Guild Wars 2

I have recently seen a post asking to nerf the thief invisibility skills. I think they are designed the way it should be and instead other classes should have a chance to detect stealth enemies. There should be two types of detectors:

1 and 2 Detect location: to know the thief’s direction and know where to run/dodge. These should be at least 2 skills/class.

3 Reveal invisible: to see the invisible thief for a very short time allowing you to hit them. This should be a single skill/class.

The thief can be revealed only once every 6 seconds otherwise his abilities would be useless against multiple enemies. There is no need for new skills, in stead the actual skills should have other abilities included.

Ranger
1) Torch/Bonfire: if thief catches on fire, you can see the flames thus his position
2) “Sic ’Em”: Your pet follows the enemy’s smell and keeps a close trail.
3) Sun Spirit/Solar Flare: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

Guardian
1) Staff Orb of light: Reveal stealth enemies aura for 2 seconds
2) Wall of Reflection: See the thief’s mirror image in the wall, knowing his direction.
3) Focus Ray of Judgment: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

Engineer
1) Healing Turret: Overcharge creates a water field, you can see the footsteps in that area.
2) Throw Elixirs: If they land near the Thief, the enemy will leave colored footprints.
3) Utility Goggles: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

I could continue for other classes as well.

DISCLAIMER: Feel free to use straw man on this comment since every other baddie feels this claim is detrimental to their anti-thief crusade.

Last night in Kaineng, my friends (ele and engi) and I were messing around in Greenbriar when, for 30 minutes straight, a Thief was harassing every caravan going to it. Third harass attempt I caught him in the distance and told my friends about it. So we waited.

This pretty much was the encounter from there:

1. Prepped “behind me” (queue) in chat.
2. Place Tripwire behind Yak.
3. Thief trips it less than a second later.
4. Said queue when trap disappeared.
5. Friends run through me and start using improvised AoE.
6. Thief appears and starts attacking us.
7. At 30% hp, the Thief pops shadow refuge (which we all saw the refuge).
8. All three coordinate a debilitating attack on the Refuge: Ele uses Frozen Ground. Engi uses Glue Shot. I used Caltrops.
9. Thief ran out too early at 20% HP and appeared seconds later with Cripple.
10. I spam Dancing Dagger to keep his butt crippled while my friends kill him.

It was glorious and the best part was he stuck with the zerg afterwards.

tl;dr ==> l2p
____________________________________

@ the “lol u needed 3 people” baddies

Since you missed the point of the example, let me spell it out to you. All three of us knew what we were doing. Any one of us could have either repelled or killed the thief but since the thief reached the threshold of annoyance all three of us decided to kill him. L2P tips will be bolded. You can also click the second link in my siggy.

The thief that was targeting our dolyak stealthed. I could only assume that he was going to open with a backstab in which I decided to place AoE CC directly behind the dolyak called Tripwire. *I waited until I was at the dolyak’s kitten before I place it and saw it disappear (trigger) second later.

Placing timed CC directly behind the dolyak effectively stopped the thief in his tracks and allowed a 3s window of free hits while he burns away his stealth.

Ring of Warding, Chilblains, Staggering Blow, etc. would have the same effect as Tripwire, in this case, by halting the thief’s advance.

Since the thief got put on his kitten and stealth doesn’t have to end for the damaging attacks to work, my friends started using “improvised AoE” (Blowtorch and Fireball while running in a circle in this case). Don’t know what it is? Grab a ranged weapon, run in a wide circle and spam the 1 skill. You just used IAoE. Yay.

Thief was at around 60% when he appeared from stealth so we briefly (about 10 seconds) tussled with him and got him down to 30% even after he blew his Hide in Shadows. That’s when he popped Shadow Refuge.

Now Anet lets you guys see the refuge and for some reason you never think that the thief just might be in it for the 3-4s duration. So how do we get the thief in this large ring? Easy…. you hit the entire ring with cripple/AoE. Shadow Refuge > Fleet Shadow is common so if you see it that means the thief will book it as soon as the refuge drops.

Things like Cripple, Chilled and Immobilize will screw the thief out of his mobility. Since my friends and I already knew he would pop it at low hp, we saved our AoE cripples/chills for his Shadow Refuge.

Once he became visible, I began throwing Dancing Dagger every few seconds to keep cripple on him. My friends caught up to him and he melted.

Point is all of us trained ourselves against stealth-heavy builds so this was just an opportunity to apply what we knew. We knew wtf we were doing, so you should be capable of knowing wtf you are doing too.

zacchary? you are my new hero. <3 ya man!

i posted in the other post on this topic, and i’ll post again — anytime someone gets their behiney handed to them in pvp, they decide that, rather than figure out how to counter the issue, the winning profession just needs a nerf.

here’s one for ya — i have two thieves. yes, i know, makes no sense to any of you, but i LOVE learning professions from the ground up, and i build my own builds. anyway. the first thief i built, i incorporated no toughness, no stealth. she’s designed as a highly mobile attack machine dishing out super-high levels of condition damage (i can get bleeds ticking at 127/tick), and she also has four — count them, FOUR — self-heals built in.

she’s a beast. yeah, the steal/zerker thief is fun, i just finished creating my own version, because i wanted to find out about this “perma stealth” thing the op in the other thread was complaining about. and as someone posted, there? it’s possible to stack invisibility up to 12s … and you CAN have a lot of stealth skills built in. but the bottom line is, if you are NOT a superlative player, and you aren’t constantly aware of your surroundings, and you don’t take the time to absolutely know your profession? this build ain’t gonna do jack for ya.

as zacchary said? L2P. if someone’s givin’ you issues? research. find the counters. trust me, they DO exist.

