Guild Wars 2

[Prediction] Stealth if left unchanged will ruin Stronghold.

Correct me if I’m wrong but the reason stealth doesn’t matter in sPvP at the moment is that its not valuable for point capping. Stronghold will not be point capping.

Stealth is going to be just as annoying as it is in WvW. Except this time the matches are supposed to be balanced and there will be ranked leaderboards.

You will have teams running around invisible. Bye bye spectator e-sports.

Stealth will destroy any chance that Stronghold has to become a good, well populated game mode. Please don’t let it do that.

[Solution] Disable stealth in Stronghold.

Yes, completely disable it. There’s no way it can work in any form.

This will not destroy any class – even thieves. And it will be good for the game mode.

Is it not a bit early to claim that?
We have no idea how Stronghold will look and what it will contain.
For all we know there will be an ability to place sentries that reveals stealthed people.

oooooh…..Stealth counter traps sound like fun, haven’t thought of that.

Stealth will be fine, you do know that ranger and engi can reveal stealthers right ?
“You will have teams running around invisible. Bye bye spectator e-sports.” lol.

lordkrall.7241:

Is it not a bit early to claim that?
We have no idea how Stronghold will look and what it will contain.
For all we know there will be an ability to place sentries that reveals stealthed people.

We don’t know what it will look like. That’s why I’m making this suggestion so that hopefully Anet does something about stealth in Stronghold.

I’d prefer it be disabled altogether. Make a “Light of the Mists” effect in Stronghold that reflects light in all directions so that stealth is impossible.

But at least sentries and traps and no stealth allowed in the Lord Room.

sminkiottone.6972:

Stealth will be fine, you do know that ranger and engi can reveal stealthers right ?
“You will have teams running around invisible. Bye bye spectator e-sports.” lol.

Its irrelevant that Rangers and Engis can reveal stealth. That will only mean pigeonholing people to that role. A lame role I might add. Which will be a detractor to getting a lot of people to play Stronghold.

I want a active, vibrant Stronghold PvP game mode. There are so many people who hate stealth that if it is unchecked then it will result in less people playing the game mode. Less people playing is bad. More people playing is good.

No stealth will, for the most part, ruin thieves. You sound a bit salty, so I’ll tell you how thieves are countered: AoE. If whole teams stealth themselves, that’s called coordination, and gives a tactical advantage. Also, pretty sure one team won’t be able to simply stealth-run to Lord, or else there’s a whole other problem than stealth on the map.

Don’t go jumping the gun like that Penguin guy, asking for things to be nerfed out of nervousness and speculation. I assume ANet’s balance team isn’t so naive as to not consider stealth when they built this map, yeah? At least complain after it’s out.

stealth plays an important role in engagement and disengagement. that won’t change with stronghold.

unless you’re seeing 5 thieves running courtyard and crying OP. (not that stronghold will be a straight up deathmatch game)

If it proves to be a problem then learn something from Dota and balance the Thief according to that without stupidly saying we ban you from this game mode.

It is certainly true that in the current state, Thief will likely be the King of Stronghold.

Johje Holan.4607:

This will not destroy any class – even thieves. And it will be good for the game mode.

What universe do you live in?

Thieves have very little versatility and survivability do to the fact that most of the utilities suck (venoms, traps, most tricks) and you want to eliminate some of the few things that actually do work in PvP? Everyone would be reduced to playing S/D and would never be able to SR an ally to rez them and do what a lot of warriors can do in an instant via banner.

A simple solution would be to change mesmer stealth skills to only effect a limited number of allies. Neither mesmer nor thief will be weaker in a fight and you won’t have invisible zergs running around anymore.

Ahm no. Lets not jump to conclusions now, there are things to be revealed. There will be something to capture, probably the heroes that they spoke about. Also don’t forget that there will be a new class and each existing one will get specialization. New weapon, utilities and elite. We don’t know what will be added to the game. Lets wait and see, there will be betas, everything will be tested.

If it truly became a problem, could they not just give NPCs abilities that strip/see through stealth?

Huh?? We’ve had AoE bunker,turrets,AoE celestial taking advantage of conquest, CC in skyhammer,leaps in SW… there will always be something stronger in a mode. Disabling stealth will hurt more than thieves lol, how should we backstab anyway?

Just relax you dealt with conquest and bunkers didn’t you?

Johje Holan.4607:

[Prediction] Stealth if left unchanged will ruin Stronghold.

-snip-

You will have teams running around invisible. Bye bye spectator e-sports.

