Guild Wars 2

Let’s take a look at the main reason why the stealth mechanic remain the most hated aspect that may be implemented in a videogame:

people are able to attack from stealth

Personally there is no logic behind this, why it should be allowed?!, I’ve opened this thread with the hope the community, a developer hopefully can give me an answer to my questions, I find it extremely hard to believe that a game advertised as the next e-sport MMO , we find something like stealth: attacking people while invisible.

In GW1, every decision was made based on the visual information you could get from the enemy , but here in GW2, once somebody turn invisible, you are unable to obtain these visual information, from a skill based game we pass to a guess based game and it’s here that the concept of e-sport fall flat on the ground.

Did he run away? is he healing himself back ? is he preparing to attack? is he on the left..the right..behind me?
This is what frustrate me the most, the opponent just obtained an advantage no thanks to his skill but thanks to the mechanic of its profession, he did not accomplish some complicated awe inspiring combo, he did not skillfully counter my moves…he simply pressed a single button when things started to go bad for him

Even the fun factor get removed from the game, fighting a thief or mesmer is simply not fun, even if I win 10 times out of 10, I still hate the idea of fighting one of them, in every aspect of the game you’re forced in constantly watching your backs because maybe an invisible [censored] is lurking behind the corner.

I did not make this thread because I just lost to a thief or mesmer, I’m not even playing the game atm and the truth is that rarely I lose to a thief or mesmer, because against them I play at 200%, I simply refuse to lose against something as an invisible enemy, something that require no skills whatsoever to eve used.

In the end I believe that something like stealth should not be implemented in a MMO, it’s simply not fun to fight against an invisible enemy and the whole purpose of a game is to have fun

Arheundel.6451:

Let’s take a look at the main reason why the stealth mechanic remain the most hated aspect that may be implemented in a videogame:

people are able to attack from stealth

Personally there is no logic behind this, why it should be allowed?!, I’ve opened this thread with the hope the community, a developer hopefully can give me an answer to my questions, I find it extremely hard to believe that a game advertised as the next e-sport MMO , we find something like stealth: attacking people while invisible.

In GW1, every decision was made based on the visual information you could get from the enemy , but here in GW2, once somebody turn invisible, you are unable to obtain these visual information, from a skill based game we pass to a guess based game and it’s here that the concept of e-sport fall flat on the ground.

Did he run away? is he healing himself back ? is he preparing to attack? is he on the left..the right..behind me?
This is what frustrate me the most, the opponent just obtained an advantage no thanks to his skill but thanks to the mechanic of its profession, he did not accomplish some complicated awe inspiring combo, he did not skillfully counter my moves…he simply pressed a single button when things started to go bad for him

Even the fun factor get removed from the game, fighting a thief or mesmer is simply not fun, even if I win 10 times out of 10, I still hate the idea of fighting one of them, in every aspect of the game you’re forced in constantly watching your backs because maybe an invisible [censored] is lurking behind the corner.

I did not make this thread because I just lost to a thief or mesmer, I’m not even playing the game atm and the truth is that rarely I lose to a thief or mesmer, because against them I play at 200%, I simply refuse to lose against something as an invisible enemy, something that require no skills whatsoever to eve used.

In the end I believe that something like stealth should not be implemented in a MMO, it’s simply not fun to fight against an invisible enemy and the whole purpose of a game is to have fun

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

It’s the most absurd mechanic ever introduced into MMO’s and companies continue to make the same mistakes.

So while I agree that the stealth mechanic needs work, I don’t agree with your reasoning.

Attacking from stealth? Fine. Sure.

Not being unstealthed when they directly hit is what I don’t like. Generally, the only way you can get feedback and reliably hit them is with a melee weapon and watch for it to scroll through it’s multi-staged autoattack. You get better at it (especially if you play a mesmer and thief), but it’s still kind of silly (and destroys many budding new pvpers often times). It would be nice to have audible, and maybe some visual feedback that you’re hitting something in the very least (damage counter etc).

In the same vein, I’d like to see them become transparent instead of completely invisible. if they get within a certain distance (couple feet). As you’ve said, I just don’t see complete invisibility as being all that skillful, but then, I like things to be difficult/rewarding.

That would of course mean there would need to be other changes to the class if you change its core mechanic (whether that be raising dps and/or surivability… not going into that here). It sounds like there’s a fairly significant change coming soon to traits across the board though, so it’s probably better to wait and see what happens.

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

How about no? Mesmers are the most disgusting abusers of stealth, at least while a thief is stealthed he is incapable of attacking you as doing so will reveal him, mesmers are perfectly capable of attacking and applying an equal amount of pressure on you as when they’re not in stealth through phantasms. Have fun dealing with 3 iduelists scattered around the area while the mesmer laughs at you vainly trying to find him. It’s misconceptions like this that let the class slide by with it’s op mechanics while other classes get nerfed.

I find it hilarious that people are whined over this in the sPvP forum.

Now, you make the argument that in GW1, decisions were based on visual information from the enemy, and then you attempt to apply this to GW2 as well. Why? Is the only way to know what your enemy is doing is to be able to see them?

