Guild Wars 2

This applies to both WvW an SPvP. The main reason why me, and many of my friends have given up on any sort of PvP (whether it is wvw, or sPvP, or tPvP) is

Stealth

As simple as that. After countless hours playing all sort of encounters, playing thieves ourselves, we have decided that the mechanic is too broken at the moment.

An example of stealth done “right” is mesmer, and this is arguable, but once you learn the mechanics of the class, you can get around pretty easily. Thieves on the other side dont, and here let me explain point by point why;

1. Stealth offers many benefices
   You can go unnoticed, scout, have the fights start on your terms, disengage at will, stealth your alies, stomp enemies without they even knowing you were even there, revive allies, get behind the front enemy line, kill someone before they have a chance to retaliate. Comes with boons like regen, swiftness. Which brings me to the next point:

1. Too many benefices, no handicap.
   In any sort of balanced game stealth comes with some sort of handicap (no, not being able to cap is not a handicap, if anything sometimes it helps thieves since if a capture point were to suddenly stop being capped you would know a thief is there), some of these handicaps are:

>not being able to use it in combat unless you use a very long CD skill
>decreased mobility
>a chance to get revealed
>damage reveals
>CC reveals
>some sort of item, condition, skill, circumstances that reveal them

Currently none of these have been implemented, and there is literally no way to counter stealth. AoE does not cut it, given that those generally speaking come with long CDs, are not guaranteed to hit and a thief have still swiftness, regen and teleports as well (if he is any smart) will move away from the red circles, which are now on CD for the enemy and the enemy still doesnt know if it were any effective, even if one tick managed to hit.

1. Stealth is too accessible

A well medium to well played thief is able to keep constant stealth if he manages the skills well, this allow for little to no counterplay, and even if one were to win the fight due to focus fire from 3+ people (usually you cant afford this in a tPvP match) , the aftertaste is bitter, no rewarding feeling knowing he will be back in 10 secs doing the same. The only fun comes from the thief knowing they are giving a hard time. Which brings me to the other point;

1. Fun ratio of stealther/defender is not there
   Usually beating a mesmer, seeing through all the mirages feels good, stomping the real one feels good, both the attacker and the defender feel good about messing around with the fight. It allows for changing tactics, skills, making decisions. With thieves this is non existent. A thief can pop out of nowhere and end you before you can do much, if you manage to live all it takes is a couple of more seconds to repeat the process, unless you run. There is no fun in running (or dying) or having the enemy always run away when you manage to do something to him. The fun is sure on the thief part, none on the defender. Which brings me to my last point;

1. Thief are too effective at taking down targets

As simple as that, the rotation is very simple 9 1 222 6 1 222 8, repeat until dead. Currently not even blocking the first attack can free you from the guaranteed 6-8k backstab that follows it. There is literally nothing you can do to prevent a thief with countless gap closer to get onto you and insta gib you. While you can survive and run, point of the matter is; once again, they offer too little of a window for retaliation

Solutions; well, for starter make block reveals thieves, CC get them of stealth (a guardian pull should do it, a knock back should do it, roots dont, but any sort of stun should). Reduce the damage of backstab, add it to skill that require some planning, some sort of “RISK”. To make up for this; give them some more team utility, it will fix their PvE problems as well as given them something to do in WvW and tPvP. Like I said, move the damage from backstab to other skills, and have backstab have an internal cooldown of 15 secs.

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Moderator.3406:

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Thank you!

Now, back to the topic, here as some suggestions that could make Thief more desirable in PvE enviroments. Since their damage and stealth would need to go down, the need something to make it up with;

We already have plenty of boons sharers, mesmers can already given stealth and so do thieves, so instead we need to come with something that adds utility while remaining stealth/rogue-ish

A fun utility is, after stealing, you can share with 5 people the weapon you get. As for more serious stuff, having your mates been stealthed (with traits) would give them random boons (sort of like mesmers but this boons would be)

Fury
Might

Also, maybe having them give a 1 sec guaranteed stun/daze out of stealth when using an AoE stealth (30-45 secs CD) or poisons would make stealth fun to use on allies rather than just selfishly.

