Guild Wars 2

The gw1Assassin did it right. Shadow stepping gave them huge mobility, they had great control and really powerful offensive/defensive abilities that took finesse and skill to master. Just look at those skills. They still had the power to not be targeted and escape or close faster than any other class and all without the invisibility gimmick.

Stealth by comparison is lazy and boring.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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.

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but a mechanic that has no hard counter should probably have one.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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.

It depends on how is applied. Take something like this skill (that is quite crappy by itself).
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Utility_Goggles
It would make sense for it to give, say, 5 seconds where you (and only you) can see stealthed enemies.
As long as the cooldown is high enough, a class hasn’t got more than a couple of skills with this effect and they’re restricted to two, max three classes, it would be balanced.
(and if someone is really taking two utility skills just to counter a single mechanic, well, he will probably be beaten by any other class)

Huck.1405:

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.

I like this a lot more. I always thought it was stupid that a character could magically hide in the middle of a fight and become invisible (with a few exception skills anyway). What if the majority of stealth skills just made a thief more transparent? As if he were made of glass or something.

You could eve base on something like distance or angle you’re looking at him if you want to be creative. Ex. staring straight at him= normal view, behind your character = invisible, to the side= glass like transparency. Of course that sounds like it’d be way to hard to program unfortunately.

Stealth is a part of the game.

Adapt or die.

Or whine til it’s gone or nerf hammered :p Which I guess is adapting in it’s own way…

I have to disagree with the suggestions involving anti stealth mechanics. Implementing such a mechanic would either be so situational its pretty much useless (unless your paranoid and believe thief demons are around every corner of LA trying to backstab you) or it would just render the thief’s main defensive ability useless.

Don’t get me wrong d/p stealth can get annoying not OP just annoying.

I don’t think Stealth would feel as obnoxious as it does if players had some more reliable way of dealing with it instead of just getting lucky and guessing where the stealth target is. They introduced Boon Hate to punish bunker builds, why not revamp certain things to help with stealth. Help, not obliterate it’s value.

Imagine someone you cannot see in front of you, and you’re armed with a stick. If you swing said stick and connect with the invisible target, you would feel that you landed a hit.

Currently in GW2, there is no way to tell you successfully landed a hit on a stealth target until they’re no longer under stealth. If they added some sort of sound effect or something when a successful hit connects with them, I think it would add to more active play, while not completely giving away their location. Seeing damage numbers might work, but there’s a chance that it’s too much of a giveaway in location, especially if you AoE or range them.

Another option would be to allow boon removers to treat it as a boon and remove it. Just a thought.

I hope my point isn’t too strawman like. It’s not intended to be a complaint about stealth, but I do feel that sometimes it feels a bit silly. The invisibility doesn’t really feel very classic Thief like. If anything, the way that they implemented it, you would think that Mesmer would be the king of invisibility since it’s basically an illusion using light. Just my two cents.

To the people saying stealth is a thief’s only real defense and that you can’t just nerf it, well yeah they made the thief very stealth reliant and they said that it wasn’t supposed to be that way when they were marketing this game. It needs a core redesign.

One person gets to make informed decisions, the other doesn’t? How the kitten is that balanced? I’ve left people swiping thin air like lunatics, putting skills on cooldown and then came back for the kill at my leisure and they can’t do that to me.

Anybody defending kittening ridiculous tactics like “spray and pray” should really go quietly sit down and whittle something.

Long OP read about an opinion not fact…

But if they removed stealth, thieves would just be rangers without pets. In other words, still better than ranger.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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.

Yeah, let’s give everyone seizures.

Lol stealth doesnt equal immunity to damage. As an engi in WvW i kill more thieves than anything else, got to love grenades.

I agree with some things and not with others in the OP.
Yes, more no-target skills/cc could help.