Let’s look from the thief’s perspective. If he/she is low on health, what can the thief do but run, or heal? Given that that’s what you think will happen, why can’t you lay down poison AoE to mitigate the heal? Or, if you use your autoattack as a sort of detector for stealthed thieves, then why can’t you interrupt the person from stealth, given that you know the thief’s location? You could use ele’s dagger L #5 attack, one of the warrior physical utilities, headshot from thief, SB 5 on ranger… Whatever. Everything that applies to regular combat applies to stealth, with the only difference being that the thief exchanges the ability to attack with your ability to gather information purely visually from the thief. You can, however, still predict the thief’s next moves, and that gives you counterplay.

Really, in stealth, nothing’s changed.

If there would be a counter it would be fine. Like in WvWvW there is a trap which reveals stealth-ed enemies or something.

Well maybe if stealth counted as a boon then that would work since there are boon stripping skills, but otherwise you’d be wasting a skill just for countering stealth which just isn’t worth it (unless it was something that they added to be died to multiple different skills, but then that seems like it would completely break thieves as a class).

^Sigh… just woke up… typing skills are lacking. Oh well.

disagree, because good players know how to counter thief and Mesmer stealth.

What i find the most unreasonable is that Stealth has no counter. Someone goes into Stealth and stays in stealth.
There is no player mechanic, no skill, no trait, no tool, nothing, that can actually counter Stealth.

There is nothing in the game that can warn you that someone is standing right next to you, making funny faces, in Stealth.
There is nothing you can do in this game but blind guessing when your target poofs of into Stealth.

It is the only mechanic in the game that does not have a counter. There are counters to stability, stuns, conditions, Fear, boons, even immunities are not full-proof (hint: conditions incase you didnt know) despite build-in drawbacks to prevent abuse.
Blocks can be countered and even Evade doesnt get you passed everything.
And then there is Stealth, the perfect mechanic, that does what it’s suppose to do 100% of the time, without fail. And there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Pretty much this ^
Any mechanic needs a counter mechanic. Stealth doesn’t have one.

Giving us a chance to see the stealthed enemy, or make him come out of stealth without his will , is something that this game needs.

If you think that thief is the biggest problem with stealth, give a look at the mesmers again.
If the thief attacks in while in stealth, he will break his stealth(probably he can go into it instantly but still, he gets out of it momentarily) that means no (burst) damage made in the time being invisible.

On the other hand, a mesmer can throw 3 clones on you that can make amazing burst damage while he stealths to safety.
AI makes damage, you use the “broken” mechanism of stealth and take no damage.

Mesmer makes damage, while takes none, this is even bigger “abuse” of the stealth mechanic than thief.

Devs really need to look at the stealth and it’s aspects.

What is the counter to Obsidian Flesh other then waiting for it to end. There isn’t one.
Lets be real tea not everything needs a specific counter.
Stealth is supposed to be kept in check by its duration and the possibility of still incurring damage. As well as tripe.
“You counter dmg immunity with conditions”. No you go around physical damage immunity with conditions, you don’t strip, it. Same way you don’t strip stealth you go around it with attacks that don’t require a target or using some patience.

I guess all stealths should be instant cast then.
Since, you know, there’s no possible way to avoid CnD or interrupt BP>Seeker/Hide in Shadows or pull them out of Refuge.
Nope. Not counterable.

There should be a chance to see invisible people within a short range in front of you. Possibly based on precision. Something like: (Precision -500) * 0.2 units in a 90 degree cone in front of your character. So a base precision character can see stealth 83 units (inside melee range) directly in front of them. A glass cannon with 2000 precision could see 300 units,

ensoriki.5789:

What is the counter to Obsidian Flesh other then waiting for it to end. There isn’t one.
Lets be real tea not everything needs a specific counter.
Stealth is supposed to be kept in check by its duration and the possibility of still incurring damage. As well as tripe.
“You counter dmg immunity with conditions”. No you go around physical damage immunity with conditions, you don’t strip, it. Same way you don’t strip stealth you go around it with attacks that don’t require a target or using some patience.

You’re comparing abilities with long cooldowns to stealth, which can be used indefinitely as long as you don’t hit anyone.

Please know and understand the mechanics of this game before making comments like these. You’re obviously new to the game, and stealth may seem OP because you’re not accustomed to it and don’t know how to counter it.
But, in high (and even mid) tier sPvP, stealth is FAR from overpowered. The thief has been in a bad spot for the past few months, and only recently (since Jumper’s build) has there been any shine on the thief.

Using a cooldown to counter stealth is only normal, and is expected in high-tier PvP, because the player using stealth is also using a cooldown.
Play this game for 6 months and then come back to read your post and you will eat your words.

Caffynated.5713:

You’re comparing abilities with long cooldowns to stealth, which can be used indefinitely as long as you don’t hit anyone.

Purposefully, if players want to roll around about “No counters” there are multiple things with no counters in this game, you play around them. That’s just the reality. Indefinite stealth? You’re talking about onesweapon set. Or is Sword/Pistol, Pistol/Pistol, Shortbow stealthing dropping so much of this “broken” stealth.
What indefinite Stealth S/D, or D/D’s have you been playing that can be used as long as you don’t hit anyone.

D/P itself gets prevented by interrupting the hs.

Jumper.9482:

I guess all stealths should be instant cast then.
Since, you know, there’s no possible way to avoid CnD or interrupt BP>Seeker/Hide in Shadows or pull them out of Refuge.
Nope. Not counterable.