Thank you, Isende.

JubeiTM.5763:

Ranger
1) Torch/Bonfire: if thief catches on fire, you can see the flames thus his position
2) “Sic ’Em”: Your pet follows the enemy’s smell and keeps a close trail.
3) Sun Spirit/Solar Flare: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

Guardian
1) Staff Orb of light: Reveal stealth enemies aura for 2 seconds
2) Wall of Reflection: See the thief’s mirror image in the wall, knowing his direction.
3) Focus Ray of Judgment: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

Engineer
1) Healing Turret: Overcharge creates a water field, you can see the footsteps in that area.
2) Throw Elixirs: If they land near the Thief, the enemy will leave colored footprints.
3) Utility Goggles: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

I could continue for other classes as well.

I was thinking about hard counters to stealth, but this is great. It adds value to the more obscure skills. I wouldn’t make both the ranger torch skills light up the thief, one or the other. Personally I would give the classes with the hardest time dealing with stealth better options. For example, warriors have almost no solution to stealth, while the Mesmer phantasms are a great option.

Some anti-stealth skills would be cool.

Muddy Terrain for the ranger is one skill in particular I feel would fit in very well. Logic wise If someone is walking through mud you’d see their footprints breaking the stealth. Mechanic wise this skill right now is fairly weak, but if it was given a reveal effect on it, it could serve as a 20 second anti-stealth AoE which would give people a reason to use it.

GKC.3851:

JubeiTM.5763:

Ranger
1) Torch/Bonfire: if thief catches on fire, you can see the flames thus his position
2) “Sic ’Em”: Your pet follows the enemy’s smell and keeps a close trail.
3) Sun Spirit/Solar Flare: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

Guardian
1) Staff Orb of light: Reveal stealth enemies aura for 2 seconds
2) Wall of Reflection: See the thief’s mirror image in the wall, knowing his direction.
3) Focus Ray of Judgment: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

Engineer
1) Healing Turret: Overcharge creates a water field, you can see the footsteps in that area.
2) Throw Elixirs: If they land near the Thief, the enemy will leave colored footprints.
3) Utility Goggles: Reveal the thief for a very short time.

I could continue for other classes as well.

I was thinking about hard counters to stealth, but this is great. It adds value to the more obscure skills. I wouldn’t make both the ranger torch skills light up the thief, one or the other. Personally I would give the classes with the hardest time dealing with stealth better options. For example, warriors have almost no solution to stealth, while the Mesmer phantasms are a great option.

^ exactly as you said. Anet we need this.

Yeah that will be fine, you can give other professions the ability to disable the thieves entire profession mechanic. So long as you give thieves a defensive counter skill that allows the thief to return the favour by disabling their opponent’s profession mechanic.

Upon activation, in 1200 AoE range – max 5 targets – the following profession mechanics are disabled:

• ranger – pet dies and goes on cooldown
• engineer – can’t switch kits
• mesmer – can’t create clones
• warrior – can’t use burst skills
• necro – can’t use death shroud
• guardian – can’t apply/receive boons
• ele – can’t switch attunements

As a thief can only be revealed once every 6 seconds under your proposal, we’ll make this new thief skill on a 6 second cooldown ok?

Stealth is the thieves profession mechanic – giving players the ability to completely nullify it is just stupid

I really like the OPs ideas, despite it negatively affecting my build (mesmer stealth) – I can’t counter any of the suggestions in the OP, because they all make perfect sense.

What if the Revealed debuff was completely removed in favour of this? So you could chain together stealth indefinitely, but each class would have some active means of detecting you, with similar suggestions as in the OP?
- water field footsteps
- light revealing you – torch skills/light orbs, etc…
- ranger per “sniffing you out”
and so on…

The only problem I could think of is how challenging this might be to implement.

It would make players actively use skills to try and find stealthed players.

Why not remove the thief completely? Problem solved

Matroxion.9348:

Why not remove the thief completely? Problem solved

I agree. Why should others be expected to learn the skills of another class when it’s just simply easier to complain enough and have them removed? I mean, just because we leveled a thief in order to better understand how to defeat them doesn’t mean everyone else should…

/sigh

rofl, matroxion and patriot! clappin’ and cheerin’ here!

I really don’t understand the negativity – as far as I can see the OP is not complaining about stealth at all – these changes not only make sense (surely you should be able to see a stealthed player if you are for example holding a torch and they come within say 100 range?), but they would enhance the gameplay.

Note: I said “stealthed”, not “thief”, referring to any form of stealth through combos or even mesmer.

In order to balance it out, there could for example be more opportunity for chainable stealth – say maybe you could chain 2 stealths in a row before Revealed would kick in (on the 3rd stealth).

Just leave the thief alone already. This trend is just getting out of hand.

How some people spend days coming up with ways to nerf instead of hours of devising new winning strategies is something I’ll never understand…

Synesence.7546:

Just leave the thief alone already. This trend is just getting out of hand.

How some people spend days coming up with ways to nerf instead of hours of devising new winning strategies is something I’ll never understand…

A lot of this is not a hard reveal. You still wont be able to target the player. You only get a vague idea of where he is if you have these skills. That is the point of this. It is a soft counter to stealth. The other reveals are short lived and can be avoided. There are already soft counters to other class abilities. You can easily tell which Mesmer clone is real by how it moves and the UI display on top. You can kite ranger pets easily by using terrain. You can juke engineer grenades and bombs. The other classes you can flat out kill, its not that hard.

