Guild Wars 2

Pre-casting it during a match will land you on the enemy’s point completely unseen.
10 seconds of stealth is far too much.
In tPvP, the main purpose a thief (BS&PW) brings over other classes is to get in unnoticed and burst someone down before they can react (because they didn’t notice you; less time to prepare/react).
10 Seconds of stealth just trivializes this as the enemy team can’t even tell what half of the map the thief is on.
SFuge, if kept the way it is now, I believe should be given 1 less tick. At LEAST make it 5-7 seconds of stealth.

Thanks.
-R45 Thief Player, 1600+ Games Played [on Thief].

edit:

You’re not seeing the big picture here.
If you can pop up from mid to the enemy’s far point completely undetected at any time, that means the enemy team can’t have a bunker sitting inbetween points (ex: foefire: ele, engie on cliff).
So you either HAVE to have a mesmer on your team with portal on point, or fight mid 4v5.
I don’t want to see any one class being required for a team to compete competitively.

Nice to see that you have realised that thieves are broken.

Is it because you have to play against good ones now since every good team has at least one thief reroll?

The thief’s damage potential is not broken at all. You still need to learn to play.
A 10-second stealth when applied to it (or any roamer for that matter), however, is.

edit: Also… What?
The enemy team having a necro whom I can only burst down to 1/2hp (If he doesn’t deathshroud/spec armor it) then turn around and melt my face off while in stealth is FAR scarier than a thief which i can just blind+shadowstep away if I get caught.
Powerr knows this I’m sure.

The argument i’m making is extremely simple:

Lots of teams are rerolling into thief and even switching other roles around to accommodate it. They wouldnt make this massive investment in learning how to play thief and others having to learn other things UNLESS the pay off was worth it – thieves are just that good.

Also I really dont know what to say if you die to a necro as a thief. He only even has a chance with plague form up and even then you can just pop Guild of Skill.

ehtom.5047:

Also I really dont know what to say if you die to a necro as a thief. He only even has a chance with plague form up and even then you can just pop Guild of Skill.

Not sure if serious.

The spectral armor/well of darkness builds destroy backstab thieves.

I agree I am playing thief all day today and shadow refuge is crazy good, matter in fact, shadow refuge and blind powder in hands of a good thief leads to TONS of survivability for a glass cannon character

Said it the very first day, that skill is op in almost every aspect

Malicious.6742:

Said it the very first day, that skill is op in almost every aspect

Only now (as of Act1 Patch) that you can move out of it after it’s finished applying for a 10-second stealth.

wow so there was actually an undocumented megabuff to thieves…

Nope, it was there allright in the patchnotes, the changes to shadow refuge. it was bugged before and fixed so its now working as intended and now its blatantly overpowered?

How is 10 seconds stealth from Shadow Refuge OP when you can achive the same 10 seconds just spamming Cluster Bomb on Smoke Screen?

Yeah and heals for the same amount as 1 engineer healthpack lol

Jumper.9482:

Malicious.6742:

Said it the very first day, that skill is op in almost every aspect

Only now (as of Act1 Patch) that you can move out of it after it’s finished applying for a 10-second stealth.

I was actually referring to the very first day of the Act1 Halloween patch

Asomal.6453:

How is 10 seconds stealth from Shadow Refuge OP when you can achive the same 10 seconds just spamming Cluster Bomb on Smoke Screen?

You do know that Smoke Screen bombing consumes Initiative you probably don’t have. Shadow Refuge is super ez to use and can be used to stomp downed enemies or to res mates or just to safe or res yourself if you use it right before you get downed. It’s just far superior.

You do know that Smoke Screen bombing consumes Initiative you probably don’t have. Shadow Refuge is super ez to use and can be used to stomp downed enemies or to res mates or just to safe or res yourself if you use it right before you get downed. It’s just far superior.

