Guild Wars 2

Serophous.9085:

One problem i see with this. You are calling it stealth. Its invisibilty. If i see someone running towards me and ‘stealths’ and suddenly he disappears from view, he didnt sudden jump into shadows or moved quietly, he went invisible.
Thieves can have stealth. They cant have invisibilty.

Finally someone gets it

Serophous.9085:

One problem i see with this. You are calling it stealth. Its invisibilty. If i see someone running towards me and ‘stealths’ and suddenly he disappears from view, he didnt sudden jump into shadows or moved quietly, he went invisible.
Thieves can have stealth. They cant have invisibilty.

As much as we like to call it invisibilty, the skills are named Stealth. The Wiki description is pretty funny though.

Stealth — Thieves have access to multiple skills that, for a short duration, make them invisible to enemy players and avoid aggro from hostile NPCs. While stealthed the thief is not targettable, but can still be damaged by area of effect, and attacking from stealth will break the deception.

It’s called stealth, but it gives invisibilty.

Swim.6830:

Serophous.9085:

One problem i see with this. You are calling it stealth. Its invisibilty. If i see someone running towards me and ‘stealths’ and suddenly he disappears from view, he didnt sudden jump into shadows or moved quietly, he went invisible.
Thieves can have stealth. They cant have invisibilty.

Finally someone gets it

Ive always gotten it, but some developers dont. Hell, DDO does a better implementation of stealth than gw2.

‘But our (so called) stealth isnt like single player games.’
You’re right. Its not. Which should make you stop and think, is this really stealth? Am i creeping slowly, staying in the shadows to not be seen, or am i still running in the open, but they still cant see me? The problem lies in developers who want to applease the stealth crowd (i do love stealth, in any rpg a thief is what i usuall roll first).

I agree, if thieves lose stealth, they need to be compensated for it. I dont think anyone here will disagree with that. Give them something to blind, set more traps, use poisons, more hp, more defensive skills, its all fine if your invis goes away.

On my bunker warrior, i just dont bother with thieves. I had a roaming thief appear using he pistol stealth. He then invis’d did it again, then once more invis’d, and tried a third. I just kept running, there was no point. Of course i got a taunt, but i wasnt stupid. He wasnt goin to kill me. Even after those three attacks, i had only lost barely a quarter of hp, which my regen and shouts took care of. I couldve stayed there for god knows how long, or went somewhere and be useful. I mean, this so called ‘skill’ is invis, attack, invis, attack, steal against somethin really far away for shadow step, cds up, rin .

Honestly, can anyone say its fair that a glass rogue beats fpass proffession x because he gets opening strike?

Originally I thought stealth was OP… so I rolled a thief recently. According to the thief forums, it’s a job that has a high learning curve…. I’m starting to actually believe that. If you go and watch some of the Thief stealth videos where they’re winning 2 v 1’s and 3 v 1’s, those thieves are exceptionally skilled. There’s one in particular where a guy recorded his fight and then went back and recorded his thought processes over what he had done, and it’s incredible how quick and precise his decision making was, and the incredible depth of his knowledge regarding the judgement of an encounter.

After watching that, it became apparent to me that yes, stealth is a powerful skill in WvW. There is no punishment for using it like in PvP where you can’t claim an area while stealthed. However, that guy was an incredible player. I think he probably could have beaten me on almost any job, just due to how quickly he assesses situations. Now… it’s possible he just posted recordings of his best fights and then did a voice over in hindsight, which we all know is 20/20… but still. Some of them are just really kitten good players. Maybe it’s just a profession that attracts exceptional players who aren’t inclined to rely on the zerg for safety, due to it’s role as a roamer/solo job. Idk… just a thought.

Deamhan.9538:

Uruz Six.6594:

Amun Ra.6435:

Sooooo… you suggesting you NEED more than one person to take down a thief? If this doesn’t sound broken to you I don’t know what will.

I’m saying what’s broken is complaining about 1 vs 1 and neglecting that WvW and PvP is about team play.

