Guild Wars 2

First of all my main is an engineer. I can certainly keep someone away from me if I want to. I have the ability to escape fairly well with nets, cripples, knockdowns, rocket boots, rifle jumps, dodges, glue shot, supply drop, etc.

The problem I have is that all of my escapes require….actual skill. Along with the fact that I’d have to already have all those skills equipped which would use my entire bar. I have to ground target some, in some cases change my direction to rocket away, break the stun, double net because they will probably at least dodge the first one, and make sure I dodge as well.

Play thief. Click invis. Laugh.

We had two people trying to chase down a thief in WvW yesterday. If we got him low he’d invis and run away. If we got close again he’d just teleport three times. By the time we could catch up and get him low he’d start it all over again.

Now I’m not saying he shouldn’t have an escape. But the fact that it’s so one-click easy kind of bugs me.

I’m also not sure exactly what the solution is, whether it’s changing the cooldowns, adding a cast time long enough that it could be interrupted, or not allowing it to be cast in combat. But I feel like maybe a possible solution might be to add some method of stealth detection.

Now of course we don’t want to completely ruin one of their skills by introducing this but there would obviously be limits on the detection. Range, cooldown, casting time, etc.

Not to mention the fact that I find I have a hard time killing people as an engineer but maybe I just haven’t found the right build yet(not that I can experiment much without spending loads of gold!)

Thoughts?

If this was in WvW and you’re in Yak’s Bend. I think I was chasing that thief down right along with you.

If not, same thing happened to me yesterday too.

They should make that “Can’t go invis again” debuff slightly longer.

Invis is very short term and long CD. Yes, he should be able to escape. He’s a Thief. He probably had several invis moves on his bars so his damage and utility were hampered in order to have lots of escape. He was probably kittening that yall kept catching him. You would think with a stealth you could get away.

The longest stealth is about 5-6 seconds and he has to stand in a small AOE for 5 seconds to get it. Plenty of time to get hammered down by splash. Did you have any engage abilities or CC? Or are you just complaining because his stealth gave him what 10-15 yards of range from you?

Well whatever he used he ended up about 1500 range away by the time he reappeared.

AOE and CC? Well I have two aoe skills that have a long enough cooldown that it isnt going to deal that much damage. I could use supply drop but that’s a two second stun every 2 minutes and makes me immobile for it to be of any further use. My CC isn’t really going to work very well without being able to target him.

He probably set his return point with shadow step before engaging. That’s what I do.

Manifoldgodhead.2356:

Invis is very short term and long CD. Yes, he should be able to escape. He’s a Thief. He probably had several invis moves on his bars so his damage and utility were hampered in order to have lots of escape. He was probably kittening that yall kept catching him. You would think with a stealth you could get away.

Prolly why many think that Thief is OP. Not only are they near impossible to kill but they do outrageous damage (independent of their damage ability as opposed to other classes that have to sacrifice damage potential in order to gain survival ability).

I know many players that are moving to greener pastures (other games, not GW2) because of the massive imbalance. Nothing more exciting then dying near instantly to a player that you can’t see and does more damage than you could only imagine doing. It is one of the reasons my friends and I have stopped playing as much as we use to.

A small squad of them can keep you blinded for most of the fight and just dash around you like an annoying gnat with a gun. If you do manage to kill one, they just teleport away from your finishing move and get back on their feet. Then they gloat about it. The best argument people have for the cons of thieves is they have low survivability, in a game that totes it doesn’t use the holy trinity and therefore defense and healing is worthless anyway. Thieves have always been the troll class and I hate them for it.

As someone who has rerolled from Thief to Elementalist (at least from a PvE standpoint, I will still play my thief in PvP primarily) you’d be surprised how many thieves are absolutely awful, and do nothing more than try to Pistol Whip you down and run away if it fails to oneshot you.

That being said, pistol whip is not a productive playstyle except for that fact that it’s a psychology thing. The same thing applies to most stealth based builds….if – as a thief – I can draw 4-6 people away trying to chase me down (which has happened numerous times in WvWvW) instead of playing the objective, I’ve just created a pretty good advantage for my side.

