Guild Wars 2

I’m not too sure if this has been discussed, and it’s frankly a very obvious topic, but I haven’t seen much mentioning of it.

It’s basicly why thiefs and mesmers are a pain in pvp. The game limits the targets.

Simply put:
For stealth: it’s an annoying mechanic because you lose your target, thus limiting the amount of damage you can do to the opponent. In FPS’ where stealth occur (TF2), it’s less frustrating because you don’t feel completely powerless when the opponent goes invisible.

For Clones: With FPS like controls, if would be easy to focus the player instead of tabbing through all the clones, Playing against mesmers is more enjoyable with combat mod, because you can tag the clones and quickly see if they were the player or not.

I’m not saying we should go with combat mod (I would sorta prefer the current system), I’mm just saying that in a game (and, dare I say, any game) where targeting is so important, the most frustrating classes are the ones that can avoid being targeted (stealth and clones).

“Oh well of course, Capt. Obvious!” you might say, but I just thought it should join the discussion directly instead of being underlying common knowledge. I don’t know what to do to fix it (revamp the system to make single targeting easier?), but I think Anet should put more focus on balancing around the target system instead of nerf-hammering classes with cool mechanics.

The 15k backstab dmg can be discussed elsewhere.

If you target (as in paint them with a red bullseye) for the most part I can keep an eye on the mesmer. I have seen it come off during stealth occasionally, but in general just painting mesmers and using the targetting button will allow you to swap to your painted target. Not perfect but useful.

Except that the target marker drops every single time the targeted player uses stealth. I should’ve screenshotted the combat log where I had to consecutively re-call a thief seven times before our team was able to drop him.

This game was built upon the principle of being fun. Being on the receiving end of a stealth burst class isn’t fun, and this is not being helped by the target mark wipe on entering stealth. I’m not saying Thieves (and to a similar extent, Mesmers) are necessarily too strong, just that their mechanics make fighting them a chore more than anything else. I know it’s their defense flavour and it’s fully intentional for this to be so.

As a mesmer, I think bullseye targets need to stick until death. With the number of mesmers in pvp now I find myself facing another mesmer quite often and would like to keep track of them myself. Also, each player should get their own marker, that way you can follow your own mark and not switch to someone else’s mark.

fallconn, it’s not hard to retarget them as soon as they reappear. Mesmers only have two stealths possible unless they trait for a third (which is a bad trait to take IMO)

So you target them early, hope they blow stealth to clear target. You take that opportunity to disengage and reassess, retarget them and collapse. (That second stealth is their ult, you can interrupt it.)

There’s no need for target to pass through stealth and it was a major complaint from mesmers earlier.

As far as calling thieves, do not bother, lay down the AoEs and condition damage near your players, and the thief will have to retreat out of melee range or die.

IMO the strongest thief buid does not involve the mass abuse of stealth anyways.

If you tab through targets vs a mesmer you deserve to loose. Sorry but that is just the truth. Kite the clones and look for original then ctrl+t him.

a thief goes invisible, your target should drop.