1 =/= 2. Thus it should never require a minimum of two people to counter the class mechanic of just one. Balancing it based on 1 vs 1 is EXACTLY how it should be done.

Once A = B, B = C, and C=D, then A+B=C+D, A+C=B+D, and A+D=B+C.

Then everything will be equal. By equal, I mean identical and identical equals boring. Identical is another way of saying that skill is not required. As things stand, the classes in GW2 are fairly well balanced, without being equal.

Look at it this way:

If you take 2 people of equal skill, equal gear, equal damage dealing capability, equal survivability, and equal mobility, then the person who loses will be the one who either makes the first mistake or, more likely, get’s unlucky.

If you have 2 classes that differ in their dps v/s survivability, mobility v/s dps, survivability v/s mobility, etc, then you have a challenge of skill v/s skill. Luck, and the RNG become influences to deal with, rather than the deciding factor. It becomes possible to recover from a mistake, rather than be doomed by the inevitable mathmatics of “equality”.

Stealth may be annoying at times(trust me, I’ve been smoked by thieves often enough in WvW to understand the frustration), but it does come with a cost to the player who chooses to make a thief. It needs to be tweaked, but if the choice is having stealth & inequality, or equality and no stealth, I choose stealth.

P.S. my three main characters are a warrior, an elementalist, and a ranger. My thief is a distant 5th, and is unlikely to be seeing the inside of WvW anytime soon.

Serophous.9085:

One problem i see with this. You are calling it stealth. Its invisibilty. If i see someone running towards me and ‘stealths’ and suddenly he disappears from view, he didnt sudden jump into shadows or moved quietly, he went invisible.
Thieves can have stealth. They cant have invisibilty.

This times 1000. If a thief required shadows/cover/brush to hide in, and HAD to move much more slowly to not blow their cover (watch a vid on youtube on some of the training US snipers go through and see what stealth is REALLY like) I would be very much in favor of it. In fact if they had to actually take the time to do such things then their burst would be warrented (in fact I think it would need to be unnerfed) as it would provide skillful play for the thief (stick to cover, Stick to the shadows, dont move too fast) and even some viable counter play for a non-thief.

Another problem the class has, in my opinion, is the fact that if you have the best ability to PICK your fights, you should never, ever, have the best ability to leave a fight, especially not with the burst thieves have. Currently thieves have these paired abilities that should never be paired which is why the other 7 professions dislike the class, and why the class is rarely fun to play against.

ps. if you say a thief is squishy you are wrong. While they may not be able to take a large amount of hits, they have the best tools to never take those hits in the first place. Mobility is honestly the best defense in this game from my experienced with stealth being just behind. Both of which thieves have in spades………

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

Originally I thought stealth was OP… so I rolled a thief recently. According to the thief forums, it’s a job that has a high learning curve…. I’m starting to actually believe that.

I’m leveling a thief right now and I don’t even have all the stealth skills unlocked. I got all of 8 trait points to work with and can’t even equip a third utility skill or an elite skill yet. Already I can pop in and out to a limited degree. There is nothing skillful about it.

tinymurder.5791:

Deamhan.9538:

Uruz Six.6594:

Amun Ra.6435:

Sooooo… you suggesting you NEED more than one person to take down a thief? If this doesn’t sound broken to you I don’t know what will.

I’m saying what’s broken is complaining about 1 vs 1 and neglecting that WvW and PvP is about team play.

1 =/= 2. Thus it should never require a minimum of two people to counter the class mechanic of just one. Balancing it based on 1 vs 1 is EXACTLY how it should be done.

Once A = B, B = C, and C=D, then A+B=C+D, A+C=B+D, and A+D=B+C.

Then everything will be equal.

By equal I mean balanced. So it is irrelevant what you mean by equal.

Look at it this way:

If you take 2 people of equal skill, equal gear, equal damage dealing capability, equal survivability, and equal mobility, then the person who loses will be the one who either makes the first mistake or, more likely, get’s unlucky.

Yeah, what’s the world coming to when the deciding factor on who wins is who is the better player and not some crutch mechanic.

