Guild Wars 2

Sorry to dissapoint, but there is no teary story of how thief whooped me hard in pvp just now. Generally i handle most of thieves that come my way just fine.

Still doesn’t change the fact that stealth is pretty unfair in terms of balanced combat. If a thief misses his hit due blind/evade, or it gets blocked (especially that part) he still remains stealthed!

I don’t see the point behind thief getting such free out of jail card, while everybody else has to face consequences of wasted opportunities, for example warriors losing all their adrenaline when using burst regardless if it hit it’s target or not. If you blew it, tough luck, no refunds!

I believe stealth attacks should follow the same paradigm. If thiefs target blocked/blinded/or through some xavier level telepathy evaded the invisble attack, then that person should be rewarded for successful defense vs sneak attack by revaling the thief. Especially since thief’s special stealth attacks (especially backstab) cost absolutely nothing.

There is nothing that thief loses when having his attack from stealth blocked/evaded All his initiative is still there, and he’s still cloaked, while the one defending blew his precious cooldown, or burned endurance to get outta cheap shot.

This matter requires thorough adjusting by the devs in my honest opinion.

A thread requesting reveal on block was getting posted every couple of months last year, and then they just stopped. Each time they got mixed views, but I think the majority were in favour of it. At least if the hit originated within a certain range. As for the on "miss," that’s a new one I think. I’m not sure that’ll happen since by missing, you didn’t touch them, and thus couldn’t have revealed yourself.

My opinion: on block not really fussed in all honesty, but no to on miss.

That’s only half of it actually. Since their stealthed Steal skill has no CD they can spam the kitten out of it and remain stealthed until it actually does connect. How ’bout them apples?

Well regarding the ‘miss’ part of my suggestion. When i mean “miss” i don’t mean being out of range of their attack. I’m talking about situation when their attack would hit, but something you or someone else did prevented that from happening.

When you get on screen message like “evaded”, “miss”, “invulnerable” (mesmer’s 4th shatter) that means you just dodged an attack and it’s no longer a secret someone’s on your tail.

And since that dodge didn’t pop out from thin air, but by using a skill with a cost attached (be it cooldown, endurance, initiative or w/e) it’s only fair that there is a reward for it in form of decloaked attacker (be it thief or anyone else who was stealthed).

That’s still way more lenient then warrior bursts mind you. If i use a burst on my warrior and there was no enemy in range i don’t get to keep my adrenaline.

In fact i believe the best change would be either to pin a high initiative cost on stealth skills, or have them forcibly decloak you when used, regardless of hitting/missing the target.

That would actually enforce some skilled use of it, rather then just happily running a mile behind target, spamming #1 all day long untill it finally hits, regardless of target’s blocking, evading or good positioning.

any interaction with enemies should cancel stealth imo

ZeftheWicked.3076:

If i use a burst on my warrior and there was no enemy in range i don’t get to keep my adrenaline.

Thieves can’t stealth without either an enemy around or using a weaponskill (initative) or a skill (cooldown) – so if they miss their burst they have to do the whole process of getting stealthed again which requires undoubtly a lot more skill (be it CnD or timing/spending initative wisely) than rangers spamming rapid fire or warriors filling up their adrenaline level. If someone dodges a backstab the chances of the thief being able to land a successful backstab in that brief time are very slim, so sorry but in my opinion you’ve got no point.

Still, a thief attacking from stealth… you block it (either because you anticipated it or just by chance) and you get a “blocked” message, the thief stays in stealth (makes no sense at this point since the attack should have canceled stealth) and they can just attack again.

The attack should remove stealth does not matter if it missed or was blocked or anything, as long as it was an attack targeted at someone and you weren’t just smacking thin air.

it makes sense to stay stealthed, the only way to break stealth is by doing damage, if you really cant play against thieves then practice interrupting the skills that expose them to heavy damage like heartseeker, black powder, stealth heal, and basi

It’s really not about being able to play against thieves, it’s about the fact that an attempted attack at someone should break stealth.