Against any npc wielding class (All Rangers, MM Necro, All Mesmers, Ogre Rune character) CnD can be used in such a way it cannot be avoided (in the same way that you can use necro’s condi transfers w/ 100% success on them as well).
The Blind field duration is long enough that even if you interrupt the first heartseeker through it, they can still get a second meaning you have to chain two heartseeker interrupts in order to actually stop their invis.
As for Shadow refuge he is completely correct, you can knock people out of it, you can just run in and get them to spam dodges a little bit then knock them back if you have it available. Problem is that if spec’d certain ways stealth will also remove condi’s countering a “fear out” approach unless amazingly timed, I know as a ranger you have the wind up time to get this fear which is highly noticeable. I have stopped trying to do this as the CD is very long and the only thing a thief thinks about in SR is “I don’t want to be knocked out”.
Hide in Shadows is a non-issue about stealthing imo. The big thing about this one would be that it removes all damaging conditions (burn, bleed, psn) before the heal goes off, then can gain an additional condition removal for going in stealth, and additional one later (meaning 5 conditions removed). Seeing as “aoe/condi” is supposed to counter stealth this makes it very difficult to argue that point.

How do I feel about this stuff? I am completely fine with it, I actually have the most fun in the game playing against thieves that do some kind of stealth build. The only thing I dislike is that the condition removal they gain upon entering stealth (when traited) ticking immediately on stealthing. I believe they should have to wait, gaining 2 condition removals for 3s in stealth and then not attacking is theoretically the highest condi removal in the game. (2X12=24 condi removal per min[uses 5s as a restealth time, to come out naturally with the 4s traited stealth then going back in almost immediately to continue the chain]) Meaning any point they are under condition pressure they can just wait it out with a high burst of condition removal.

In Guild Wars 1, Everyone one pretty much stood still or moved slowly, it was easy for the Assassin Class to pick a target and Shadowstep to it. In Guild Wars 2, everyone is moving and dodging about so Shadowsteps aren’t effective at getting you to enemies in the back row, thus they opted for stealth instead. It achieved all the positioning ends of Shadowstep, but was more adaptable when the enemy moved.

Also, if a Thief couldn’t attack from stealth, they’d be in a worse place than Warriors are now. Everyone would just dodge their Backstabs and Tactical Strikes.

This thread is a great place to point out that thieves and mesmers still take damage while in stealth. Furthermore, unless they teleport away (i.e., use a long cooldown and waste a stun breaker) you can easily tell where they are by spamming your (melee) auto attack chain.

If the stealthed target is there, you can see your character’s attack chain progress past the first attack. Keep attacking and the thief/mesmer will likely pop-out of stealth in downed state. Unless specced for it (and few do), a thief can’t out run you while in stealth; meaning that you get lots of free hits.

If you want to see how players counter stealth (there are more ways than the simple one I mentioned) just make a thief and go into any hotjoin with highly ranked players.

DingDongDooleeDum.4987:

Please know and understand the mechanics of this game before making comments like these. You’re obviously new to the game, and stealth may seem OP because you’re not accustomed to it and don’t know how to counter it.
But, in high (and even mid) tier sPvP, stealth is FAR from overpowered. The thief has been in a bad spot for the past few months, and only recently (since Jumper’s build) has there been any shine on the thief.

You might want to re-read the original post. You missed the whole point.

It is not how powerful stealth is that is the main problem.
It is how annoying it is to deal with.

Even if i was guaranteed a kill every time I fought a thief or mesmer, i would still avoid them because they aren’t fun to fight.

Major flaw of stealth isn’t being able to attack while in it, it’s the fact that there is no counter whatsoever to it. Start giving out traits and added effects to AoE that allows a person to throw an enemy out of stealth, and the problem will be solved. For example, make it so that if you have a certain trait on, a Ranger trap can knock an opponent out of stealth. You’ve immediately given stealth a counter and made it easier to deal with somebody who has it. Another example would be making it so that a Warrior can knock them out of stealth with “Fear Me!”

I think stealth could use a counter, yes. The problem is that stealth or not – thieves and mesmers are perfectly killable as it is.

Maybe a good option would be a 50% movement speed debuff while hidden, this way you would counter stealth by simply running away until it fades, without crippling it’s defensive use.

RyuDragnier.9476:

For example, make it so that if you have a certain trait on, a Ranger trap can knock an opponent out of stealth.

I just want to point this out, that trait would be entirely pointless. If an invisible enemy walks on your trap you see exactly where they are, so ranger traps essentially already work in this way.

As to the thread in general, I think that fighting against stealthy enemies gets easier and more enjoyable the more you know how they work.

Gaidax.7835:

I think stealth could use a counter, yes. The problem is that stealth or not – thieves and mesmers are perfectly killable as it is.

Maybe a good option would be a 50% movement speed debuff while hidden, this way you would counter stealth by simply running away until it fades, without crippling it’s defensive use.

Useless, considering the thief can use steal or a signet or shadowstep to port to you and disregard the movement penalty.

I hate stealth because I use S/F on my ele. There are about 3 skills you can use against a stealthed thief with that weapon set, the rest don’t work without a target.

I hate that the thief can stack stealth in Shadow Refuge. Stealth was announced as a short period, 15 seconds of doing whatever you like is not a short period and as a S/F ele who has phoenix, flame wall and water 2 (ice shards?) as the only skills to attack the field it is a bit much.