The possibilities are countless, I believe we need to move away from this uncouterable thief who excell only in PvP enviroments and does little to nothing outside of it. That prevents people from having too much fun due to hard hard to counter it is (near impossible)

sorry for hte dumb question but a thief would be conssidered fotm? (new player game patching as i type)

Shalentei.8061:

sorry for hte dumb question but a thief would be conssidered fotm? (new player game patching as i type)

easy to learn, hard to master, worth it for sure. Right now they offer little counterplay so they are quite safe to play. Of course, like any class, you will require some knowledge of other classes, but if you want to play without dying much and while killing almost everyone, then thief is your class.

The other one that is relatively easy to pick up is mesmer

But as far as FoTM is concerned, necro is t now, conditions are out of control and necros are the biggest issue on it

ive made a thread of this but as some one who spent the last 2 years almost playing star wars what would you recomend for a new player in terms of pvp?

I agree with this topic, however I don’t believe that backstab should be tonned down.

If you take away some of the thieves abilities to stealth, you take away his ability to use Backstab, thus double nerfing it.

Some of the ideas I have to bring to the topic are:
Remove skills 2- 5 when stealthed and replace with new stealth abilities. These could be generic across all weapons, leaving skill 1 as stealth skill
E.G.
1 Backstab (D/D e.g.)
2 “Hear I Am” – Leave stealth gaining Might and Fury for x seconds and reinforcing allies with Might and Fury

3 Double Dagger Strike (Main / offhand specific) – Do something cool with 2 daggers, maybe a low – medium damage skill that goes through block?

4 (a)“Psst, take this” / (b)Pickpocket -
4 (a) Drop your stolen skill on the ground for 30 seconds for your allies (or yourself) to use
4 (b) If you haven’t got a stolen item this skill appears instead: Steal from your foe, melee range, doesn’t work with steal traits and doesn’t break stealth.

5 Shadow Master – Lose all stealth trait effects and boons but gain an additional 3 seconds of stealth, additionally all skills, utilities and weapon swap are unusable (become locked for the duration)

Just some ideas rolling around.

I never liked games where pvp was built around CC and Stealth. Every single Spvp match I join now over half of both teams are thieves who just spam CnD and are in stealth 99% of every fight. You can’t hit them, you can’t target them, you just run around while they tear you apart.

Then you have the CC fests where you are just chain stunned and can’t do kitten even after you blow your break free utilities. These crap doesn’t = good pvp

It means if you play any other class you might as well just reroll thief or necro

EATtheDEAD.4768:

I never liked games where pvp was built around CC and Stealth. Every single Spvp match I join now over half of both teams are thieves who just spam CnD and are in stealth 99% of every fight. You can’t hit them, you can’t target them, you just run around while they tear you apart.

Then you have the CC fests where you are just chain stunned and can’t do kitten even after you blow your break free utilities. These crap doesn’t = good pvp

It means if you play any other class you might as well just reroll thief or necro

You can hit a stealthed thief, but it can be a lot harder with certain weapon sets. I would say most projectile / beam weapons make it harder (e.g. Scepter Focus on ele compaired to D/D on ele). If you smash your auto attack (with a melee or move your camera to raise your projectile skills) you will still have a chance at hitting the thief. This is not as fun a just fighting someone though, even if they had a stealth or 2. Fighting someone in constant stealth is just irritating.

Fortus.6175:

1. Stealth offers many benefices
   You can go unnoticed, scout, have the fights start on your terms, disengage at will, stealth your alies, stomp enemies without they even knowing you were even there, revive allies, get behind the front enemy line, kill someone before they have a chance to retaliate. Comes with boons like regen, swiftness. Which brings me to the next point:

To throw in my two cents, some of the traits in Shadow Arts are just so ridiculously strong. Strong enough that I can reset fights or just toy with people that would otherwise completely push my poop in. eg , remove condition on stealth, regen on stealth, more regen on stealth, init restore on stealth.

Nobody wants their ez modo button taken away (and to be honest this is less of a problem in tpvp since S/D) but I just wanted to exacerbate the massive benefits stealth offers while having only ONE minuscule drawback.

What do you honestly think is worse? Fighting someone who stealths a lot / hides a lot in battle, which gimps DPS output & negates the ability to contest a node … or someone who can hit relatively hard but evade spams constantly and has an unlimited number of disengages should they start to get into a bad situation?