Though Smoke Screen is 30 seconds CD against 60 from Shadow Refuge, but SR is superior,i’ll give you that. However, it’s not like god mode to revive yourself or an ally. Is it good? Of course it is! I use SR all the time for those cases but let’s be real here: How many people keep attacking you when you enter stealth to revive an ally? You and your ally didn’t move from place but some people may think ’’wow where did they go?" and does nothing until you reapper!

In all games I play melee dps and indeed usually thief or warrior, in GW2 I didnt like them.

On my thief, I dont use backstab build, caltrop or other lame builds, just random stuff. The thing is I rarely play thief because of broken mechanics and autoaim skills. Makes you wonder where player skill is :p

Anyway, I always use the same utilities/elite:

- Hide in shadows, casting time but u get heal + stealth
- Blinding powder, instant stealth + blind
- Shadow Refuge, instant aoe long duration stealth + heal
- Quickness, which I only use for autoattack automatic kills when im out of initiative (never seen anything so lame but since I have a free utility slot ^^)
- And finally Thieves guild, cause you gotta be kitten to not use this iwin-without-fighting button

Of course I use D/D + Shortbow combo…
So I get another instant stealth with CnD (required for steal/cnd exploit) and I get stealth combos too but … 4 rather short cd stealth skills are usually more than enough.

Overall, thief damage is ok… And shouldnt have been nerfed to begin with /sigh too late

But so many out of jail cards + bugged stealth rendering + steal/cnd exploit + thief highest burst damage = w t f ??
If Anet would fix obvious gamebreaking bugs .. Maybe adjusting/balancing classes would make sense…

1/ fix teleport exploits
2/ fix stealth rendering or remove it temporarily

Waiting for rogue crywaggon to tell you how much Im wrong lol

What does all that have to do with Shadow Refuge…

Asomal.6453:

Though Smoke Screen is 30 seconds CD against 60 from Shadow Refuge, but SR is superior,i’ll give you that. However, it’s not like god mode to revive yourself or an ally. Is it good? Of course it is! I use SR all the time for those cases but let’s be real here: How many people keep attacking you when you enter stealth to revive an ally? You and your ally didn’t move from place but some people may think ’’wow where did they go?" and does nothing until you reapper!

If you trait for heal in stealth and if your mate actually keeps ressing himself it’s not that hard to res – unless heavily aoe’d ofc.

Jumper.9482:

Pre-casting it during a match will land you on the enemy’s point completely unseen.
10 seconds of stealth is far too much.
In tPvP, the main purpose a thief (BS&PW) brings over other classes is to get in unnoticed and burst someone down before they can react (because they didn’t notice you; less time to prepare/react).
10 Seconds of stealth just trivializes this as the enemy team can’t even tell what half of the map the thief is on.
SFuge, if kept the way it is now, I believe should be given 1 less tick. At LEAST make it 5-7 seconds of stealth.

Thanks.
-R45 Thief Player, 1600+ Games Played [on Thief].

it has a visible border for its duration and a big freaking house above it when first put down. not too mention its a fixed point, you have to stay in it pretty much its full duration, doing nothing, to get 10 seconds of stealth.

can you explain in better detail what your complaining about?

You have to stay in it for 4s. After that you got 8s of stealth during which you can move around freely.

Malicious.6742:

You have to stay in it for 4s. After that you got 8s of stealth during which you can move around freely.

ok, thats not 10 seconds but ok

but agian, im not getting what the OP is complaining about exactly, about a thief using SR while capturing a point?

ok, thats not 10 seconds but ok
but agian, im not getting what the OP is complaining about exactly, about a thief using SR while capturing a point?

You can’t cap a point while in stealth, unfortunately. OP is complaining when one use SR before engaging a fight, grating the individual 8 seconds invisible to cover a large amount of ground and surprise your enemy, which I, don’t think it’s a real game breaking problem.

