Guild Wars 2

Stealth is a relatively new addition to gaming. It seems like every MMO from Shooters, Space games, RPGs, MMOs, and MOBAs all have to have stealth these days. In this post I’m going to analyze why stealth is an inherently unbalanced mechanic and why should generally be avoided in games in the future unless there is a specific purpose for it instead of being bolted onto any genre and trying to balance it afterwards.

First off, let’s visit stealth as a mechanic. We’ve all seen it. You enter stealth becoming invisible for a time and then reappear under set conditions be it time, action, or something else. However, stealth gives a TON of benefits, both tangible and intangible that need to be considered during balance. The longer the stealth is, the larger most of these benefits become and often the more uncounterable the benefits become. This uncounterability of players while in stealths lends itself to use of mechanics instead of skilled decision based gameplay. So let’s analyze these pieces one by one:

• Time to analyze your enemy
• Cooldown reduction
• Movement closing
• First strike advantage
• Untargetability
• Scouting undetected

When a PVP battle starts several things happen in a very short span of time. What a player does the first few seconds of combat can determine how good they are as a player. Let’s say you see your enemy off in the distance. You now have a few seconds to determine their class, look at their armor and weapons, analyze their buffs, and from there try to determine how their character is built and if you could handle their build in your current build. This can make or break a good player. Engaging an opponent when they are built to counter your build is suicide, but if you guess wrong at their build they can send you a haymaker in combat that you weren’t expecting and force you to adapt.

The challenge and fun of PVP begins at first contact. The less information that is outright given to you but clearly displayed on the enemy the better, but that’s a topic for another time. Stealth breaks the initial period of analyzing, theorizing, and preparing for the coming battle. One party gets to analyze the other often for large amounts of time while the other can have no idea of the existence of the other. The stealth character gets the ability to almost perfectly select targets they know they can kill. It skews the initial planning phase of the battle drastically in the stealth characters favor with no more than the push of a button. This removes a huge skill aspect of PVP and greatly favors mechanics over skill-based gameplay.

Along the same lines, during combat you often have to adapt to enemy tactics and strategies. Giving yourself a big time out during combat is a gigantic advantage. However, with stealth, this also applies to your enemy. This can be a wash in instances where there’s not a mechanical advantage to having a slight breather. However, in games where a stealth class has lots of front loaded damage this is a dramatic advantage. Not only do you get to take a breather and plan your next move but you also get to sit out all your cool downs and apply more front loaded damage again. It essentially removes the detriment of burst damage which is generally high cool downs.

The longer stealth is the more it lessens the number of decisions opponent can make for how to deal with it as well. So if the enemy has no important decisions to make while the character who is stealthing does, this creates an even greater informational advantage. I’ll say this multiple times, but again this points to a mechanical advantage instead of skilled gameplay.

Movement and positioning can often be the key between winning and losing a battle in most game types be it PVP, PVE, what have you. When you stealth the enemy has no idea what direction you’re moving in but you can still see theirs. This creates a huge disparity in what the non-stealthed player can do to mitigate what you can do. This highly favors mechanics instead of skilled gameplay. At best, they can see you off in the distance, watch you stealth, and move away from you preventing you from gaining much distance on them. At worst, during a melee combat the stealth character gets a huge advantage to peel from combat if they are losing since they can just move in the opposite direction the enemy is or makes it so they can stick to a fleeing target with no hope of the fleeing target landing CC because the stealth character can’t be targeted. It also could allow a stealth character to stealth out of view of a player and close the gap between you two without the player being able to do anything to mitigate this gap closing. Again, being unable to mitigate this means the mechanic not only requires less skill to use but promotes less skilled gameplay from opponents as well.

First strike advantage is absolutely gigantic in any game. Entire classes and spells are built around mitigating first strike advantage for the simple reason that classes like thieves and rogues exist. The element of surprise gives even the most skilled opponents a couple seconds of disparity which can be devastating. If the stealth class has any CC this becomes even worse. The stealth character can strike, CC, and strike a few times more before the enemy gets any chance to do anything reasonable. If the stealth is short this is generally negligible as the opponent can predict when you will come out of stealth more accurately and take appropriate measures to counter your opening. However, it does still provide a fairly solid benefit even with short stealths. Being able to press a button and gain the first strike advantage also mitigates skilled usage however it does allow for the defending player to make skill based decisions which could then take adapting to. I’ll discuss this a bit more later.

Untargetability is obviously a gigantic advantage. This is what allows stealth characters to have the first strike advantage, gives them the ability to avoid CC, and allows them to escape things other classes are simply incapable of. Couple this with the ability to avoid being seen and it makes even untargeted AOE spells incredibly hard to land. Without the invisibility part untargetability is still strong but it can be mitigated by AOE CC and AOE damage. Untargetability itself allows for very skilled play with short durations to interrupt spiking combos, dodge or anticipate important CC from enemies, and mitigate ambush burst on squisher characters. With long durations and invisibility it basically provides invulnerability for the entire duration of the stealth and again, reduces the impact on skilled decisions and instead emphasizes mechanics.

