once culling is fixed, which requires very fundamental changes to the game, and if not done carefully, can result in an entire host of new bugs, people will move on to whine about thieves being OP.

Gisei.5749:

I did have a problem with thieves and culling, until I picked my own thief back up and started WvWing on it. After some theory crafting and play time, I’ve come to the conclusion that even without culling, a thief will still have complete control over when the fight begins, and when the fight ends.

I figure that once culling is fixed, which requires very fundamental changes to the game, and if not done carefully, can result in an entire host of new bugs, people will move on to whine about thieves being OP.

That is because thieves are the most overpowered class and they are just a grief to everyone in WvWvW.

The whole balancing of the game is ridiculous to say the least. I have never seen a game this unbalanced, buggy and simply not working when it comes to classes and skills. And that is across the board through all classes.

Nothing can fix this because the developers are highly incompetent.

My solution to the problem is simple:

Everyone just make a thief character and all use thief in WvW.

(and mesmers too for porting over the walls)

and then the level 50 scrubs discovered the [TAB] key

Just do like everyone else and roll up a level 80 thief alt. Then we will all be OP together!

With every patch you will see more and more thieves. They are the staple of WvW pvp. Sucks for anyone who honestly wanted to be a thief, since they are now a dime a dozen, but it can’t be helped.

Scootabuser.4915:

and then the level 50 scrubs discovered the [TAB] key

tab doesn’t work on the perma stealthed thieves, but keep pretending that it does, lol.

Tab also targets moas and distant targets.

It’s just ridiculous that the plan is to just leave the game imbalanced as it is for a year or so until a fix is found. Just leave it. All that matters is that one day it will be balanced. The gameplay of thousands of people for their hundreds of thousands of game hours until then don’t matter.

Columba.9730:

I understand that the culling bug is difficult to fix, and you guys have tried. However, it’s giving thieves huge benefits right now as they can perma stealth because of it. At what point do you plan to adjust stealth cool downs in wvw to compensate for the culling bug benefits that thieves get, or do you even consider that an option?

Thank you.

First off permastealthing is a pretty draining and uncommon thing for thieves to do. I’d happily say 1 in 10 does it. Sure it is irritating, but just the same as warriors who specced in this invincible build spamming endure pain while loling at you. There are always going to be those players who go for those cheesy builds in any games.

It resolves around taking not the most effective spec to achieve this, and then to cast black powder to finally to keep spamming heart seeker (3 times is needed to keep it up nicely) through the combo field in a timely manner on and on and on and on again, while using utility stealth skills to tie it all up when you are getting yourself too drained. Mess it up once and it goes wrong, hence exposing you (giving you a 3 second window at least to attack said thief) because of vanish debuff and also probably a little bit longer so said thief can replenish some initiative.

But do not take this as me disagreeing with you on the fundamental issue, culling IS a problem. Maybe a difficult one but still an issue that severely needs addressing.
Thing is the typical thief does not actually count on it. To me, on my monitor, the way I appear and disappear is the same as when I PVE. When my stealth is down, I feel exposed as much.

Obviously culling means it isn’t the case. It means I gain an steep, unfair advantage. I know how frustrating it can be when I hop on my mesmer or warrior and see the culling effect from the other side of the coin.
And this gives an even worse reputation to this class I really love. Stealth is always going to make thieves/shadows/rogues/assassins/operatives unpopular due to the fact stealth is a rather difficult utility to counter (AKA the “where am I?!?!?? muhahahaa” effect, which I can’t deny I’ve always loved).

Any good, fair-game thieves would agree the culling needs to go. Besides if a thief wanted to be unseen for longer, he’d find legitimate ways to do it.

Just thought adding a thief point of view on this matter might help show that all “honest” players of every class are supporting this issue being raised.

edit : typo

Well if they cannot fix culling they need to adjust stealth.

^It’s nice to see a player of a thief respond with thoughtfulness and fairness, instead of making irrational personal attacks on people who want changes done to stealth. If you are the majority, your demeanor is stealthed, while the unsavoury types are very very noticeable.