What I most object to is this “heads I win, tails I get away” combat that thieves have. There’s no penalty to their stupidity. Unless they get extremely greedy they can always get away. That is not a fun way to play. Zacchary told a story about how he took down a thief. My problem with that is it took 3 people to kill a greedy theif

Stealth is both a fundamental and a crutch. When you’ve seen 1 thief you’ve seen them all, except one might do hit damage and the other might do condition. Stealth is the only thing that works for them which is a shame because it looks like they were intended to do much more. I can build a warrior that doesn’t use burst skills. Its really easy. I have plenty of options to avoid using clones on my Mesmer. I can have them blow up almost instantly, I can use phantasms or I can avoid them altogether. They are not essential. My necro barely uses spectral form and most others barely use it either. My engineer only stays in 1 kit and there’s builds that only use rifles. The only eles that need to switch atunements are the dagger dagger eles. There are plenty of viable builds on the other classes for PvP. You only see thieves fight 1 way because there is nothing players can do about it. They either win or run.

Some classes do have solutions to stealth, but not many. Mesmer phantasms are a great option, while you stealth they recharge and when you pop back in you can get hit with a full volley. Moa morph works great also. Engineer bombs and grenades can be great but not usually. You say people should think of new strategies so I’ll ask, what do you propose warriors can do against thieves? What is their winning strategy against the cliché dual dagger thief?

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Stealth is the thieves profession mechanic

No it isn’t. Initiative and stealing are your profession mechanics. Stealth is just an overpowered game mechanic that thieves have in abundance.

Overpowered mechanic? Play WoW or SWTOR where this type of class has real perma-stealth. The trick is just to learn how to use this against them.

@Zacchary — so three of you took down one thief and ONLY after using a purchased trap and coordinated AoE. Yeah we don’t need any tweaks to stealth (sarcasm)

@FinalPatriot — WoW and SWTOR also have enhanced detection traits, reveal skills, and NO RESTEALTH IN COMBAT (except for a single skill on huuuuge c/d). So no, it’s not even close to the same.

I’m not against the stealth mechanic, but it is a bit much in it’s current state. If everyone was honest about it, they’d admit that clones and stealth are a tier above ALL other class mechanics in PvP/WvW. My main is a mesmer and although I can spot a real mesmer rather easily in a fight, many players still whack on my clones rather than me.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Overpowered mechanic? Play WoW or SWTOR where this type of class has real perma-stealth. The trick is just to learn how to use this against them.

Its been a while since I played my WoW rogue but last time I remembered most rogues didn’t run around in stealth. They mounted up, ran somewhere safe, stealthed, crawled to their target and had a huge opening gambit (which then they nerfed). You could not stealth in combat unless you blew a 2 minute cooldown (like an elite). Most rogues had a movement speed penalty while stealthed in addition to be unable to mount up. Mounted players moved at 100% speed while non-traited subtlety rogues moved at -30%. Most of the rogue’s abilities required you to stay in combat because their system was combo points which makes the rogue more dangerous as combat continues.

GW2 stealth moves at full speed. You can use all abilities in stealth so long as you don’t harm opponents. You can use stealth frequently in combat. The thief’s initiative system encourages the player to duck out once and a while. What ANET did was very different than the typical treatment of stealth in other pvp games.

juno.1840:

@Zacchary — so three of you took down one thief and ONLY after using a purchased trap and coordinated AoE. Yeah we don’t need any tweaks to stealth (sarcasm).

First off, the trap was Tripwire.
Secondly, those rings that grant stealth (shadow refuge) are visible to the enemy. It’s literally screaming “attack here”. What better way to burn CC than with an enemy made target where 80% of the time they’ll stay for the whole duration.

Again, l2p.

Please stop this thread, some threads are actualy worth reading, and if the good threads of suggestion was up, Arena Net would have it pretty easy to what needs to be implented in the game, and not to remove/remake every proffession so they can overcome something that is easy to overcome…….By making thiese suggestiong Arena Net would maybe miss the actual good suggestions that is worth reading/doing something about.

I will make this quiet simple, you dont need a reason to remove stealth AT ALL, not in WvW or in PvP.
In PvP its easy, if you actualy is tryieng to follow the thief, or going for a thief instead of capturing a point, its going to make you a bad player, since the PvP in this game isnt about actually killing people, but creating a huge oppertunity for a great point income, and if the thief go stealth, they wont be able to take the point until they go out of it.

WvW is a bit more difficult, but again, you dont need to go after a thief, actually bad, since you the main thing you should do is defend/capture stuff again, everything from defending a tower with ac´s all over the place to atking a tower, stealth wont do anything.
Btw, simple as this, if you think 1 class is OP roll that class. There should be a trick to get to lvl 80 in less than a day, some say in less than a hour if you run from lions arch to orr

Please stop thiese “balance threads” it was true for some months ago, but isnt anymore, all classes can overcome basecly everything, your traits/build/gear/wep is incorrect for that task if you fell like your beeing killed to fast.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Yeah that will be fine, you can give other professions the ability to disable the thieves entire profession mechanic. So long as you give thieves a defensive counter skill that allows the thief to return the favour by disabling their opponent’s profession mechanic.

Upon activation, in 1200 AoE range – max 5 targets – the following profession mechanics are disabled:

• ranger – pet dies and goes on cooldown
• engineer – can’t switch kits
• mesmer – can’t create clones
• warrior – can’t use burst skills
• necro – can’t use death shroud
• guardian – can’t apply/receive boons
• ele – can’t switch attunements

As a thief can only be revealed once every 6 seconds under your proposal, we’ll make this new thief skill on a 6 second cooldown ok?

