Guild Wars 2

Title says it all: What if stealth was not just a typeless effect, but rather a direct boon? Stealth provides partial immunity to player-targeted (and not ground-targeted) ranged attacks because the targeting system cannot lock on to you.

Would it introduce counter play, or kitten up stealth reliant classes even more? Discuss.

Edit 1: Stealth when debuffed/removed automatically drops the condition reveal.

Then reveal could be a condition lol

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Then reveal could be a condition lol

Yeah, forgot about the unintended side effect. There we go.

I think it would be interesting to try out. It’d give counter play if anet brings ‘reveal’ conditions to certain classes. But the acccess to revel would have to be somewhat uncommon like stability so it’s not spammable (and wouldn’t destroy thieves)

But how would you remove it if the target cannot be targeted? More aoe?

Or if i can see you in stealth, wouldn’t that count as invulnerable? Wouldn’t that take away the surprise/ambush if you can clearly see the thief walking toward you?

I think most boon stripping aoes aren’t very harmful.

Gandarel.5091:

But how would you remove it if the target cannot be targeted? More aoe?

Or if i can see you in stealth, wouldn’t that count as invulnerable? Wouldn’t that take away the surprise/ambush if you can clearly see the thief walking toward you?

The current stealth implementation makes it possible for melee characters (by way of their frontal 180-arc 130 range PBAoE to still hit targets. Ranged characters can also manually adjust their camera so that the launched projectile can hit the stealth target reliably.

Also, most boon-strip AOEs aren’t harmful, and in this case the AOE themselves are deterrent if they’re cast to the ground already, as you can dodge condi application through AOE via dodging. If they’re trigger based AOE, then dodging will also prematurely detonate them.

Stealth is fine. The problem is the duration and how much it can be spammed, and the fact that the classes that can spam it also do so much spike.

It’s not that a 3-4 sec stealth is unbalanced. It’s that it can be done every 4 seconds with little option to retaliate.

Unless you are a bunker in one backstab you lose 1/3-1/2 your health, and then it’s dagger auto+heartseeker for immediate loss.

The little time you have to retaliate they have blind and stealth to make sure they can’t be counterpressured before they kill you.

Increasing the cost of stealth and only giving a bonus to heartseeker at the 25% hp threshold would go a long way to fixing stealth.

If the thief somehow fails to position of stealth, due to his ini regen trait he can just keep dropping bp and heartseeking through it to extend his stealth to ridiculous periods of time before he run out of initiative.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Then reveal could be a condition lol

I think that’d be funny simply to see P/D thieves kitten themselves by increasing reveal’s duration by pumping condition duration with their traits.

I don’t really see how this interacts well with much. Most boon removal is targeted I believe, so aside from the occasional necro skill (or the “lucky” blind shot), this would basically just make stealth benefit from boon duration and not have much else in the way of counter play unless you’re fighting a necro.

That would be really fun lol. Larcenous Strike skillshot steal someone’s stealth away.

if stealth is a boon, then it would be affected by boon duration.

not sure how people would react to this.
stealth lovers rejoice?
stealth haters hate more?

mesmers could null field a thief’s freshly dropped shadow refuge and cancel it straight away.

You can only stealth when behind your foe lol. Or walking in front of a foe reveals you. Because if you try and sneak up on me, by walking at me, I must be half asleep to not notice lol.

Thieves, the true ninjas

Btw, they should remove stealth stacking. Because the original short duration stealth is now 15 – 20 seconds

We need 4s revealed to go away. All stealth problems solved.

Stealth does nothing in tpvp and only hurts your team.

Sure, hit joins its a little different, but are we really going to make a class worse at tpvp so that noobs in hot joins have an easier time with that class?

Thief can’t suffer anymore nerfs or it becomes the most worthless class if it isn’t already.

They need to buff the stealth thief if anything so it becomes viable build in tpvp. Right now the only viable option is s/d evade and burst. Neither of which use stealth except on rare occasions.

Advent Leader.1083:

Gandarel.5091:

But how would you remove it if the target cannot be targeted? More aoe?

Or if i can see you in stealth, wouldn’t that count as invulnerable? Wouldn’t that take away the surprise/ambush if you can clearly see the thief walking toward you?

The current stealth implementation makes it possible for melee characters (by way of their frontal 180-arc 130 range PBAoE to still hit targets. Ranged characters can also manually adjust their camera so that the launched projectile can hit the stealth target reliably.

Also, most boon-strip AOEs aren’t harmful, and in this case the AOE themselves are deterrent if they’re cast to the ground already, as you can dodge condi application through AOE via dodging. If they’re trigger based AOE, then dodging will also prematurely detonate them.

All of the Necormancer boon removals need a target, except for the well.

Zenith.7301:

Stealth is fine. The problem is the duration and how much it can be spammed, and the fact that the class that can spam it also do so much spike.

fixed that for you

how would you remove the stealth boon if you cannot target the kitten thief?

aka “what is boonhate if it’s still invisible?”