It shouldn’t reveal when it’s blocked or when it misses due to blinds and neither when it hits an invulnerable target.
It should reveal when it is dodged though.

It’s about reminding thieves about this little design concept of risk vs reward.

Backstab has a huge reward for landing, but there’s hardly any risk involved. If you don’t see what’s wrong with the picture then let me pop you an eye opener of a story here.

Imagine you’re in spvp, and my warrior is running at you with axe in mainhand and a sick smile on his face. You know what that means, I know what that means, and the axe knows what that means.

Few secs later an eviscerate is happily flying torwards you! No biggie, you dodged. Wth? ANOTHER eviscerate?! Wth? Where’s the adrenaline burn? And burst skills cooldown while we’re there? Dunno, but your head is about to become a flying object! You dodge again. Another one! You block…4 eviscerates in a row. Nice job! Unfortunately there’s more coming….for roughly 4-15 seconds of eviscerate spam “till it hits” depending on skill warrior used…
Few such experiences later you rage at forums about warrior being broken.

But hey, at least he wasn’t invisible while doing it!

Ofc that’s not how warrior burst works but just letting you know how it would feel if some other spvp “unliked skills” followed the rules set for thieves…

with the amounts of blocks/blinds/aegis/invulerability i can poop out on my guardian landing a backstab on me would become a significant challange and i only need to land 1 spin and get some retal up to poop on the thief, yeah sounds balanced xd

I support this. Warriors was gutted with adrenaline cause they could spam f1 without worrying about a miss, as adrenaline stayed on max till one of the burst eventually landed, so ppl complained about “no reward” for dodging/blocking/blinding. And the adrenaline change came in due to the amount of qq. Stealth is no exception – if you kitten up you deserve to be punished. Equal treatment for all please.

Kousetsu.1627:

with the amounts of blocks/blinds/aegis/invulerability i can poop out on my guardian landing a backstab on me would become a significant challange and i only need to land 1 spin and get some retal up to poop on the thief, yeah sounds balanced xd

Just because a meditation guardian is broken as hell and can eat any other zerker (and most other things) alive, does not mean that the issue at hand is balanced.

its so fun using all of your defenses to stop the thief getting a free back stab and they think it is to because once you use up your defenses then they can just happily kill you after that without worrying.

i kill stupid thieves all the time on my necro be it power or condi but the smart ones are a problem… they will just prod at me until i use one of my defensive skills shadow step away, wait then trololololol all the way back and repeat knowing that my defences are on a longer cool down then it takes for their entire initiative bar to fill up, if for some strange reason they ever used it all in the first place… from then on its a free kill

Look like OP got whooped hard by thief in pvp. Actually every time another bad player gets rekted by thief we can see topics like this…

Btw, I don’t mind to reveal on blocks. Just make BS damage = Eviscerate damage not depending of positioning and make it possible to use it without stealth.

As i said in opening post (reading is a diffucult skill, I know), i don’t have particular thief issues in my games. 80% of the time if it’s 1v1 with thief, they’re going back to their base.

There is no law that says that i have to be on the receiving end to notice something wrong and suggest a fix.

Sorry, but there are a lot of rekted guys who say they have no issues with thieves. Sometimes they even wisp you that you are noob and noskill. Hugging the ground at the same time ofc. I wonder if it was you btw. Please write “noob” so I could compare.

As a thief player I think if a stealth attack is blocked or missed due to blind it should reveal you. However, I do not think it should reveal you if it is evaded.

Here is how I rationalize it: If the attack is blocked, the attack connected with something and therefore should reveal the thief. If the attack misses because of blind, the thief effectively fumbled the attack and should be revealed because of it. If the attack is evaded, the attack does not connect with anything and the thief is not fumbling the attack because he/she is blind. Therefore he/she can remain in control of the stealth.

From a balance point of view, blocks are generally usable less frequently than evades, and therefore IMO should have some small advantage over evades when it comes to stealth. With blind, it really should be down to the thief to use his brain to determine when to attack and not attack, if he can simply spam the stealth skill without consequences then there is very little skill involved.