Stealth is the thieves profession mechanic – giving players the ability to completely nullify it is just stupid

Incorrect. Stealth is not a thief only proffession mechanic. Your proffession mechanic is actually “steal”. Nice try.

Also, try building your thief without stealth…you would be surprised how tough a GOOD thief is to kill and how much of a crutch stealth really is. If you NEED stealth, you fail at combat.

Reveal my stealth? Sure, I’m ok with that. Give me Heavy Armor, tons of HP and tons of Toughness and then we’ll talk at the table

Bad players get Good players Nerfed because they do not understand how to counter the other player.

I am a Thief and I HARDLY use Stealth when fighting another player

Stealth is NOT the problem when I can go around and take out players left and right WITHOUT the use of Stealth!

I will agree, however, Cloak and Dagger IS a problem within this game

Crawford.4135:

Reveal my stealth? Sure, I’m ok with that. Give me Heavy Armor, tons of HP and tons of Toughness and then we’ll talk at the table

Bad players get Good players Nerfed because they do not understand how to counter the other player.

I am a Thief and I HARDLY use Stealth when fighting another player

Stealth is NOT the problem when I can go around and take out players left and right WITHOUT the use of Stealth!

I will agree, however, Cloak and Dagger IS a problem within this game

This isn’t a reveal, it’s a soft counter. Have you ever played starcraft? Do you remember the shimmer that cloaked units would give? Think about that, but instead effects like that only happen when certain abilities are used.

This has got to end already, thief reveal per profession won’t happen. Thief relies on stealth, a lot. You don’t see thieves with permanent vigor and protection and regen, they get much less than a swig of the goodiness other professions have. Let me break this down for you.

Regeneration: either for 5 seconds upon entering stealth (doesn’t stack with other regens including itself), from a healing skill for 3 seconds, in short durations from major traits, or from staying in stealth with a trait from 30 into Shadow Arts.

Protection: none

Stability: from Dagger storm. Otherwise, none.

Retaliation: none.

Vigor: from 2 major traits in 2 different trees.

Aegis: none.

Swiftness: from minor and major traits found in different trait lines.

fury: from 2 major traits in different trees.

End result?

Thief relies on stealth. Look at their traits and tell me how a stealth reveal is at all fair to them. You would make almost every thief build futile if they could be “revealed”. Stealth counter’s come down to player skill/experience. If you have no clue what you’re up against then just sit down and take the beating. Otherwise, l2p.

People who main or have played thief generally know the thief playstyle and what thief is capable/not capable of. Roll a thief, and learn how their skills behave. Quite easy to kill them and thats coming from a hammer sword/warhorn warrior in pvt gear…

What are thieves going to get for compensation to this nerf?

Thief:
1) Pepperspray: Makes pets unable to attack, run away in fear for 20 seconds. If its cured they immediately are stunned for 10 seconds.
2) Shadow Shield: Makes the Thief to be immune to all guardian attacks/abilities for 10 seconds.
3) Causes the thief to be able to booby trap turrets and gadgets so they explode on the engineer, knocking him back and causing massive damage, this also strips stability.

Daecollo.9578:

What are thieves going to get for compensation to this nerf?

Thief:
1) Pepperspray: Makes pets unable to attack, run away in fear for 20 seconds. If its cured they immediately are stunned for 10 seconds.
2) Shadow Shield: Makes the Thief to be immune to all guardian attacks/abilities for 10 seconds.
3) Causes the thief to be able to booby trap turrets and gadgets so they explode on the engineer, knocking him back and causing massive damage, this also strips stability.

You are right, thief is the worst class in game! They must be improved! Thief also should get perma cloak and for the love of god tipple the damage. Thief’s should also use heavy armor because a Ninja is strong and all. Swiftness should be special on thief , running 5 times faster. Maybe flying would be nice! And automatically recycle the attacker’s items and deposit them to my collectibles and steal the legendary equipments and make them unbound so I can sell them on trading post.

JubeiTM.5763:

Daecollo.9578:

What are thieves going to get for compensation to this nerf?

Thief:
1) Pepperspray: Makes pets unable to attack, run away in fear for 20 seconds. If its cured they immediately are stunned for 10 seconds.
2) Shadow Shield: Makes the Thief to be immune to all guardian attacks/abilities for 10 seconds.
3) Causes the thief to be able to booby trap turrets and gadgets so they explode on the engineer, knocking him back and causing massive damage, this also strips stability.

You are right, thief is the worst class in game! They must be improved! Thief also should get perma cloak and for the love of god tipple the damage. Thief’s should also use heavy armor because a Ninja is strong and all. Swiftness should be special on thief , running 5 times faster. Maybe flying would be nice! And automatically recycle the attacker’s items and deposit them to my collectibles and steal the legendary equipments and make them unbound so I can sell them on trading post.

i think i love you Jubei xD

I play thief myself and i really have to say the stealth needs alot of fixin tweaking nerfing and balancing.

and the “Cloak And Dagger” needs a “detected” condition after every use not only if you attack out of stealth. HUGE problem!
so before you start hating me now, nerfing will also bring balancing to the thief class. it wont get weaker it will just be nerfed then balanced along with it.

negerleif.2106:

JubeiTM.5763:

Daecollo.9578:

What are thieves going to get for compensation to this nerf?

Thief:
1) Pepperspray: Makes pets unable to attack, run away in fear for 20 seconds. If its cured they immediately are stunned for 10 seconds.
2) Shadow Shield: Makes the Thief to be immune to all guardian attacks/abilities for 10 seconds.
3) Causes the thief to be able to booby trap turrets and gadgets so they explode on the engineer, knocking him back and causing massive damage, this also strips stability.

