Guild Wars 2

This topic is probably going to draw some passionate debate, and a lot of people will shoot it down, but I think it needs to be discussed.

Two times in the first Guild Wars, ArenaNet backtracked on implementing stealth and removed the mechanic entirely, coming to the conclusion that it was overpowered.

In the original public beta, the Ranger profession had a Stealth attribute and line of skills, but this was eventually removed due to giving one class a hefty advantage.

With the release of Factions, ArenaNet toyed with the idea of giving Assassins stealth, but again, remembered the imbalance inherent in the mechanic and so created the shadow step mechanic as an alternative.

Fast forward to GW2 and they seem to have forgotten those lessons.
We now have thieves with both the shadow step mechanic, and the one it was meant to replace, Stealth.
This is made worse by stealth not being dependent on environmental conditions such as shadow or cover, instead being an unconditional invisibility.

It’s quite telling when you look at the forums for professions other than Thief and notice that every one has one or more topics asking how to deal with them.

So ArenaNet, as per the topic title, why implement stealth, and additionally are you considering changing it?

My idea is to have an item like the “ash legion spy kit”, but would reveal invisible people around the user.

Or maybe an item that you hold that radiates an aura around you that uncloaks, etc.

Just a counter, for kitten’s sake!

It’s good to see ideas about how to moderate stealth, but I am genuinely curious to see a developer’s justification for adding it.

DotA got a hero that is permanently invisible and it doesn’t seem he’s OP, why not here where stealth is limited to 3s max except a high CD one?

But that’s part of my point. They combined both Shadow Step and Stealth which it was meant to replace. Arguably, shadow step skills in GW2 are much better than they ever were in GW1. There’s not much to indicate balance other than the reasonably short durations of stealth skills. There probably are ways to balance unconditional stealth, but not many are apparent in the current GW2 implementation.

I will never understand MMO developers and the insistence of adding a class that can stealth/become invisible at will and have extreme high burst damage at the same time. Rogues, and every other MMO after WoW that copied that bullkitten, has always been one of the most complained about topics.

You cannot balance a class that can go invisible at will and have the ability to take out any target with impunity.

The funny thing is that in early beta the Thief had a 30 second stealth skill, which was then removed to make stealth last 3-4 seconds overall, so it would work as a tool to help the Thief avoid damage, instead of being a permanent thing. But now the Thief basically have permanent stealth again, and pretty much plays like an Assassin.

I just wish that ArenaNet would make the Thief play as it was original designed to be played. That is; a profession that avoids damage trough movement and speed. That was what made it fun to play. Stealth should be a tool to avoid damage, short term, not a permanent thing.

I understand this is a thief’s discussion in regards to stealth, and honestly I feel like it should be in the thief sub-forum.

However, I’m curious as to why I see so many posts regarding thieves. Do people truly have so much trouble with thieves in PvP to warrant all this attention? If so, shouldn’t those claiming over-powered here, and nerf there keep it focused towards PvP play?

Maybe I’m a bad thief (which is entirely possible), but in PvE my HP gets eaten away extremely often. I also like to think I run a very balanced vitality build too.

The main mechanic I see used in dungeons that just destroy players is condition damage. I mean… players will drop if they get more than 1 debuff on them. So often times I feel there is a very unfair lean towards Guardians, since they have such a huge amount of condition removal. Yet, as frustrated as this makes me, since I absolutely detest playing a guardian, and personally find condition removal somewhat lacking on other job classes in comparison; I accept that mechanic. Guardians are known for their party support, so should they not shine in that aspect?

Thieves are known for their mobility in this game. That’s their defense. Mobility is the pure lifeline of a thief. This game has proven stealth, and mobility go hand in hand. They balance this with the very low HP pool of a thief.

So every time I see discussion like this, really what I read is ‘nerf the defense of thief.’ I definitely feel there needs to be balance, but really should we not focus our discussion to the real problem here, PvP?

Because the people working at Arena Net right now are not the same that worked on GW1? Just look at every aspect of the game, it’s really obvious.

TheUndefined.1720:

Do people truly have so much trouble with thieves in PvP to warrant all this attention?