To be honest, the thief is still very squishy even in stealth, and those who know how to combat it can make short work of a stealth thief. But as it stands at the moment, stealth is very easy to use and very difficult to combat, when the user is skilled enough to get the most out of it. So something like this will mean an increase in skill requirement for all skill levels of player. Therefore, if revealed was implemented on block and blind, and evade, there really needs to be some balancing done in other areas or in other ways to compensate for this.

As an alternative suggestion, maybe instead of being revealed the stealth duration is reduced by 1 second for every block, miss or evade?

No. Blocks and blinds shouldn’t have a special place cuz they are scarce.

A thief has like 3s to backstab before he loses that stealth. If he gets hit by a stray blind in a team fight he can’t do anything. If the guard uses aegis, warrior converts burn to aegis or whatever, the thief also can’t do anything. He just wasted black power and heartseeker for nothing.

But if a player is clever enough to expect the backstab and avoid it that player should be rewarded. Sure, luck dodges still happen, as in the guy was dodging some other thing at the exact same moment. But it adds some counterplay to it.

Also these changes probably will ruin d/p thief. That’s another story.

There seem to be a lot of threads these days about mesmers being confusing because they have so many clones, about thieves’ stealth spam, about scepter elementalist burst, and about vertical teleports. Sure, some of us are probably thinking that the pvp forums are about serious issues in pvp (leaderboards, cough cough), but I really welcome the return of these threads. It means new players have joined pvp, and that’s always good news! Welcome Zef! I hope you’ll like it here.

Scoobaniec.9561:

I support this. Warriors was gutted with adrenaline cause they could spam f1 without worrying about a miss, as adrenaline stayed on max till one of the burst eventually landed, so ppl complained about “no reward” for dodging/blocking/blinding. And the adrenaline change came in due to the amount of qq. Stealth is no exception – if you kitten up you deserve to be punished. Equal treatment for all please.

i play warrior and i agree that it is bullkitten that they don’t get revealed when blocked or blinded. it puts you in combat, it should reveal you.

I dont think people know how thieves stealth lol. Whenever i go for a backstab ill do at max three hs in black powder which gives about 3s or less of stealth, idr. the icon for stealth is blinking the entire time. When i miss a backstab usually its because someone evaded someone else’s attack, and when they do sure i dont get revealed but i basically do anyways because stealth doesnt last that long. 70% of the time my backstab doesnt hit, i dont land another one or if i choose to its a waste of initiative and time.

By logic i can understand why block may be able to reveal, although i think this gives a huge disadvantage to thieves when they fight guards because landing that initial backstab is important in forcing the guard to waste his heals and blocks, and its already pretty difficult to fight guards on thief.

When it comes to evades or blinds it makes no sense why it should reveal since it didnt connect.

@Nyx. it connects with blinds, as it removes the blind with little to no consequence.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Theft

Aegis problem solved. Aegis granting skill have cooldown, steal has a cooldown too. And if you didn’t trait mug your steal will not reveal you, letting you land that backstab.

Ok guys, consider this. In pvp, it is well known that a thief’s role is to decap points and to +1 team fights, and to avoid 1v1s as much as possible. It means that thief is probably not OP war machine you think it is. Don’t you think you’re doing something wrong?

fumcheg.1936:

Btw, I don’t mind to reveal on blocks. Just make BS damage = Eviscerate damage not depending of positioning and make it possible to use it without stealth.

Right after BS will get a 10 sec cooldown, will be dodgeable via reaction play and not prediction and will consume all your initiative even if dodged/blocked/missed.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

fumcheg.1936:

Btw, I don’t mind to reveal on blocks. Just make BS damage = Eviscerate damage not depending of positioning and make it possible to use it without stealth.

Right after BS will get a 10 sec cooldown, will be dodgeable via reaction play and not prediction and will consume all your initiative even if dodged/blocked/missed.