Ignoring the perma stealth problem won’t make it go away. Sory.

Columba.9730:

Well if they cannot fix culling they need to adjust stealth.

This would only wreck PVE for legitimate thieves. Doing this might sound like the easy option but this sort of general punishment is not fair when the players behind the class are not responsible for this. This isn’t us exploiting a certain build or actively pushing to get the most out of an exploit. A lvl1 thief who never ever played GW2 and logs in for the first time ever in wvw WILL benefit from this problem when he uses his heal unintentionally EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The point is, he doesn’t mean to. The game has a technical “broken” issue and “breaking” a class to fix it is not the answer.

I admit to currently being a stealth/condi build which works wonders in dungeons and PvP, and if I were to lose a second or two on each of my stealth abilities, well sure I COULD cope but it would take a lot of fun away for me of playing my class.
Just the same as a mesmer COULD cope losing some distortion or a warrior COULD deal with losing time on endure pain.

My point is they devs need to take care of this prompto. This is turning the community on one another when, really, no one did anything wrong.

Columba.9730:

Ignoring the perma stealth problem won’t make it go away. Sory.

As I said in my earlier post, any class can go for its own “LOL” build, doesn’t mean you need to damage a heavily relied upon aspect of said class.
If a gameplay mechanic is broken and exploited, then fine.
If it’s a technical/graphic mechanic that’s broken, then it isn’t fine.

I know what I am going to say is going to brush some people the wrong way, but thieves NEED stealth. It’s not just for picking our fights and all the cheesy counter arguments one might put out, but it is our most important defensive ability.

Would you like it if I took away the toughness/ heavy armor of the soldier classes ? What if I took away the meat shields of “pets” classes such as ranger, necros or mesmers?

My point is, yes, any skill or traits can be used for more than its original purpose ( being smart and adaptive about our own class skills is what makes a player good or bad) but it doesn’t mean it still isn’t fundamental to this class.

Without it, we are just crappy DPS who are begging to be one-hit shot.

We’re never going to stop players who find ways to abuse a certain mechanic of their classes. I mean,if permastealth annoys you that much…how do you feel about mesmer portals? Does golem porting tastes nice to you ? Where is the line drawn ?

Besides aren’t we supposed to discussing culling instead of permastealth thieves ?

The teleport back skill(the one where you set a circle on the ground that teleports you back) gives stealth as well. I don’t know if it’s a render issue due to sudden teleportation but it’s there and it’s also giving them perma stealth if done consecutively

Kromsin.6359:

Columba.9730:

Avigrus.2871:

Yeah, it’s really annoying trying to fight the invisible man/woman… wish they could fix the issue already – it should be priority number 1.

If they cannot fix it, then they need to quickly increase stealth cooldowns significantly. I know several people leaving the game because of thieves effectively getting perma stealth iin wvwvw,

Lol come on its not that bad. I know no one leaving because of it. Lol

Then i doubt you are in a guild that actively does wvw daily o.O
Perma-stealthing is really happening in wvw and it really does suck out all of the fun in the game when you are on the reciveinng end.

You won’t be able to kill competent thieves who are actively abusing the culling system unless you have 4+ people running around spamming auto attacks.

People don’t’ even bother escorting yaks anymore because there is no point to do it unless you have a party with you to stop one person.

knight.8926:

The teleport back skill(the one where you set a circle on the ground that teleports you back) gives stealth as well. I don’t know if it’s a render issue due to sudden teleportation but it’s there and it’s also giving them perma stealth if done consecutively

I hardly ever use shadowstep, I much prefer infiltrator arrow as I’m quick on the mouse and it permits me to have space for another utility but if I remember correctly, it is just a teleport. So it must be a rendering issue.

If the engine struggles to cope with rendering in general, then anger shouldn’t be towards the thief class but towards the developers and testers who didn’t do their job properly.