In reality, people do not have that much of an issue with thieves. Well, those who are pretty decent at their class. Primarily, the people complaining are the people who are dying to thieves burst, and want them nerfed rather than learning to counter the burst and anticipate it.

To be fair, there is somewhat of a culling problem combined with a thief’s stealth, but I do not think it is as widespread as some are making out. I think people are pointing the fingers too much at an easy “reason” rather than buffing their class, or learning to counter.

Way to easy to point the finger outward, rather than inward.

Kravick.4906:

I will never understand MMO developers and the insistence of adding a class that can stealth/become invisible at will and have extreme high burst damage at the same time. Rogues, and every other MMO after WoW that copied that bullkitten, has always been one of the most complained about topics.

You cannot balance a class that can go invisible at will and have the ability to take out any target with impunity.

Yet isn’t the balance for this that you can basically two shot those classes?

Playing a ranger in WoW, I would eat those rogues alive. I’d drop traps, and smoke out any stealthed character. I’d also stun them, cripple them, and sic my pet on them. I actually remember back in BC a completely twink (I think that was the term lol…) rogue in the ultimate PvP gear for level 20 bracket couldn’t touch me. I kited him in a tight circle, and just mowed him down. Yet, a warrior would close the distance, and eat right through my silly low level leather gear.

One of my favorite parts of an MMO is the rock vs paper of job classes. Sure your class might not be effective towards this one class, but how effective is your class to a ranger, or necromancer, or elementalist?

I mean, is the argument here everything should be equal, nothing should be special against something else?

Fiennes.9568:

TheUndefined.1720:

Do people truly have so much trouble with thieves in PvP to warrant all this attention?

In reality, people do not have that much of an issue with thieves. Well, those who are pretty decent at their class. Primarily, the people complaining are the people who are dying to thieves burst, and want them nerfed rather than learning to counter the burst and anticipate it.

To be fair, there is somewhat of a culling problem combined with a thief’s stealth, but I do not think it is as widespread as some are making out. I think people are pointing the fingers too much at an easy “reason” rather than buffing their class, or learning to counter.

Way to easy to point the finger outward, rather than inward.

Thanks for the info, and not flaming me lol. I’ve really tried to avoid these threads as I am very biased towards Thief. However, having played dozens of MMO’s in my lifetime I’ve never seen such unabashed complaining over one class on the forums. I have PvP’d maybe three times in this game total. So, I’m quite ignorant of how the games play out. The two times I went into WvW I dueled a thief on mesmer, and honestly… it was really easy to send him / her running lol.

I’ll gladly say I’m an absolute terrible pvper. I tried to a duel a ranger on my thief, and he basically laughed me out of the instance. I guess I just look at PvP as, you win some you lose some.

Overall, though, I really am curious why my class gets such an incredible amount of hate. How fun is a game if you truly can just mindlessly kill anyone on the field? You should die in PvP, isn’t that what makes those kills so rewarding?

Meh sorry I’m rambling. Didn’t mean to derail the topic on stealth though. Thanks for indulging my curiosity.

This thread (cuz we’ve had it repeatedly) always amuses me.

1) It’s never started by someone who has actually played a thief. If they had, they’d realize just how freakin’ hard the class is to keep alive even with stealth.

2) A well built warrior is vastly more dangerous than any thief. Not only do they have the same kind of burst damage, they can actually take a punch.

3) My ranger gets 10x more kills than my thief. After all, my ranger can dropped crit, might, fire sigil buffed barrage down on a zerg that racks up 20k+ damage ON EVERYTHING THAT DOESN’T GET OUT OF THE CIRCLE O’ DOOM IMMEDIATELY. My thief dreams of hitting more than one target at once with something stronger than the pea shooter that is a thief shortbow. (side note: my ranger is in full zerker gear with ruby orbs and has easily moved beyond glass into the fabergé cannon stage)

3) Mesmers make better use of stealth than thieves for completely frakkin’ with people’s ability to fight back. Unlike thieves where you just retarget, mesmers create their own target chaff. The game doesn’t really do a good job with targeting in the best of times. Even if you the player can figure out which mesmer is the real one when they come back out of stealth, it doesn’t mean the UI is going to make it all that easy to get them targeted again.