If you have 2 classes that differ in their dps v/s survivability, mobility v/s dps, survivability v/s mobility, etc, then you have a challenge of skill v/s skill. Luck, and the RNG become influences to deal with, rather than the deciding factor. It becomes possible to recover from a mistake, rather than be doomed by the inevitable mathmatics of “equality”.

I’m talking about balance between the professions, not the game consisting of just one profession. It also doesn’t matter either way. If the professions are balanced or two people are fighting each other with the same profession, it will come down to who the better player is. Sure there will always be a “luck” factor, that is something that exists in everything but the stealth mechanic and how it is implemented in this game stacks the odds. Thus, it detracts from the need of skill.

Stealth may be annoying at times(trust me, I’ve been smoked by thieves often enough in WvW to understand the frustration), but it does come with a cost to the player who chooses to make a thief. It needs to be tweaked, but if the choice is having stealth & inequality, or equality and no stealth, I choose stealth.

Of course you do, so long as the stealth tips the scale in your favor.

Each profession can have its own style. Its own way about doing what the other classes do.

As for the Thief. How about instead of the thief being about damage avoidance with stealth, it is about damage avoidance through more evades and dodge rolls. Hell, from a full meter, each class can dodge twice in a row. What if the thief can do it a third time. A lot of their skills already have evades.

Honestly there should only be two stealth skills for them. One is a skill that only grants stealth while out of combat. In combat it becomes an evade with the visual of going stealth for the duration of the evade. This could even be a signet. The passive effect grants stealth but as soon as you are in combat you lose the passive effect. The +50% movement speed while in stealth trait would have to be changed to 25%.

Then there is the skill that can be used in combat. This would be a stun breaker and would remove conditions that effect movement. It would also grant a 25% movement speed which would stack with the 25% given by the trait. The length on the stealth would be sufficient enough that you can get far enough to break combat and the passive effect of the signet would take over. The CD on this skill would be pretty long. Long enough that if you tried to only pop out of stealth to hit then use it and vanish every time it is off CD, the person you are trying to get would also be out of combat (since you broke combat with them) long enough for their hp to refill.

This basically gives them the capability to move around unseen and pick their targets. It also gives them a means to escape if it looks like they are about to die. However, it also means that in order for them to actually fight someone, they have to stay visible and fight them. Their means to avoid damage is now through the use of evades.

Haven’t read something like this in a long while and I wholeheartedly agree. You can’t really ‘balance’ invisibility. And sure the thief community comes around asking if you got facerolled by some thief.

I for myself avoid fighting thiefs as it’s no fun having him run once he loses and gets away with it. If the (usually) only outcome of a fight is either a draw or a loss on my end, why fight at all ? Can just go away and giggle while the guy tries to lure me into continuing the fight.

GW did pretty well without invis, no clue which **** at Anet was thinking this might be a good idea.

stealth – noun : the act or action of proceeding furtively, secretly, or imperceptibly

the act or action of proceeding secretly

proceeding secretly

secretly

se·cret – adjective : kept from knowledge or view

kept from view

Invisible

Ohai! Thieves can be invisible.

reference – http://www.merriam-webster.com/

While Stealth may have a bad rep, at least now the tech’s there for countering stealth (there’s a bonus in WvW with AC that has the force removal of stealth, I believe, but it takes a lot of points). It’ll only be a matter of time before classes have an implementation for it.

Advent Leader.1083:

While Stealth may have a bad rep, at least now the tech’s there for countering stealth (there’s a bonus in WvW with AC that has the force removal of stealth, I believe, but it takes a lot of points). It’ll only be a matter of time before classes have an implementation for it.

This will be a glorious day, when the untalented baddies can no longer have an instant get out of jail free card when they’re getting their kitten kicked and want to flee.

This is why the thief should have been an assassin. I miss my assassin.

Deamhan.9538:

This basically gives them the capability to move around unseen and pick their targets. It also gives them a means to escape if it looks like they are about to die. However, it also means that in order for them to actually fight someone, they have to stay visible and fight them. Their means to avoid damage is now through the use of evades.