I bet half of these thieves exploiting the culling don’t even realise it and are just spamming their stealth skills one after the other because they just don’t want to be seen (thieves know being seen means being killed, sorry).

I’m even willing to bet they only get killed when for some reason they stop stealthing (which means no initiative and all stealth skills on CD). It’s not to say they are bad thieves, just that they are currently a bit unexperienced. Good stealth specced thieves always got a stealth left up their sleeves OR at the very least know they can handle themselves while one is about to pop back up.

I am saying that because while SOME thieves know culling exists, we do not see it on our screen hence it is a bit harder to work around it when if we don’t know whether we have been rendered or not. But I am sure some types got it worked out.

My point remains that the average thief does not count on it. This of course does not negate the fact it brings them an distinct, unfair advantage. But shooting the messenger will not fix anything either.

Everyone has a limited list of players that they can see, because the server is only sending data to from that list to the client. Maybe stealth is removing players from that list, if so, the solution could be to keep stealthed players in that list.

Brutal Arts.6307:

I’m not going to leave the game because of it but I sure avoid wvw like the plague except for when the monthly resets.

^^ Ditto, I go in get my 50 kills get out, the only other thing I go in for is the stupid 500 badges of honor needed for legendary.

no real reason to stick around the way it is now, the rewards are meaningless
Let’s see if the big 2013 upcoming WvW messiah patch fixes things up for good, if not Nostradamus foresees the end of the WvW side of Guild Wars 2 altogether.

It’s not like a thief is more vulnerable than others when out of stealth. They still have medium armor and mobility. Elementalists have light armor and can’t stealth through most of the battle.

People get angry at thieves because of the ones who do abuse this problem, and when they do, they dance over the bodies of those they cheat-killed.

Sure, it’s not fair to those who aren’t abusing it, but for 3 months all-but-thieves have been being victimized. It’s about time for the fraction that has had it great this long to be the victim of this unsolved problem. Other builds that depend on being stealthed at every possible moment can be adopted in that case.

I don’t understand how anyone can accept that “stealth” which people accept as hiding, sneaking or camouflaging manages to translate to “total invisibility” in broad
daylight in the open fields.

It has been the lazy solution to a difficult mechanic in MMOs for far too long.

ArenaNet will correct me if I’m wrong, but unless I’m mistake about this issue the cause is the game not being properly optimised to use graphics cards, it uses CPU far more than it should.

If this is the case, it isn’t going to get fixed anytime soon.

florence.1674:

I don’t understand how anyone can accept that “stealth” which people accept as hiding, sneaking or camouflaging manages to translate to “total invisibility” in broad
daylight in the open fields.

It has been the lazy solution to a difficult mechanic in MMOs for far too long.

I hate using that old adage but “would having every class being the same be something worth playing ?”.

In which case, anyone could turn around and start spouting (sorry to say this but) really stupid things : “pets get in the way of the 1v1 fight, remove pet mechanics” or “support classes swim in buffs and this create unacceptable inbalance, remove boons” or “why should we be divided in different tiers of armors ?” or even " Being able to cast magic attacks and raining down AoEs on me is clearly OP. Everyone should be using a sword only".

I know it might sound patronizing a little bit and I don’t mean to, but if we eliminate specific class related abilities because it seems out of control on paper, then we lose the RPG factor in this MMO. In which case, counter strike is more up your alley. All the same, pure skills and definitely no differences which could result in unbalanced scenarios.

I do not see why one class’s special mechanic is less worthy of being in the game than those of others. By all means balance it, fix the rendering, do whatever you have to do to make sure that no one has a clear advantage over somebody else. But don’t come after a certain class mechanic and call it balancing either.

This thread is turning more and more into a war against stealth, rather than a pertinent question about a serious rendering issue.

^^ Those comparisons have nothing to do with what is going on mate.
the root of the problem is both stealth and culling.

There’s a reason you almost never see complaints about stealth in sPVP, why ? cause there it works the way it’s meant to aside from some builds that take it to the extreme and need some minor tweaking.

Culling:
- self explanatory as to why it makes stealth classes OP !