Scouting undetected can be gigantic in certain games. Games like EVE online have entire squads dedicated to reconnaissance because in war, knowledge is power. In MOBAs stealth generally gives a huge advantage to scouting as well as knowing enemy movement can make the difference between lost assets or a defended push. The lower the sight lines, game importance on knowing enemy movements or compositions, and size of the combat maps can make or break undetected scouting as a mechanic. At short durations of stealth, undetected scouting becomes almost impossible. From a game design perspective at the inception of the game developers need to analyze what emphasis they want to put on scouting. Measures like EVE online’s inability to target enemy players for several seconds after stealth or stealth ships’ inability to do substantial damage can put heavy emphasis on balanced scouting and supporting without impacting balance in combat situations. This is one of the few instances permastealth can be easily balanced.

As you can see, stealth can easily reduce the skill level of classes and reduce meaningful skilled choices players can make to adapt to it. Especially in Guild Wars 2, stealth can make it so you win fights by mechanics, not by skill. So how do you balance stealth in a game with all these massive advantages it gives? It’s very logical and quite simple. I’m going to refer to three examples I feel are extremely well balanced stealth mechanics in PVP games: The Mesmer, EVE online, and Smite:

• Remove stealth or do not include stealth
• Remove the ability to do anything useful after stealth
• Design your game with rock, paper, scissors balance
• Keep stealths short in duration
• Increase the number of untargeted spells

The first is the most obvious. Just don’t have stealth in your game. Stealth is such a powerful mechanic and designers really need to see the role very clearly for stealth before including it. Don’t just include stealth because it’s the hip thing to do. Including stealth in a game is by no means going to increase the reception of it. Quite the opposite is true if it unbalances the game in some way. Also, make sure if you do decide to include stealth make sure your engine can handle it properly and it’s not buggy. There’s a lot of complex things code wise that stealth needs to do in a game. If your game simply cannot handle stealth from a base perspective, think of another way to fill the niche your game needs. This is rather impractical in Guild wars 2 as the design team has already committed to using stealth. However, they could make stealth simply turn the Thief shadowy and make him untargetable but still visible. This would make them still susceptible to AOEs but still give them the ability to mitigate most kill strike burst damage. This could make for a very interesting and balanced alternative in my mind, but still shouldn’t have more than a 5s duration on non-elite skills.

Removing the ability to do anything useful after stealth means quite simply you only want it to be used for scouting purposes. Trying to make a high damage low survivability class stealth is completely impractical. Make it so they can burst a target quickly and it becomes a one sided fight of “can the stealth character choose their targets properly.” Make the stealth class do too little damage and the enemy simply turns around after being engaged and guts them like a fish. The balance line is so razor thin it’s best to avoid it altogether. Having stealth characters do no damage isn’t practical for a lot of games but games with big open worlds, sandbox games, and other creative uses can often make use of a pure scouting or support role. It could be tweaked to make sure the class that can stealth can only use support functions like CC or buffing friendly players. This has the added benefit of increasing communication and team play as the stealth class generally cannot solo kill anything but can be a force multiplier for their team. If you want a great example of well balanced stealth support and scouting, EVE online does is splendidly with 3 different classes of stealth craft. One class can only really scout enemy systems, the other can do fairly decent CC but very low damage, and the third is only good for fleet logistical purposes. This is impractical for Guild Wars 2.

Another from the design perspective, balance your game in a rock, paper, scissors fashion. Make it so stealth characters counter something, but something hard counters stealth characters. You see this in MOBAs frequently and some RPGs. I think it’s good balance as it emphasizes team composition, positioning, and sticking together much more but other players dislike it. It promotes strategy at the cost of reactionary tactics. What you’ll often see is warrior characters having decent CC and physical mitigation, but low maneuverability and mage characters doing high armor ignoring damage but with low escape and survivability. What ends up happening is if a rogue engages a warrior the warrior brushes off most of the rogue’s damage and caves his skull in with CC and damage. If the rogue stealths up to a mage he can gut the mage in a matter of seconds leaving the mage with little defense. Mages by contrast do heavy damage to the warrior as most of their damage is unmitigated. You can throw in other things like support characters and objectives to make sure the team is focused on supporting each other instead of running around mindlessly TDMing each other. This has the added factor of increasing balance. If the rogue gets a huge buff for some reason teams need only to increase the number of warriors to compensate which then makes mages more viable etc.

Guild Wars 2 could go to this model, but it would take massive rebalancing. I don’t think it’s viable as every class is meant to be able to do everything. As you can see, lots of emphasis is put on deciding WHY, WHEN, and HOW to implement stealth in your game. As Anet seems to have bolted on stealth to jump on the bandwagon, they missed out on a great deal of this planning phase. So what could Anet do?

Of the two things that Anet could do, normalizing and lowering stealth durations is the best option. In my opinion the Mesmer is very well balanced as far as stealth. It simply acts as a way to throw off your enemy for a second, reposition yourself a bit, and reengage while possibly dodging a spell. If you engaged something you shouldn’t have then it probably won’t save you. Their stealths sit at around 3 seconds (the best amount of time in my opinion, they should all be exactly 3) and their elite is 5 seconds and does nothing but stealth. They also get no bonuses when stealthing which keeps it from becoming even more unbalanced. Remove the ability to increase stealth duration and it would be perfect. The low time means that you can’t use stealth to endlessly to analyze potential targets and completely ignore fights that you can’t win. Low duration also reduces the amount of time you’re able to wait out your burst potential. Abusing stealthed movement is at a minimum with low duration and makes it only useful for slight repositioning not outright quitting a fight. It still gives the first strike advantage, but as I’ll discuss below allows for more tactical decisions and skill from both players. This makes short untargetability, first strike, and repositioning the benefits of stealth and still makes it very powerful.