-snip-

Are they just going to chain shadow refuges until they get to the lord? Are there not going to be any doors in the way of getting to the lord room? Stealth is only a benefit in WvW roaming where you don’t have an objective you’re pursuing. In this game mode, you would think you’d have to leave stealth (or rather not gain it since there’s no passive permanent stealth) to accomplish intermediate goals at some point before the final battles in the lord rooms (or whatever the climax/victory conditions are). Stealth may keep a thief (or other class) alive in an encounter, but that doesn’t mean they are going to be helping push their team towards victory while in stealth.

Dondagora.9645:

No stealth will, for the most part, ruin thieves. You sound a bit salty, so I’ll tell you how thieves are countered: AoE. If whole teams stealth themselves, that’s called coordination, and gives a tactical advantage. Also, pretty sure one team won’t be able to simply stealth-run to Lord, or else there’s a whole other problem than stealth on the map.

Don’t go jumping the gun like that Penguin guy, asking for things to be nerfed out of nervousness and speculation. I assume ANet’s balance team isn’t so naive as to not consider stealth when they built this map, yeah? At least complain after it’s out.

AoE is not a counter to stealthed theives. Unless its a small confined space or cap point. In an open space just move out of the AoE.

You have more faith in the devs than I do I guess. I’m simply worried because they seem to love stealth and are blind, no pun intended, to its negative impacts on the game.

I hope you all are right and Stronghold is not dominated by stealth. I hope its a well populated game mode. But if not, Anet was warned.

Johje Holan.4607:

You have more faith in the devs than I do I guess. I’m simply worried because they seem to love stealth and are blind, no pun intended, to its negative impacts on the game.

I suppose thats why they added the revealed effect?

OP gives no evidence or argumentation, only baseless assertions. Could you please explain in detail how you think stealth will impact stronghold?

Xenon.4537:

OP gives no evidence or argumentation, only baseless assertions. Could you please explain in detail how you think stealth will impact stronghold?

he solo roams WvW and gets picked apart by thief roaming parties, so “stealth OP”

BrunoBRS.5178:

Xenon.4537:

OP gives no evidence or argumentation, only baseless assertions. Could you please explain in detail how you think stealth will impact stronghold?

he solo roams WvW and gets picked apart by thief roaming parties, so “stealth OP”

Hoho so funny. I play a Thief along with Ele and Ranger. And what I can get away with on my Thief because of stealth is amazing.

Xenon I will attempt to explain how I think stealth will impact Stronghold. I’m not a lawyer so don’t expect a litigators ability at argumentation.

My main concern is that I believe it will cause a lower participation than would otherwise be the case. Moreso than any other mechanic or feature of GW2. The evidence for this is the countless criticism of stealth that has occurred since launch.

People like Bruno will chime in with noob, l2p, go back to PvE, etc. But guess what, that just drives people away from the game mode. Sensible people, even ones who like playing stealth characters, have acknowledged that stealth in GW2 is poorly implemented.

I stated that the reason stealth hasn’t been complained about in sPvP is because it is useless for capturing a point. You can’t cap a point while in stealth. Isn’t that correct? So that it is not used to an advantage in sPvP. Now for a moment imagine that you could cap a point while in stealth. How broken would that be?

In the end if stealth gives too big of an advantage then it will hurt the game mode. If it annoys too many people it will hurt the game mode.

Lol, break one class and hurt another, both of whic are already at a slight disadvantage in conquest as it is…

Edit: Every thief would probably be forced to play s/d perma evade, and most mesmers would be negatively affected without the option to access at least one stealth skill (unless niche build like blurred insc full signets with say sw/sw, staff and either moa or tw elite…).

I’d rather fight a team of thieves in non-conquest, than say a team of engineers on Foefire…

Stealth is fine, we have no idea what will be most efficient in Stronghold, I’m sure there will be suitable countermeasures to balance out the situation, whatever the case it will be nice to have a change from trying to uproot kittening bunkers from cap points.

Or maybe we could actually see how the mode is going to work and see how the meta evolves and work from there, instead of starting a nerf/delete panic with ABSOLUTELY ZERO INFORMATION TO WORK FROM?! You literally pulled your assessment out of nothing.

My god, what kind of insanity is this? This is beyond paranoia.

or you know just guard the lord if you know a thief broke in.

Johje Holan.4607:

BrunoBRS.5178:

Xenon.4537:

OP gives no evidence or argumentation, only baseless assertions. Could you please explain in detail how you think stealth will impact stronghold?

he solo roams WvW and gets picked apart by thief roaming parties, so “stealth OP”

Hoho so funny. I play a Thief along with Ele and Ranger. And what I can get away with on my Thief because of stealth is amazing.