The field should be, whilst inside, remain in stealth unless doing not stealthly stuff and heal, when leaving, get 3 sec stealth (if that) instead of this 11 seconds of bs stealth.

Yeah, I think shadow refuge should let you use skills while remaining stealthed in the field, but if you leave the field you should unstealth.

Before release they nerfed mesmer stealth skills to not stack, like Veil. But for some reason shadow refuge and Black Powder blast finishers were not subjected to this same nonstacking rule.

It’s even worse with D/P thieves because none of their offense outside backstab relies on spending initiative, so they can always pool initiative for a black powder>backstab sequence.

So the complaint about stealth is that you can attack from it?

God have mercy on their souls. Attacking from stealth, treason!

RyuDragnier.9476:

Major flaw of stealth isn’t being able to attack while in it, it’s the fact that there is no counter whatsoever to it. Start giving out traits and added effects to AoE that allows a person to throw an enemy out of stealth, and the problem will be solved. For example, make it so that if you have a certain trait on, a Ranger trap can knock an opponent out of stealth. You’ve immediately given stealth a counter and made it easier to deal with somebody who has it. Another example would be making it so that a Warrior can knock them out of stealth with “Fear Me!”

Sure, just give Invulnerability a counter too since nobody enjoys when elementalists/guardians use this defensive skill without any counter.

Zenith.7301:

Gaidax.7835:

I think stealth could use a counter, yes. The problem is that stealth or not – thieves and mesmers are perfectly killable as it is.

Maybe a good option would be a 50% movement speed debuff while hidden, this way you would counter stealth by simply running away until it fades, without crippling it’s defensive use.

Useless, considering the thief can use steal or a signet or shadowstep to port to you and disregard the movement penalty.

not, because that way they need to actually use utilities more carefully, and it would be more difficult to land their burst.

Honestly I find GW2’s stealth to be refreshing compared to other MMOs that allow stealth up-time to be on 24/7. Some MMOs let the player continuously attack while literally invisible and the target dies from a completely unseen player.

With that said, stealth in GW2 would be much more balanced if there were countermeasures available vs stealth.

1. Certain skills should have a stealth detection mechanic built in.

2. Stealth should be canceled and revealed when taking damage. Therefore, all ground-targeted AoE abilities that hit the stealthed target should reveal them.

3. Stealth should be treated as a channel that is interrupted by damage. Therefore, in order for a player to stealth, they must stop taking damage beforehand (think Twitch’s stealth in League of Legends).

Just like any other mechanic, stealth should require an amount of player skill to use. Increasing the difficulty of using stealth also increases the skill it takes to play the stealth class, which provides a more rewarding gameplay experience overall.

Seth.4927:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Major flaw of stealth isn’t being able to attack while in it, it’s the fact that there is no counter whatsoever to it. Start giving out traits and added effects to AoE that allows a person to throw an enemy out of stealth, and the problem will be solved. For example, make it so that if you have a certain trait on, a Ranger trap can knock an opponent out of stealth. You’ve immediately given stealth a counter and made it easier to deal with somebody who has it. Another example would be making it so that a Warrior can knock them out of stealth with “Fear Me!”

Sure, just give Invulnerability a counter too since nobody enjoys when elementalists/guardians use this defensive skill without any counter.

What a stupid thing to say. Ele invuln is a 75 sec cd, guardian elite is longer. And if you’re going to talk bunker survival, a guardian bunker won’t gib anyone for even close to 4-6k crits in spvp. He hits like a wet noodle, and bunker eles as well won’t be touching the spike capacity of a GC mesmer or thief. The difference is the mesmer’s stealth and defenses are on 30+ sec cd’s.

D/P thief can stealth pretty much every 6-7 seconds, and renew his stealth by blasting the blind field while stealth if his target complicates his backstab attempt.

It’s cute and all to be an ele with a multitude of cleaves you can sort of punish thief stealth with, but most classes don’t have the kind of non-targeted cleave a warrior or ele has to try to punish stealth.

And in WvW where permastealth builds are not penalized it’s even more absurd as you can get a thief with 15-16k health that still hits like a spvp GC thief yet has more survival and crit dmg.

Try beating a well played D/P thief as a GC necro or ranger or guardian or engineer.

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

You can get pretty substantial stealth uptime on a Mes if you trait for it.

shimmerless.4560:

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

You can get pretty substantial stealth uptime on a Mes if you trait for it.

Phantasm mesmers can’t trait for it, and the mesmers who can trait for stealth are garbage builds anyways. Nobody is going to go into the Chaos line as it is absolutely terrible in the adept traitline and requires heavy investment to bear some sort of return.

I’d also love to know how many mesmers in spvp or roaming wvw (not 10-15man team fights) run veil.

Torch is an absolutely atrocious weapon due to the long cooldowns and the horrible phantasm.

Zenith.7301:

Seth.4927:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Major flaw of stealth isn’t being able to attack while in it, it’s the fact that there is no counter whatsoever to it. Start giving out traits and added effects to AoE that allows a person to throw an enemy out of stealth, and the problem will be solved. For example, make it so that if you have a certain trait on, a Ranger trap can knock an opponent out of stealth. You’ve immediately given stealth a counter and made it easier to deal with somebody who has it. Another example would be making it so that a Warrior can knock them out of stealth with “Fear Me!”

Sure, just give Invulnerability a counter too since nobody enjoys when elementalists/guardians use this defensive skill without any counter.