4) You really, really don’t want to encourage people to learn to play sword-dagger acrobatic thieves. You can see such thieves. You can just never hit them.

stof.9341:

DotA got a hero that is permanently invisible and it doesn’t seem he’s OP, why not here where stealth is limited to 3s max except a high CD one?

Because this isn’t DotA, genius. For a start, you can actually detect invisibility, which is a large change. Also it doesn't have Magnus in it.

Now I would like to see some way to detect invisibility in this game but I don’t think it could be done without completely messing up the class balance. Thieves would become notoriously useless, for a start. And inevitably one class will be better at detection than others.

The only idea I have is to have an elite skill available to all classes that does a search for stealthed characters in about a ~1200 radius for 3 seconds on a 60 second cooldown, like the echo ability as a dolphin in the underwater fractal. It would also fix the problem of most elites being extremely situational. It would be kind of a nerf to thief in that someone will be there to detect them but at the same time a buff because of the lack of elite skills in their target. I don’t know, just throwing something out there.

@Xavori,

I actually forgot to mention in my previous post just how terrified I’d get if I saw a warrior lol.

I feel far more fear towards a warrior than I have ever felt towards a thief.

Still, this is coming from the person that’s PvP’d like three times, so I don’t know how much weight my opinion has in this aspect of the game.

@Writetyper,

If your suggestion is to add a skill to every class specifically to basically abolish 1 class’s ability, then there should be a skill like that for every class. There should be an elite for every class to strip a warrior’s def and / or power. There should be an elite to destroy every mesmer’s clone / disable them for a short period of time. There should be an elite to shorten a ranger’s ranged weapon to nearly nothing, and despawn their pet. There should be an elite to buff necro’s, and engineers (<— see what I did there… j/k ;P) You’re basically taking away every class’s unique game play ability. Stealth / mobility is a thief’s.

a lot of people seem to have a misconception that a terrible health pool is compensation for stealth, and this would be true if that was all the thief had.

in mmo’s and games focused on balance (tribes, tf2, ect) the main balance for having low speed is survivability and damage. that is the two of them togeather are used to counter balance the advantage that high speed can give you. thief being the fastest class in the game should not have the highest burst potential. (for you tf2 players, that would be like if the sniper could no scope and run as fast as the scout)

now don’t get me wrong. i don’t mind that thieves have the highest burst potential in the game and are the fastest in the game because of an abundance of distance closing mechanics, but giving them stealth on top of that was a bad idea. the stealth mechanic doesn’t make up for a low health pool. the thiefs mobility does. the stealth mechanic is a proven bad idea in many other mmo’s and together with high mobility and high damage make for a completely broken class. the level of skill needed to go stealth, come up on someone and backstab them for 6k is far lower then the level of skill needed to counter this tactic. the reward to effort ratio on the thief is completely out of whack, and stealth is the primary reason for it.

high burst damage/ high movement options/ stealth. you can only have 2

TheUndefined.1720:

I understand this is a thief’s discussion in regards to stealth, and honestly I feel like it should be in the thief sub-forum.

However, I’m curious as to why I see so many posts regarding thieves. Do people truly have so much trouble with thieves in PvP to warrant all this attention? If so, shouldn’t those claiming over-powered here, and nerf there keep it focused towards PvP play?

Maybe I’m a bad thief (which is entirely possible), but in PvE my HP gets eaten away extremely often. I also like to think I run a very balanced vitality build too.

The main mechanic I see used in dungeons that just destroy players is condition damage. I mean… players will drop if they get more than 1 debuff on them. So often times I feel there is a very unfair lean towards Guardians, since they have such a huge amount of condition removal. Yet, as frustrated as this makes me, since I absolutely detest playing a guardian, and personally find condition removal somewhat lacking on other job classes in comparison; I accept that mechanic. Guardians are known for their party support, so should they not shine in that aspect?

Thieves are known for their mobility in this game. That’s their defense. Mobility is the pure lifeline of a thief. This game has proven stealth, and mobility go hand in hand. They balance this with the very low HP pool of a thief.

So every time I see discussion like this, really what I read is ‘nerf the defense of thief.’ I definitely feel there needs to be balance, but really should we not focus our discussion to the real problem here, PvP?

Let me put it to you this way. Because of stealth, thieves out attrition the “attrition class”.