If the thief is kiting you and running away, perhaps you should consider not chasing him. If you want us to fight against you, don’t chase us. You’ll lose.

edit: as far as why I even mentioned Elementalist, I do feel like the skill requirement for being ‘decent’ and extremely annoying is pretty low as a thief. A well played thief will almost never die. A mediocre thief will still kill alot of ‘good’ professions (not great, but people who are better than average) just based on class alone. There’s more room for error because alot of your abilities have inherit side effects that help you out (blind/stealth/condition removal, etc)

SausageStorm.4293:

If this was in WvW and you’re in Yak’s Bend. I think I was chasing that thief down right along with you.

If not, same thing happened to me yesterday too.

They should make that “Can’t go invis again” debuff slightly longer.

LOL yeah… it’s getting worse in sPVP now too, run up to a node to cap, suddenly start losing health with no enemy in sight then when you’re down you see a thief ready to deathblow you and the combat summary showing you ate 18K heartseeker and backstab and cloak & dagger… ugh it’s getting irritating.

afflaq.3947:

The same thing applies to most stealth based builds….if – as a thief – I can draw 4-6 people away trying to chase me down (which has happened numerous times in WvWvW) instead of playing the objective, I’ve just created a pretty good advantage for my side.

^This.

There are many instances in which I can push a group back a good portion by forcing the front of the enemy to follow me closer to their gate.

And just shadow stepping back.

People keep forgetting that a lot of our skills are melee-based. We have to be close to hurt people (the most). Even with PP it isn’t easy to hurt a group and get smashed by long-range-casters/rangers.

A thief has the ability to scare the group into thinking they will die if they do not attack him.

Still curious how a detect invisible skill might change things though. Hopefully the devs read and at least test it out to see if it makes any kind of sense as far as balance goes(for all classes).

An air attuned elementalist properly played has the best escape skills in the game, yet here you are kittening about a thief.

Inferno.2315:

Still curious how a detect invisible skill might change things though. Hopefully the devs read and at least test it out to see if it makes any kind of sense as far as balance goes(for all classes).

All this would do is ruin the thief class mechanics further.

As someone who has played tons of thief/mesmer since beta.

Yes invis is insanely strong in this game.

Stronger than pretty much any MMO out there.

Kurow.6973:

An air attuned elementalist properly played has the best escape skills in the game, yet here you are kittening about a thief.

Inferno.2315:

Still curious how a detect invisible skill might change things though. Hopefully the devs read and at least test it out to see if it makes any kind of sense as far as balance goes(for all classes).

All this would do is ruin the thief class mechanics further.

This. I play both and wanted to main air on my ele but earth and fire are more useful most of the time (though air is best underwater as far as toe to toe fighting is concerned) but air attunement is great for getting away, especially with the lightning teleporting skill that breaks CC and gets me to events faster.

Cabbage.4085:

afflaq.3947:

The same thing applies to most stealth based builds….if – as a thief – I can draw 4-6 people away trying to chase me down (which has happened numerous times in WvWvW) instead of playing the objective, I’ve just created a pretty good advantage for my side.

^This.

There are many instances in which I can push a group back a good portion by forcing the front of the enemy to follow me closer to their gate.

And just shadow stepping back.

People keep forgetting that a lot of our skills are melee-based. We have to be close to hurt people (the most). Even with PP it isn’t easy to hurt a group and get smashed by long-range-casters/rangers.

A thief has the ability to scare the group into thinking they will die if they do not attack him.

As a thief I hate when two ranged mobs are far from each other since you have to burst them down individually and any AoE you have will only effect one of them. It’s not a problem if there are only two, but a good strategy is run towards the ranged, melee follows you, you caltrop the ground, death blossom to apply an extra bleed stack, do a normal attack, and finish them off from there depending on what the mobs can do.

Knote.2904:

As someone who has played tons of thief/mesmer since beta.

Yes invis is insanely strong in this game.

Stronger than pretty much any MMO out there.

Apparently you’ve never played WoW with perma stealth?…

This made me want to play my thief.
A big vote of NO on stealth detection.
We don’t need it. Would ruin the whole game.

Sin.8174:

Knote.2904:

As someone who has played tons of thief/mesmer since beta.

Yes invis is insanely strong in this game.

Stronger than pretty much any MMO out there.

Apparently you’ve never played WoW with perma stealth?…

And even then rogues have a high skill cap and should follow the simple rule of don’t shadowstep into the flare lol!

Agemnon.4608:

Sin.8174:

Knote.2904:

As someone who has played tons of thief/mesmer since beta.

Yes invis is insanely strong in this game.

Stronger than pretty much any MMO out there.