What if the stealth buffs were moved to the revealed debuff?
- regen health when revealed is up
– 100% crit in revealed (no backstab garantee crit, but 3-4 secs of crits?)
– gain 2 initiative when revealed
– remove a condition every 3 secs you have revealed.
This would force the thief to stay in combat more than in stealth to keep its benefits.
It would not hurt so much players that keep active in fights, but it would reduce the benefits of stealth for long times to fully recover.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Buff-revealed/first#post1924956

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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.

oh. just trollin. wheres my block option.

daver.8324:

Lol stealth doesnt equal immunity to damage. As an engi in WvW i kill more thieves than anything else, got to love grenades.

WvW is a very large place. Often 360 degrees worth of choices when it comes to a Thief running away from you. How do you know which direction they’re going to run in, in order to throw your ‘nades? I presume you’re speaking about killing Thieves after they enter stealth.

The most apparent way to see that stealth is currently broken is how a player can use stealth to leave fights they are losing. Thieves can also insta-gib an enemy without the enemy even knowing there was a fight to begin with.

One of these is tolerable. Both is completely frustrating to play against.

shimmerless.4560:

Thief-style (as in the game, Thief) stealth based on the environment would be fantastic and (as a Mes main) I’d welcome it with open arms, problem is that GW2’s maps are not terribly complex and many, even in sPvP, consist of huge, plain swathes of flat land and broad daylight.

AND, the bright floating name-plates (and dmg) make it just useless.

so far it seems one of 2 have to go Stealth or Initiative system having no cooldown for the massive damage thiefs pull out is unreasonable,but hey they said they would lower thief’s overal burst damage on this patch so lets wait.

Can someone link a stealth thief versus stealth thief pvp 1 on 1 fight? Cant seem to find any lol. Humor. Battle must be epic…

Valenthor.4052:

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.

Well, it’s not fun for other classes to get systematicly killed by a class that can pop in and out of stealth at will while in combat and is dam near impossible to kill as a result.

So basically you aren’t skilled enough to deal with stealth so you declare that it reduces the skill of play…

Mr Crossbones.8793:

Can someone link a stealth thief versus stealth thief pvp 1 on 1 fight? Cant seem to find any lol. Humor. Battle must be epic…

It would be quite a short battle… a thief actually knows how stealth works and how to easily counter it, if you are in stealth you are doing no damage but you are still taking full dmg. I love when a thief stealths, the question is not where he will appear, but rather, where will he appear downed so I can finish him off.

Mr Crossbones.8793:

Can someone link a stealth thief versus stealth thief pvp 1 on 1 fight? Cant seem to find any lol. Humor. Battle must be epic…

Timelapse Photo 2 Thieves fighting

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).

Well I think you pretty much proved the OP right. That is what is broken…they have perma stealth. Thief in this game has the most broken stealth in any game I have seen… hit stelath, hit stealth, hit stealth, hit stealth and hit stealth. Stealth should be used at you said…but not in a rinse and repeat fashion. If you are using stealth to run away it should not be spamable.

Waiting for a Thief to make a mistake is NOT a way to kill them.

jesterscript.7493:

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?

I will try to find a link but have you seen that youtube video of this dude and his thief in spvp? He is only using 1 dagger and one button and he is going around just walking up to people killing everyone he comes across. Granted this was in the beginning of Gw2, still funny.

Stealth should be should make you think on HOW to use it…not how many times can you use it in a single fight.

stealth is fine. play a thief for more than a couple minutes in ‘PvE’ and you would understand it.

Kubb.9764:

stealth is fine. play a thief for more than a couple minutes in ‘PvE’ and you would understand it.

Stealth is fine…but repeatedly being able to stealth and high burst damage is not a balanced combo.

But they took much of that burst away, and no we can not stealth for ever. If one builds in such a way he will not kill any decent or even most terrible players, he will just troll them.

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.

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.

This post and others like it are annoying. Your argument is not strengthen by insulting people who enjoy stealth.