Right after thief will get same toughness, skills power, passive healing, access to burn, boons, might stacking, invuls and blocking

And we will get another warriror then.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Theft

Aegis problem solved. Aegis granting skill have cooldown, steal has a cooldown too. And if you didn’t trait mug your steal will not reveal you, letting you land that backstab.

What else thieves should not trait to make you finally satisfied?

ZeftheWicked.3076:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Theft

Aegis problem solved. Aegis granting skill have cooldown, steal has a cooldown too. And if you didn’t trait mug your steal will not reveal you, letting you land that backstab.

There is no Aegis problem. The passive Aegis is already extremely powerful against dagger thieves. How braindead do you have to be to not dodge/block/about face when you see a “blocked” message out of nowhere?

im a thief and i approve.

Sorel.4870:

Ok guys, consider this. In pvp, it is well known that a thief’s role is to decap points and to +1 team fights, and to avoid 1v1s as much as possible. It means that thief is probably not OP war machine you think it is. Don’t you think you’re doing something wrong?

Quoted for truth. Horrible players are going to destroy the thief class if the devs listen to them.

Now for OP….

A thief getting revealed on accident is either blowing his CDs to get out of the fight and fully drop combat or dying on the spot. Do people seriously think that a random guardian aegis boon or blind debuff is worthy of inflicting this fate? Furthermore random aegis procs or any sort of blind would totally negate stealth attacks – the thief can literally do nothing (reasonable) to remove the aegis/blind without revealing himself.

Block skills are already good counters to backstab; OP is just too horrible to realize it.

Block skills do exactly what you want them to when the thief is using stealth in a combat situation. When the thief is on the fringe of battle stacking his stealth up to longer durations, you have less control. The thief dictates the opener, but when he drops powder and heartseekers at your face and goes for the follow up backstab, block skills stop it dead. Here’s how:

First, consider that in order for a D/P Thief to stealth it costs 9 initiative if they are not SA spec, 7 if they are. Since these are the PvP forums and not the WvW forums, most thieves in PvP are not using SA. In other words, stealth has a 8.18 second cooldown for your average D/P thief assuming he uses ZERO initiative for any other reason whatsoever. Additionally, the combo takes 1.25 seconds to perform and is very easy for many classes to interrupt and abuse to prevent stealth from happening in the first place. If this happens, add 5.45 seconds to that stealth cooldown.

Not only that, but stealth also only last 3 seconds, which is at most 1 second longer than any block ability in the game. Let’s take a look at a few blocks

Gear Shield: 3 sec. 20 sec cd
Shield Stance: 3 sec. 30 sec cd
Shelter: 2 sec. 30 sec cd

If we look at these numbers, warriors can use shield stance to completely negate the chance of a backstab for 1 in every 3.66 times a thief enters stealth, again under the ludicrous assumption that the thief uses zero initiate for anything but entering stealth.

Engineers, 1 in every 2.44. Also, don’t forget these abilities do more than block a backstab it also stops every other player in existence from hitting you for the duration.

Guardians have to buy 3/4 of a second for movement time for the thief and they can negate the backstab chance at the same rate as a Warrior. Similarly, mesmers, rangers, and warriors can force a thief to eat a counter-attack with their counter-block skills as long as the thief can’t backstab within half of a second of entering stealth which is almost impossible anyway. Also you can dodge to guarantee the effect and against a thief there actually aren’t many better opportunities for dodges.

TL:DR What’s the point? If you haven’t figured it out by now (I’m sure you haven’t) – using blocking skills when a thief goes stealth basically says “not today” to a thief trying to backstab you in almost all situations and forces him to use an entirely new stealth to try again (after being “revealed” for, on average, 5 SECONDS).

^By that logic we should revert adrenaline change. You can blind/dodge/block/interrupt it and you see it coming from miles away unlike stealth attacks which is nothing else but a guess minigame same as dodging steal.

In this case revert the change to balance this stuff out as it stands now its completely unfair for warrior to lose all his adrenaline on a failed burst while thief is still babysitted by mechanic “oh he blocked/evaded/blinded me? i dont give a f and spam it until eventually it land” I want babysit mechanics to carry me like a princess too ya know?