Increasing the number of untargeted spells is a great way to mitigate stealth’s benefits to a simply deceptive role. Smite is a MOBA with only untargeted spells. Everything is a skill shot. They have one character, Loki, who has a relatively short stealth. He can really only use it for escape juking and quick engagements from the jungle because if you try to use it in full view of your enemy they will just CC where you disappeared from and hit you with everything anyways. This brings a great tactical element to stealth and AOEs as it gives you the ability to make more decisions in response to a stealth. In Guild Wars 2 there are two things preventing this from being viable at mitigating stealth. Dodge rolling in stealth and delayed AOEs. Very few AOE spells are instant cast making the ability to react to a stealth and hit them quickly impossible. On top of that dodge rolling makes it so that you can just avoid the AOE and stay stealthed. The best way to balance this is to make dodge break stealth. This plays out very nicely on the battlefield in regards to short stealths.

Let’s say a Mesmer decides to hit her torch 4 and enters a 3 second stealth. The enemy has a few options. Blow a defensive cool down and absorb the burst, try to hit the Mesmer with AOE to deal damage or CC to keep pressure on, if they have stealth they can stealth second and just get to have the first strike advantage when the Mesmer leaves stealth, or do nothing and absorb the re-engagement or let the Mesmer leave combat but have their cool downs up for the next time they need them. Let’s say the enemy decides to blow an AOE and drops it right on the Mesmer’s head. Now the Mesmer has a decision to make. Do I blow the dodge roll, leaving stealth and allowing the enemy to have the first strike advantage while I finish my roll animation or do I eat the damage? With long stealths the defensive buff duration won’t last long enough, the CC / damage will be impossible to follow up on, and the enemy can just walk away regardless. There’s no skill or branching decision making to be had. I could easily give more examples of decision making that long stealths eliminate but good skilled and complex decisions that short stealths add.

As you can see this branching decision making adds a lot of skill and complexity to PVP, something that is very good. However, this assumes that stealths have low durations and dodge rolls be adjusted to only allow the dodging of one spell (in this case the AOE) and not complete invulnerability during the entire roll. However, even if the dodge animation makes them completely invulnerable like is currently the case the enemy still baited out a dodge roll making that one less available to them later. I have several issues with dodge as currently implemented however but that’s another story. Let’s leave it at I think all buffs to endurance pool size and regeneration should be removed from everything and it should be normalized amongst all classes and dodge should only stop one attack when you hit the button choosing amongst the first to hit you.

Overall, the Thief needs to be looked at in Guild Wars 2. The style of play it brings to the table reduces complex decision making for the thief and to counter stealth as their class mechanic leads it to the best burst in the game while simultaneously making them almost unkillable at the press of a button. As it stands now, Thieves don’t get kills through skill, it’s simply mechanics that allow them to pick up kills. Players play PVP because they don’t want to play simply against mechanics. PVPers want skill to be the defining characteristic of their fights. Bring depth and skill to the class and to people reacting to the class. Of course, changing the stealth durations will require more balancing with class survivability, damage, and traits. As I have outlined, the class reduces complex decisions for all players involved and that simply is not good game design. Please go back to the drawing board and take another look at the Thief class.

If you read this far, thank you! You’re a trooper. I know it was lengthy but game balance is very complex and understanding the fundamentals is important. Thanks so much for your time and I hope you learned something.

It appears to me that developers respond to the lowest common denominator having the loudest voice. Stealth is not a new idea; it’s a borrowed idea.

Developers are like normal people. They fall into patterns and tend to not question how things work or why they work a certain way. Ideas are simply borrowed from the people who invented them.

I agree that stealth doesn’t provide skill based game play. However; keep in mind the audience that you’re trying to convey this discussion to. They generally don’t like to think.

Stealth was already nerfed. This was due to an unbalanced “perma-stealth” Thief troll build. Now with that said, let’s breakdown your complaints one by one:

• Time to analyze your enemy
This is done before a Thief or Mes goes into stealth. If the target is squishy, you attack. If it’s a Guardian, you run away. Simple.

• Cooldown reduction
This was the nerf. No more perma-stealth trolling.

• Movement closing
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• First strike advantage
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Untargetability
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Scouting undetected
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

Summary – Stealth is a part of the game. If you’re unable to come up with effective strategies to counter it, it doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced or broken. It means you need to get better. There are many ways to counter a Thief or Mes, but being that I play both, I won’t discuss them (for fear of people learning how to kill me).

Calae.1738:

I agree that stealth doesn’t provide skill based game play. However; keep in mind the audience that you’re trying to convey this discussion to. They generally don’t like to think.

Why think when you can just spam buttons on your keyboard for easy kills?

Actually this is a really good and well thought out post. Kudos OP. That said, you’re basing your initial assumption on something I don’t agree with.

You say that skilled play comes from having the time to analyze what’s going on and know what to do next based on that. I disagree.