What a stupid thing to say. Ele invuln is a 75 sec cd, guardian elite is longer. And if you’re going to talk bunker survival, a guardian bunker won’t gib anyone for even close to 4-6k crits in spvp. He hits like a wet noodle, and bunker eles as well won’t be touching the spike capacity of a GC mesmer or thief. The difference is the mesmer’s stealth and defenses are on 30+ sec cd’s.

D/P thief can stealth pretty much every 6-7 seconds, and renew his stealth by blasting the blind field while stealth if his target complicates his backstab attempt.

It’s cute and all to be an ele with a multitude of cleaves you can sort of punish thief stealth with, but most classes don’t have the kind of non-targeted cleave a warrior or ele has to try to punish stealth.

And in WvW where permastealth builds are not penalized it’s even more absurd as you can get a thief with 15-16k health that still hits like a spvp GC thief yet has more survival and crit dmg.

Try beating a well played D/P thief as a GC necro or ranger or guardian or engineer.

So 2 classes built for running Glass Cannon specs in mind, meant to be hard hitting gankers… Can’t be measured up to by an Attrition class, a bunker class and a jack of all trades?

Isn’t it a bit like saying, thief can’t bunker as well as guardian if both spec’d for it because a thief can’t contest points, guardians need a nerf. Same with necro’s, they have so many conditions while thieves only can marginalize on mostly 1 or 2 and 3 with this new patch if they take a specific venom. Why are thieves not a jack of all trades like Engi? With a multitude of versatile kits and such at their disposal.

I don’t think its fair to compare how effective classes built for high damage and evasive survival are at these two areas when talking about classes designed around attrition or bunker capabilities.

Anet said you can play how you want, not that every class would be as good as each other at everything, then what would the point in classes even be? Certain classes do certain things better.

PistolWhip.2697:

Zenith.7301:

Seth.4927:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Major flaw of stealth isn’t being able to attack while in it, it’s the fact that there is no counter whatsoever to it. Start giving out traits and added effects to AoE that allows a person to throw an enemy out of stealth, and the problem will be solved. For example, make it so that if you have a certain trait on, a Ranger trap can knock an opponent out of stealth. You’ve immediately given stealth a counter and made it easier to deal with somebody who has it. Another example would be making it so that a Warrior can knock them out of stealth with “Fear Me!”

Sure, just give Invulnerability a counter too since nobody enjoys when elementalists/guardians use this defensive skill without any counter.

What a stupid thing to say. Ele invuln is a 75 sec cd, guardian elite is longer. And if you’re going to talk bunker survival, a guardian bunker won’t gib anyone for even close to 4-6k crits in spvp. He hits like a wet noodle, and bunker eles as well won’t be touching the spike capacity of a GC mesmer or thief. The difference is the mesmer’s stealth and defenses are on 30+ sec cd’s.

D/P thief can stealth pretty much every 6-7 seconds, and renew his stealth by blasting the blind field while stealth if his target complicates his backstab attempt.

It’s cute and all to be an ele with a multitude of cleaves you can sort of punish thief stealth with, but most classes don’t have the kind of non-targeted cleave a warrior or ele has to try to punish stealth.

And in WvW where permastealth builds are not penalized it’s even more absurd as you can get a thief with 15-16k health that still hits like a spvp GC thief yet has more survival and crit dmg.

Try beating a well played D/P thief as a GC necro or ranger or guardian or engineer.

So 2 classes built for running Glass Cannon specs in mind, meant to be hard hitting gankers… Can’t be measured up to by an Attrition class, a bunker class and a jack of all trades?

Isn’t it a bit like saying, thief can’t bunker as well as guardian if both spec’d for it because a thief can’t contest points, guardians need a nerf. Same with necro’s, they have so many conditions while thieves only can marginalize on mostly 1 or 2 and 3 with this new patch if they take a specific venom. Why are thieves not a jack of all trades like Engi? With a multitude of versatile kits and such at their disposal.

I don’t think its fair to compare how effective classes built for high damage and evasive survival are at these two areas when talking about classes designed around attrition or bunker capabilities.

Anet said you can play how you want, not that every class would be as good as each other at everything, then what would the point in classes even be? Certain classes do certain things better.

If by “certain things better” you mean “monopolize roles”, sure.

Because engineer isn’t a jack of all trades — it’s an aoe condition cc class, you might as well take away the rifle-- and a guardian is just a bunker. Might as well erase all the traits and weapons that don’t fit that, and if you’re going to pigeonhole necros into terror builds to be able to 1v1 instead of being food for thieves and mesmers, you might as well erase dagger and axe as weapons — why have them ingame if the presence of thieves and mesmers will make most offensive build options for other classes useless?

And then people like you complain about bunker. Fuqqing duh, it’s the only way those classes can survive being farmed by thieves and mesmers, and even then D/P and S/D thieves and mesmers can still significantly threaten bunkers — so with a single build they can do pretty much everything they want besides bunker a point, useful only for spvp, and in WvW where bunkers are useless outside D/D ele, thieves and mesmers become the choice roaming classes.

What I want to do to people like you who play mesmers and thieves is ban you from playing said classes, force you to play a mindnumbingly boring BM ranger or bunker engineer, while everybody gets to play thief and mesmer, and if you decide to play a ranger or necro and feel like running anything that is not a bunker — be forced to hopelessly die as any longbow or greatsword burst ranger would or dagger berk necro would.