You bring up a good point, obviously thief should be able to hit through blocks etc while stealthed.

fumcheg.1936:

CutePicsHunter.7430:

fumcheg.1936:

Btw, I don’t mind to reveal on blocks. Just make BS damage = Eviscerate damage not depending of positioning and make it possible to use it without stealth.

Right after BS will get a 10 sec cooldown, will be dodgeable via reaction play and not prediction and will consume all your initiative even if dodged/blocked/missed.

Right after thief will get same toughness, skills power, passive healing, access to burn, boons, might stacking, invuls and blocking

Right after warrior will get same amount of dodges, invis, no weapon skills cooldowns, etc.

I’m not playing thief, but I don’t think we can compare this class to any other.

Stealth is an important mechanism for thief damage, and it might be broken in some fights, but let’s not forget it’s also a defensive mechanism. If a thief gets revealed because of blind or aegis, he’ll get punished in the next few seconds.

Can you say that about a zerk warrior missing a F1 shot ?

Thieves don’t have the boons the engis got, don’t have the overall ranged weapons and survival skills the rangers got. If you strip them off the stealth mechanism, they’re pretty much naked.

So I understand it’s not an easy decision to make for Anet. It’s not all about damage.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

fumcheg.1936:

CutePicsHunter.7430:

fumcheg.1936:

Btw, I don’t mind to reveal on blocks. Just make BS damage = Eviscerate damage not depending of positioning and make it possible to use it without stealth.

Right after BS will get a 10 sec cooldown, will be dodgeable via reaction play and not prediction and will consume all your initiative even if dodged/blocked/missed.

Right after thief will get same toughness, skills power, passive healing, access to burn, boons, might stacking, invuls and blocking

Right after warrior will get same amount of dodges, invis, no weapon skills cooldowns, etc.

coming out of stealth into backbreaker spam would be glorious.

in seriousness, the thief screwed up. they tried to backstab someone with block/blind/agis up. it’s not hard to see these things, hell two of them have icons. removing agis and blind without getting revealed is absolute cheese, even more so with the adrenaline nerf. if these thieves are allowed to remove defensive boons/condis with the only penalty being an auto attack cast time then the adrenaline changes need to be reverted. warrior’s f1 skills are all hugely telegraphed unlike stealth backstab, so it’s far more cheese for the thief to be immune.

Neva Eilhart.5347:

I’m not playing thief, but I don’t think we can compare this class to any other.

Stealth is an important mechanism for thief damage, and it might be broken in some fights, but let’s not forget it’s also a defensive mechanism. If a thief gets revealed because of blind or aegis, he’ll get punished in the next few seconds.

Can you say that about a zerk warrior missing a F1 shot ?

Thieves don’t have the boons the engis got, don’t have the overall ranged weapons and survival skills the rangers got. If you strip them off the stealth mechanism, they’re pretty much naked.

So I understand it’s not an easy decision to make for Anet. It’s not all about damage.

If you use stealth in a defensive manner you run away/reposition not attack right? At this point how you would be releaved on blind/block? Why thieves are supposed to not give a flying kitten about blind on them/block on targer while everyone else have to pay attention? If other classes make mistake they are punished for it. Thieves naturally dont care as it wont reveal them so they can try over and over for the duration of stealth.

If i pick up a warrior and do killshot under blind effect/block on target should i have a second chance to sue this move right away? Should i have that chance as a ranger to use point blank shot again cus i didnt payed attention to blind/block/evade/stab? Everyone should be punished for bad gameplay, no exceptions. As i said carry me like a princess mechanic.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Neva Eilhart.5347:

I’m not playing thief, but I don’t think we can compare this class to any other.

Stealth is an important mechanism for thief damage, and it might be broken in some fights, but let’s not forget it’s also a defensive mechanism. If a thief gets revealed because of blind or aegis, he’ll get punished in the next few seconds.

Can you say that about a zerk warrior missing a F1 shot ?