That’s PART of skilled play. But reaction to the unknown, and having stuff in your bar to deal with the unexpected is, to me, just as much a part of skilled play. So you have your stun breaker, and condition remover and a decent AOE which is part of the best way to deal with thieves.

Because once the thief actually appears, he becomes more vulnerable than a lot of classes. Less condition removal (and stealthing doesn’t cure conditions), less health and pretty measly armor.

I kill a lot of thieves in SPvP, for example, even though they appear out of nowhere and stun me. Blinding helps, for part of it, but not all of it.

Because part of skill is planning and part of skill is reaction and planning on the fly.

In fact, part of skill is actually knowing the game you’re playing and adapting to it. The kind of skill that you’ve separated out as player skill is actually only one kind of player skill. Guild Wars 2 favors reaction over other kinds of skill. Guild Wars 1 favored a different type of skill.

I’m not really sure one type is better than another.

I forgot to add: I’m a Glass Cannon Thief. I die almost as fast as I kill. So that’s pretty balanced IMO.

I think stealth is annoying/unfun, but definitely not OP or anything. The only part that is kind of unfair is that some skills can’t be used without a target (but will still go on cd if you try =/).

As for the above comment, dying as fast as you’re killed isn’t necessarily a balanced, unless you’re including time spent in stealth, kiting, etc, but there are other aspects to it ofc, and gc thief is fine imo, but just had to say it…

I personally think stealth would be more interesting (and fun to fight against) if it players took more damage while using it or there was some sort of visual effect when you hit something in stealth. But thieves would need massive buffs if something like that happened :p Basically, it’d be more fun with some sort of counter mechanic.

Might also be worthwhile that stealth does remove conditions if you trait for it, and that thief armor isn’t measly, it’s medium.

If you are having problems against a stealthed character , you really don’t know all the facts on how to deal with stealth. Probably don’t even lift.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Stealth was already nerfed. This was due to an unbalanced “perma-stealth” Thief troll build. Now with that said, let’s breakdown your complaints one by one:

• Time to analyze your enemy
This is done before a Thief or Mes goes into stealth. If the target is squishy, you attack. If it’s a Guardian, you run away. Simple.

• Cooldown reduction
This was the nerf. No more perma-stealth trolling.

• Movement closing
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• First strike advantage
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Untargetability
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Scouting undetected
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

Summary – Stealth is a part of the game. If you’re unable to come up with effective strategies to counter it, it doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced or broken. It means you need to get better. There are many ways to counter a Thief or Mes, but being that I play both, I won’t discuss them (for fear of people learning how to kill me).

Only you fail to note how “the purpose of stealth” is bad to begin with. Stealth offers too many advantages while not giving an appropriate balance of disadvantages. “The purpose of stealth” has nothing to do with it. The purpose is wrong to begin with. It’s designed to be ezmode for the stealther. All I learned from your post was that you like easy kills, you have no interest in balance(for fear of people learning how to kill you), and you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Be glad this game does not have permanent stealth like other games….

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

If you are having problems against a stealthed character , you really don’t know all the facts on how to deal with stealth. Probably don’t even lift.

Wish I could +1 this more times.

Stealth is a part of the game.

Adapt or die.

This is a very indirect attack on Thieves. Thieves are the main users of stealth and they really don’t have much else of a defense other than shadow return and dodging. Thieves are also squishy so using stealth is their best form of survival.

Age of Conan did the “stealth” ability right. (one of the few things they actually did right) It was stealth, not invisibility like every other game including GW2. One had to be in shadows or in cover, like brush, to be concealed and you could not sneak up on somebody in the open in broad daylight. It took SKILL to sneak up on a player in that game.

And I do not understand how Anet can allow stealthers to pop in and out of stealth while in combat! That gives the stealthier a major unfair advantage over his opponent, not to mention a “get out of being killed” button in PvP and WvW since they can just pop stealth and sneak away when the fight’s going bad for them.

What???

Stealth adds depth to the game. If you don’t see this, then you probably don’t understand how stealth works in this game.

Fighting someone who has stealth involves using additional strategy, not less. The same goes with stealth.

Stealth isn’t something that can be spammed infinitely without cost. If you don’t understand how that is so, feel free to roll a thief.

Kiran.2705:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Stealth was already nerfed. This was due to an unbalanced “perma-stealth” Thief troll build. Now with that said, let’s breakdown your complaints one by one:

• Time to analyze your enemy
This is done before a Thief or Mes goes into stealth. If the target is squishy, you attack. If it’s a Guardian, you run away. Simple.

• Cooldown reduction
This was the nerf. No more perma-stealth trolling.

• Movement closing
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• First strike advantage
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Untargetability
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Scouting undetected
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

Summary – Stealth is a part of the game. If you’re unable to come up with effective strategies to counter it, it doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced or broken. It means you need to get better. There are many ways to counter a Thief or Mes, but being that I play both, I won’t discuss them (for fear of people learning how to kill me).

Only you fail to note how “the purpose of stealth” is bad to begin with. Stealth offers too many advantages while not giving an appropriate balance of disadvantages. “The purpose of stealth” has nothing to do with it. The purpose is wrong to begin with. It’s designed to be ezmode for the stealther. All I learned from your post was that you like easy kills, you have no interest in balance(for fear of people learning how to kill you), and you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Stealth is needed for those classes depend on Stealth for the rest of their mechanics, because of their low toughness/vit they need another way to survive. If a Stealthless Thief goes agaisnt a Warrior, guess who is gonna win 9 times out of 10. Yes, you could put skill in or say that certain builds factor in, but the BASE stats is going to have the Warrior win. Mesmer has it as a cantrip, mage classes have that as another survivablity.