I respect that the OP seems to have thought this out, and I don’t feel like writing as long a reply – but I disagree. People do have to build around stealth, just as they build around other parts of the meta to mitigate and deal with them. I enjoy using stealth, and I find it fun. I disagree that it does not require skill either. Heartseeker spam is probably pretty low skill, but not stealth. Hoping in and out of it, and being aware of it is a huge part of playing many games, and this one, considering it’s a mechanic 1/4 classes have access to easily. There are defiantly decisions to be made, and there is skill/play involved in making those decisions. Both for the person who uses it and the person who is responding to it. Stealth or not, you are going to have to be able to respond quickly to burst builds…

More specifically, stealth in this game does not seem OP… For instance, four common ways for thieves(I am far more familiar with thieves than mesmers) to get into stealth:

-Shadow Refugee shows the area the thief could be in to opponents. It is very easy to shoot some AoE damage in there.
-Stealth on fall – the thief has to take damage. Being have to use your surroundings to your advantage and find a low jumping point that won’t be terrible and involves using your terrain to your advantage – defiantly a strategy that should be rewarded.
-Cloak and Dagger… Requires them to hit you. You cannot get the first strike from this. Unless of course there are NPCs around. But like I’ll get to later, it is your responsibility to be aware of this kind of thing.
-Smoke field + Leap finisher: Probably Pistol #5+heartseeker. This is another noticeable one, and although you can maintain stealth for a long time, doing this realistically in combat repeatedly is very heavy on initiative, and requires alot of skill to pull off while doing damage, even if you had infinite initiative. Not to mention the smoke field is very easy spot and AoE into.

Overall stealth either requires alot of resources to obtain, some skill, or is short lasted. Obviously I missed several, but I cannot think of a single stealth mechanic in game that is not very noticeable. Like I was saying, if you are at all aware of your surroundings you will see the thief before he stealths, and have time to respond. Burst builds are part of many MMOs. They exist because people enjoy them. And it is not unfair to sacrifice long term viability for short term damage spikes.

One thing I feel should be mentioned is that the most deadly way of initiating combat in this game, from stealth, is pretty fair. Backstab can hit hard… But like I said, you should seriously be able to spot the thief before the stealths. Weaving around in response makes it pretty hard to grab your back, and if the thief does, good. He employed some of that ‘skill’ we all worship. Although it might be more realistic to avoid the burst build all together.

Of course stealth gives advantages to the person who uses it. Virtually every game mechanic ever is designed to give advantage to the user. Not the person the user is fighting.

Honestly I just totally disagree with you OP. Stealth is fun for some people, not overpowered, and a huge part of the meta because anything that 1/4 of classes (so by extension, 1/4 players) have access to should be a huge part of the meta. Thieves might not be perfect, or stealth. But it’s really not a bad mechanic.

Amun Ra.6435:

Well I think you pretty much proved the OP right. That is what is broken…they have perma stealth.

Correction. They had perma-stealth. With the cooldowns and nerfs made recently, you can’t be hidden 24/7.

Besides, all it takes is a skilled player to counter a Thief in stealth. If you understand the mechanics, you don’t have to worry. So I’ll agree with you that it’s broken, but only to those who don’t know how to counter it.

Kubb.9764:

stealth is fine. play a thief for more than a couple minutes in ‘PvE’ and you would understand it.

PvE=/= PvP. Very different in terms of strength between these two. And if stealth were given a counter mechanism, you’d probably get some nice buffs in other places, so you’d probably end up better. But yeah, I do understand, thieves need some love in pve.

Very impressive OP.

I like you the way you broke things down very formally.

If I were to ask you how many those who had left the game overall because of thief OP stealth mechanic? you would be very surprised. Many and Many, but I Dare you not say that thief is OP because Arenanet indented them to be.

Let me ask you another question, how many posts and thread which had raised concerns about thief Stealth, that were later Eraced and Closed? Far too many.