Honestly, we could argue our points for years without a resolve. I guess at the end of the day we’re all going to hold our opinions, and stay very stubborn in consequence to our experiences.

I could keep arguing against the last two posts, but really I’d just like to suggest to anyone that is having trouble against killing a thief; please play the class for a short time.

I used to think Guardians were ridiculously OP in PvE (still kinda do lol), then I played them. Anyone that can suffer that boring gameplay kinda deserves to smash their face at the keyboard (just teasing ;P)

It’s amazing what will happen if we all tried to walk in each other’s shoes for a short time.

Anyhow, thanks for indulging a carebear in this conversation for so long!

Fiorrello.8126:

a lot of people seem to have a misconception that a terrible health pool is compensation for stealth, and this would be true if that was all the thief had.

in mmo’s and games focused on balance (tribes, tf2, ect) the main balance for having low speed is survivability and damage. that is the two of them togeather are used to counter balance the advantage that high speed can give you. thief being the fastest class in the game should not have the highest burst potential. (for you tf2 players, that would be like if the sniper could no scope and run as fast as the scout)

Fastest class in the game? Oh. You mean the dagger/dagger elementalist.

They’re also one of the tankiest classes in the game, and can still hit freakin’ hard while spec’d towards tank.

TheUndefined.1720:

Honestly, we could argue our points for years without a resolve. I guess at the end of the day we’re all going to hold our opinions, and stay very stubborn in consequence to our experiences.

I could keep arguing against the last two posts, but really I’d just like to suggest to anyone that is having trouble against killing a thief; please play the class for a short time.

I used to think Guardians were ridiculously OP in PvE (still kinda do lol), then I played them. Anyone that can suffer that boring gameplay kinda deserves to smash their face at the keyboard (just teasing ;P)

It’s amazing what will happen if we all tried to walk in each other’s shoes for a short time.

Anyhow, thanks for indulging a carebear in this conversation for so long!

I have an 80 thief. They’re ridiculous. I’m not even joking when I tell you that I’ve killed people by just pressing 2 on my keyboard. Yeah, its bad, and requires no skill, but its easy to kill a lot of people by doing it. There isn’t any other class in the game I’ve been able to do that with.

Even knowing how thieves work, I still have trouble against them. The fact that they can disengage at will, and heal to full while in stealth, without the use of their healing skill, should be evidence enough. Throw in their healing skill, that ALSO turns them invisible, and stacks with all the OTHER invisible abilities… well, kitten. I know the heal in stealth is a trait, but every thief is running it because of how powerful it is. The only way a thief dies is because they screwed up in a bad way. Not because of any one particular class or ability.

Of course people who play thieves as their main are going to defend it. It was the same way in WoW. Yet in every single game with high burst/invisibility classes this is always, ALWAYS a hotly debated topic. It never ceases to amaze me how anyone can call this combination anything but a steaming pile of poop in regards to balance. I would not call a high burst class with the ability to go invisible at will “balance” in any game, though.

Yea yea those 3 second stealth on long cooldowns are really a game breaker . Too bad this class is always visible unless hard traited. Atleast try and read the thief tooltips on skills before posting another kitten clueless thread.

offence.4726:

Yea yea those 3 second stealth on long cooldowns are really a game breaker . Too bad this class is always visible unless hard traited. Atleast try and read the thief tooltips on skills before posting another kitten clueless thread.

“better to remain silent and be thought a fool, to to speak up and remove all doubts” -Abraham Lincoln

if you can’t understand why stealth is bad, even with as large an outcry as it has against it. then you aren’t trying to understand, already understand and are simply a troll, or incapable of understanding and simply a fool.

You know how to solve this stealth problem? Stop PvPing. You might even find some side benefits, such as a drop in blood pressure or a decrease in animosity for your fellow players.

By the way, to the person saying that these topics are always created by people who have never played Thief, that’s a bad straw man and I’m here to prove you wrong. I play Thief.
I know how imbalanced they are, and as stated many times by myself already, I’m curious why ArenaNet, who in the past have acknowledged how badly imbalanced a mechanic stealth is, have all of a sudden thought different with GW2.