You are right, thief is the worst class in game! They must be improved! Thief also should get perma cloak and for the love of god tipple the damage. Thief’s should also use heavy armor because a Ninja is strong and all. Swiftness should be special on thief , running 5 times faster. Maybe flying would be nice! And automatically recycle the attacker’s items and deposit them to my collectibles and steal the legendary equipments and make them unbound so I can sell them on trading post.

i think i love you Jubei xD

I play thief myself and i really have to say the stealth needs alot of fixin tweaking nerfing and balancing.

and the “Cloak And Dagger” needs a “detected” condition after every use not only if you attack out of stealth. HUGE problem!
so before you start hating me now, nerfing will also bring balancing to the thief class. it wont get weaker it will just be nerfed then balanced along with it.

Only if this “balancing” includes abilities that make players consider thieves contributing team members, retaining the ability to take out targets behind the enemy line (it’s been Thief and Assassin’s job since day one), make it so we don’t need to go glass to be effective, and since we’re talking about giving classes detection skills, the ability to contest point in stealth.

this is kittened the thiefs stealth and ability to gain initiative in a fight and is its only strong point, if you nerf stealth then whats left for a thief to do???t span heartseeker all day long….no thanks..the class would become utterly boring as hell. Oh and if they do nerf stealth then they need to nerf the crap out of mesmers cause they are WAY more OP then thiefs

the only thing i hear from most people nerf the HB of the warrior .. i say why you can not evade a simple skill like that?

when this is made i will never use my theif in pvp again.

Thief is pretty weak in pvp already. Very limited in wvw, and not the dominator in pve. They arn’t kings anywhere, yet people can’t seem to l2p :/

Somethings will never make sense…

OK.. I have no issue with this, if and only if the ability to detect stealth was put on abilities and Weapons that are considered bad in WvW.

As long as it’s a choice between detecting thieves and using something far more useful in every other situations, then I don’t see the issue.

Just like I don’t have an issue if a class can do anything, as long as it has to make hard choices about which things it can do at any time. EG Warriors can do heavy DPS or Really good team healing… but not both at the same time.

It’s very similar to the Boon Hate the Thief now gets on the sword. It takes out a classes main class dynamic, a Guardian needing boons to be comparable to other classes. But it’s not really an issue because the Thief has to choose to use a sword which isn’t as good at other things.

I would also be tempted to put these abilities on some of the weaker PvE classes and then put in some hidden traps in dungeons that only these abilities can reveal.

NinjaEd.3946:

Thief is pretty weak in pvp already. Very limited in wvw, and not the dominator in pve. They arn’t kings anywhere, yet people can’t seem to l2p :/

Somethings will never make sense…

I don’t know how this changes would effect PvE and personally I am all for buffing thieves if this is too much. I want them viable. What I dislike is the mechanic of stealth itself. It is a very harsh mechanic and it’s not that fun to deal with. Not many classes have an option to counter the tactics and the fight ends in annoying stalemates.

Let me paint you a picture on how these soft counters can play out. Lets say a water elemental’s water field, geyser, made it so the thief sometimes left footprints or water droplets while walking inside it. The elementalist can’t actually see the thief but he can guess where he’s heading and try n’ hit his opponent with area of effect abilities. If there are no droplets then the ele can guess that the thief is somewhere else. The thief can respond in a few ways. The first option is he could wait until he’s out of the water field to start his invis, or he can be unpredictable enough not to be hit by it during the invis. If he’kitten he can use one of his many blink abilities so the thief’s opponent still doesn’t know where he went. He could stand still inside the field in order to pretend like he didn’t enter. He could keep moving knowing that the ele will know and just dodge the incoming AE attack. He could have a friendly distract the ele so he doesn’t have the time to actually track the thief.

Do you see how much meta game this will add in PvP? A thief will actually need to be tricky.

To be clear and fair – I play myself self one, its my main character and I also had my experiences with fighting against other thiefs, that seemed to look alot overpowered compared to my thief, because they could somehowe just beat me to a pulp within just fricking 2 hits, whereas I need like to at at them douzens of times and they still don’t go down into downed state and I’m not a condition build thief, I’m a critical hit build thief – surely yet not a perfect one, not using berserker gear, but those few % difference in critical damage really shouldn’t be of such a dramatical damage difference, that you mysteriously can deal with just like 10-20% less critical damage like serveral thousands of damage more, that you deal like with only 2 hits over 20000 damage with just 1 Steal-Attack and 1 followed cloak and dagger, as the steal got already changed, that it shouldn’t be able anymore to deal critical hits, but heals therefore now…

There is so far an easily solution versus stealth, that is also kind of bugged, because it totally ignores the fact of stealth duration – FEAR.
You just need to use fear after a thief goes in stealth and it AFFECTS them.
Really, how kittening ridiculously is it, that you can fear something, that you don’t see???
The the most ridiculously bugge annoiyng fact about fear is it, that this bullkitten condition seems to totally ignore the fact that a stealth thief maybe has still some left stealth duration.
You can stand like 3 seconds in your shadow refuge and have like 6 seconds of stealth, if u get feared out of your refuge, you mystiriously instantly lose your stealth, even if u basically had still your kittenm 6 seconds of stealth left… and nobody can say me, this is normal, this is just a dumb BUG!! Otherwise it would stand in the description of fear, that fear is able to make hidden enemies visible…

Otherwise, the most best friend for everyone to handle a thief are mesmers and elementalists, as they are currently the most overpowered classes of all, that can easily handle any thief with the right builds, eles, easily because they can damage thiefs even when in stealth with all that quick spammed AoE skills and outmaneuver them easily with chill/stun AoEs, so that they can’t flee.