I would Dare hope Arenanet take this matter serious and resolve it very soon.

Obviously, Stealth does reduce depth and skill, why so?

It only takes 1-2 utilities to master thief.
It only takes 1-2 key buttons to take advantage of stealth.
It only takes 1-2-3 hits to kill and finish off. your enemies. .
It only takes 1-2-3 to walk by a full zerge; unseen.
It only takes 1 to vanish without a scrape.
It only takes 1-2 for any new thief players to master stealth.
It only takes 1-2 combo finishers to wipe a full party.
It only takes 1-2-3 to 0-100+ dps.

As the saying goes, “Very cheap play”.

It’s a Shame

I really agree with what O kitten aying. I don’t think that stealth is always bad, but it is my opinion that this game has one of the worst implementations of stealth that I have ever seen.

Consider how ESO is doing it… like the single player elder scrolls games, everyone can sneak. In ESO, this will grant stealth… and every class has it.

How will they balance/manage such a thing?

Well, stealthing/sneaking consumes one of your 3 resource bars – your stamina/fatigue bar. (You have Health, Magicka & Stamina). This means that you cannot use stealth indefinitely. It also means that when you break stealth, it has cost you one of your resources and therefore puts you at a slight disadvantage in combat. Because, for those who know the series, stamina/fatigue is used in melee combat, for sprinting etc, and in this game for dodging too.

Firstly, the decision to give it to everyone is a great idea in my opinion. Secondly, there is an opportunity/resource cost to using it.

And yes, you can choose to speacialise in stamina/fatigue if you want to focus on it more than other builds – but all classes still have it.

Me and my GW2 rl buddies have discussed this topic at length, and have come to the conclusion that thieves need stealth as a mechanic to function. However, the other classes need a sort of “skill based” tell on thieves to make stealth a little less op.

Such as bleeds on the thief may leave small bloody prints on the ground (the number of said footprints being directly effected by the amount of bleeds one has), allowing aware players to follow the thief. Fire might cause some periodic sparks or flares, causing a hardly noticeable “shimmer” effect.

summary – stealth is op, but needed to set apart thieves as a different playstyle. but we need SKILLFUL ways to counter it’s effectiveness..not nerf it or take it out completely.

Well I guess I’m a trooper since I read all of your post OP. First of all, I regret that most of the people ranting in this post didn’t really get what you were trying to do. I understand that you’re not trying to complain, but rather try to have a more lucid and logical approach of a game mechanic, in order to discuss it in the most intelligent way possible. I liked the fact that you tried to break down the stealth mechanic as much as possible, in order to properly discuss it, rather than just considering it as a “one key hide skill”, like a lot of people in this thread (from both “sides”) are trying to do.

Now, you’ve said a lot of thing, and I don’t think I’ll be able to bring anything insightful about stealth in it-self, or the way Anet has implemented it in GW2. Furthermore, I think they have their own vision of how stealth should work, and there’s nothing that we can say that will make them change their mind about, though that doesn’t mean we can’t try to bring a more interesting turn to this conversation.

So, since you said all this nifty stuff about stealth, I think it’s more interesting to bring up another thief-related – and thus stealth-related – issue in this conversation, which is “How can a thief be played, due to the stealth mechanics”.

Indeed, I think one of the main issue is that, compared to other classes, there are a lot less ways to play a thief, than you can play any other classes. I mean, you can choose to make a bunker Warrior, or a glass canon one. In each of these archetypes, you can choose between different kinds of weapons, and different style to do damages (direct damages vs conditions). Same goes for the Elementalist, which can take more of a “support” role, or choose to specialize in damage dealing, and so on. Until recently, the Mesmer also had different playstyles, but since confusion/retaliation damages have been greatly reduced, their choices dwindled accordingly.