Zenith.7301:

If by “certain things better” you mean “monopolize roles”, sure.

Because engineer isn’t a jack of all trades — it’s an aoe condition cc class, you might as well take away the rifle-- and a guardian is just a bunker. Might as well erase all the traits and weapons that don’t fit that, and if you’re going to pigeonhole necros into terror builds to be able to 1v1 instead of being food for thieves and mesmers, you might as well erase dagger and axe as weapons — why have them ingame if the presence of thieves and mesmers will make most offensive build options for other classes useless?

And then people like you complain about bunker. Fuqqing duh, it’s the only way those classes can survive being farmed by thieves and mesmers, and even then D/P and S/D thieves and mesmers can still significantly threaten bunkers — so with a single build they can do pretty much everything they want besides bunker a point, useful only for spvp, and in WvW where bunkers are useless outside D/D ele, thieves and mesmers become the choice roaming classes.

What I want to do to people like you who play mesmers and thieves is ban you from playing said classes, force you to play a mindnumbingly boring BM ranger or bunker engineer, while everybody gets to play thief and mesmer, and if you decide to play a ranger or necro and feel like running anything that is not a bunker — be forced to hopelessly die as any longbow or greatsword burst ranger would or dagger berk necro would.

Slow down there genius, I don’t like Mesmer and I don’t want to play one. I also quit maining thief a while back because they lacked a lot certain classes have, and it was go zerker or go home.

I play a warrior, and main it. Being one of the most under-powered classes in spvp along with Necro, I think your prejudice is misguided. This being said, thieves are very easy to fight, you just need to of played one I guess, contact a necro named High Warlord Sikari, hes a very good necro and using his build I beat a lot of D/P thieves.

Having mained a guardian too, bunkers are far easier to play, and I’ve never had issues with thief. Mesmers however, they are a different issue, but it isn’t their burst damage which makes them broken.

If you think bunkers are boring that’s your personal preference, I personally know many people who dominate using the bunker roles Engi, Ranger and Guardian can provide and they enjoy it a great deal. Sure I hate bunkers, but that’s because I play a warrior and they are painstakingly annoying to fight for me.

Those poor GS/Longbow Rangers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jo0joBlyg

I’ve seen plenty of zerker guardians, well played they are pretty kitten potent. I’ve also played a zerker engi before and wrecked face (albeit after learning the mechanics). Necro I haven’t tried zerker yet admittedly, but I’ve seen WvW vids of a full zerker necro beat every other class in 1v1’s.

My point still stands, Anet intends for certain classes to do certain things better, that’s why GC is preferable to a thief or a mesmer over a necro. Same way going Rabid or Shamans is preferable to other classes than Thief or mesmer.

Phantaram.1265:

So the complaint about stealth is that you can attack from it?

God have mercy on their souls. Attacking from stealth, treason!

Nice! When, few months ago, That’s So Pish used to instagib one of your teammates from stealth at the beginning of each match it sounded like you guys had a big problem with it.

Jzaku.9765:

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

How about no? Mesmers are the most disgusting abusers of stealth, at least while a thief is stealthed he is incapable of attacking you as doing so will reveal him, mesmers are perfectly capable of attacking and applying an equal amount of pressure on you as when they’re not in stealth through phantasms. Have fun dealing with 3 iduelists scattered around the area while the mesmer laughs at you vainly trying to find him. It’s misconceptions like this that let the class slide by with it’s op mechanics while other classes get nerfed.

+1 I agree mesmers are the most disgusting abusers of stealth.

Also believe that if someone gets hit by AE damage they should be revealed as well as being too close to someone, I mean if your in front of me how am I not able to see you.

Another thing all MMORPGs that have stealth or invisible mobs have a thing called “see invis” Guild Wars 2 is the first RPG I’ve played that doesn’t have this mechanic.

shimmerless.4560:

Zenith.7301:

shimmerless.4560:

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

You can get pretty substantial stealth uptime on a Mes if you trait for it.

Phantasm mesmers can’t trait for it, and the mesmers who can trait for stealth are garbage builds anyways. Nobody is going to go into the Chaos line as it is absolutely terrible in the adept traitline and requires heavy investment to bear some sort of return.

I’d also love to know how many mesmers in spvp or roaming wvw (not 10-15man team fights) run veil.

Torch is an absolutely atrocious weapon due to the long cooldowns and the horrible phantasm.

You seem prone to gross exaggeration and baseless categorical claims. I’ve traited into Chaos just fine, for Adept you get access to Manip CDR (amazing for keeping melee distance with Staff trait) or a flat 10% damage reduction (on top of a line that already rewards ample Protection uptime). For roaming I lessened points in Dom and put into Chaos because with Dom you can kill someone faster but you have terrible scaling in uneven engagements and poor mobility. It’s just a trade.

As for Veil I don’t run it much (not fond of skills with high CDs). Torch can be great for stealth openers the CD is not that long

Now if you’re going to tell me this all hurts you in X or Y area then I’ll agree to an extent but I would never claim you can be and do everything with a 30/30/30/30/30 build. I don’t think any class has such a luxury. If you trait up to 30 then you will have to give somewhere but it’s far from unplayable, quite the opposite. What’s nice about Prismatic is that your bonus is applied to the stealth given to allies, so your MI lasts 6 seconds for them too.