8s stealth is hella long. It’s long enough to travel at least one third of the map without being noticed and finally attack the enemy’s point. You don’t see the house, you don’t see a thief approach you and then hide you simply don’t see anything until you eat the first BS.

LOL. What’s funny about this: I was playing my thief today for the first time in about a month(my main is an Ele) and during my time I noticed that SR was letting me leave and basically get to the other side of the map before it would end.

I was going to report it as a bug because I was like “wow, this is ridiculously overpowered”. Pretty neat that it is intended.

I will tell you why I´m giving a break to this game… it´s just because of this!! You guys are like baby girls that QQ for anything possible when it comes to thief concern… tired of this kind of weird behaviour… not fun anymore cause of this never ending crying community. It just became easy to find funnier things to do.

Malicious.6742:

What does all that have to do with Shadow Refuge…

Asomal.6453:

Though Smoke Screen is 30 seconds CD against 60 from Shadow Refuge, but SR is superior,i’ll give you that. However, it’s not like god mode to revive yourself or an ally. Is it good? Of course it is! I use SR all the time for those cases but let’s be real here: How many people keep attacking you when you enter stealth to revive an ally? You and your ally didn’t move from place but some people may think ’’wow where did they go?" and does nothing until you reapper!

If you trait for heal in stealth and if your mate actually keeps ressing himself it’s not that hard to res – unless heavily aoe’d ofc.

Are you mad ? with healing traits in shadw refuge u heal 700 hps for first 5 seconds then 350 or so for next 10. The tottal healing is around 7000 if you dont go out of stealth for 15 seconds. plus 1400 that shadow refuge innitialy heals making it around 8400. Pretty incredible but doesnt go with caping points or heavy backstab or other builds if you aim for damage.

Learn to play against it, it’s not overpowered. /thread

Its not OP however it came to a point where taking Blinding powder is useless as we got shadow refuge. They should be kind of evened out a little. Current balance of our invis is like 1 aoe invis 10 seconds 1400 heal other aoe invis 3 seconds and blind on enemy.

^There are tons of similar issues for other classes and no ones complaining about them.

That sounds like a bug, it should function by breaking stealth as soon as it ends or the thief leaves the radius. I doubt it is intended to build up stealth duration if the thief stays in it for the full duration.

It was in patch notes, that if you stand 5 seconds in shadow refuge while area is shown for enemies you have 10 seconds free movement invisible. However they reduced time we could be invisible and caped stealth time limit to a smaller one too in same patch, but ppl who ask for nerfs dont know that so w/e.

They already tweaked shadow refuged , Jumper stop lying about your rank your obvious not playing a thief if you are and not uptodate then your bad.

“Overall, thief damage is ok… And shouldnt have been nerfed to begin with /sigh too late”

Lol I think this guy actually said this with a straight face.

You’re not seeing the big picture here.
If you can pop up from mid to the enemy’s far point completely undetected at any time, that means the enemy team can’t have a bunker sitting inbetween points (ex: foefire: ele, engie on cliff).
So you either HAVE to have a mesmer on your team with portal on point, or fight mid 4v5.
I don’t want to see any one class being required for a team to compete competitively.

offence.4726:

They already tweaked shadow refuged , Jumper stop lying about your rank your obvious not playing a thief if you are and not uptodate then your bad.

You clearly dont do much pvp if you dont know Jumper

MasterDeere.3417:

offence.4726:

They already tweaked shadow refuged , Jumper stop lying about your rank your obvious not playing a thief if you are and not uptodate then your bad.

You clearly dont do much pvp if you dont know Jumper

Im actually busy with my paid team and playing the game I stopped watching twitch streams and if I do i rather watch team paradigm. Assume more bro

Jumper.9482:

You’re not seeing the big picture here.
If you can pop up from mid to the enemy’s far point completely undetected at any time, that means the enemy team can’t have a bunker sitting inbetween points (ex: foefire: ele, engie on cliff).
So you either HAVE to have a mesmer on your team with portal on point, or fight mid 4v5.
I don’t want to see any one class being required for a team to compete competitively.

so because a class can screw with a current accepted strat its OP?

no, thats how the game evolves kitten /p>

Wolfe.3097

so because a class can screw with a current accepted strat its OP?