Let’s get to the point : In my opinion, and I might be wrong, and I do hope people will express their opinion if it is different, Thieves have less options in the matter of how to play their class. I feel that this is caused by the stealth mechanics you described, and the way this profession has been conceived, but I think that Thieves can only rely on stealth to do their deed. It’s all about trying to sneak up on your target (which can be alone, or within a group), deal as much damage as possible in the less time possible, and go back to a safe place to prepare your next move.
From what I have tried, and seen, it is very difficult for a thief to be useful (when in a group) or effective (when alone), by adopting another approach of the fights. Playing a toughness build is not interesting for a Thief, because other than being less squishy, it lacks other ways to be of use for its group, or it will simply lack the necessary output to kill its target. Where a Warrior or a Guardian can use a lot of CC/banners/shouts to distribute boons and support their teammates, a thief has only limited options in this matter, and can only shine with its damage.

So, in my opinion, this is where “stealth” is an issue in people’s mind. Thief = Stealth = Heavy Damage or Target fleeing. This is because it’s the only thing a Thief can rely onto, and because other than dealing damage, it’s really hard to find another use for this profession, when others can be of use in more or less different ways. On a side note, you can also be of some help with blind skills, but it’s nothing compared to the advantage given by stealth, I think.

Thank you for reading and for further thoughts about that.

How do you counter a thief exactly? Serious question. I just rolled a thief yesterday because every time I see one run at me in WvW… I know I’m about to die. So I figured, why not try it? I’m just curious what people do against a thief because I never seem to beat them. Once they go into stealth mode its game over.

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

How do you counter a thief exactly? Serious question. I just rolled a thief yesterday because every time I see one run at me in WvW… I know I’m about to die. So I figured, why not try it? I’m just curious what people do against a thief because I never seem to beat them. Once they go into stealth mode its game over.

You just took a step in the best direction. Counter your enemy by learning your enemy.

The problem I find with stealth is that as soon as a player goes invisible, player interaction has pretty much ended.
If you see a big attack coming towards you, or you get some nasty conditions applied to you, or you see AoE circles on the ground, you have tools and can make choices to react to these situations and ideally the person who makes the better decisions and makes the best use of these tools will come out better in the fight. However, when a player goes invisible it’s not like you can think to yourself “Okay, he’s used stealth, now I can use X to fight back”, you might use a heal and then you’re just slashing at the air hoping you get lucky.
Also guaranteed escapes really take a lot of the fun out of fights, for both players. Knowing that your opponent can quite easily get away from you at any point and reset the fight is disheartening and knowing that you can easily get away at any point in the fight takes out a lot of the fun (at least for me) because there’s much less risk involved.

Johnson.3874:

Let’s get to the point : In my opinion, and I might be wrong, and I do hope people will express their opinion if it is different, Thieves have less options in the matter of how to play their class. I feel that this is caused by the stealth mechanics you described, and the way this profession has been conceived, but I think that Thieves can only rely on stealth to do their deed. It’s all about trying to sneak up on your target (which can be alone, or within a group), deal as much damage as possible in the less time possible, and go back to a safe place to prepare your next move.

I get what you’re saying, but its like saying that rangers and necros can only rely on their pets, mesmers can only rely on their clones, and elementalists have to rely on all of the elements. Each class has its special mechanic as its centerpiece, that’s going to inherently limit builds.

That being said, I disagree. I’ve been using short bow more and more frequently in AoE spam situations, there’s no need to stealth if you’re laying down poison fields and cluster bombs while zipping back and forth. I’ve also switched to a P/D build which, while using stealth, doesn’t use it as its burst mechanic but for survivability and laying down nice stacks of bleeds.

Thief stealth is all about what you make of it. Sure, you can GC burst, but that’s not the only build.

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).

So to sum up, you’re telling others to get better with no help while cowering behind and being afraid of having to become better yourself… seems legit.