I think high duration stealth thieves are not nearly as impossible as you make them out to be. They might be really hard to actually down if they immediately run at the first sign of danger, but their damage output is not consistent and they have little to no presence in a team fight, making them worth so much less.

They are by no means impossible to kill, it just requires a little CC and understanding of whether or not they have any disengages left and a rough estimation of where they are in stealth, and AOE is probably the most crucial aspect of this.

For example … many times I’ve immobilized a thief right before they stealth, I’ll follow it up with something that stuns them and do a little damage. The trick behind stealth centric thieves is to keep a little additional pressure on them while they’re in stealth, and then react immediately as they try to burst. Stunbreak basilisk venom, negate the incoming 2 spam, counter attack, and do everything in your power to chase them when they stealth, too.

Biggest sign is you will see your melee weapon chains continue to chain through your attacks if you keep hitting them in stealth. So if you know a thief is coming, set down AOE for them to walk into and spam auto attacks, and if you by chance see it change, dodge roll / block / anything you can. There ARE ways to counter stealth centric thieves, and they aren’t exactly super powerful because the SA traitline is actually a little bit weak and mostly neglected for that reason.

If thieves had the benefits upon stealthing that mesmers do, then I’d be open to discuss how overpowered stealth is for thieves.

I find it amusing that Mesmers were mentioned as being done right, when they have extreme burst damage that AOE’s, plenty of stealths / target drop / where the hell is the mesmer now, mechanics, and huge uptime on regeneration, protection, and plenty of reapplications to the above including aegis, specced right. And this hardly gimps their damage.

If thieves had something similar … then I’d think stealth was actually somewhat problematic, but they don’t.

Jesiah.2457:

If thieves had the benefits upon stealthing that mesmers do, then I’d be open to discuss how overpowered stealth is for thieves.

I find it amusing that Mesmers were mentioned as being done right, when they have extreme burst damage that AOE’s, plenty of stealths / target drop / where the hell is the mesmer now, mechanics, and huge uptime on regeneration, protection, and plenty of reapplications to the above including aegis, specced right. And this hardly gimps their damage.

If thieves had something similar … then I’d think stealth was actually somewhat problematic, but they don’t.

Yeah, because stealth every 32 seconds and every 90 seconds is soooooooo OP!

Zenith.7301:

Jesiah.2457:

If thieves had the benefits upon stealthing that mesmers do, then I’d be open to discuss how overpowered stealth is for thieves.

I find it amusing that Mesmers were mentioned as being done right, when they have extreme burst damage that AOE’s, plenty of stealths / target drop / where the hell is the mesmer now, mechanics, and huge uptime on regeneration, protection, and plenty of reapplications to the above including aegis, specced right. And this hardly gimps their damage.

If thieves had something similar … then I’d think stealth was actually somewhat problematic, but they don’t.

Yeah, because stealth every 32 seconds and every 90 seconds is soooooooo OP!

^ exactly this. Mesmer have access to it but very limited access. They cant come out with 8k backstabs either every 2 seconds. Sure mesmers are strong, but their strenght is on confusing foes, but more often than not I can tell which one is the real; the one casting skills, moving, dodging, changing weapons, the one low in hp. besides, AoE actually counters them, because you can see by just one tick which one is real and which one isnt by how much health you take away, not to say most clones die with 2-3 ticks, and retaliation makes this so much better.

In teamfights mesmers can get punished, whereas thieves have the liberty to completely pick their fights, get in and out on command, while still spiking their intended target.

Too many benefices unless you have a fully coordinated 5 man team with plenty of practice to be able to deal with this. Vast majority of the plaers dont do this, let alone solo queue and chat-based 5 man teams

Sthealth for thieves is just fine in it’s current state. There are lots of classes / builds that are annoying to specific individuals but you will just need to manage with that. IMO Mesmers are annoying, engies can be annoying, rangers … the list goes on.

If thief shealth was OP then there would be much more thieves in pvp than there currently is. The more you hide the less you accomplish. It is that simple.