It’s not screweing with a current strat, it’s reinforcing the current strat.

Portals are pretty much already a requirement unless you want to fight 4v5 the entire match. Not being able to have vision on thieves just makes it worse.

Not really sure what’s hard to understand?

@Noctred: So they found a counter to your counter. Get back to the drawing board and find a new counter. Overcoming onstacles is how metas grow. Much like how overcoming obstacles makes us grow as people.

Dual.8953:

@Noctred: So they found a counter to your counter. Get back to the drawing board and find a new counter. Overcoming onstacles is how metas grow. Much like how overcoming obstacles makes us grow as people.

It’s not a counter to anything. I don’t think you understand what is being said.

The current meta typically involves a mesmer on home point who can leave a portal and then go team fight mid. If anybody is seen going for a backcap, the mesmer ports back home and stops the neut. However, it’s also possible to have other classes fill this role if your team’s map vision is good enough.

With shadow refuge granting as much stealth as it does, thieves can avoid all vision and simply show up on the enemy team’s home point completely unannounced. This effectively makes mesmers the ONLY valid home point defenders who can also assist in other areas of the map, because they’re the only ones who can make it back in time to stop the neut on home. If you place another class on your home while the opposing team has a mesmer on their home, then your team will be fighting 4v5 because your home point defender will need to sit there 24/7.

This effectively reinforces the already existing meta of putting a portal mesmer on your home point. It prevents the meta from evolving.

Does that make more sense?

Noctred.6732:

Dual.8953:

@Noctred: So they found a counter to your counter. Get back to the drawing board and find a new counter. Overcoming onstacles is how metas grow. Much like how overcoming obstacles makes us grow as people.

It’s not a counter to anything. I don’t think you understand what is being said.

The current meta typically involves a mesmer on home point who can leave a portal and then go team fight mid. If anybody is seen going for a backcap, the mesmer ports back home and stops the neut. However, it’s also possible to have other classes fill this role if your team’s map vision is good enough.

With shadow refuge granting as much stealth as it does, thieves can avoid all vision and simply show up on the enemy team’s home point completely unannounced. This effectively makes mesmers the ONLY valid home point defenders who can also assist in other areas of the map, because they’re the only ones who can make it back in time to stop the neut on home. If you place another class on your home while the opposing team has a mesmer on their home, then your team will be fighting 4v5 because your home point defender will need to sit there 24/7.

This effectively reinforces the already existing meta of putting a portal mesmer on your home point. It prevents the meta from evolving.

Does that make more sense?

Yes, it means your new strategy failed to beat the old one and you need new method to counter the current strategy. Perhaps something so out of left field it’ll break the current flow of battle. Basically, find any way to win. It doesn’t need to hinge on a single class or role, think broader, where you stand, where your enemy stands, how moving your guys will force them to move.

8s stealth is hella long. It’s long enough to travel at least one third of the map without being noticed and finally attack the enemy’s point. You don’t see the house, you don’t see a thief approach you and then hide you simply don’t see anything until you eat the first BS.

If they are backstabing you from stealth from Shadow Refuge, it won’t be that damaging of an attack chain since they can’t use C&D. Steal, BS all at once.

Shadow Refuge is fine, you guys need to get over it.

@Dual: You still aren’t’ getting it, but at this point I don’t think you will. It isn’t even about you disagreeing, it’s that you don’t seem to understand what he’s saying.

If you have some super secret uber idea that you don’t want to share because it’ll make you the #1 GW2 player ever, fine. However, generalizations on theorycrafting strategies don’t help in the face of an explicit example of how the ability is affecting the meta.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Dual: You still aren’t’ getting it, but at this point I don’t think you will. It isn’t even about you disagreeing, it’s that you don’t seem to understand what he’s saying.