You are giving something substantial. Either fury on phantasm or points in Inspiration or Illusions.

My point is thieves have to sacrifice a lot less in function to have useful stealth than mesmers do. Mesmer stealth baseline is pretty crap and nowhere near as accessible.

kaplis.7195:

Phantaram.1265:

So the complaint about stealth is that you can attack from it?

God have mercy on their souls. Attacking from stealth, treason!

Nice! When, few months ago, That’s So Pish used to instagib one of your teammates from stealth at the beginning of each match it sounded like you guys had a big problem with it.

Back then they hadnt figured out how to fully exploit teldos smoke bomb :P
Stealth time is way too long imo

PistolWhip.2697:

Zenith.7301:

If by “certain things better” you mean “monopolize roles”, sure.

Because engineer isn’t a jack of all trades — it’s an aoe condition cc class, you might as well take away the rifle-- and a guardian is just a bunker. Might as well erase all the traits and weapons that don’t fit that, and if you’re going to pigeonhole necros into terror builds to be able to 1v1 instead of being food for thieves and mesmers, you might as well erase dagger and axe as weapons — why have them ingame if the presence of thieves and mesmers will make most offensive build options for other classes useless?

And then people like you complain about bunker. Fuqqing duh, it’s the only way those classes can survive being farmed by thieves and mesmers, and even then D/P and S/D thieves and mesmers can still significantly threaten bunkers — so with a single build they can do pretty much everything they want besides bunker a point, useful only for spvp, and in WvW where bunkers are useless outside D/D ele, thieves and mesmers become the choice roaming classes.

What I want to do to people like you who play mesmers and thieves is ban you from playing said classes, force you to play a mindnumbingly boring BM ranger or bunker engineer, while everybody gets to play thief and mesmer, and if you decide to play a ranger or necro and feel like running anything that is not a bunker — be forced to hopelessly die as any longbow or greatsword burst ranger would or dagger berk necro would.

Slow down there genius, I don’t like Mesmer and I don’t want to play one. I also quit maining thief a while back because they lacked a lot certain classes have, and it was go zerker or go home.

I play a warrior, and main it. Being one of the most under-powered classes in spvp along with Necro, I think your prejudice is misguided. This being said, thieves are very easy to fight, you just need to of played one I guess, contact a necro named High Warlord Sikari, hes a very good necro and using his build I beat a lot of D/P thieves.

Having mained a guardian too, bunkers are far easier to play, and I’ve never had issues with thief. Mesmers however, they are a different issue, but it isn’t their burst damage which makes them broken.

If you think bunkers are boring that’s your personal preference, I personally know many people who dominate using the bunker roles Engi, Ranger and Guardian can provide and they enjoy it a great deal. Sure I hate bunkers, but that’s because I play a warrior and they are painstakingly annoying to fight for me.

Those poor GS/Longbow Rangers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jo0joBlyg

I’ve seen plenty of zerker guardians, well played they are pretty kitten potent. I’ve also played a zerker engi before and wrecked face (albeit after learning the mechanics). Necro I haven’t tried zerker yet admittedly, but I’ve seen WvW vids of a full zerker necro beat every other class in 1v1’s.

My point still stands, Anet intends for certain classes to do certain things better, that’s why GC is preferable to a thief or a mesmer over a necro. Same way going Rabid or Shamans is preferable to other classes than Thief or mesmer.

You linked me a video of a ranger dueling a mesmer, who ran staff/gs, didn’t dodge the pet knockdown or interrupt his rapidfire with distortion or try to blink through him to break the channel.

Then it showed me a duel with a “tanky” D/D ele who used shocking aura against his longbow arrows, who ate a 6k maul (doesn’t happen on a tanky ele, not even with signets activated, sorry), who ate a hilt bash and randomly used armor of earth when he hadn’t even been stunned. Who didn’t use much of frost aura whenever the ranger engaged him in melee, and who didn’t try pressuring him when he was in longbow.

And in none of those duels did that ranger fight a D/P thief, let alone one that would pop Thieves Guild on him.

shimmerless.4560:

Zenith.7301:

shimmerless.4560:

Zenith.7301:

shimmerless.4560:

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

You can get pretty substantial stealth uptime on a Mes if you trait for it.

Phantasm mesmers can’t trait for it, and the mesmers who can trait for stealth are garbage builds anyways. Nobody is going to go into the Chaos line as it is absolutely terrible in the adept traitline and requires heavy investment to bear some sort of return.

I’d also love to know how many mesmers in spvp or roaming wvw (not 10-15man team fights) run veil.

Torch is an absolutely atrocious weapon due to the long cooldowns and the horrible phantasm.

You seem prone to gross exaggeration and baseless categorical claims. I’ve traited into Chaos just fine, for Adept you get access to Manip CDR (amazing for keeping melee distance with Staff trait) or a flat 10% damage reduction (on top of a line that already rewards ample Protection uptime). For roaming I lessened points in Dom and put into Chaos because with Dom you can kill someone faster but you have terrible scaling in uneven engagements and poor mobility. It’s just a trade.

As for Veil I don’t run it much (not fond of skills with high CDs). Torch can be great for stealth openers the CD is not that long

Now if you’re going to tell me this all hurts you in X or Y area then I’ll agree to an extent but I would never claim you can be and do everything with a 30/30/30/30/30 build. I don’t think any class has such a luxury. If you trait up to 30 then you will have to give somewhere but it’s far from unplayable, quite the opposite. What’s nice about Prismatic is that your bonus is applied to the stealth given to allies, so your MI lasts 6 seconds for them too.