In exchange we want more HP and more damage. You take away from our survival and burst mechanics, we want something back.

Uruz Six.6594:

Deamhan.9538:

This basically gives them the capability to move around unseen and pick their targets. It also gives them a means to escape if it looks like they are about to die. However, it also means that in order for them to actually fight someone, they have to stay visible and fight them. Their means to avoid damage is now through the use of evades.

In exchange we want more HP and more damage. You take away from our survival and burst mechanics, we want something back.

Even without stealth openers (ie. Backstab) thieves have plenty of dps.

Right now the Shadow Arts trait line is your +toughness and +healing. Instead the Acrobatics trait line should be what has the +toughness and +healing.

Give the thief, instead of healing and removing conditions with stealth, the ability to heal and/or gain regen while performing certain evades. They already remove conditions upon use of certain evades.

The focus on survivability would then come with avoiding being hit in the first place and healing back the damage you do take. Similar to how the guardian avoids damage by blocking and heals the damage they take. So, no, thieves can stay with guardian and elementalist with regards to hp pool.

Uruz Six.6594:

Deamhan.9538:

This basically gives them the capability to move around unseen and pick their targets. It also gives them a means to escape if it looks like they are about to die. However, it also means that in order for them to actually fight someone, they have to stay visible and fight them. Their means to avoid damage is now through the use of evades.

In exchange we want more HP and more damage. You take away from our survival and burst mechanics, we want something back.

How about more HP and more mobility instead; as your damage is already more than enough. I personally wouldn’t want to see the Stealth mechanic vanish entirely, just reworked into the F2-F3 and merging some of the traits so its function becomes more tactical.

Deamhan.9538:

By equal I mean balanced. So it is irrelevant what you mean by equal.

Balanced does not always mean equal. That is the point I was making in my previous post.

Deamhan.9538:

Yeah, what’s the world coming to when the deciding factor on who wins is who is the better player and not some crutch mechanic.

Once again, my point is that skill, not luck should be the deciding factor. By making everything “equal” , rather than balanced, you also decrease the impact of skill. An encounter becomes a matter of, “who hits first, wins.” Additionally, calling stealth a “crutch mechanic” is an opinion, not a fact. You could make the same statement about a mesmer’s phantasms, a warrior’s fury, a elementalist’s attunement, et cetera. Stealth is just a core mechanic for a thief. It’s a core mechanic that needs to be tweaked, but it’s not an “I win” button.

Deamhan.9538:

I’m talking about balance between the professions, not the game consisting of just one profession. It also doesn’t matter either way. If the professions are balanced or two people are fighting each other with the same profession, it will come down to who the better player is. Sure there will always be a “luck” factor, that is something that exists in everything but the stealth mechanic and how it is implemented in this game stacks the odds. Thus, it detracts from the need of skill.

Never did I speak of the game consisiting of only one profession. The example I gave was to illustrate how a fight between two balanced, yet unequal professions, will go to the more skilled/knowledgeable player. If both professions are “equal”, then all we have is an open world version of Street Fighter 2 and all of our choices are Ryu.

Deamhan.9538:

Of course you do, so long as the stealth tips the scale in your favor.

…what? Please don’t try putting words in my mouth. I have a thief, but I don’t play her much. I haver in fact, never played her in WvW or PvP. I currently main an elementalist and a warrior, not a thief, so I’m not sure if you’re trying to get rise out of me, or if you’re just cherry-picking my post for quotes to be snarky with.

As I said earlier, I agree that stealth needs to be tweaked. I disagree with the statement that it reduces depth and skill. It doesn’t take much skill to be annoying with stealth, but it does require skill to be effective and deadly. I’ve been jumped in WvW on my warrior before, by thief with better gear. They dropped my health by half, in one shot, and loaded me down with conditions. I popped Endure Pain & Signet of Stamina, healed and commenced to beat the tar out of that thief. They couldn’t kill me, despite their best efforts. Unfortunately, my gear wasn’t all that great & I couldn’t quite kill them either. We were at a stalemate, until their friend showed up before mine did.