And Mesmers easily spam so quick clones, that you never seem to fight against the real one and in the time until u spot the real one, they can easily heal themself and u die quickly through the spammed conditions, which a thief can’t heal quick enough to survive a duel with a mesmer long enough over time, if they don’t land the first critical hit to send the mesmer player into a deadly pressure situation first that brigns them to a point to hastingly waste time with healing, than spamming conditions at you and spamming clones/phantasms that they can easily send out in like a six pack at you when timed right to let them explode in front of us to keep u basically permanent under confusion too with high stacks.

Buff/Food/Tonics shouldn’t be usable in WvW, these items should be only usable in PvE, in WvW it makes players/builds way too powerful or BuffFood/Toniucs should have different effects in WvW, than in PvE, like improving certain WvW Skills, when using specific food items/tonics, but absolutely not stat boots and positive side effects that make player characters in WvW into unbeatable killing machines, if you also don’t use buff food/tonics.

WvW needs for further class balance and improved WvW roles also class specific WvW Skills, otherwise this game will be there always just a stupid zergfest and nothing else.
I want to play out finally in WvW my thief as that, what a thief should really be in WvW – as an infiltrating Saboteur, that spies out the enemy for important information, manipulates enemy siege weapons and steals enemy supplies
That the kittenM role for a thief in WvW wherefore a thief should have long lasting stealths to be able to infiltrate enemy taken towers and keeps and wherefore all other classes should have hard counter skills to be abble to detect hidden thiefs.

Phew, thats something that needed to come out finally of me.
All my frustrations about playing a thief so far got out now in this posting.
Somehow I feel better now.

GKC.3851:

NinjaEd.3946:

Thief is pretty weak in pvp already. Very limited in wvw, and not the dominator in pve. They arn’t kings anywhere, yet people can’t seem to l2p :/

Somethings will never make sense…

I don’t know how this changes would effect PvE and personally I am all for buffing thieves if this is too much. I want them viable. What I dislike is the mechanic of stealth itself. It is a very harsh mechanic and it’s not that fun to deal with. Not many classes have an option to counter the tactics and the fight ends in annoying stalemates.

Let me paint you a picture on how these soft counters can play out. Lets say a water elemental’s water field, geyser, made it so the thief sometimes left footprints or water droplets while walking inside it. The elementalist can’t actually see the thief but he can guess where he’s heading and try n’ hit his opponent with area of effect abilities. If there are no droplets then the ele can guess that the thief is somewhere else. The thief can respond in a few ways. The first option is he could wait until he’s out of the water field to start his invis, or he can be unpredictable enough not to be hit by it during the invis. If he’kitten he can use one of his many blink abilities so the thief’s opponent still doesn’t know where he went. He could stand still inside the field in order to pretend like he didn’t enter. He could keep moving knowing that the ele will know and just dodge the incoming AE attack. He could have a friendly distract the ele so he doesn’t have the time to actually track the thief.

Do you see how much meta game this will add in PvP? A thief will actually need to be tricky.

In theory, yes this would be sort of fair. In practice, think of how hard this would be to incorporate. Stealth reveal isn’t an option for the clear reason that thieves can’t stealth for ever. If they try to, they simply arn’t hurting anyone because the second they deal any direct damage they are revealed. I main thief, I also play warrior and ranger. Because I main thief, I know the common patterns thieves use and have found them to be lousy and pitiful. They can “perma stealth” but the second they are revealed they are meaningless to me and I don’t spec for dps (wvw). In spvp, it usually ends in a stalemate because they simply cannot stay out of stealth long enough to get me near low health.

Bottom line, thieves arn’t that powerful if you know what they’re capable of.

Zacchary.6183:

Last night in Kaineng, my friends (ele and engi) and I were messing around in Greenbriar when, for 30 minutes straight, a Thief was harassing every caravan going to it. Third harass attempt I caught him in the distance and told my friends about it. So we waited.

This pretty much was the encounter from there:

1. Prepped “behind me” (queue) in chat.
2. Place Tripwire behind Yak.
3. Thief trips it less than a second later.
4. Said queue when trap disappeared.
5. Friends run through me and start using improvised AoE.
6. Thief appears and starts attacking us.
7. At 30% hp, the Thief pops shadow refuge (which we all saw the refuge).
8. All three coordinate a debilitating attack on the Refuge: Ele uses Frozen Ground. Engi uses Glue Shot. I used Caltrops.
9. Thief ran out too early at 20% HP and appeared seconds later with Cripple.
10. I spam Dancing Dagger to keep his butt crippled while my friends kill him.

It was glorious and the best part was he stuck with the zerg afterwards.

tl;dr ==> l2p

So basically, you needed 3 people to kill a single opponent?
Yeah, indeed, L2P…
Just like in any other MMO with PvP, the stealth classe(s) is(are) overpowered and need adjustments (nerfs).

all i hear in this thread is Mommy i got WTFPWNED by a well played thief and im garbage at my class please make the bad man go away Q_Q

Korrigan.4837:

Zacchary.6183:

Last night in Kaineng, my friends (ele and engi) and I were messing around in Greenbriar when, for 30 minutes straight, a Thief was harassing every caravan going to it. Third harass attempt I caught him in the distance and told my friends about it. So we waited.