You are giving something substantial. Either fury on phantasm or points in Inspiration or Illusions.

My point is thieves have to sacrifice a lot less in function to have useful stealth than mesmers do. Mesmer stealth baseline is pretty crap and nowhere near as accessible.

Mesmers are not Thieves and Thieves are not Mesmers, you are only concurring with what I originally said which was that you cannot do and be everything at once. If you want to run pure phant then yes it’s a very strict setup but it’s not the be-all end-all Mes build and you will not insta-down or get b-slapped through the monitor by big brother ANet for putting points into Chaos.

Or, you can run phantasm build without points in Chaos and do just as well roaming/1v1.

This is the cutest post ever omg. Stealth hard for players that don’t know how to play against it, that is one argument. Once you know how to beat stealth or counter it you will be fine.

Another argument is do not let him/her/them stealth. This is fine way to counter stealth, unless it is a SR from far away, not much you can do about that. But then that is more of a general game plan and they have team composition made to burst you on far point.

THE GENERAL CONSENSUS: Don’t let them stealth. Can’t even mention how many times I have died playing D/P trying to escape because I could not stealth. Mesmer stealth barely lasts longer than 4s. I wouldn’t really consider their stealth that “game breaking”.

shimmerless.4560:

Zenith.7301:

shimmerless.4560:

Zenith.7301:

shimmerless.4560:

Zenith.7301:

shimmerless.4560:

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

You can get pretty substantial stealth uptime on a Mes if you trait for it.

Phantasm mesmers can’t trait for it, and the mesmers who can trait for stealth are garbage builds anyways. Nobody is going to go into the Chaos line as it is absolutely terrible in the adept traitline and requires heavy investment to bear some sort of return.

I’d also love to know how many mesmers in spvp or roaming wvw (not 10-15man team fights) run veil.

Torch is an absolutely atrocious weapon due to the long cooldowns and the horrible phantasm.

You seem prone to gross exaggeration and baseless categorical claims. I’ve traited into Chaos just fine, for Adept you get access to Manip CDR (amazing for keeping melee distance with Staff trait) or a flat 10% damage reduction (on top of a line that already rewards ample Protection uptime). For roaming I lessened points in Dom and put into Chaos because with Dom you can kill someone faster but you have terrible scaling in uneven engagements and poor mobility. It’s just a trade.

As for Veil I don’t run it much (not fond of skills with high CDs). Torch can be great for stealth openers the CD is not that long

Now if you’re going to tell me this all hurts you in X or Y area then I’ll agree to an extent but I would never claim you can be and do everything with a 30/30/30/30/30 build. I don’t think any class has such a luxury. If you trait up to 30 then you will have to give somewhere but it’s far from unplayable, quite the opposite. What’s nice about Prismatic is that your bonus is applied to the stealth given to allies, so your MI lasts 6 seconds for them too.

You are giving something substantial. Either fury on phantasm or points in Inspiration or Illusions.

My point is thieves have to sacrifice a lot less in function to have useful stealth than mesmers do. Mesmer stealth baseline is pretty crap and nowhere near as accessible.

Mesmers are not Thieves and Thieves are not Mesmers, you are only concurring with what I originally said which was that you cannot do and be everything at once. If you want to run pure phant then yes it’s a very strict setup but it’s not the be-all end-all Mes build and you will not insta-down or get b-slapped through the monitor by big brother ANet for putting points into Chaos.

Or, you can run phantasm build without points in Chaos and do just as well roaming/1v1.

Phant scales even worse than pure shatter in WvW so good luck finding those noble 1 v. 1s outside of dueling clubs

If you can’t disengage then that’s an issue with you. I can roam with my phantasm mesmer just fine and it’s about the only build that can reliably kill competent thieves. My BM ranger, engineer, and ele can only stalemate since none of them have the raw burst to gib a thief in between revealed debuffs.

To be honest stealth is totally fine it just depends on how you use it, maybe not on thiefs but stealth on other classes can be used to do many different tactics. For example this 1…. http://www.twitch.tv/xsuperxgw2/c/2469548

A visual feedback if I hit a stealthed enemy with cleaving/aoe would be more than enough. Or, alternatively: stealth should not stack.

I run decoy/signet/blink and mass invis. I am getting away if I want to.

My problem with stealth is that not all attacks can be used against stealthed foes.

For example, warrior can swing widely or d/d ele can use his auto attacks. But a S/F ele (what I play) has very few skills that can hit a stealthed thief, or pressure him out of refuge. The s/d auto attacks don’t work without a target and the aoes are on high c/d or are lamesauce.

I’m sure there are other classes / setups in the same boat.

TGSlasher.1458:

My problem with stealth is that not all attacks can be used against stealthed foes.

For example, warrior can swing widely or d/d ele can use his auto attacks. But a S/F ele (what I play) has very few skills that can hit a stealthed thief, or pressure him out of refuge. The s/d auto attacks don’t work without a target and the aoes are on high c/d or are lamesauce.

I’m sure there are other classes / setups in the same boat.

Oh there are quite a few. Rangers in general have a really hard time with this, due to the fact that pretty much all of our weapons (with the exception of the GS) require a target to be used properly.