Thieves don’t have the boons the engis got, don’t have the overall ranged weapons and survival skills the rangers got. If you strip them off the stealth mechanism, they’re pretty much naked.

So I understand it’s not an easy decision to make for Anet. It’s not all about damage.

If you use stealth in a defensive manner you run away/reposition not attack right? At this point how you would be releaved on blind/block? Why thieves are supposed to not give a flying kitten about blind on them/block on targer while everyone else have to pay attention? If other classes make mistake they are punished for it. Thieves naturally dont care as it wont reveal them so they can try over and over for the duration of stealth.

If i pick up a warrior and do killshot under blind effect/block on target should i have a second chance to sue this move right away? Should i have that chance as a ranger to use point blank shot again cus i didnt payed attention to blind/block/evade/stab? Everyone should be punished for bad gameplay, no exceptions. As i said carry me like a princess mechanic.

agree 100%.

The punishment of thieves in bad gameplay is minimal compare to other classes. At a minimum, if they are not revealed, cost of initiative should be affected.

Scoobaniec.9561:

^By that logic we should revert adrenaline change. You can blind/dodge/block/interrupt it and you see it coming from miles away unlike stealth attacks which is nothing else but a guess minigame same as dodging steal.

In this case revert the change to balance this stuff out as it stands now its completely unfair for warrior to lose all his adrenaline on a failed burst while thief is still babysitted by mechanic “oh he blocked/evaded/blinded me? i dont give a f and spam it until eventually it land” I want babysit mechanics to carry me like a princess too ya know?

One of the most obvious differences is that a Warrior can strip blind and aegis before he uses his bursts. Using blocks/blinds in reaction relates to your point about them being seen from “miles away” which I will address later.

Second, this argument varies so greatly depending on build. The meta shoutbow warrior cures 3 conditions on burst, and is beefy and his burst skill is mainly sword for the 4 second immob on a target while his team destroys the target. It’s not even comparable to backstab in anyway.

The closest comparison between burst skills and backstab thieves is an eviscerate warrior. A furious/sharpened axes/burst mastery warrior is literally always full adrenaline. At full tactics, burst skills take 7.75 seconds to recharge and I can always use BOTH bursts in this time period suggesting the burst frequency is one every 3.88 seconds – i.e. twice as often as a thief can backstab assuming that’s all the thief spends initiative on.

Then of course, you have the fact that eviscerate hits for 36% more damage than backstab (14% more on targets below 50% health) and doesn’t require any positioning. And the fact that by definition, warriors have to do DPS in order to ready a burst skill and thieves have to not do DPS in order to set up a backstab.

In regards to their interrupt-ability, eviscerate has a .75 activation time, so does earthshaker. Mace and greatsword bursts are at 0.5 seconds. This is not abnormally long. Also, the warrior forums irony is literally killing me right now because the one burst skill that everyone says has a uselessly long activation time when someone complains about getting hit for 14,000 at 1200 range is kill shot, with a 1.25 second cast. The exact amount of time it takes for thief to use his stealth combo (which is often interrupted and countered as well).

TLDR; Get good, princess. Warriors are so far ahead of thieves on paper that it’s not even close. And honestly, losing your adrenaline on an axe warrior means literally nothing – the cooldown stops it, not the adrenaline.

It’s a quite complicated topic since Thieves can be left pretty vulnerable outside of stealth depending on their weapon set. While I consider it ‘unfair’ that there currently is no punishment for screwing up a BS etc. I’m not sure that revealing them on a fail is the right thing to do.

However, what about disabling the stealth-attack (e.g. Backstab) for 3-4s when they miss it? As a result they can’t mindlessly spam their stealth #1 skill but won’t be exposed immediately. Sounds like a reasonable compromise to me.

Rome.7124:

agree 100%.

The punishment of thieves in bad gameplay is minimal compare to other classes. At a minimum, if they are not revealed, cost of initiative should be affected.