If you’re going to try to contribute, do it with something relevant to the discussion. Reinforce your point by stating why you think stealth ISN’T imbalanced.
Stay away from the ad hominems. It’s a weak argumentative style and contributes nothing to the discussion.

All I can see on the forums is people complaining on how you can’t kill a thief when he is fleeing from you.

Think about it. Can you really call OP a class that runs away from you?

Thieves are only dangerous to glass cannons – and they are designed to counter them ya know.

If you have some survaivability you can outlast thief easily. Hence thieves escaping with stealth.

I don’t see a problem here.

Mungrul.9358:

By the way, to the person saying that these topics are always created by people who have never played Thief, that’s a bad straw man and I’m here to prove you wrong. I play Thief.
I know how imbalanced they are, and as stated many times by myself already, I’m curious why ArenaNet, who in the past have acknowledged how badly imbalanced a mechanic stealth is, have all of a sudden thought different with GW2.

If you’re going to try to contribute, do it with something relevant to the discussion. Reinforce your point by stating why you think stealth ISN’T imbalanced.
Stay away from the ad hominems. It’s a weak argumentative style and contributes nothing to the discussion.

How could it possibly be imbalanced? Thieves may be unique in having the most stealth, but that does not make it imbalanced.

All I hear from people complaining about stealth is that they can instantly kill glass cannons who are caught out alone. So what? That is the very essence of the thief class, being deadly in one-on-one combat, scouting ahead of the team, ravaging supply lines, cutting off stray reinforcements.

Isslair.4908:

All I can see on the forums is people complaining on how you can’t kill a thief when he is fleeing from you.

No, that’s a strwman.

All I see are people complaining that it takes far more skill to avoid being two-shotted by a thief than to two-shot people as a thief.

Oh, wait, I also see people complaining that it’s a sign that something’s not right if seven classes have to adopt their playstyle and (to some degree) even their equipment / skills to surviving against one profession.

The rest are players who think a class is not overpowered if other classes can survive them if they skill corectly, equip correctly, play well and are constantly looking out for thieves.

phooka.4295:

Isslair.4908:

All I can see on the forums is people complaining on how you can’t kill a thief when he is fleeing from you.

No, that’s a strwman.

All I see are people complaining that it takes far more skill to avoid being two-shotted by a thief than to two-shot people as a thief.

Oh, wait, I also see people complaining that it’s a sign that something’s not right if seven classes have to adopt their playstyle and (to some degree) even their equipment / skills to surviving against one profession.

The rest are players who think a class is not overpowered if other classes can survive them if they skill corectly, equip correctly, play well and are constantly looking out for thieves.

You are not supposed to be able to survive a thief one-on-one, unless you really try. Thief is perfectly balanced.

stof.9341:

DotA got a hero that is permanently invisible and it doesn’t seem he’s OP, why not here where stealth is limited to 3s max except a high CD one?

……EVERY hero is OP in Dota, which makes it balance out funny enough.

Plus there’s a vast difference between a MMO like GW2 and a MOBA like Dota

That being said stealth doesn’t really bug me in this game aside from the rendering bug……….has that been fixed? Have not been in WvW lately so I have no idea.

How about improving all classes. So they all have their own advantages.

phooka.4295:

All I see are people complaining that it takes far more skill to avoid being two-shotted by a thief than to two-shot people as a thief.

Putting on some Pow\vit\toughness gear is not “skill”. It’s just, you know, gearing.

Saying that thief can 2-shot is like saying that you are always dying to warrior’s HB. Do you?

And you NEED to adopt your skills and build to counter different professions.

Necro or mesmer? Better have a lot of condition removal.
Engi? Stability or bust.
Warrior? I hope you can clear those roots.
Etc., etc.

So why thief should be different. If you have a glass cannon build that two-shots almost any other professions, why shouldn’t you be vulnerable to stealthy thief?

Most of the complaints about stealth from what I see come from the WvWvW PvP’rs so I think thieves are getting an unfair shake here. The culling in WvWvW is pretty bad, I have run into full groups on my thief un-stealthed and stood among them for upwards of 10 seconds before showing on their screens, If I go in stealthed it takes longer for me to show, I have seen many other thieves do the same. When spec’d for long term/borderline perma stealth the culling only benefits us more, but we have to sacrifice most of our burst damage for this, I personally use a condition/stealth build to annoy people for long periods of time, now if culling wasn’t an issue I would have to time my abilities 100% perfectly while doing little damage in order to maintain permastealth. As far as burst builds go, due to culling a thief can easily stealth in take down 1-2 players before they even show on the screen and there is no amount of skill that will prevent you from dieing, best defense is stay grouped and 1-3 aoes will kill thief easily, its just the way it is at the moment.