Stealth
- stealth needs to break on damage that is the only change I would suggest, why cause what you can’t see can kill you and right now there’s no way to break their stealth, sure you can spam aoe and hope to hit him, but even in the best games out there that have stealth classes if I hit you you come out of stealth and while in combat you have maybe 1 or 2 emergency very long cooldown abilities that allow you to stealth again even while in combat.

Avigrus.2871:

Yeah, it’s really annoying trying to fight the invisible man/woman… wish they could fix the issue already – it should be priority number 1.

Yea instead of them banning thousands of people permanently for small things without warning on first offense. They should be working on important things.

Latinkuro.9420:

^^ Those comparisons have nothing to do with what is going on mate.
the root of the problem is both stealth and culling.

There’s a reason you almost never see complaints about stealth in sPVP, why ? cause there it works the way it’s meant to aside from some builds that take it to the extreme and need some minor tweaking.

Culling:
- self explanatory as to why it makes stealth classes OP !

Stealth
- stealth needs to break on damage that is the only change I would suggest, why cause what you can’t see can kill you and right now there’s no way to break their stealth, sure you can spam aoe and hope to hit him, but even in the best games out there that have stealth classes if I hit you you come out of stealth and while in combat you have maybe 1 or 2 emergency very long cooldown abilities that allow you to stealth again even while in combat.

I know and I agree with you, I was just voicing my own opinion on those coming in the thread and pretty much spamming “nerf/remove stealth”.

Nerfing stealth is not going to change culling, and will hurt thieves in PVE. Hence I wrote a little post about why the hell should stealth be removed because some dislike it and how it generally and unfair attitude that could be turned on any class.

As I said many times in this thread, stealth + culling/rendering issues is technically making thief OP. But it’s not the thieves fault and they shouldn’t be punished for it. ANet should fix this issue as it is dividing the community, despite the fact that no oneis really doing anything wrong (exept exploiters but they are everywhere and playing every class so crushing one is not going to get them out of the game anyway).

Black powder = 3 sec, Healing shadow = 3 sec, CnD = 3 sec, Shadow refuge = okay…12sec, a bit more if specced.
I know it’s a bit weird to say but try to ignore shadow refuge, purely for PVE perspective ( no one in their right mind is going to blow their best ace at the first sign of danger). If the developers take off a second or a second and a half from all stealth abilities in order to make up for the culling effect, then we find ourselves with pointless stealth abilities which don’t allow us to escape aggro,etc…

This is what prompted to kind of say “if you just want stealth removed, just say it”.

To those raising the issue of culling and not stealth itself, then I agree with them. Culling needs to go, but doing that by nerfing a class because they badly optimized their engine is not fair in any way, shape or form.

tl;dr- culling yes, stealth no.

^^ I agree with most of what you wrote except this:

stealth needs to break on damage

- Why, so that the person being jumped has a chance to counter other than the “let’s see if I get lucky and hit him with my blind targeted AOE”

- if you have no AOE or ground targeted abilities you’re pretty much dead to a stealth focused thief (forced target drop anyone)

The resource system for thieves is also a joke There’s absolutely no consequences to exhausting your supply of innitiative, just go into stealth and regenerate it at a constant accelerated rate, give me a break !

Swtor did this resource management system the right way as a trooper you had to manage your ammo carefully if you go in spamming and blow it all up it regenerated a lot slower the less ammo you had left.

This would be in line with A.net view of choices and compromises so it fits Guild Wars 2 perfectly

Examples:

How it is now
hmmm I’m thief do I want to go in and kill this guy with my back stab/deathblossom spam ?
oh heck yes I do, even if he’s tanky and survives I can just pop stealth regenerate all my innitiative and use my shortbow’s spammy infiltrator’s arrow to put a huge gap between us and run away

How it would be if innitiative regen was slower the less you have
hmmm I’m thief do I want to go in and kill this guy with my back stab/deathblossom spam ?
oh heck yes I do, but wait if he is tanky and survives I would’ve blown all my innitiative and even if I go into stealth it will regenerate at a lower speed :S I wouldn’t be able to use my spammy infiltrator’s arrow to escape, dang, I better weigh my options properly or I might die, hmm I will go in and do 1 back stab see how much damage I do first than decide. see the difference

Swtor had a lot of issues but resource management was one of it’s strong points.