Oh and perma stealth still exists. I can still get hit multiple times by a thief before they are revealed in sPvP, and once they are revealed, they have the best mobility and can simply come back stealthed in 4 seconds. So we have inherent top mobility, almost top survival due to current stealth mechanics, evades and whatnot and also top tier damage and conditions. Seems balanced…

As a Thief myself, playing S/D since shortly after release, and as a WvW regular I do roam a lot and manage to either kill or flee from my target most times.

First: The only build that will come and start the fight from Stealth is a D/P one, every other Thief won’t start the fight from stealth because it is counter productive, so there is no “guaranteed first hit” due to stealth, it comes from player positioning most of the times.

Getting this away, I play a full berserker build heavily traited to make the best use out of stealth and even then I’ll avoid using it’s full duration most times. The way Thief works, the longer the fights goes on, the harder it will be for the Thief to kill a cooldown class and regen his own life without giving too much breathing room to the enemy (not to mention it allows the enemy no neutralize points in sPvP). It is a fine line between using stealth to survive and spamming stealth until the advantage goes to the enemy.

So, I would like to ask here, what is the type of Thief that is the worst to fight on (weapon set, survivability)? What do you expect/want from a Thief to make a better fight? This would be more constructive than just saying that stealth is bad and should be removed, when it is a clear necessity to Thief gameplay.

The main issue (as I see it) is not the concept of stealth; but the way ANet has implemented it.

Just look at all the benefits a Thief can get through traits that apply to stealth.

• Cloaked in Shadow (Blinds nearby foes)
  * Fleet Shadow (Move 50% faster while in stealth)
  * Hidden Assassin (Gain might)
  * Hidden Killer (100% crit chance while stealthed)
  * Shadow Protector (Grant targets of your stealth skills Regeneration)
  * Infusion of Shadow (Gain 2 initiative when using a skill that stealths)
  * Patience (Regain initiative faster)
  * Shadow’s Embrace (Remove one condition every three seconds)
  * Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Regenerate health)

From my perspective Stealth should have been a mechanic that would allow for setting up an ‘ambush’ or ‘escape’. But ANet went overboard by attaching so many additional bits of junk through traits. It’s like they couldn’t come up with a more interesting mechanic, so they just went with: “When in doubt, add more (stuff to) stealth”

To me, Stealth could have been a great tactical class-mechanic (for the F# keys) with a limited number of traits to enhance it. Instead they made it a shallow gimmick that’s almost mandatory to use with traits giving out measly little bonuses everywhere.

So personally I think they should have used Stealth for a class-mechanic and used it for F2/F3 with additional effects depending on the type of weapon you had equipped. So using F2 or F3 with a D/D would have a different ‘type’ of Stealth ability compared to using S/D or SB. That would have made Stealth an interesting, dynamic and tactical mechanic. Applying Stealth whenever a Thief breaks wind doesn’t strike me as interesting and makes the Thief look more like a clown that’s trying too hard to be funny.

Frankly, some of your complaints are just absurd. Scouting undetected? No kitten, that’s sort of the point. What kind of idiot chooses to play the role of scout and attract attention if they do not have to? First strike? Again, duh? A stealth class in any game I have played (I don’t consider any class in GW2 to be a true stealth class) have crap for defenses (screw you Infiltrators…lol), stealth and the ability to choose their fights IS their defense, get over it.

I love stealth classes, they are a blast to play (and having fun is WHY I play games, not to stroke my ego). Having said that, I usually play a heavy melee class (melee dps or melee tank) with a stealth type as something on the side I play for fun (Ranger/Nightshade in DAoC, Rogue in WoW, etc).

Have I been able to pull off crazy stunts as a stealth class? Yes, of course. However, the VAST majority of the time it was because my opponent/victim was stupid or lazy.

Why is this even in GW2 forums? The “stealth” in this game is such a joke that if you find a need to kitten, you really need to find another game to play.