So IMO no one has really played against a thief the way it was made to be played against due to culling in WvWvW, culling gives the perception of perma stealth and creates the image of thieves being god like when its not the case. Thieves are a very strong class especially in the right hands but yet so are all classes in the right hands.

Fix culling then “fix” thieves if its even needed.

Stealth

Shadowstep

Burst Damage

Those three components make up the core of Thief design and balance issues.

2 of those elements by themselves could be dealt with. All three combined make Thieves incredibly hard to counter.

Isslair.4908:

All I can see on the forums is people complaining on how you can’t kill a thief when he is fleeing from you.

Think about it. Can you really call OP a class that runs away from you?

Thieves are only dangerous to glass cannons – and they are designed to counter them ya know.

If you have some survaivability you can outlast thief easily. Hence thieves escaping with stealth.

I don’t see a problem here.

Until they turn around, and face plant someone. The problem is, thieves don’t have any cool downs on their weapon skills save for initiative. The running away thing is only to build initiative back up, which takes very little time. Meanwhile, every other class is bound by some pretty long cool downs on their abilities.

I main a necromancer. The supposed “attrition (lol)” class. The class that people have “a hard time running away from (more lol)”. You cannot attrition a thief. You cannot CATCH a thief, unless the thief is bad. Thieves do attrition better, AND combine it with insane burst damage. Thieves can catch and finish people off WAY better.. You know what kind of gear I use on my necromancer? Soldiers. Power, vitality, toughness. Its been coined the Juggermancer build on the necro forums. Go look it up. Its about as tanky as a necro can get. I can still get burst down quite easily. I can survive the initial burst easily enough thanks to death shroud and other assorted cool downs, but I cannot outlast thieves. They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive. Like clockwork, as soon as I start getting the upper hand, they disappear, heal to full, and come right back. Without those cool downs and my death shroud depleted, I get utterly destroyed even in full soldiers gear. So much for “trouble getting away from” and “attrition”.

Conditions do not stick to thieves, or anyone else for that matter, so don’t bother bringing that up. I learned a long time ago that you don’t PVP with condition builds. Conditions never stay on long enough to mean anything.

Typical thief fight goes like this:

“Find a target, alternate C&D and backstab until 50% HP. Spam 2. If you lose at least 50% HP before they do, just Shadow Refuge and reset the fight. While your opponent blew all his cool downs just trying to prevent you from bursting him down in a matter of seconds, all you’ve used is 1 cool down. Shadow Refuge. Now that you’ve reset the fight, and healed back to full, you can just go back in and mop up. Your opponents cool downs are all used. You have nothing to worry about unless there happens to be a zerg hiding behind that rock. You did check your surroundings first, right?”

This is how all of my fights went while playing my thief. I rarely died. When I did, it was because I screwed up, and I paid for it. There is very, very, VERY little risk when playing a thief. Glass cannon or not, you’d have to be completely reckless to get yourself killed. I leveled to 10 in PVE and then exclusively in WvW there after, all the way to 80. Thieves, even down leveled, are insane. Thieves become the true “death incarnate” once they hit 80 and get exotic gear. I stopped playing my thief because it provided no challenge. Pretty much everyone was fodder. Well, except dagger/dagger elementalists. They’re the only class, besides other thieves of course, that can actually get away from a thief if the fight isn’t going their way.

Grr! I didn’t want to continue to respond to this thread since I felt I had already made my point… but I have a very deep love for Necro’s (I could never truly master them in GW1, but absolutely adored their whole tone since then!), and you brought up Necro.. so I have to comment!

Buff Necromancers!!! This class has so much potential. Every time I try to play Necro in general I just faceplant, same with engineer. These two classes are the most underpowered imo.

So really… the solution here isn’t nerf nerf nerf, instead we should be calling for buuuuffs!