If that thief had been better at his class, than I am at mine, he could have smoked me. If stealth was the “I win” button that so many people in this thread have said it is, he should’ve smoked me. The fact is, he didn’t. Furthermore, I know this is pure opinion here, but I had a blast. We were far from being equal, but somehow, our classes balanced out. Weird.

Deamhan.9538:

Each profession can have its own style. Its own way about doing what the other classes do.

As for the Thief. How about instead of the thief being about damage avoidance with stealth, it is about damage avoidance through more evades and dodge rolls. Hell, from a full meter, each class can dodge twice in a row. What if the thief can do it a third time. A lot of their skills already have evades.

Honestly there should only be two stealth skills for them. One is a skill that only grants stealth while out of combat. In combat it becomes an evade with the visual of going stealth for the duration of the evade. This could even be a signet. The passive effect grants stealth but as soon as you are in combat you lose the passive effect. The +50% movement speed while in stealth trait would have to be changed to 25%.

Then there is the skill that can be used in combat. This would be a stun breaker and would remove conditions that effect movement. It would also grant a 25% movement speed which would stack with the 25% given by the trait. The length on the stealth would be sufficient enough that you can get far enough to break combat and the passive effect of the signet would take over. The CD on this skill would be pretty long. Long enough that if you tried to only pop out of stealth to hit then use it and vanish every time it is off CD, the person you are trying to get would also be out of combat (since you broke combat with them) long enough for their hp to refill.

This basically gives them the capability to move around unseen and pick their targets. It also gives them a means to escape if it looks like they are about to die. However, it also means that in order for them to actually fight someone, they have to stay visible and fight them. Their means to avoid damage is now through the use of evades.

Finally, we get to some constructive suggestions. This is more like what I was expecting as a response. The funny part is, you’ve just suggested ways to keep stealth, when you were trying to get rid of it earlier. At this point I’m tired of writing, so I’ll respond to your suggestions in a different post.

A suggestion before I go:

Try making your posts more like the last four paragraphs and people will consider you a reasoned and intelligent poster. Keep making them snarky, like the first half of your post, and you just sound like a pillock

Sil.4560:

Advent Leader.1083:

While Stealth may have a bad rep, at least now the tech’s there for countering stealth (there’s a bonus in WvW with AC that has the force removal of stealth, I believe, but it takes a lot of points). It’ll only be a matter of time before classes have an implementation for it.

This will be a glorious day, when the untalented baddies can no longer have an instant get out of jail free card when they’re getting their kitten kicked and want to flee.

How dare they try to survive you killing them! The nerve of some people!

-.-

Thieves aren’t the only ones with a get out of jail free card. Elementalist have multiple ways to cure crippled, immobilized, & chilled, as well as gaining swiftness. So do Guardians & Rangers, too. In fact, most classes have more than one way to remove conditions and/or pick up speed.

Maybe we should pull those abilities from those other classes. Not yours, of course. For you, Anet should totally install the “I win” button.

Can we get back to constructive posting now, or shall we snark some more, complaining about “baddies” that we couldn’t figure out how to beat?

Aveneo.2068:

How about more HP and more mobility instead; as your damage is already more than enough. I personally wouldn’t want to see the Stealth mechanic vanish entirely, just reworked into the F2-F3 and merging some of the traits so its function becomes more tactical.

I support this suggestion. I think that Anet originally wanted a more tactical stealth, anyway. That would explain why they didn’t give thieves a permastealth, like in WoW. Somewhere along the way, though, they took a step in a less useful direction.

tinymurder.5791:

Balanced does not always mean equal. That is the point I was making in my previous post.

The use of “=” was just to mean that the two are balanced. Not that they were the same thing.