The punishment of thieves in bad gameplay is much more compared to other classes…..

if you waste your initiative in a fight you cant escape properly and you die. If you get revealed in a team fight with no way to back out when ccs come in or aoes you die pretty fast. With usually only one way to remove conditions, unless you play panic strike, you die if you dont dodge through aoes. I once lagged when trying to steal backstab a necro when he moved away from his wells and somehow got caught in them and i got bursted in 2s. Pretty punishing sometimes

Take a zerker warrior who has a burst on his longbow and on his greatsword. His cooldowns are fairly low and he has about 23k health. He can remove conditions on swap and has traits to basically be immune to damage and to conditions. If he messes up something its not nearly as big of a deal, especially since warriors have pretty good mobility.

@Xaylin Stealth usually lasts for 2-3s max when you’re trying for a backstab, unless you actually get time to prepare and see someone coming. If you miss your backstab it is basically disabled because it will take a while to be able to get into stealth and position again. As i said before I really dont see how this is that much of an issue since most of the times i miss a backstab i dont end up landing it since a good part of the stealth is wasted on waiting for the person to not expect it or if i do its not on the persons back and only hits for like 1k.

There are plenty ways to gain longer stealth than 2-3s, really. I think we don’t have to argue about that. But you don’t have to sit in stealth for 10s to benefit from the lack of punishment for failing to connect a hit, anyway. High stealth duration is annoying but certainly not the problem at hand.

Access to stealth aside, even with a short stealth it’s not like you can’t hit #1 twice in that window without being punished for spamming it into blocks, evades, blinds or whatever. It’s also not rocket science to stay somewhat-behind a target while hammering #1. And why shouldn’t you spam it? It won’t hurt. Stealth will eventually expire, of course. But let’s not kid ourselves and make this sound like a big weakness in this context. Unless you are running P/P you can re-enter stealth quite easily.

I’m not saying this is good gameplay or that stealth makes you invulnerbale to your target or anything. The ability to spam Backstab untill it connects circumvenes all defensive mechanics other classes can counter it with, though. That’s pretty silly. Period.

Yasha.5963:

You bring up a good point, obviously thief should be able to hit through blocks etc while stealthed.

:D Someone with some humor.

Btw this thread isn’t going to get anywhere, just like the other 5,000,000 (exaggerating) variation of it.

As Xalyin mentioned, our forum thieves like to play dumb with stealth duration. I had lvl 80 thief myself so i know the game.

3 points into shadow arts – infusion of shadow in adept traits. Now your cloak & dagger ends up costing 4 initiative for 4 seconds stealth as long as you have 6 initiative to start with.

And I remind you, that if you are not revealed (read: did not manage to land that backstab) then after stealth ends you’re free to immediately reenter it. Punishing as hell.

But backstab’s not the worst of it yet. The real issue of thief not being revealed after successfully dodging his atack is that he’s still invisible. He may be trying to backstab you. Or maybe he’s running to another location and extending his stealth duration while he does so. You can’t tell, just blindly flail around and hope your skills and prediction of his behaviour are spot on.
Reward for successfully stopping an stealthed assault is a still invisible thief playing mind games with you.

As said before about blinds, evades ect. I don’t know how to feel about that. The attack never connects.

Blocks however.
If there is someone behind you and stabs your shield I think that would be a dead give away to where you are. Sure, but smart players see the “block block block” and should know exactly where the thief is (Behind you, Backstab only gets good damage from behind or the side. Warriors and Guardains will be able to cleave and hit them in stealth if they are on the side)

Its honestly a touchy subject, in high level play Thief isn’t used as a “real fighter”, rather a “finish off low hp target and cap” person. So we cant get a feel if this will break the class or not until the Cele Meta has been shifted out. Seeing as most roles are done better as a fotm celestial spec.

Xaylin.1860:

There are plenty ways to gain longer stealth than 2-3s, really. I think we don’t have to argue about that. But you don’t have to sit in stealth for 10s to benefit from the lack of punishment for failing to connect a hit, anyway. High stealth duration is annoying but certainly not the problem at hand.