Ok sorry.. I’m done now XD

Okay, let’s turn around and look at other classes from the thieves’ perspective:

1) Elementalist. If Staff = easy kill. If daggers = run the frak away before they see you.

2) Ranger. Lol it’s dead cuz all rangers are glass cannons (cuz why wouldn’t you build your ranger that way and rain death down on enemy zergs)

3) Necromancer. Maybe. Three bar bunker necros aren’t worth the time and effort to kill, and odds are they’ll have a friend come along and ruin your day while you’re whittling them down. Condition necros are no problem because they are limited to poison and bleeding, and thieves can shed those two.

4) Mesmer. Maybe. Condition build mesmers are a pain because thieves don’t have a lot of tools to deal with confusion. Shatter builds can be tricky because clone splodey is an AoE, and it really hurts. The rare bunker/stealth mesmer is unkillable so don’t bother.

5) Guardian. If they are running around with a greatsword, they’re likely glass and hence, a target. If they are holding a shield, don’t bother attacking. You can’t kill them.

6) Warrior. If they are using a greatsword, AND you can catch them unaware, go for it. Be ready to run if they survive the burst or seem to not mind being bled/poisoned. If they are shield offhand, just ignore them like all the other tanks. If they are axe offhand, and you’re really good, go for it otherwise ignore.

7) Engineer. Hahahahaha. No seriously. Hahahahaa. Okay, there are two exceptions to that. One is a bunker build engineer that like many other bunkers gives itself away with the off-hand shield. But even then, most engy bunkers aren’t bunker enough. The other is a bugzapper engineer that catches you unaware. In that case tho, you’re already dead so what’s to worry about?

8) Other thieves. Let them go as a professional courtesy. Maybe even point out the annoying necros who keep coming to the forums trying to get stealth nerfed because thieves own necros

Kravick.4906:

They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive.

So you basically won the fight. Thief runs away. And you, knowing that he will return still decide to stay and wait for him and give him another advantage?
Why not run to your zerg, to the keep. simply run away. That’s clearly not a thief fault.

As to your second point of being strong in WvW. I’ve done my monthly (50 kills) on my underleveled warrior and died like two times due to culling issues.

Does it mean warrior is OP? No. Does it mean I have great skill? No. It means that average WvW player is really bad. In some cases I felt like I was fighting a mob, same running around in circles just out of reach. And that’s what thieves are made for, to punish loners and bad players.

Give assassins a predator like shimmer, increase CD. That will also help the rendering issues as well, since the assasins will always need to be ‘rendered’ in some way. No more culling.

TheUndefined.1720:

Grr! I didn’t want to continue to respond to this thread since I felt I had already made my point… but I have a very deep love for Necro’s (I could never truly master them in GW1, but absolutely adored their whole tone since then!), and you brought up Necro.. so I have to comment!

Buff Necromancers!!! This class has so much potential. Every time I try to play Necro in general I just faceplant, same with engineer. These two classes are the most underpowered imo.

So really… the solution here isn’t nerf nerf nerf, instead we should be calling for buuuuffs!

Ok sorry.. I’m done now XD

Now that we can agree on. The current class philosophy ANet has for necromancers does not currently match the class as it is right now.

Isslair.4908:

Kravick.4906:

They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive.

So you basically won the fight. Thief runs away. And you, knowing that he will return still decide to stay and wait for him and give him another advantage?
Why not run to your zerg, to the keep. simply run away. That’s clearly not a thief fault.

As to your second point of being strong in WvW. I’ve done my monthly (50 kills) on my underleveled warrior and died like two times due to culling issues.

Does it mean warrior is OP? No. Does it mean I have great skill? No. It means that average WvW player is really bad. In some cases I felt like I was fighting a mob, same running around in circles just out of reach. And that’s what thieves are made for, to punish loners and bad players.

You clearly don’t know your class very well. The thief backs off with the full intention of resuming the fight merely a few seconds later. There is no “running”. There was no “winning” the fight, because its not over yet. Just because a thief goes stealth doesn’t mean hes running away. I’ll get maybe 10 feet before the thief is on top of me again, with the thief back at nearly full health.

Kravick.4906:

I’ll get maybe 10 feet before the thief is on top of me again, with the thief back at nearly full health.