Once again, my point is that skill, not luck should be the deciding factor. By making everything “equal” , rather than balanced, you also decrease the impact of skill. An encounter becomes a matter of, “who hits first, wins.” Additionally, calling stealth a “crutch mechanic” is an opinion, not a fact. You could make the same statement about a mesmer’s phantasms, a warrior’s fury, a elementalist’s attunement, et cetera. Stealth is just a core mechanic for a thief. It’s a core mechanic that needs to be tweaked, but it’s not an “I win” button.

Look at chess. A perfectly balanced game. It really comes down to who is the more skilled player. Sure by chance the other person may slip up putting you at an advantage. It is then up to that person to recover from their slip up, and yes it is possible to do so. Again, skill is the primary factor that determines who will win.

Now, you want to have diversity in the game but all diversity is is each profession completing the same goal (dishing out damage and cc while mitigating what’s coming their way) in their own unique way.

As for stealth, it’s not an opinion seeing one person hold out indefinitely against 5. I have, on rare occasions, seen one or two thieves hold their own against 20+ but I have very frequently seen 1 thief hold their own against 5. I’m talking WvW. It’s not like they can only keep this up for 30 seconds or even 1 min. They can keep it up indefinitely. Sure they can’t really finish anyone off because anyone they down is revived, but those five can’t down the thief. Even the heaviest tank guardian will eventually go down against 5 opponents. Provided we’re not talking about 5 up levels and/or under geared players.

tinymurder.5791:

How dare they try to survive you killing them! The nerve of some people!

-.-

Thieves aren’t the only ones with a get out of jail free card. Elementalist have multiple ways to cure crippled, immobilized, & chilled, as well as gaining swiftness. So do Guardians & Rangers, too. In fact, most classes have more than one way to remove conditions and/or pick up speed.

There is a fundamental difference though.

The thief’s escape from such cc is also a complete escape. As in, they are out of sight and you don’t know where they went. With the other classes, when they break out of the cc and run, you see them as plain as day doing it. You can then give chase and it becomes a contest between their ability to put distance between them and you and your ability to close that distance.

You can’t chase something you can’t see. In fact I’ve done this with my thief. I was being chased along the wall of the south east tower (Redwater I think?), as soon as I rounded the corner I entered stealth and then turned around and ran through the pursuers, dropping down into the water. On any other class, I would not be able to do this.

Well anti stealth mechanics are finally being implemented, at least in wvw. Now just to wait and see how effective they will be.

It is safe to say that a massive portion of GW2’s player base has left this game; because they are tired of stealth classes.

I think giving one class a pause button that removes all their conditions, and puts them back at full hp is ridiculous.

Deamhan.9538:

Look at chess. A perfectly balanced game. It really comes down to who is the more skilled player. Sure by chance the other person may slip up putting you at an advantage. It is then up to that person to recover from their slip up, and yes it is possible to do so. Again, skill is the primary factor that determines who will win.

That’s a pretty kittenty analogy, actually.

As for stealth, it’s not an opinion seeing one person hold out indefinitely against 5. I have, on rare occasions, seen one or two thieves hold their own against 20+ but I have very frequently seen 1 thief hold their own against 5. I’m talking WvW. It’s not like they can only keep this up for 30 seconds or even 1 min. They can keep it up indefinitely. Sure they can’t really finish anyone off because anyone they down is revived, but those five can’t down the thief. Even the heaviest tank guardian will eventually go down against 5 opponents. Provided we’re not talking about 5 up levels and/or under geared players.

And your point is? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen videos of a single squad (5 people) holding off zergs that outnumbered them by a factor much bigger than just 5.

Protip: A crappy thief (which covers majority of them) won’t be able to do that.
Protip 2: A skilled player is always worth more than multiple unskilled, uncoordinated and unprepared players.

I think giving one class a pause button that removes all their conditions, and puts them back at full hp is ridiculous.

Nice exaggeration there, mister. A single instance of stealth will only remove 2 conditions, plus bleed/poison/burn if you happen to use Hide in Shadows. Chaining stealth is hardly a valid argument, considering that it lowers their damage and allows the opponent’s skills/utilities to come out of cooldown as well.