Complaining about how it isn’t fair when the game has classes built around that fact. I would consider my self lucky that the Devs gave you some way of hurting a stealthed character, you can’t just swing your sword in the air in other MMOs and hope that you hit something.

What the OP didn’t talk about was how the characters react to someone going stealth right in front of them, they still have the same options that the stealthed character does…the Thief just has his plan hidden until the Stealth goes away.
example:
1) Warrior sees Thief, Thief sees Warrior, Thief Stealths

2) Thief’s plan of action) Look at enemies class, determine skill, engage or run away

3) Warriors’ plan of action) Look at enemies class, determine skill, engage or run away

Whats so unfair about them having their hand covered until they play it? Thats the class feature for them to make up for their squishness.

Is this example going to fit every situation? Nope, it isn’t ment to, nor will I be able to give you the perfect example that changes your mind.

Combat is Combat, stealth will shine at certain moments and it will be horrible at certain moments, I don’t see how this is more unfair then say something like creating clones and switching with them, or some people having pets when others don’t access it to. This is more a topic of “If one person gets stealth we should all have stealth!” Which should NOT be happening in a forum of a Class-based MMO…all of that is my opinion of course but still.

Being in stealth does not guarantee that you’ll get the first strike. Being stealth isn’t necessarily supposed to be fair, but it is a fair mechanic to have in the/a game. GW2 does it pretty well despite some prior bugs/exploits/hiccups.

There are several ways in which every class can counter thieves. You can’t really argue how imbalanced stealth abilities are, if you don’t really even take into account the plethora of ways that show it’s actually in pretty good balance.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Stealth was already nerfed. This was due to an unbalanced “perma-stealth” Thief troll build. Now with that said, let’s breakdown your complaints one by one:

• Time to analyze your enemy
This is done before a Thief or Mes goes into stealth. If the target is squishy, you attack. If it’s a Guardian, you run away. Simple.

• Cooldown reduction
This was the nerf. No more perma-stealth trolling.

• Movement closing
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• First strike advantage
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Untargetability
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Scouting undetected
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

Summary – Stealth is a part of the game. If you’re unable to come up with effective strategies to counter it, it doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced or broken. It means you need to get better. There are many ways to counter a Thief or Mes, but being that I play both, I won’t discuss them (for fear of people learning how to kill me).

He was not only talking about from a thief’s perspective, but also from another class’ perspective.

1. Analyze your enemy. How can I analyze my enemy when they approach me in stealth? If they’re hiding behind a structure or hill, and stealth around it and up to me, I have no idea what’s about to happen. Are they tanky or will they burst me down in 2 hits? No way for me to know because I can’t size them up before battle.

3. Movement closing. How can I close in on a stealthed thief if he’s invisible? There are 360 degrees he could have gone, and I have to not only pick the correct degree, but the correct distance as well. Is he running, or did he stealth and is still standing back near where he initially stealthed?

4. First strike advantage. The thief will always have this advantage because of #1. They can stealth up to me and get their hit off first every time. I can only swing my sword and shoot arrows into space while the thief laugh and walks up behind me, completely undetected and unhit.

5. Untargetability. My AOEs take a second or two to get off and by the time they finally make contact, the thief is long gone. I can’t hit, see or shoot an untargettable object, yet it can target me. Seems like Predator vs humans with pokey sticks.

6. Scouting undetected. I don’t mind perma stealth for scouting purposes only. This was what OP said as well.

I don’t mind the stealth, but would be cool if there were subtle hints like foot prints in snow, shuffling in the grass, or swirls in shallow water.

WatchTheShow.7203:

He was not only talking about from a thief’s perspective, but also from another class’ perspective.

1. Analyze your enemy. How can I analyze my enemy when they approach me in stealth? If they’re hiding behind a structure or hill, and stealth around it and up to me, I have no idea what’s about to happen. Are they tanky or will they burst me down in 2 hits? No way for me to know because I can’t size them up before battle.

3. Movement closing. How can I close in on a stealthed thief if he’s invisible? There are 360 degrees he could have gone, and I have to not only pick the correct degree, but the correct distance as well. Is he running, or did he stealth and is still standing back near where he initially stealthed?

4. First strike advantage. The thief will always have this advantage because of #1. They can stealth up to me and get their hit off first every time. I can only swing my sword and shoot arrows into space while the thief laugh and walks up behind me, completely undetected and unhit.

5. Untargetability. My AOEs take a second or two to get off and by the time they finally make contact, the thief is long gone. I can’t hit, see or shoot an untargettable object, yet it can target me. Seems like Predator vs humans with pokey sticks.

6. Scouting undetected. I don’t mind perma stealth for scouting purposes only. This was what OP said as well.

Counter points:

1) Exactly. That’s the purpose of Stealth. To sneak up on an enemy and hit them without them knowing.

2) Missing

3) Exactly. That’s the purpose of Stealth. To hide your movements.

4) Exactly. That’s the purpose of Stealth. To be able to strike first.