This pretty much was the encounter from there:

1. Prepped “behind me” (queue) in chat.
2. Place Tripwire behind Yak.
3. Thief trips it less than a second later.
4. Said queue when trap disappeared.
5. Friends run through me and start using improvised AoE.
6. Thief appears and starts attacking us.
7. At 30% hp, the Thief pops shadow refuge (which we all saw the refuge).
8. All three coordinate a debilitating attack on the Refuge: Ele uses Frozen Ground. Engi uses Glue Shot. I used Caltrops.
9. Thief ran out too early at 20% HP and appeared seconds later with Cripple.
10. I spam Dancing Dagger to keep his butt crippled while my friends kill him.

It was glorious and the best part was he stuck with the zerg afterwards.

tl;dr ==> l2p

So basically, you needed 3 people to kill a single opponent?
Yeah, indeed, L2P…
Just like in any other MMO with PvP, the stealth classe(s) is(are) overpowered and need adjustments (nerfs).

Lol! Straw man is cool but we didn’t “need 3 people” for kitten. We train against specific builds in PvP while we get our laurels and stealth-heavy thief builds are one of them. Any one of us could’ve killed him. As for that encounter, it just so happened that all of us were kitten y from him ganking a few of our dolyaks and we wanted to ruin him. It was quick but satisfying, nonetheless.

NinjaEd.3946:

GKC.3851:

NinjaEd.3946:

Thief is pretty weak in pvp already. Very limited in wvw, and not the dominator in pve. They arn’t kings anywhere, yet people can’t seem to l2p :/

Somethings will never make sense…

I don’t know how this changes would effect PvE and personally I am all for buffing thieves if this is too much. I want them viable. What I dislike is the mechanic of stealth itself. It is a very harsh mechanic and it’s not that fun to deal with. Not many classes have an option to counter the tactics and the fight ends in annoying stalemates.

Let me paint you a picture on how these soft counters can play out. Lets say a water elemental’s water field, geyser, made it so the thief sometimes left footprints or water droplets while walking inside it. The elementalist can’t actually see the thief but he can guess where he’s heading and try n’ hit his opponent with area of effect abilities. If there are no droplets then the ele can guess that the thief is somewhere else. The thief can respond in a few ways. The first option is he could wait until he’s out of the water field to start his invis, or he can be unpredictable enough not to be hit by it during the invis. If he’kitten he can use one of his many blink abilities so the thief’s opponent still doesn’t know where he went. He could stand still inside the field in order to pretend like he didn’t enter. He could keep moving knowing that the ele will know and just dodge the incoming AE attack. He could have a friendly distract the ele so he doesn’t have the time to actually track the thief.

Do you see how much meta game this will add in PvP? A thief will actually need to be tricky.

In theory, yes this would be sort of fair. In practice, think of how hard this would be to incorporate. Stealth reveal isn’t an option for the clear reason that thieves can’t stealth for ever. If they try to, they simply arn’t hurting anyone because the second they deal any direct damage they are revealed. I main thief, I also play warrior and ranger. Because I main thief, I know the common patterns thieves use and have found them to be lousy and pitiful. They can “perma stealth” but the second they are revealed they are meaningless to me and I don’t spec for dps (wvw). In spvp, it usually ends in a stalemate because they simply cannot stay out of stealth long enough to get me near low health.

Bottom line, thieves arn’t that powerful if you know what they’re capable of.

lol @ Bottom line, thieves arn’t that powerful if you know what they’re capable of.

You only say that if you are a bad thief, lying or dunno how to use a sword.

Zacchary.6183:

Last night in Kaineng, my friends (ele and engi) and I were messing around in Greenbriar when, for 30 minutes straight, a Thief was harassing every caravan going to it. Third harass attempt I caught him in the distance and told my friends about it. So we waited.

This pretty much was the encounter from there:

1. Prepped “behind me” (queue) in chat.
2. Place Tripwire behind Yak.
3. Thief trips it less than a second later.
4. Said queue when trap disappeared.
5. Friends run through me and start using improvised AoE.
6. Thief appears and starts attacking us.
7. At 30% hp, the Thief pops shadow refuge (which we all saw the refuge).
8. All three coordinate a debilitating attack on the Refuge: Ele uses Frozen Ground. Engi uses Glue Shot. I used Caltrops.
9. Thief ran out too early at 20% HP and appeared seconds later with Cripple.
10. I spam Dancing Dagger to keep his butt crippled while my friends kill him.

It was glorious and the best part was he stuck with the zerg afterwards.

tl;dr ==> l2p

You needed 3 people to take out a thief and your telling others to L2P?

Isende.2607:

(…)anytime someone gets their behiney handed to them in pvp, they decide that, rather than figure out how to counter the issue, the winning profession just needs a nerf.(…)

Wise words, I hate that every time I open the suggestion forum someone I asking for a nerf.
A few weeks ago someone was saying the barrage (#5 ranger Longbow) was OP and needed nerf asap.

Now, on topic, simple fact is, make if you can reveal the stealth even if it’s just every 6 secs, it would make it useless.
It’s like asking for a smelly grenade to keep pets away, or chicken wings to make warriors munch on them an be unable to attack you.

Last few updates really screwd eles because people just didn’t know how to counter and wouldn’t stop asking for nerfs, as a result several builds became useless just like that.

Kopipoki.3542:

Zacchary.6183:

Last night in Kaineng, my friends (ele and engi) and I were messing around in Greenbriar when, for 30 minutes straight, a Thief was harassing every caravan going to it. Third harass attempt I caught him in the distance and told my friends about it. So we waited.

