Guild Wars 2

Hi all.

Thief is a profession designed around stealth, and its stealth builds work rather well. Unfortunately, two other professions encounter problems with stealth: mesmer and engineer. This is not a balance thread, so no “nades OP” or “kitten daze spam” here, please.

Engineer. The major problem you encounter when playing a stealth build on an engineer is that leap finishers don’t reveal you even if you deal damage, but blasts do. Since engineers don’t have that many leaps, but A LOT of damaging blast finishers, they end up being revealed all the time, the biggest offender being EG #4, since the damage ticks it deals AFTER the blast will also reveal you.
Suggested improvements:

- Make blast finishers combo after the damage is dealt, similar to leaps. It won’t change much for thieves (they have easier access to stealth anyway), but would be a great QoL change for engineers.

- EG #4 ticks shouldn’t reveal you. The on-dodge bomb is fine.

Mesmer. The biggest problem with stealth mesmer (apart from the slightly over the top PU duration) emerged with the last patch. If you spec into Chaos for PU (or even for the stab on shatter trait), and you take the trait Master of Manipulation, you gain 2s of Mirror on your manipulation skills. Who thought this was a good idea? Mass Invis is a skill that is used ONLY for stealth, and the trait reveals you in every situation that is not a 1v1, making it almost useless in roaming. Even on Blink, it’s bad, since you often use it in combination with a stealth skill. And on Feedback… yeah.
Suggested improvement:

- Replace the Mirror on the trait by another skill. Power Cleanse would be cool, but not really original since it’s given in the inspiration line. Signet of Midnight (AoE blind) would work very well also.

I don’t play stealth trap ranger, so I don’t know if they are issues with them as well.

1. this is not wvw forums
2. check pvp forums, there are constant complains about stealth…. do you really think that stealth buffs in any forms would be welcome lol?

Cynz.9437:

1. this is not wvw forums
2. check pvp forums, there are constant complains about stealth…. do you really think that stealth buffs in any forms would be welcome lol?

You can play stealth builds in pvp as well, and it’s usually a good place to talk about balance, since people usually have a better knowledge of the different professions.

People complain about some aspects of stealth application that are considered not fun or OP. For example, I agree that PU is a bit too strong. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that a mechanic that was implemented three years ago (blast finishers in a smoke field) is still broken. Do you understand? I have no interest in writing yet ANOTHER post about PU or SR. I have a very specific problem I would like to see fixed, that would certainly not impact balance.

I personally love Master of Manipulation with mirror as a buff. I can play more aggressively against ranger/engi that use a lot of projectile skills. However I did struggle quite a bit at first especially in team fights (wvw) as I constantly got revealed because of mirror. However I later got used to not to pop my Mass Invis unless I know I am 100% safe and there’s no projectiles coming my way. It’s really not hard to get used to it considered you also have torch stealth and decoy as a PU mesmer. Another important things is that don’t take Mirror (the heal skill) if you’re running PU. The 4 sec mirror effect can sound really tempting but it almost always reveal you in fights.