5) Exactly. That’s the purpose of Stealth. To avoid getting hit.

6) Exactly. That’s the purpose of Stealth. To be able to scout the enemy locations without being seen.

Edit – Please note that good players are able to counter Thieves, even when you can’t see them. Higher tiered servers have skilled players, so you can always ask them for tips. Low tiered servers are mainly zerg balls vs zerg balls with no strategy.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Stealth was already nerfed. This was due to an unbalanced “perma-stealth” Thief troll build. Now with that said, let’s breakdown your complaints one by one:

• Time to analyze your enemy
This is done before a Thief or Mes goes into stealth. If the target is squishy, you attack. If it’s a Guardian, you run away. Simple.

• Cooldown reduction
This was the nerf. No more perma-stealth trolling.

• Movement closing
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• First strike advantage
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Untargetability
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

• Scouting undetected
Part of the purpose of being stealthed. You can run away or move in for a hit. Nothing wrong here.

Summary – Stealth is a part of the game. If you’re unable to come up with effective strategies to counter it, it doesn’t mean it’s unbalanced or broken. It means you need to get better. There are many ways to counter a Thief or Mes, but being that I play both, I won’t discuss them (for fear of people learning how to kill me).

Trying to sound smart and failing to even understand the base perspective. Calls OP’s points “complaints” and does a “breakdown” to say the same thing over and over. Ends with a real complaint.

…. lul

If you are going to make this thread then you need to tell us what you would replace our main defence with, the other being evades.

Otherwise the whole thing becomes just another baseless complaint with no substance.

There is nothing inherently imbalanced about stealth in video games. It can be balanced or unbalanced depending on how it is implemented. To suggest otherwise, is severely discrediting the ability of developers to balance their game. There are many disadvantages to stealth (which you conveniently ignored and makes me want to discredit your whole opinion) that have been added to various games to counter the advantages. It has worked in many games with great success and stealth is an extremely fun game mechanic for some people. Stop trying to ruin other people’s fun because you happen to not like it. Essentially, this thread can be summed up as a thinly veiled QQ post with lots of words.

P.S. I rarely ever play a stealth character and if I do it is an alt.

ExZee.8109:

Trying to sound smart and failing to even understand the base perspective. Calls OP’s points “complaints” and does a “breakdown” to say the same thing over and over. Ends with a real complaint.

…. lul

FYI – the base perspective you bring up is that those without skill to counter a Thief will complain about no balance.

And note – all my replies are the same thing over and over, because the OP doesn’t understand the purpose of Stealth to begin with. It’s like starting an argument about the sun being too hot, thus it’s not balanced.

I’d like to add something else to the discussion.
What we have in GW2 and other similar games, be they MMO or single player, is not real stealth gameplay.
It’s invisibility.

Real stealth games?
The Thief games.
The Deus Ex series.
The Splinter Cell games.
The Metal Gear Solid franchise.
Dishonored.
The Hitman games.

These games all share a common idea: that stealth is based around actual player skill and the observation of the enemy and environment.

GW2’s “Stealth” dumbs that down to a single button press, taking it to the extreme where it’s possible to disappear from sight on a well-lit day with no cover in the middle of an empty field.

Where the hell is the skill in that?

I spit on MMO “Stealth”. It’s lazy design.
You know what would make a good start to a proper Stealth implementation?
Making it so you can’t see enemy nameplates.

Though I miss the GW1 Assassin, people probably forget that, regardless our preference/dislike for the mechanic, stealth is a classic ability of the classic Thief/Rogue fantasy archetype. Its purpose in the game isn’t necessarily to grief those who hate the mechanic on a PvP game. It just partially meets the archetype’s criteria (on a similar matter, I find the steal mechanic pretty weird/non-fitting, but I guess true pickpocketing has no place in this game anyway, so they had to have the “steal” moniker somewhere.)

In short, not having stealth on a Thief mean he would be more the thug, non-sneaky type of thief (you could be a Thief with no stealth abilities after all), which although a valid concept too, most players couldn’t probably relate to.

Not to mention that Thieves on this game almost need stealth to be more effective, otherwise their survivability suffers. Taking stealth away from the game basically destroys the Profession, and they would need to redo Thief as well as many other Professions that also ocassionaly cloak-just for the sake of someone’s valid, but subjective value about what a fair, strategic fight means.

You could argue similar concerns about the Mesmer as well, how fighting clones is not fair strategically-wise, etc. (plus they can cloak too) but it’s just another Profession design that you learn to adapt to.

Mungrul.9358:

I’d like to add something else to the discussion.
What we have in GW2 and other similar games, be they MMO or single player, is not real stealth gameplay.
It’s invisibility.

Real stealth games?
The Thief games.
The Deus Ex series.
The Splinter Cell games.
The Metal Gear Solid franchise.
Dishonored.
The Hitman games.

These games all share a common idea: that stealth is based around actual player skill and the observation of the enemy and environment.

GW2’s “Stealth” dumbs that down to a single button press, taking it to the extreme where it’s possible to disappear from sight on a well-lit day with no cover in the middle of an empty field.

Where the hell is the skill in that?

I spit on MMO “Stealth”. It’s lazy design.
You know what would make a good start to a proper Stealth implementation?
Making it so you can’t see enemy nameplates.