A.net says they take the best ideas out of other games and try to implement them into their game well, guess what you missed a big one !

Anger should be towards the thieves.

After all, they are just doing what their role portrays accurately – using every unfair way they can exploit to their advantage. When did the word ‘thief’ ever equate to ‘fair’?

Similarly, the rest of the community will also not be blamed if we hate thieves.

projectcedric.6951:

Anger should be towards the thieves.

After all, they are just doing what their role portrays accurately – using every unfair way they can exploit to their advantage. When did the word ‘thief’ ever equate to ‘fair’?

Similarly, the rest of the community will also not be blamed if we hate thieves.

Who’s talking about fair
I’m talking about having consequences for when / if they screw up

On a side note:
I made it my point in swtor to hunt and massacre stealth classes I build my character specifically to hunt them down and bash their face in. That option is currently not available here, but when it is thieves dying screams will be heard all the way to the eternal battlegrounds underground !

Latinkuro.9420:

Who’s talking about fair
I’m talking about having consequences for when / if they screw up

That IS talking about fair.

On a different but slightly related note, have you ever noticed how in most mmorpgs, the thief/rogue/stealth classes are always the ones dominating in pvp? It seems like it is so easy for the general player base to quickly find a lame but comfortable and OP build around thief-associated skills.

I actually almost expected that GW2 would be different. Good thing I didn’t.

projectcedric.6951:

Latinkuro.9420:

Who’s talking about fair
I’m talking about having consequences for when / if they screw up

That IS talking about fair.

On a different but slightly related note, have you ever noticed how in most mmorpgs, the thief/rogue/stealth classes are always the ones dominating in pvp? It seems like it is so easy for the general player base to quickly find a lame but comfortable and OP build around thief-associated skills.

I actually almost expected that GW2 would be different. Good thing I didn’t.

You got a point there, I was hoping GW2 would be different till they announced the thief class than I knew what would happen, still A.net is not like every other developer out there so I keep my hopes up wishing they will fix it.

I’m not saying it should be balanced or 100% fair in WvW after all it is all about not being perfectly balanced but…

There’s a huge difference between broken VS unbalanced

Columba.9730:

Avigrus.2871:

Yeah, it’s really annoying trying to fight the invisible man/woman… wish they could fix the issue already – it should be priority number 1.

If they cannot fix it, then they need to quickly increase stealth cooldowns significantly. I know several people leaving the game because of thieves effectively getting perma stealth iin wvwvw,

I atleast know some that are taking a break because this issue,imo its a exploit being abused Heavily,they also feel that way and thus taking a break untill the culling issue is fixed,i can understad it honestly.Its just that i like gw2 to much to be taking a break over this,fixing this needs to be indeed priority 1,but i dont think its that easy to fix..

Not only can a thief blow all their initiative, stealth up + heal + regen the initiative quickly, they can get away quickly, chase you down with ease and then kill you while invisible. Then, to add insult to injury, spike you while invisible as well.

In the next patch, culling won’t be fixed and thieves will get another set of buffs because, as long as there is a way to stop them, the class is underpowered.

As a thief, I keep my stealth skills on stand-by for getting out of a fight, not to get in to one.

I wouldn’t know at what range I was being culled for the other player(s) even if I tried. And, as other classes, I have been a victim of culling. “Oh look, a guy on his own, let me take him dow…. oh, crap.” And suddenly 30 people appear on my screen, probably grinning about this lone thief caught with his trousers around his ankles :P

Latinkuro.9420:

Swtor had a lot of issues but resource management was one of it’s strong points.

A.net says they take the best ideas out of other games and try to implement them into their game well, guess what you missed a big one !