Access to stealth aside, even with a short stealth it’s not like you can’t hit #1 twice in that window without being punished for spamming it into blocks, evades, blinds or whatever. It’s also not rocket science to stay somewhat-behind a target while hammering #1. And why shouldn’t you spam it? It won’t hurt. Stealth will eventually expire, of course. But let’s not kid ourselves and make this sound like a big weakness in this context. Unless you are running P/P you can re-enter stealth quite easily.

I’m not saying this is good gameplay or that stealth makes you invulnerbale to your target or anything. The ability to spam Backstab untill it connects circumvenes all defensive mechanics other classes can counter it with, though. That’s pretty silly. Period.

The reason why you cant really spam 1 when you’re in stealth even if you dont get punished for it is that when you play against people who arent stupid you wont be able to just sit there in stealth.

1v1s people will spam aoes or guards will spam burns. Sure against an idiot you can stand behind them and press 1 a billion times till it connects but against people who know you are there if you stand pressing 1 you will lose most of your health. In scenarios where the person doesnt know you are there i can understand why it not connecting should be punished, but the only scenario i can see of that happening is if a thief creeps up on a guard and his passive block stops the backstab. There its already a tough situation for a thief because guards are the counter to theives, and that initial backstab can change everything, which is why i dont think it should be punsihed there.

In team battles you definitely cant spam 1 till it connects because you will definitely die from cleaves. And most of the time it wont connect because of block or dodges that someone uses to evade someone elses attack. why someones lucky dodge should reveal a thief makes no sense to me. And blocks are usually not timed to stop you either.

The thing about sitting in stealth i mentioned because people make it seem like you have forever to backstab someone. Yes i know you can get more than 2-3s of stealth, im saying that in most scenarios you wont have that much because its a waste of initiative.

In terms of the physical reasoning behind why the thief would be revealed, it doesn’t really matter. We can explain away why the thief is revealed no matter what we decide. For example, maybe thieves are revealed BECAUSE they used such a powerful skill in stealth (stealth attacks) and thus are revealed whether it hits or not. Maybe they are revealed because they hit somebody (blocks only). Maybe the sound of an attempted attack reveals them (any misses whatsoever). The real argument is what is fair gameplay wise.

Also, in response to making it reveal on certain types of mitigation, I think that might be a bit confusing for new players. Imagine you go for a backstab and on the first go it is evaded and doesn’t reveal, then on the second attempt it is blocked but then it does reveal? What about blind or invuln? Distortion? Consistency is better.

This nerf would slightly hurt thief defenses (as you would need to go through more hoops to get backstabs on certain classes, thus leaving you vulnerable for longer) and majorly hurt thief offenses (Certain defenses now completely stall you). Ganking someone in a team fight shouldn’t change too much for a good thief, but think about certain match ups. Would D/P thief become just plain unplayable against these meta builds Assuming that using a stealth attack via skill 1 would reveal you?:

1. D/P Thief
2. S/D Thief
3. Shatter Mesmer
4. Power Ranger
5. Cele Engi
6. Cele Ele
7. Shoutbow
8. Condi Necro
9. Power Necro

Warrior’s adrenaline was nerfed because it was too forgiving, but it was also on a class that was too forgiving. Thief has very forgiving stealth mechanics, but do you think this is fair because the entire class is pretty unforgiving?

1. Same build as you, so no advantages/disadvantages.
2. Blinding powder still works, he can’t attack you from distance.
3. Now that he can punish you with it, you might bait distortion from him sending his clones/phantasm to oblivion. Also his stealth would follow same penalties as yours.
4. What about it?
5. Use stealth to set up caltrops on his spot, rather then smashing your #1 against his gear shield?
6. If you don’t attack you don’t get revealed, use stealth to catch your breath/pull out.
7. I don’t see a problem here, they usuallly don’t have shield equipped and aegis is not a warrior’s thing.
8. Necro – only thing they have is blindness, and that either has sick cooldown, or 3/4s cast time – large enough to take notice and evade if you’re focused reactive player…which a good thief should be more then any other profession (except maybe lockdown mesmer)
9. Even easier.