I wish I could have protection / regeneration / aegis proc every time I stealth as a thief! Please don’t try to tell me that Shadow Arts based stealth spamming thieves are even remotely overpowered, and for your information, they are not likely to have 8k backstabs and I seriously laugh at the notion that thieves can backstab every two seconds considering there’s a 4 second revealed duration. And if you honestly play that aggressive / greedily you’re going to get completely slaughtered.

Mesmers might not stealth for ridiculous periods of time, this is true, but on that exact same note this allows them to be more useful by themselves on a point, unlike a thief. Stealth spamming / prolonged duration stealth hurts the team more than it helps.

Where as trying to pick out a mesmer in the spam of clones / detargets + phantasms you’re forced to deal with … yeah, please tell me that prolonged duration stealth is somehow overpowered by comparison of not needing to rely on stealth nearly as much and having strong aoe burst damage that rivals what a thief can do … but did I mention … oh yeah this is aoe damage and it can be done from RANGE.

Please cry more about thief stealth. <3

i always thought that simply adding a movement debuff in stealth would do the job. like no port/blink and no more speedbuffs available while in stealth.

you still can escape using shortbow and evades, you still can use blink in stealth its just like an attack and you get unstealthed.

like the orb mechanic on spirit watch, not that slow but you get what i am talking about.

Stealth needs to have drawbacks when used poorly. If used stealth skillfully, game should reward user by allowing him to continue stealthy shenanigans. But it should also punish those who fail at it. Here’s example:

Good thief: Appears from stealth, steals, backstabs apply blind, opponent misses his skill, thief then smack him once more and stealth away.

Bad thief: Appears from stealth, steals, backstabs, starts spam heartseeker. Opponent casts burning condition on him and that will apply “Reveal” effect and thief cannot stealth during burning. He then forced to eat damage from target or cleanse condition.

Thats just one example of better play with stealth and not what we have now, which is basicly noob proof get away.

One year into the game and no serious balancing of stealth and you expect this to change why?

Roll a thief/mesmer or play another game. Only practical solutions.

I’ve played a thief since launch but never really got into the d/d or d/p style. I mostly play hot join spvp and my thief has zero means of going into stealth and I tend to not have a problem with other thieves unless I’m not paying attention and they get too close without being seen. But when I die, I can’t be upset because it was my mistake that let them do their thing. If they do damage from stealth they can be in stealth no more than 50% of fight, which is quite a bit but our health pools are generally very low and a burst d/d thief is going to have like 13k hp. CC them when they are visible and burn through their measly hp and you’re done. Thieves are typically put into the bottom tiers because, while annoying, they aren’t very effective in pvp once you’ve learned to deal with them.

In my opinion, a possible solution to the Stealth at the moment will be simply :

• Remove Stealth Stacking.
• Apply Reveal when “Blocked”, “Miss”, “Evade” etc. from stealth attacks.
• Apply some small CD´s between skills to avoid extreme spam of them.

Regards

Seed

Fortus.6175:

Zenith.7301:

Jesiah.2457:

If thieves had the benefits upon stealthing that mesmers do, then I’d be open to discuss how overpowered stealth is for thieves.

I find it amusing that Mesmers were mentioned as being done right, when they have extreme burst damage that AOE’s, plenty of stealths / target drop / where the hell is the mesmer now, mechanics, and huge uptime on regeneration, protection, and plenty of reapplications to the above including aegis, specced right. And this hardly gimps their damage.

If thieves had something similar … then I’d think stealth was actually somewhat problematic, but they don’t.

Yeah, because stealth every 32 seconds and every 90 seconds is soooooooo OP!

^ exactly this. Mesmer have access to it but very limited access.

This is not true at all.. decoy, torch offhand, mass invi, veil.. plus prismatic understanding, they have lot of stealth uptime if they want.

Jesiah.2457:

I wish I could have protection / regeneration / aegis proc every time I stealth as a thief! Please don’t try to tell me that Shadow Arts based stealth spamming thieves are even remotely overpowered, and for your information, they are not likely to have 8k backstabs and I seriously laugh at the notion that thieves can backstab every two seconds considering there’s a 4 second revealed duration. And if you honestly play that aggressive / greedily you’re going to get completely slaughtered.

Mesmers might not stealth for ridiculous periods of time, this is true, but on that exact same note this allows them to be more useful by themselves on a point, unlike a thief. Stealth spamming / prolonged duration stealth hurts the team more than it helps.