Apparently you’ve never played WoW with perma stealth?…

And even then rogues have a high skill cap and should follow the simple rule of don’t shadowstep into the flare lol!

LOL I used to kitten off huntards like that. xD

I’d come in and ambush them, then vanish.. they’d get all paranoid and pop flare and hug the middle of it. Then i’d shadowstep in quickly, smack them, then Prep+vanish again.

Used to love messing with them!

Sin.8174:

Knote.2904:

As someone who has played tons of thief/mesmer since beta.

Yes invis is insanely strong in this game.

Stronger than pretty much any MMO out there.

Apparently you’ve never played WoW with perma stealth?...

WoW perma stealth goes away when you attack or get hit. GW2 Stealth doesn’t, that’s huge. I don’t really think it’s OP enough to need a dedicated anti stealth though.

Maybe if it was easier to manually aim ranged attacks it would be better. Quite a few times I scared a thief off with fear me or the warrior longbow burst at my feet and saw the little stealth tell that shows up now and then, but couldn’t take advantage of it because my character seems obsessed with firing arrows into the ground at his feet when I don’t have a target instead of in the direction I know the thief is traveling.

I can’t quote -.-

@ Greiger- That would be a player culling issue or lag.

When i’m in PvE, as soon as I hit backstab, I’m removed from stealth and the mob is on top of me again. It would be nice for them to fix this issue with PvP however.

Ah, my bad then. It often takes a few seconds after getting hit to be able to see or target the thief, and they wreck me because of it.

Carry on then.

They should make that “Can’t go invis again” debuff slightly longer.

The “Can’t go invis again” debuff, or “revealed”, as we like to call it, is 3 seconds. That’s about the same as the average length of a stealth ability. So, given that they don’t attack from stealth, they time their abilities right, and they brought along enough stealth skills to outlast cooldowns and initiative regen, the thief can be invis for, on average, about 50% of the time. And that’s without attacking at all during that 50%, mind you.

No, stealth is fine as is. What you have a problem with, most likely, is the player culling bugs. For some reason players who pop out of stealth near you aren’t prioritized over people halfway across the map when the game does the calculations to determine if they should be visible or not, so it can seem like the thief is stealthed for much longer than he really is.

At least this works wonders in PvE when mobs go invisible.

Your an engineer OP? You do have an anti-stealth scanner. It’s called Grenades. Spam grenades everywhere around you – watch the lulz happen. I’ve done it quite a few times to see theives freak out and return to waypoint wondering how I knew where they were. I didn’t… just took a educated guess and spammed the area around me and where I think the thief is. Considering the closer he is to you – the harder it is for him to dodge (as well as take up his stealth timer) – the more advantage you have. Flame throwers #1 skill works great as well against stealth enemies once you find them.

Any AOE is a good invis detector.

Invis does not last long enough for an invis detector to be needed. Increase invis by 300% then they might have to add a detector.

Sin.8174:

Knote.2904:

As someone who has played tons of thief/mesmer since beta.

Yes invis is insanely strong in this game.

Stronger than pretty much any MMO out there.

Apparently you’ve never played WoW with perma stealth?…

Doesn’t even come close. Possible to see people stealthed, can break stealth with damage, very few skills let you break combat with stealth.

Stealth here can be used in combat, doesn’t break on dmg, and you can have multiple stealth skills with short cooldowns.

On top of that, there’s that annoying kitten bug where people are still invisible coming out of stealth for like 1-1.5 seconds and you have to tab target or watch your condition dmg tics.

If they made it so you can still see your dmg numbers on stealthed players, or if that’s too good with conditions, just make them flicker a bit when taking direct dmg (like TF2 stealth).

I can get away with full glass cannon builds on Thief/Mesmer so friggin easily because of stealth.

I could get on board with a “take damage and you get revealed” type mechanic. Or even just that flicker.

You kidding right?
A Stealth that lasts 3 – 4 seconds is a huge issue?
Not to mention the long cool down on it, and their dagger skill 5 is a high int skill that actually requires you to HIT a target, meaning spam it twice because you missed the first time that means no more int for heartseeker spam.

Most of the time a thief activates their heal stealth is to run away

Because Stealth only lasts a couple seconds and is the crux of a Thief. But, unlike WoW, they can’t drop into stealth and stay there, planning out an attack, etc. They use it mid-battle to drop threat (PvE) or for movement/dodging (PvP). There are counters to thieves: block/dodge/daze/heal thru their initial burst & then kill ‘em when they’re out of initiative (simplified).