This pretty much was the encounter from there:

1. Prepped “behind me” (queue) in chat.
2. Place Tripwire behind Yak.
3. Thief trips it less than a second later.
4. Said queue when trap disappeared.
5. Friends run through me and start using improvised AoE.
6. Thief appears and starts attacking us.
7. At 30% hp, the Thief pops shadow refuge (which we all saw the refuge).
8. All three coordinate a debilitating attack on the Refuge: Ele uses Frozen Ground. Engi uses Glue Shot. I used Caltrops.
9. Thief ran out too early at 20% HP and appeared seconds later with Cripple.
10. I spam Dancing Dagger to keep his butt crippled while my friends kill him.

It was glorious and the best part was he stuck with the zerg afterwards.

tl;dr ==> l2p

You needed 3 people to take out a thief and your telling others to L2P?

Again… Lol! Straw man. Lol! Didn’t need 3 people. We were all just kitten ed with him.

XII.9401:

lol @ Bottom line, thieves arn’t that powerful if you know what they’re capable of.

You only say that if you are a bad thief, lying or dunno how to use a sword.

More like thieves are squishy. You can pretend all day that thieves are dominators but you better kick yourself for thinking they are at all on par with some other builds. Thieves arn’t gods as people claim them to be. These non-sense stories of people needing “5+ people” and they still cannot kill a single thief just means they have no clue what a thief is or what pvp is. They prolly only do zerg play and have no experience with 1v1.

I watch idiots in wvw run in circles chasing a thief. The second I step in I’m on that thief like a predator because I watch what they do/and know how their skills behave. Call me w/e you like, but I know how to best thieves. They are easy if you know them. Anyone who suggest otherwise has never rolled a thief or cries because they got killed from someone more skilled than them(disregarding the class choice.)

ITT: Zacchary tells a story and screams lol strawman at any1 who dares to deduce from it.

Stealth is OP in gw2 and OP’s suggestions, although odd, are very clever and original. I like.

Zacchary.6183:

Kopipoki.3542:

Zacchary.6183:

Last night in Kaineng, my friends (ele and engi) and I were messing around in Greenbriar when, for 30 minutes straight, a Thief was harassing every caravan going to it. Third harass attempt I caught him in the distance and told my friends about it. So we waited.

This pretty much was the encounter from there:

1. Prepped “behind me” (queue) in chat.
2. Place Tripwire behind Yak.
3. Thief trips it less than a second later.
4. Said queue when trap disappeared.
5. Friends run through me and start using improvised AoE.
6. Thief appears and starts attacking us.
7. At 30% hp, the Thief pops shadow refuge (which we all saw the refuge).
8. All three coordinate a debilitating attack on the Refuge: Ele uses Frozen Ground. Engi uses Glue Shot. I used Caltrops.
9. Thief ran out too early at 20% HP and appeared seconds later with Cripple.
10. I spam Dancing Dagger to keep his butt crippled while my friends kill him.

It was glorious and the best part was he stuck with the zerg afterwards.

tl;dr ==> l2p

You needed 3 people to take out a thief and your telling others to L2P?

Again… Lol! Straw man. Lol! Didn’t need 3 people. We were all just kitten ed with him.

obviously you did need 3 people otherwise you would have given a different example.

I would just be happy if Ranger pets could sniff out and track thieves. Just that alone would give one…. ONE…. thing to counter act Thieves in WvW.

Ranger can plant a trap and if a thief in stealth triggers it, well, you have a general fix on their location.

I have 3 professions I have played a good amount (in descending order). Thief, Warrior, ranger.

In spvp (where 1v1 skills are much higher) I have ended a duel in a stalemate with my thief vs a ranger, and my ranger vs a thief.

Im no where NEAR pro in spvp (long break from spvp, many people stomp me) yet I can still pull off a stalemate. FYi, a usual stalemate in spvp is when a fight looks like it is going nowhere. Neither one dies, neither one looks to be dominating, after 5 or 8 minutes later.

Go to the thief forums and look for a post titled, “Ask a Thief” or click my name and look for that post if you wana dig through. Send me a tell for kitten’s sake, ask questions. Thief is NOT OP. There are much more viable professions/builds than a zerker thief in dps when in a group of skilled players.

Ask in lion’s arch for a “pro” thief. Stop blaming player skill on thief’s success. There is no reason to.

zengara.8301:

Please stop this thread, some threads are actualy worth reading, and if the good threads of suggestion was up, Arena Net would have it pretty easy to what needs to be implented in the game, and not to remove/remake every proffession so they can overcome something that is easy to overcome…….By making thiese suggestiong Arena Net would maybe miss the actual good suggestions that is worth reading/doing something about.

While I think just removing stomp when invisible is enough, I think it’s fair that if large amount of player complaining a type of skill is too strong, A-net should consider what to do about it. Afterall, the sole reason of periodically rebalance skills is to keep players playing the game.

zengara.8301:

I will make this quiet simple, you dont need a reason to remove stealth AT ALL, not in WvW or in PvP.

WvW is a bit more difficult, but again, you dont need to go after a thief, actually bad, since you the main thing you should do is defend/capture stuff again, everything from defending a tower with ac´s all over the place to atking a tower, stealth wont do anything.

Btw, I just seen the following once in WvW this month.

In this case, I was in a group of about 30 players attacking a keep. Just as usual after the keep is captured, most in the group follows the commander to attack the next target, and leaved about 5 players cleaning out the sieges inside the keep. And then we found an enemy thief stayed in the keep.

All of us keep throwing damage at him and can’t kill him or make him go away. He keep killing the NPC workers therefore makes keep upgrade impossible. This is just weird.

How about throwing enemy players out the keeps after the keep has been captured for… like 5 minutes?