I do not mean to argue your point (you are entitled to your opinion), but perhaps stealth’s “lazy” design is probably more realistic to implement than the more complex, “true stealth” system used in your cited games?

Mungrul.9358:

GW2’s “Stealth” dumbs that down to a single button press, taking it to the extreme where it’s possible to disappear from sight on a well-lit day with no cover in the middle of an empty field.

Just like pressing a single button to make meteors appear out of thin air? Curse this thing called “magic”.

Star Ace.5207:

I do not mean to argue your point (you are entitled to your opinion), but perhaps stealth’s “lazy” design is probably more realistic to implement than the more complex, “true stealth” system used in your cited games?

I’d rather they’d left it out entirely if that is indeed the case.
I’ve made this point before plenty of times, but it deserves repeating here:
In the first game, ArenaNet looked at implementing classic MMO stealth twice, but rejected it as being over-powered and inherently un-balanced both times.
During Beta, Rangers had a Stealth stat, yet come final release ArenaNet removed it.
Then again when they were making the Assassin profession, they looked at stealth, but again deciding it would be too powerful, implemented the well-designed Shadow Step mechanic as an alternative.
Why on Earth they forgot these lessons between GW1 & GW2 never ceases to boggle my mind.

Mungrul.9358:

You know what would make a good start to a proper Stealth implementation?
Making it so you can’t see enemy nameplates.

Works in CoD. Won’t work here. What good is removing the nameplate if you can still click on the player? lol

Considering any real alterations from how stealth has worked in major title MMO’s, either keep it the way it is or make the class who uses “stealth” abilities so homogenized to any other melee class that they’d be better off trashing the class all together.

I really loved how Assassin in original Guild Wars worked.

Crit based, shadow stepping, dagger profession, with grace and speed. No need of stealth at all.

I think the Stealth mechanic for classes/professions is a plague in MMOs.

The only place I can see a Sealth mechanic work is against NPCs, like in a dungeon. There could be a special area in the dungeon you get stealthed and need to avoid enemies, red circles and other stuff you can avoid.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Just like pressing a single button to make meteors appear out of thin air? Curse this thing called “magic”.

Please don’t stoop to using straw man arguments. This point is not relevant to the discussion at hand.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

FYI – the base perspective you bring up is that those without skill to counter a Thief will complain about no balance.

And note – all my replies are the same thing over and over, because the OP doesn’t understand the purpose of Stealth to begin with. It’s like starting an argument about the sun being too hot, thus it’s not balanced.

LOL. You made my day… twice. If only I hadn’t seen this today you’d be #1.

evo.8640:

Works in CoD. Won’t work here. What good is removing the nameplate if you can still click on the player? lol

Actually, they could make it work by having you lose target if the enemy goes out of Line-of-Sight.

I generally hate to deal with thieves. Stealth is the main reason, but does not apply to mesmers. Stealth on mesmer to me is more of a defensive move. On the other hand, stealth on thief is just a pain. Its just annoying to even think about what to do next. They have Back Stab, and that’s what killed me 99% of the time when I’m alone.
*If I engage to fight, I lost my target every second
*If I run away and out of swiftness/invunl skills, I got Back Stab to death

Really don’t have much choice. I learned that (on certain profession) you can use AoE to immobilize/knockdown skill to try to counter stealth, but that’s not really a guaranteed method. Its just a chance to deal with it, and I still can’t see that thief.

I was really disappointed in Anet on this part. Many other old MMO had implemented some sort of skill to have the ability to cancel (like boon removal) or be immune to stealth.
I really don’t understand why instead of create a counter to the stealth, they continued to just N-E-R-F. I tried to play thief before, and like many mentioned, their core ability is stealth. I rather recreate this profession if I nerf the ability to a useless state.

Calae.1738:

It appears to me that developers respond to the lowest common denominator having the loudest voice. Stealth is not a new idea; it’s a borrowed idea.

Developers are like normal people. They fall into patterns and tend to not question how things work or why they work a certain way. Ideas are simply borrowed from the people who invented them.

Triple A game design in a nutshell.

PearlGore.7419:

If you are going to make this thread then you need to tell us what you would replace our main defence with, the other being evades.

Otherwise the whole thing becomes just another baseless complaint with no substance.

From what I gathered from that recent State of the Game video ArenaNet seem to be looking into ways to give Thief more comfort when it comes to remaining within the combat area without perhaps relying solely on stealth. I’d love to see this develop into something worthwhile but I can’t see Thieves ever leaving Stealth unused.

Of course Thieves will defend stealth. Stealth is why the majority play Thief I’d wager, reasons being those given in the OP. I don’t think Stealth has been done as badly as it could have been in GW2. As someone pointed out, at least it’s not able to be kept up permanently (legitimately).

In the aforementioned video, changes to invulnerability skills were also mentioned. To me, Stealth is a form of invulnerability. Yes, AoEs can hit you IF your opponent gets lucky, but having the ability to not be targeted and not even be seen is pretty close to invulnerability in my book, more-so when you combine it with teleports for even quicker escapes. As such, it seems to be used by thieves as often as possible – and why not? Forcing your enemy to look around for you, reselect you, try to predict your movements when in stealth is a ridiculous advantage.