Except that it FORCES an immediate reflex test between players. Unfortunately, the reflex test is also countered by external variables… lag, rendering time, loading time, culling, whatever you want to call it. So the reflex test is HEAVILY in favor of the thief.

THAT is why the thief’s ability to invis is OP at the moment; because it reduces the number of people that have fast enough reflexes to react to an initial burst from a thief to a lower portion of the general populace…. all from a simple mechanic (or worse a single button push).

I remember ArenaNet talked about a preparation skill for the Ranger, a long time ago, that would make stealth players visible for a short time. But that was when the Thief’s stealth skills lasted 30 seconds, and not 3-5 seconds like they do now. There doesn’t need to be a stealth detection skill though, as you have everything you need in the game to prevent stealth from being a big benefit. Chill for instance, will make stealth much less effective, not to mention just simply dealing AoE damage. Pets are also excellent at detecting opponents coming out of stealth, much faster then you can.

Stealth classes are almost always OP in MMOs at start. Can only hope it gets balanced out more.

Other classes have to scarify damage potential for survival – but stealth classes usually expect both as a class mechanic.

Practicing some more on my thief, I was able to utilize more stealth by the combo field (pistol #5 + dagger #2 + dagger #1 for backstab) without blowing any stealth utility cooldowns. But my most effective is with dual pistols; stealth+haste+150% damage and pistol #1, pistol #3, swap to sword/pistol, leap to target and pistol whip.

Rizzy.8293:

You kidding right?
A Stealth that lasts 3 – 4 seconds is a huge issue?
Not to mention the long cool down on it, and their dagger skill 5 is a high int skill that actually requires you to HIT a target, meaning spam it twice because you missed the first time that means no more int for heartseeker spam.

Most of the time a thief activates their heal stealth is to run away

You’re missing the entire point of this discussion, it’s not the 3-4 second stealth being the issue, it’s being able to stealth over and over again taking advantage of the poor game renderring/culling, appearing to be permanently stealthed. Once you’re being attacked and you can’t see anyone, you’ll understand.

The problem you are having is with culling not with stealth. Stealth breaks immediately upon attacking and incurs 3 seconds of not being able to stealth again.

Inferno.2315:

Play thief. Click invis. Laugh.

Well out of your lifestory that I was going to read, until you posted this I just stopped reading. Get better, Thief isn’t as ‘Easy’ as you interpreted.

I have heard pretty much every class be blamed for some imbalance (except engineers) now. The reason thieves are to escape and hit from stealth, is because thats what they do. They are not to stand toe-to-toe. They’ll get smashed. Every class, when played the way they were designed, can be awesome. If all it takes to discourage you from playing an MMO is a perceived class imbalance, you’ll be playing a new game every 2 months for the rest of your life.

PP

Mesmer and Thief have been my most played classes in Spvp and partly in PvE and I KNOW stealth is insanely strong in this game. Single strongest defensive (and sometimes offensive/utility) mechanic in the game.

Being able to get away with a glass cannon build and have such good survivability is due to having invis. It’s not just that a thief can burst you down a bit, stealth and redo it once, they can do it multiple times. I have a stealth/glass cannon build that has 30 in shadow arts and 2 stealth utilities, stealth heal, and dagger offhand I can re-open a fight as many times as I want, completely avoid ANY fight I want and come back to burst a single or multiple people and just go forever. It’s insanely easy and forgiving.

You don’t even need to go that far, just the stealth heal and the occasional cloak n dagger alone will give you all the stealth you need to constantly tip fights in your favor.

Teknobug.3782:

Rizzy.8293:

You kidding right?
A Stealth that lasts 3 – 4 seconds is a huge issue?
Not to mention the long cool down on it, and their dagger skill 5 is a high int skill that actually requires you to HIT a target, meaning spam it twice because you missed the first time that means no more int for heartseeker spam.

Most of the time a thief activates their heal stealth is to run away

You’re missing the entire point of this discussion, it’s not the 3-4 second stealth being the issue, it’s being able to stealth over and over again taking advantage of the poor game renderring/culling, appearing to be permanently stealthed. Once you’re being attacked and you can’t see anyone, you’ll understand.

This wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now. Before there used to be culling but it didn’t last as long and atleast showed the person’s name. It’s quite silly now, especially since the culling can keep you nearly invisible as long as your reveal window, for near permanent invisibility.

I feel like theives should be the ultimate “hit and run” profession. A high risk, high reward kind of playstyle. If they can get the jump on you, they should be rewarded.

However, with a “spammible” (put in quotes intentionally, I know it’s not ACTUALLY spammible but .. enough) stealth, and no stealth breaks, it severely lowers the “risk” of the gameplay.

Solution: When a player in stealth takes damage, a blood spray effect appears at the player’s location and the player is crippled for 1 second.

The player is not ‘revealed’, but it gives others an indication of where they are and, if they are paying proper attention, might even be able to do substantial damage. Perhaps both the blood and the cripple are too much, but one or the other would be useful.

I don’t think the stealth mechanics should be tampered with much. Stealth is really the theif’s primary tactic .. nerfing it heavily wouldn’t do well for the game mechanics. A “reveal” wouldn’t be great either. A slight indicator if a stealth target took damage would be nice (means if you’re lucky with AoE’s it will pay off … or if you manage to get a poison/burn/bleed off on the thief, you might see the effects while they’re running) or a movespeed reduction would be good too (suddenly, the thief is at risk of coming out of stealth before they’ve managed a safe distance).

I honestly don’t know why ANet is having trouble with the rendering of stealth targets. If a stealth target is near the player, load them into memory beforehand so when they un-stealth, the data is readily available to display. If it’s a problem of quickly rendering the stealth target even after they’re in the memory .. that sounds more like a clientside issue. However, I can’t imagine this is the case if so many players are having the issue.

They don’t need any stealth breaks because it is very short term. The dude was next to you when he stealth and has three seconds to position for backstabbing. meanwhile you can still damage him with aoe and normal attacks all you have to do Is pay attention and not just stand there when they stealth.

Spoken like a true thief

AoE is not working at all. As a ranger, my Entangle does not work on invisible thieves. Barrage does not work to get thieves out of stealth either.

More than half the thieves i have encountered in 3W either use infinite Initiative or teleport/stealth/speed hacks.

The class is broken and needs to be taken down a notch and anti hack systems need to be put in place.

Skyrant Kangaroomouse.7458:

AoE is not working at all. As a ranger, my Entangle does not work on invisible thieves. Barrage does not work to get thieves out of stealth either.

More than half the thieves i have encountered in 3W either use infinite Initiative or teleport/stealth/speed hacks.

The class is broken and needs to be taken down a notch and anti hack systems need to be put in place.

More than half? Really?..

Proof? I mean, you must have lots of proof right? Videos, screenshots, whatever? You know, in case Anet needs to ban these players?

Otherwise it sounds like you’re talking out your kitten simply because you dislike the class.

Knote.2904:

Mesmer and Thief have been my most played classes in Spvp and partly in PvE and I KNOW stealth is insanely strong in this game. Single strongest defensive (and sometimes offensive/utility) mechanic in the game.

Being able to get away with a glass cannon build and have such good survivability is due to having invis. It’s not just that a thief can burst you down a bit, stealth and redo it once, they can do it multiple times. I have a stealth/glass cannon build that has 30 in shadow arts and 2 stealth utilities, stealth heal, and dagger offhand I can re-open a fight as many times as I want, completely avoid ANY fight I want and come back to burst a single or multiple people and just go forever. It’s insanely easy and forgiving.

You don’t even need to go that far, just the stealth heal and the occasional cloak n dagger alone will give you all the stealth you need to constantly tip fights in your favor.

I totally agree and it’s good to hear a Tief/Mesmer player confirm what i have been saying for a long time. Someone at ANET has a huge hard on for these classes and they are unbalanced.

I just saw a video of a Mesmer doing 17k+ damage with 2 skills in sPvP (Blurried Frenzy and Shatter). Within less than a second. That is just complete insanity.

Cheers | Skyrant

If he did a lot of damage with his shatter, it’s because he used 2/3 skills prior to stack up illusions. There is a little ramp-up time there.

Maybe if us engineers could spam turrets as often as thieves can go invis…

I got killed by a group of hyleks since abunch randomly spawned on me. Nerf stuff that randomly spawns when you’re fighting so I don’t die anymore thank you.

Invis does no damage unless the thief is completly free to find your back. And as a thief I can guarantee that entangle does hit me in stealth.