If the thief is at full health, so are you. I can’t see the problem. Unless you decided to kill some mobs while he is healing.

And no I don’t play thief. But players who prefer to blame the game instead of changing their playstyle really annoy me.

Isslair.4908:

Kravick.4906:

I’ll get maybe 10 feet before the thief is on top of me again, with the thief back at nearly full health.

If the thief is at full health, so are you. I can’t see the problem. Unless you decided to kill some mobs while he is healing.

And no I don’t play thief. But players who prefer to blame the game instead of changing their playstyle really annoy me.

I hate repeating myself. People who selectively ignore whats already been said really annoy me.

I can survive the initial burst easily enough thanks to death shroud and other assorted cool downs, but I cannot outlast thieves. They’ll just reset the fight and come back to finish me off once they’ve forced me to use up everything I have just staying alive. Like clockwork, as soon as I start getting the upper hand, they disappear, heal to full, and come right back. Without those cool downs and my death shroud depleted, I get utterly destroyed even in full soldiers gear. So much for “trouble getting away from” and “attrition”.

TLDR: Cool downs and depleted resources. Initiative is a constantly renewing resource that allows abilities to be spammed over and over.

Best i can tell, the major issue with thief stealth is culling. Why oh why they can’t have the server specifically include a note to pre-buffer the thief graphics so that is ready to draw when the thief drops stealth to attack, i don’t know.

digiowl.9620:

Best i can tell, the major issue with thief stealth is culling.

And it’s not a probem of thieves or stealth.

Yet in every single MMO with stealth it’s the same old story. “If I can’t see it – it must be OP”.

Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are completely different games.

digiowl.9620:

Best i can tell, the major issue with thief stealth is culling. Why oh why they can’t have the server specifically include a note to pre-buffer the thief graphics so that is ready to draw when the thief drops stealth to attack, i don’t know.

This ^^

The stealth mechanic does NOT protect a thief from damage, it does NOT make the thief invulnerable, and it does NOT give the thief a huge amount of healing preventing damage from taking a thief out. So how exactly is it op again there OP?

The truth is they didn’t add enough stealth. PVE is suffering because of this. People wanted a thief class that had the ability to allow them to run around unhindered while gathering or traveling. Right now it barely does that. They could easily give the thief a slower toggle stealth for pve only that allows them to move around like this unhindered in pve. AND they could make it turn off in WvW Spvp and make it take two seconds before any attacks are available when coming out of stealth. STO does this with their cloaking device on tactical kits so that it’s not abused.

Without this mechanic there is no “real” stealing in this game which is sorely missed by most in the pve community.

So stealth is a necessary component, just because they are having trouble with culling bugs doesn’t mean they need to remove what they did implement.

My biggest problem with thieves is not so much on their stealth ability but the amount of people who play this class with the intention of pure glass cannon but due to having insufficient player skill themselves, end up being just glass no cannon. While in wvw/pvp, these classes at best are a annoyance to me (they come out of hiding hit me once, I smash them up a bit, they go invis and run off to safety rinse/repeat) in pve, their incompetence is much worst. I’ve had so many parties where these glass cannon thieves (even warriors!) come in to do a very basic dungeon and have a average dying/down rate of at least 2 per minute while in combat!

Seriously guys! if you haven’t adopted the familiarity with your class yet, play something with higher survivability!!! I always say, alive dps is good dps! when you’re getting better at your class, slowly switch to a more dps orientated build and see how you do. If you’re downing like mad every 10 seconds, you’re doing it wrong! (then people run here and complain that its not trinity system blah blah, in trinity the tank would hold all the aggro and I could glass cannon all I like without getting hit)

once again…people should just be happy that stealth isn’t permanent in this game like most others.

Thing is that outside of dungeons, a glass cannon warrior swinging anything with cleave is a wrecking machine.

Had one guy that showed up at a DE with mob waves. He would whirlwind into the wave, and if anything was left standing he would have them killed within the second.

It was like watching the ball at a bowling alley hitting strike after strike.

I’d rather have the stealth you see in Halo, where they are transparent and you can see them if you look hard enough. Especially with the issues already in PvP/WvW regarding culling.

Stealth=/= invisible to me.