Guild Wars 2

Just a balancing thought.

From what I’ve seen there isn’t really a counter to someone going invisible (e.g. there’s no way to un-cloak a person). And some of the classes (cough mesmer cough) use this to their advantage as a substitute for any defense.

Then looking at the conditions after the previous update, bleed appears to be the only one that doesn’t offer any secondary effects. (Fire’s secondary effect is its extreme damage)

I would suggest that the bleed dots still be visible on an enemy player even if said player goes invisible. In this way invisible players would leave a sort-of trail of blood which other players could use to guesstimate where they’re at.

A perfect, non-excessive, balance change to stealth and bleed…It provides attacking players an option to fight stealth, and if an invisible player gets hit with bleeding, they can still counter the counter with condition removal.

Thoughts?

engineers can de-stealth targets with the trait lock on.
engineers and rangers can prevent targets from stealthing by putting reveal on them.

Guardian elite spec will receive a trap that also reveals caught targets.

that is more than enough counter-play in my book.
thiefs are already borderline-viable in competitive game.modes anyways.
Their days of being OP due to stealth are long gone, and they don’t really need further nerf-bats on their stealth-mechanics. And due to their extreme squishiness, their high burst is kinda balanced as well.

I’ve unsuccessfully tried to play thief. Couldn’t get into it because I hate the playstyle of this class. But fighting them constantly in WvW and PvP is enough experience “against” the class, to think that they are fine where they are, if not even being underpowered sustain-wise.

Same goes for mesmer.
Even if their burst is pretty extreme currently, there is counterplay to stealth, and their repetitive burst-patterns are so predictable that you can dodge them even if they are in stealth.

Also – secondary effect wise – vulnerability, fear, cripple, immob, blind & burn also just have 1 secondary effect, so there is no point in bringing bleed “in line” with the rest of them, since only chill, weakness, poison, torment and confusion have secondary effects.
And once reapers are a thing, chill will be the only (announced yet) condition that can be traited for a 3rd effect.

I’d recommend you to play thief/mesmer yourself for a bit, and watch streams of experienced players to understand how the combat works from their POV. Makes it a lot easier to deal with them on your preferred classes.