Where as trying to pick out a mesmer in the spam of clones / detargets + phantasms you’re forced to deal with … yeah, please tell me that prolonged duration stealth is somehow overpowered by comparison of not needing to rely on stealth nearly as much and having strong aoe burst damage that rivals what a thief can do … but did I mention … oh yeah this is aoe damage and it can be done from RANGE.

Please cry more about thief stealth. <3

Yeah, that’s why WvW is filled with thieves roaming instead of those OP stealth mesmers.

Just shut up. 8k backstabs are more than possible in WvW with 110% crit damage. In fact, I’ve landed as high as 12k on mine.

You don’t get a random chance at prot or regen when you stealth, instead you get something much better, a stealth that lets you spike for 6-8k regularly, and several sources for it alongside teleports and much better condition clears in your stealth build than a mesmer.

dovrak.4376:

Fortus.6175:

Zenith.7301:

Jesiah.2457:

If thieves had the benefits upon stealthing that mesmers do, then I’d be open to discuss how overpowered stealth is for thieves.

I find it amusing that Mesmers were mentioned as being done right, when they have extreme burst damage that AOE’s, plenty of stealths / target drop / where the hell is the mesmer now, mechanics, and huge uptime on regeneration, protection, and plenty of reapplications to the above including aegis, specced right. And this hardly gimps their damage.

If thieves had something similar … then I’d think stealth was actually somewhat problematic, but they don’t.

Yeah, because stealth every 32 seconds and every 90 seconds is soooooooo OP!

^ exactly this. Mesmer have access to it but very limited access.

This is not true at all.. decoy, torch offhand, mass invi, veil.. plus prismatic understanding, they have lot of stealth uptime if they want.

If you are going to use torch-hand I might as well bring up pistol/pistol thieves since both weaponsets are about as viable (that is garbage).

Veil is another 90 sec cd. 2 second stealth duration, vs thief who either gets 4 always every 4 seconds or a much longer one plus healing via shadow refuge. Torch is a 30 sec cd 3 sec stealth.

Mesmer stealth cannot be spammed like thief stealth, and mesmers with stealth builds don’t have the spike nor blind spam of D/P thieves. Just stop. Mesmers with stealth builds also can’t chase worth crap.

If you take veil and decoy, you’ve got no null field or signet of illusions. Because you HAVE to get decoy and blink, and only one utility for stealth builds is optional. Mass invisibility even has a long cast time you can chain daze with pistol offhand.

dovrak.4376:

Fortus.6175:

Zenith.7301:

Jesiah.2457:

If thieves had the benefits upon stealthing that mesmers do, then I’d be open to discuss how overpowered stealth is for thieves.

I find it amusing that Mesmers were mentioned as being done right, when they have extreme burst damage that AOE’s, plenty of stealths / target drop / where the hell is the mesmer now, mechanics, and huge uptime on regeneration, protection, and plenty of reapplications to the above including aegis, specced right. And this hardly gimps their damage.

If thieves had something similar … then I’d think stealth was actually somewhat problematic, but they don’t.

Yeah, because stealth every 32 seconds and every 90 seconds is soooooooo OP!

^ exactly this. Mesmer have access to it but very limited access.

This is not true at all.. decoy, torch offhand, mass invi, veil.. plus prismatic understanding, they have lot of stealth uptime if they want.

They can have “a lot” of stealth, so what? It isnt as much as thieves, but who cares about that, the bigget problem is; you suddenly get stealth, and what can yu do with it?! Nothing. Thats right, you just wasted utilities and used near borderline useless weapons for extra stealth but cant do anything with it because you lack the thing that make stealth on thieves possible; the 6-8k backstab in sPvP or 8-10k backstab on WvW everytime you get out of stealth.

The fact that not even blocking nor evading the attack reveal them it ensures that it is a guaranteed backstab everytime.

Please, this isnt too muh about stealth, for all I care you can give stealth to everyone, but make it have a backdraw, specially make it punish missing a backstab, backstab is literally uncounterable and has absolutely no counterplay whatsoever!, there is no risk for a thief who is only going for the spikes, no “risks” he have to calculate, it is just mindless back stab after backstab and HS HS HS