And full health? Have you ever even played a Thief? The regeneration they get in stealth is 323 hp/s without healing power gear. With full healing power stuff and Shadow Protector, you’re up to something like 850 hp/s. Over the full 4 seconds, that’s still 3,400, which covers at most a third of their full HP.

Granted, if they use Hide in Shadows, that could give them full health, if they have no vitality whatsoever. But that’s on a 30s cooldown. Which, btw, Guardians also get with Signet of Resolve if they were to spec for full healing power with no vitality.

Olba.5376:

Deamhan.9538:

Look at chess. A perfectly balanced game. It really comes down to who is the more skilled player. Sure by chance the other person may slip up putting you at an advantage. It is then up to that person to recover from their slip up, and yes it is possible to do so. Again, skill is the primary factor that determines who will win.

That’s a pretty kittenty analogy, actually.

As for stealth, it’s not an opinion seeing one person hold out indefinitely against 5. I have, on rare occasions, seen one or two thieves hold their own against 20+ but I have very frequently seen 1 thief hold their own against 5. I’m talking WvW. It’s not like they can only keep this up for 30 seconds or even 1 min. They can keep it up indefinitely. Sure they can’t really finish anyone off because anyone they down is revived, but those five can’t down the thief. Even the heaviest tank guardian will eventually go down against 5 opponents. Provided we’re not talking about 5 up levels and/or under geared players.

And your point is? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen videos of a single squad (5 people) holding off zergs that outnumbered them by a factor much bigger than just 5.

Protip: A crappy thief (which covers majority of them) won’t be able to do that.
Protip 2: A skilled player is always worth more than multiple unskilled, uncoordinated and unprepared players.

True, a skilled player is indeed worth more, but when he plays a thief, that skilled player is indestructible, wheras on any other class he will eventually die.

On piken square wvw I`ve been running into an enemy stealth guild that has proven this point. I and around 5 other players spent the best part of a half hour in constant combat against a single thief and we couldn’t take him down. His restealth was so fast that I was struggling even to hit him with instant cast, no flight time attacks. He was simply shrugging off conditions and attacks of all sorts, regularly going to half health and then being full health a second or two later when he appeared again. He was killing other players in single vollies, before he could even be targeted.

People say that thieves are “squishy” and that’s simply false. They take barely a quarter of damage thrown at them and even then they seem to regenerate it away. They can kill other classes in moments. I don’t see why people think otherwise.

Idk why people are getting so mad that they are saying stealth should be just called invisibility when it doesn’t even assess the point the OP is making. But I’ll bite, since you guys want to bring hiding in shadows and bushes, that tells me you want to bring this on lore terms. For those that actually have a thief, we go “stealth” many ways, some of the main ones being throwing feathers of tufts of hair or even dropping a smokescreen to blind people rendering us “invisible”. The times we actually use magic to go in stealth via Shadow Refuge or Hide in Shadows can be technically considered stealth too. Take a game like the Halo series, Camoflauge technology works by bending light around the source essentially making you hide in darkness. So in that regard, thieves still do stealth, they do just as the skills suggests, hide in the shadows, if there is no light than there is darkness right? So they are hiding, games like Splinter Cell and MGS don’t have “magic” so stealthing is more realistic.

It’s about perception, even irl a stealthy person is invisible. invisible-not able to be seen. That’s the purpose of hiding in bushes or on ledges or what have you, it doesnt matter if they are hiding via technology or magic or flat out hiding, because to you, their target, they are invisible, no matter how they did it. So arguing that stealth is really invisibility is a futile argument sense they are basically the same thing, some of you are acting like the difference between stealth and invisibility is being able to see the person. If they are seen, they are being neither, if they aren’t seen they are both, which means, they are the same thing.

And as for OP, unless you roll a thief, you have no idea how much a crutch stealth is, because even that alone wont save you.

OP just go and try a thief, put on all the stealth utilities, make a stealth build go into pvp against players that you would consider skilled and see how you fair against them. if stealth is so busted and unskillful you should be able to win…

Spoilers you wont win.

This thread is no longer relevant.