Xenon I will attempt to explain how I think stealth will impact Stronghold. I’m not a lawyer so don’t expect a litigators ability at argumentation.

My main concern is that I believe it will cause a lower participation than would otherwise be the case. Moreso than any other mechanic or feature of GW2. The evidence for this is the countless criticism of stealth that has occurred since launch.

People like Bruno will chime in with noob, l2p, go back to PvE, etc. But guess what, that just drives people away from the game mode. Sensible people, even ones who like playing stealth characters, have acknowledged that stealth in GW2 is poorly implemented.

I stated that the reason stealth hasn’t been complained about in sPvP is because it is useless for capturing a point. You can’t cap a point while in stealth. Isn’t that correct? So that it is not used to an advantage in sPvP. Now for a moment imagine that you could cap a point while in stealth. How broken would that be?

In the end if stealth gives too big of an advantage then it will hurt the game mode. If it annoys too many people it will hurt the game mode.

Well lets just ignore responses like Bruno for now because I really would like to have a discussion about this. So you think the simple existence of stealth in the game mode will drive people away, and that Stronghold will have less people playing it as a result?

I really don’t think this will happen. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Stronghold is based on the old GvG right? Let me break down the gameplay structure.

• One team defends a base while the other attacks.
• The base contains NPCs to help defend it.
• The base comes with some defensive mechanic, like a gate which must be bypassed first.
• Victory is achieved by the attackers if they manage to penetrate the defenses and kill the “guild lord” NPC.
• Victory is achieved by the defenders if they manage to hold off the attackers for a certain length of time, or some other metric.
• Extra mechanics include things like a flag stand which gives a buff to the team that can hold it during the match.

So when I try to envision this type of gameplay in GW2, with special attention to how stealth will impact it, my first instinct is to ask how will the attackers bypass defensive positions? Thieves cannot stealth past gates in WvW, so why should they be able to in Stronghold? Now I know they haven’t confirmed specific details like this on Stronghold yet, but believe it or not, Anet does test these things before releasing and I’m sure they are well aware of the Shadow Refuge skill and have tested to see how it affects this gametype. Like someone already said, they can add turrets or NPCs which detect stealth in addition to things like gates.

Even if you ignore all of that, you can at least put yourself in the defender’s shoes for a moment and think. If I were a defender and I just saw the enemy team stealth before entering the base, I would assume their goal is to get to the guild lord and kill him as quickly as possible. That is their condition for victory, otherwise they are just wasting stealth. So my most prudent course of action is to run to my guild lord to defend him. They can’t remain in stealth during combat. If it’s the entire attacker team vs my whole team PLUS all of the defender NPCs, it won’t be very hard to counter the assault.

Xenon.4537:

So when I try to envision this type of gameplay in GW2, with special attention to how stealth will impact it, my first instinct is to ask how will the attackers bypass defensive positions? Thieves cannot stealth past gates in WvW, so why should they be able to in Stronghold?

One problem that will probably pop up is people playing pretty much unkillable shadow-arts builds. The only thing preventing SA from being OP in pvp is capture points. SA is mega-OP in wvw thanks additionally to stealthing off walls and other inanimate objects at-will. If there are walls/gates that allow thieves to stealth off any time with impunity, it really could be game-breaking.

With no collision detection, think about how easy it would be for a team of 5 thieves with 100% crit from stealth playing a valk’s build to say “and backstab the lord in 3…2…1……GOOD GAME!!!”

I do envision a scenario where stealth does break the game-mode. I hope they test it sufficiently so it doesn’t devolve into teams bringing all the cancer that currently defines the wvw roaming meta (SA thieves, PU mes, condi engie). If they introduce perplexity for this game mode…gg

BlackBeard.2873:

With no collision detection, think about how easy it would be for a team of 5 thieves with 100% crit from stealth playing a valk’s build to say “and backstab the lord in 3…2…1……GOOD GAME!!!”

That is assuming the thieves can make it all the way to the heart of the base undetected, somehow bypassing gates or other obstacles, make it to the guild lord, and have enough damage to 1-shot him.

By the way afaik this is an spvp game mode, not wvw. Crit damage will be more tightly controlled and there wont be things like food to make thieves more OP. There may even be other mechanics to consider which would make a 5-thief rush impractical or impossible. What if the guild lord is invulnerable unless some other objective on the other side of the map is held, thus forcing attackers to split up? There are infinite possibilities. We will just have to wait and see what Anet comes up with.