It’s funny you mention SWTOR because I do agree with quite a few of your points, including ammo management. I was full BM on my 5 characters (knight, shadow, commando, operative and marauder) so I remember pvp quite well :p

If you do remember, operatives were pretty much faceroll from release since they could go for Poison blade->Hidden strike-> stabby stabby->vanish-> stabby stabby all over again and nothing you could as you were quinessentially killed twice in the process xD
They deserved every nerf they got until 1.2 , but the tears didn’t stop and the nerfs kinda never stopped coming, and while I haven’t logged in months ( I probably should just to see how it is since it’s free to play) , I am pretty sure they are still a broken class …in the bad way…nobody would take my operative along for raiding or ranked wzs because they even if the player behind the class was doing admirably, other classes could do easily the same and more.
By all means, balance the all thing but do not nerf stupidly because some players on the forums are going to QQ no matter what happens (I just checked the SWTOR forums and people still cry about operatives lol). My point on this even once a class has been balanced and sometimes broken the opposite ways it does not mean the forum tear ducts have been shut yet, hence I hope the developers at ANet are a bit wiser and more confident in their decision making than those at Bioware.

Also you must remember the ammo management rate being nerfed to the point only 1 spec was worth playing (vanguard did alright, but commando for a while was just a waste of space ). My commando was medic, and I distinctively remember feeling subpar to other healers for quite a while unil they fixed that. So yeah it could go wrong, but the potential for it to go great is undeniable and ANet, like you said, should not ignore such a good idea!

The dynamic of it was great, it actually kinda helped me transit into thief quite smoothly. The trooper’s golden rule was never under 6 ammo, and I stick to that in GW2 since you never know when you might need that extra oomph for emergencies wthether it be escape or final push of burst (why wait for regen when you got it spare already :p ) so I personally would love to see that mechanic implemented to initiative.

I believe it would also really help to clean the tarnished reputation of the thief as most good/decent thiefs tend not to spam their abilities and generally baddies go stealth->heart seeker -> heart seeker-> heart seeker hahahaha i winz ><

Or if they couldn’t do this (because stealing that idea could be quite obvious, they could apply buffs or debuffs according to how much initiative you got saved up.

Always above 50% ? Great ! You get X% extra damage !
Below 50% ? Aww you must be tired…endurance replenishment is put to a halt.

There are loads of ways to stop the spamming of initiative abilities, so it feels more balanced and closer to the CD system of other classes. I still believe thieves should be able to push out their abilities a bit faster than other classes as it’s pretty much the trademark of the thief (also known as Mr Burst).
But make it clear that if they decide to take the mickey with it, there will be penalties to this type of playing. It would allow the thief to still to do insane burst if he really needed to but this time( awesome for pve), he will make a conscious decision about it having to weight the pros and cons, and ultimately good choice or bad choice will mean victory or death.

I don’t think the class needs a lot of tweaking, but it could be really easy to discourage initiative spammers and reward those who already do not do that.

IMO it’s not the solo-thief who’s a problem in wvw at all. No one ever lost a keep or tower to a solo thief.

The big problem with culling is that we can all be effectively stealthed while attacking, and that so much of the meta surrounding wvw is based on cheesy exploitation of the game’s weaknesses. Much better to go play Planetside 2, and keep GW2 for pve.

mulch.2586:

IMO it’s not the solo-thief who’s a problem in wvw at all. No one ever lost a keep or tower to a solo thief.

The big problem with culling is that we can all be effectively stealthed while attacking, and that so much of the meta surrounding wvw is based on cheesy exploitation of the game’s weaknesses. Much better to go play Planetside 2, and keep GW2 for pve.

I agree with you 100%. Group shadow refuge is more of a problem than anything a thief roamer can inflige on a couple of lone stragglers.

Also the mesmer alone can reverse the tide of any battle by simply popping a portal at the right time, in the right place. And all you need to do this is to get 1 utility skill up in your skillbar REGARDLESS the the spec you’re playing.