If you have some super secret uber idea that you don’t want to share because it’ll make you the #1 GW2 player ever, fine. However, generalizations on theorycrafting strategies don’t help in the face of an explicit example of how the ability is affecting the meta.

Who cares if it affects the “meta”? The “meta” is supposed to evolve. It isn’t supposed to stagnate and be the same forever. As classes are changed over time, the meta will change as well. That is how it is, stop complaining or don’t tPvP.

@Dual, Ashanor;

What these guys are saying is that this PREVENTS the meta from evolving.

It takes the currently used primary strategy, and further pigeonholes teams into using that strategy.

They are saying… this skill, as it stands right now, REDUCES viable options for the meta game.

Sky.9347:

@Dual, Ashanor;

What these guys are saying is that this PREVENTS the meta from evolving.

It takes the currently used primary strategy, and further pigeonholes teams into using that strategy.

They are saying… this skill, as it stands right now, REDUCES viable options for the meta game.

People were using Mesmer for that purpose anyway, it doesn’t change anything. It just makes it less easy mode for you so you don’t like it.

Sky.9347:

@Dual, Ashanor;

What these guys are saying is that this PREVENTS the meta from evolving.

It takes the currently used primary strategy, and further pigeonholes teams into using that strategy.

They are saying… this skill, as it stands right now, REDUCES viable options for the meta game.

Yeah, exactly. I really think there’s some kind of brick wall here.

The current meta involves a portal on home point. However, it can be substituted for something else if your team has good enough map vision.

With shadow refuge the way it is, the meta will continue to involve a portal on home point, but it will be pretty much required cause there’s no other way to prevent a neutralize on home when you have 0 vision on thieves due to the current shadow refuge implementation.

I really don’t understand where the disconnect is. This isn’t helping the meta evolve – it’s forcing the meta to become even more single-minded.

So nerf Shadow Refuge? You do realize the other obvious answer is to nerf Portal right? Sorry, but you shouldn’t have perfect vision of the map anyway, nor should you be able to instantly fall back to defend a node. That is the problem. You think everything needs to be the way YOU think it should be.

Ashanor.5319:

So nerf Shadow Refuge? You do realize the other obvious answer is to nerf Portal right? Sorry, but you shouldn’t have perfect vision of the map anyway, nor should you be able to instantly fall back to defend a node. That is the problem. You think everything needs to be the way YOU think it should be.

Somehow I feel like you are being argumentative just because you’re angry at… something.

Seriously, try to take a step back and look at this again.

Portal is a completely different story. The way it functions is completely different even the result is different.
Anyway you guys do realize it’s thieves complaining about their skill to be slightly overpowered it’s not some random people QQing about OHMAGAZ TIEF BS DMG OVAPOWAD NURF PLIX

Ashanor.5319:

So nerf Shadow Refuge? You do realize the other obvious answer is to nerf Portal right?

…

You think everything needs to be the way YOU think it should be.

Actually, I don’t like portal either. I think it’s bad for conquest in general because it marginalizes roamers and allows you to effectively 5 man zerg a point and still make it back to home in time to prevent a neut.

However, nerfing portal with shadow refuge in its current state would simply exaggerate the effectiveness of shadow refuge (fairly small maps + long-duration stealth w/ no speed reduction). On the other hand, reducing the stealth duration on shadow refuge once out of the radius while leaving portal the way it is would at least offer the opportunity for teams to do something other than play portal mesmers on home – because it wouldn’t be the only way to stop SR neuts without playing 4v5.

They’re both poor mechanics, but the basic problem is that shadow refuge forces portal mesmers – while portal mesmers do not necessarily force shadow refuge. Therefore, only one of these mechanics truly forces the meta into a singular strat.

IMO anyways.

Also – keep in mind that the author of this thread is a thief.