Guild Wars 2

Firstly I want to say I am really enjoying sPvP. There are issues but overall great fun (if you play the meta).

Before the game was even released I looked at the Stealth classes as I dislike full invisibility in games. I don’t have the exact wording but I noted it said there would only be very limited short duration invisibility. Not ideal but OK I can live with short duration invisibility and went ahead and followed /bought the game.

Now that we are playing I feel mislead. Thieves are almost permanently invisibile and not as advertised. I realise part of this is a bug but overall even without the bug I think they have too much invisibility. It’s being abused and is taking a long time to be fixed.

I can see the damage numbers and hear thief attack noise well before they appear on the screen. They appear briefly and then vanish again long before I can kill them. Yes I know I can still kill them when they are invisible – it’s just a crappy badly working mechanic that needs to be fixed – quickly.

Note I am playing a support Ele. If I wasn’t I would be dead well before they appear on my screen. I think bunker/support builds are largely a consequence of the stealth/massive burst of thieves. I don’t like but can deal with the burst damage alone. Burst damage combined with the broken stealth mechanic is spoiling the game.

I have a bit of radical fix idea.

Firstly get rid of the name tags over enemy heads. Being able to spot players should part of the skill. You can’t take advantage of the terrain to ambush or get away when you have a big red bullseye above your head.

Give thieves a predator style partial invisibility/camouflage. The more they move the easier it is to see them but they will be much harder to see than other players.

I didn’t read all of your post, but they really need to fix the rendering issues asap. It’s amazing how long it’s been bugged, considering how fracking annoying it is….

I like the idea of the target symbol being removed from line of sight. Would be hard to implement though. Thieves and mesmers can remove the target by stealthing so everyone else should be able to remove it when they are out of LOS. Saying that you can’t see it out of line sight is a different matter. You can still press T and then auto attack and your attacks will go towards the enemy. And they get a nice big Obstructed above where they are hiding.

And the rendering issue is just annoying as, lost half my health, that was a back stab, I’ll just run over here, and fight nothing, there’s no one there, just the kitten kitten kitten of a thief that could be in any direction.

In certain other PvP games:

Removing the name from above your head alone is a character upgrade option.

It’s also an option to see the name tag from greater range.

Even removing the name tag is a powerful form of stealth. Full invisibility as well as no name tag is over the top.

Max stealth duration should be 5 seconds stacked,,, stacking more just makes it extremely annoying to other players

don’t take shortcuts to thief design by giving them longer stealth,,, find some real cool tricks for the class, not abusive stealth abilities that make PVP UNFUN for other players