My mesmer only equips portal in WvW, I hardly ever use it in PVE…mainly indungeons to save time for group but that’s it at a stretch.

We had a WvW fight where one tower was being overwhelmed by zerg at door (no enemy siege equipment lol), with no one being able to come in effectively to build.
Commander comes up with a simple but effective strategy :

friendly zerg hug (with AoEs ready) + portal (right in middle of zerg)+ shadow refuge (just before taking portal so everyone can place themselves properly instead of just zerging out of portal) = so many downed & dead enemies in 15 secs that we do this all the time now.

What is imbalanced is how just 1 utility from one class can turn a small fight around, and even more when two abilities of the same kind meet then a 30+ zerg is reduced to ashes.

I mean if the devs want classes to have super duper abilities that can be used in battles like that, sure…but give one to each class…not just a couple ( it would bring a lot of fun and unexpected to WvW if that was the case, golem porting is getting boring fast).

Culling and stealth are heavily related. Yes culling happens to everyone. However, thieves can exploit that bug to remain permanently stealthed. I also disagree that stealth should remain while attacking. That is a terrible design choice.

I am uncertain that culling can be fixed. Therefore, stealth will have to be adjusted or thief dps will have to come down.

engineers were nerfed due to their OPness (sarcasm) and qqing. But yet thieves remain permastealthed?

We could apply the same effect that a stealthed ally has to thieves. It makes them transparent and blurry.

If they applied that effect to stealthed characters on both players’ screens, they would never need to be re-rendered each time. It would also fix how the stealth character blinds the human controlling the character, rather than just the character.

It would still be very hard to track a quick thief, and you’d have to wait for them to leave stealth to target them. It wouldn’t affect PvE, and would actually make everyone else not complain about stealth being OP.

Maybe there’s some misunderstanding here.

No thief can remain permastealthed as the game is designed.

Any attack removes stealth, and applies a cooldown so you can’t stealth again.

An idea to make them transparent and blurry is misguided because we’d have the same problem with even bigger display load (so even more culling).

In a game where most attacks don’t need to be targetted, being able to see but not target is the same as being able to target.

mulch.2586:

Maybe there’s some misunderstanding here.

No thief can remain permastealthed as the game is designed.

Any attack removes stealth, and applies a cooldown so you can’t stealth again.

An idea to make them transparent and blurry is misguided because we’d have the same problem with even bigger display load (so even more culling).

In a game where most attacks don’t need to be targetted, being able to see but not target is the same as being able to target.

Due to the culling bug, you are incorrect. They can perma stealth.

Columba.9730:

mulch.2586:

Maybe there’s some misunderstanding here.

No thief can remain permastealthed as the game is designed.

Any attack removes stealth, and applies a cooldown so you can’t stealth again.

An idea to make them transparent and blurry is misguided because we’d have the same problem with even bigger display load (so even more culling).

In a game where most attacks don’t need to be targetted, being able to see but not target is the same as being able to target.

Due to the culling bug, you are incorrect. They can perma stealth.

No you are incorrect. Read what I wrote before you say something stupid like that.

I said No thief can remain permastealthed as the game is designed

Get a game-engine that doesn’t run like poo, and it’s all good.

What does culling have to do with the Engine?

mulch.2586:

Columba.9730:

mulch.2586:

Maybe there’s some misunderstanding here.

No thief can remain permastealthed as the game is designed.

Any attack removes stealth, and applies a cooldown so you can’t stealth again.

An idea to make them transparent and blurry is misguided because we’d have the same problem with even bigger display load (so even more culling).

In a game where most attacks don’t need to be targetted, being able to see but not target is the same as being able to target.

Due to the culling bug, you are incorrect. They can perma stealth.

No you are incorrect. Read what I wrote before you say something stupid like that.

I said No thief can remain permastealthed as the game is designed

Get a game-engine that doesn’t run like poo, and it’s all good.

Anet has admitted that the culling bug allows it. the engine is part of the game design. Thus you are incorrect. stop with the personal attacks.