On top of my concerns about Stealth is the problem of hacking. Numerous times I’ve heard reports, and witnessed other players appearing for a split second in between hits before re-stealthing. Apparently there is a way to bypass the Revealed debuff? I’m not sure (perhaps it is fixed now) – this is not within my comfort zone, but if true, just the fact that this mechanic is in the game gives too much temptation for people to use it in order to cheat. Saddening.

Now for a question that arises from this discussion. If it were made easier for Thieves to stay alive in combat without having to rely on stealthing as often as cooldowns allow, would you still utilise your stealths at every opportunity, or let them take a back seat? I see no reason why a Thief would sacrifice them for what will always be a riskier, and crucially more labour intensive strategy.

Mungrul.9358:

evo.8640:

Works in CoD. Won’t work here. What good is removing the nameplate if you can still click on the player? lol

Actually, they could make it work by having you lose target if the enemy goes out of Line-of-Sight.

Line of sight to what? Your character’s FoV? The camera FoV? At what angle should the cone be on the X-Y-Z planes? If it’s not FoV, would it then only be when the stealth class gets behind an object?

Even if they did something like that, what good is losing target if you can instantly retarget them upon assuming the correct line of sight (FoV)? If it’s whenever they go behind an object, that seems pretty pointless and it’d be akin to playing pillar-hump in Blade’s Edge.

Having a stealth ability that would only be useful / useable when an enemy player does not have you either in their FoV or you’re hiding behind an object simply for nameplates disappearing and causing a minor disturbance to targeting – not only doesn’t sound fun but also seems like it’d probably never go used.

Line of sight would work if this game were linear and played in 1st person… in narrow halls (ala 1990’s Doom). But throw in open world environments, and it suddenly makes no sense.

All the anti-stealth people need to understand something: Thieves are squishy. Stealth helps to balance them out. High single target damage output + low defense = Glass Cannon that can die pretty fast. I do know that Anet wants to give Thieves a bit more chance to survive, so there may more nerfs to stealth coming. Keep in mind that if their build is adjusted too much, they become a petless Ranger.

Side note – Earlier in the thread, people were comparing other games’ mechanics. Well, if you want more nerfs to Stealth, then I propose bringing in a FPS/CounterStrike mechanic to balance things out: Anytime you are blinded in game, your screen goes bright white for the duration of the condition. I’d gladly give up Stealth for that.

No game I have ever played has had such a extensive stealth, AND lets you attack with no negative effect. Stealth is worst game mechanic you can make in a multiplayer game, cept maybe killing someone only to not have them dead(cough downedstate). Want to know why no competitive players play GW2? Stealth and downed state. No good competitive player worth his salt would waste time with stupid mechanics. They want skill based combat, not who can abuse a game mechanic the most combat. inb4 “if so good lrn2adapt”(you know good players adapt and are still better than you, they just go to a different game thats more fun and skilled to play than waste time with dumb mechanics)

Rock paper scissors is not a good design concept.
Yes, it’s simple, but have you thought of the last time you played rock paper scissors?
Does beating someone in rps make you more skilled than them? Or does it just mean you happened to be lucky? The only way you could possibly be called skilled is if you happen to know the person and remembered that they always go scissors first.

99% of games don’t let you display the above analytical aspect of skill. If you are playing a thief with stealth, and you’re going against a condition bunker build that you can’t kill, you can’t beat them. Rock beats scissors. Does that mean the other guy is better than you? No, he just happened to pick rock before the game even started. He had no way of knowing what you would pick. It’s pure luck, nothing else to it.

OP, you haven’t convinced me that stealth as a mechanic is inherently game-breaking, which is what I think you were intending to do with this thread. Yes, it allows for reconnaisance. Yes it allows for first strike, yes it allows for a timeout mid-combat, and these are all very strong aspects of stealth. But you said yourself that without a thief’s damage, the one who was ambushed would simply turn around and beat the thief to a pulp. People die to bursty thieves all the time, but it’s the burst that kills them, not the infinite stealth.

Stealth is a unique mechanic, and very powerful in the right mindset, but it’s not as game-breaking as the OP is arguing. Right now, the damage potential a thief has from stealth is the more game-breaking part.

The stealth mechanic needs to be changed, as soon as possible.

If stealth stops point capping in sPvP, it will never be balanced as your main defense mechanic stops point capping (e.g. if Aegis stopped point capping).

Since Anet balances on sPvP, it throws balance elsewhere off.

MasterGeese.4756:

Stealth is a unique mechanic, and very powerful in the right mindset, but it’s not as game-breaking as the OP is arguing. Right now, the damage potential a thief has from stealth is the more game-breaking part.

I’ll agree with you there. The high damage from Stealth does hurt. But that’s what makes a Thief who they are. Hit and run. They aren’t made to slug it out on the battlefield. This all may change come tomorrow though.

If stealth is so overpowered, why aren’t you playing a thief op?

They are introducing boon hate to indirectly nerf some classes, so…why not change some skills as to counter stealth? Like, pet/turrets could be immune to that (turrets haven’t even got eyes, after all). Or some skill could give a buff that makes you see stealthed players for a while.

Manuhell.2759:

Or some skill could give a buff that makes you see stealthed players for a while.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa there. That’s a pretty overpowered idea mate. Be careful where you swing that mind of yours.