You spent a lot of time making a pointless whine post…

As a Thief player myself I have the following problems with stealth:

- If you build for stealth you pretty much have to use it as much as possible, otherwise your survivability is almost non-existant.
- The Thief can stealth far too much IMO. The utilities only allow you to stealth for 3 seconds every 40 or so, and this is perfectly fine, but with so many ini regain options a Thief can spam stealth too frequently.
- When stealthed you’re either fighting against a skilled player, who will know how to hit you (nulifying it’s suvivability), or you’re fighting a not so skilled player, which 9 times out of 10 is an easy win and not much fun. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground like there is with other defenses.

Personally I feel stealth should be removed from our weapon skills and replaced with other survival options. Stealth should only be available from utility/elite skills or from a profession mechanic. Stealth itself is good and can be a powerful tool, it’s just too easy to spam it.

Edit – @Phaedryn: Regarding your comment “I don’t consider any class in GW2 to be a true stealth class”. As a DP thief, with the right traits, I can stay stealthed permanently if played right. I have stayed stealthed for well over a minute while roaming WvW. If that’s not a stealth class I don’t know what is.

Rin.1046:

Edit – @Phaedryn: Regarding your comment “I don’t consider any class in GW2 to be a true stealth class”. As a DP thief, with the right traits, I can stay stealthed permanently if played right. I have stayed stealthed for well over a minute while roaming WvW. If that’s not a stealth class I don’t know what is.

Any class with a toggle for stealth that is designed, from the ground up, to operate (primarily) in/from stealth. A Thief can be sort of perma stealthed, but it is not intended to operate that way. What I consider a stealth class, Assassin/Archer/Minstrel in DAoC, Rogue/Druid in WoW, etc. In GW2 stealth is a utility, not a way of life.

Ugh, whats with all the text? Just keep hitting them when they’re in stealth. ~.~

Stealth is annoying as an escape mechanism. As annoying, imo, as Ride the Lightning was.

Long, long post for the internets these days. I thought it was well written though, and brought up some things on why I deleted my level 80 thief in full exos. Others have brought up some excellent points as well.

I would love to see stealth be skill based, as in “stealth,” not “invisibility.” Having to stick to the shadows and pick and choose the best paths to stay invisible (instead of just having it handed to you) would make me reroll a thief instantly. Heck if that was implemented, I would even be ok with reverting some of the damage nerfs thieves have received since if they could skillfully perform it in the first place, it should be rewarded with massive damage.

As it stands, I still remain uncertain on how much damage thieves do. Yesterday (after mug nerf, mind you), on a character with 2600 armor I was hit with the “thief combo” (you know, queue CnD→Mug→Backstab→HS until dead, sometimes with some venom, etc) for more than my total life (20k). Obviously, it was a glass cannon thief, but CnD did 5k, Mug did 2k, Backstab did 9k, and HS did 5k. I would be ok with these numbers, or even higher, if it took actual skill to set up and pull off. Like I said, I would even roll a thief again! I just didnt enjoy how faceroll the class is. Generally speaking, I wont even fight a thief regardless of how successful I might be in the engagement. Fighting them just isnt fun, whereas I enjoy the fights against every other class. Keep in mind, I do not claim to be some elite player or anything. I just do my best, and am constantly “l2p” as I feel the concept applies universally beyond just a video game. There is always more to learn.

The reality is though, many enjoy this type of domination. And I do think Anet wants the thief to be where it is at. So, I have sincere doubts anything will change soon.

Great posts either way, by several people.

Here’s something that might interest you:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/like-a-ninja

Stealth essentially 3(+1) seconds of invisibility that can be nullified if you keep swinging in the air. Most of the Thief’s arsenal comes from GW1’s Assassin’s profession that is practically all positional-based combat.

New mechanic in games? I could “Cloak” in SWG (Star wars Galaxies) and it launched in 2003 or so. That said “Stealth increases depth and skill” is a more appropriate title. It increases YOUR skills, combating it’s use, and the complexity & depth of combat.