Guild Wars 2

Hi ANet,

Fair warning I play thief primarily, but this impacts Mesmers too. I’ve been playing Revenant and Daredevil (without stealth) for most of my playtime this weekend, in part because of what I’m about to explain.

This issue has always existed with the current implementation of reveal skills, but it hasn’t been prevelant in PvP because these abilities see so little use. I’ve been running into numerous Heralds and they have an instant cast stealth removal and reveal every 20 seconds and this is going to be on every Glint Herald.

Currently the way that reveal counters work is they inflict the reveal status in addition to removing stealth.

Here’s the issue this creates if it’s not obvious already. For Mesmer and Thief, there’s traits that put you in or make you benefit from stealth. You also have defensive skills that put you into stealth.

When you get revealed from a non-self inflicted reveal and the reveal duration is active, it severely limits your options, as in you might have none. Meta D/P thief uses stealth, shadowshot, shortbow 3/5, and shadow step as it’s primary defensive tools.

Revealed from outside sources causes you to lose control on some of your primary defenses. It removes your options to use 2 of your 3 utility skills, reduces the overall value of steal, prevents you from removing conditions and recovering from pressure you’ve taken during your burst.

Basically this 1 effect makes most of your defensive options you spec for useless during the moments you need them most. Again, this has always been the case, but revealed has never been a meta effect. On the Herald, as it is currently, revealed will be a meta effect and there will be changes in the meta like no stealth saving stomps (though part of that is due to unyielding anguish vs shadow refuge).

Maybe you want this? Idk, but just understand that because D/P thief relies so heavily on stealth for landing its backstabs and its defenses there’s the chance it’ll be better to just grab another revenant instead, since they can +1 quite effectively with just 1 use of Phase Traversal and permaswiftness (and they are more ready for a fight as they get their resource back immediately by swapping legends).

I don’t know what would keep a stealth heavy build semi-useful in team fights with revealed readily available.. revealed from outside sources simply removes stealth and doesn’t leave a revealed effect? Not sure, that’s for you to figure out if you still want stealth builds to be a thing, this is just one voice in the wind bringing awareness to you that a playstyle that has been around for a longtime is at risk.

Can we get a tl;dr thanks

I don’t have a problem with reveal mechanics in the game, but AoE reveal on 20CD is a bit rough.

They want every thief to struggle in pvp otherwise they wouldn’t implement so many brainless revealed skill. If you didn’t get a clue from the patches for the past few years: Anet never cared about what thieves needed, only about complains from other classes. I don’t see how it will change now (especially if you look at this joke of elite spec).

Being stunned for 2 seconds by an enemy that came out of nowhere and then bleeding to death while they shadowstep away limits MY options too. I think stealth needs a bit of a hit. If a reliable reveal skill that people actually want to use is on the way, I’ll welcome it.

Now I’ll have to think about when I engage as a steath thief, rather than just seeing one person by themself and slowly chipping them down.

I do not think they are dumb enough to do so, but as the title says; looking forward to see the day.

Kheo.2504:

Being stunned for 2 seconds by an enemy that came out of nowhere and then bleeding to death while they shadowstep away limits MY options too. I think stealth needs a bit of a hit. If a reliable reveal skill that people actually want to use is on the way, I’ll welcome it.

Now I’ll have to think about when I engage as a steath thief, rather than just seeing one person by themself and slowly chipping them down.

bleeding to death? don’t tell me you actually die vs condi thieves lmao

Kheo.2504:

Being stunned for 2 seconds by an enemy that came out of nowhere and then bleeding to death while they shadowstep away limits MY options too. I think stealth needs a bit of a hit. If a reliable reveal skill that people actually want to use is on the way, I’ll welcome it.

Now I’ll have to think about when I engage as a steath thief, rather than just seeing one person by themself and slowly chipping them down.

Joke attempt?