Guild Wars 2

Gix.9742:

Food for thought: Most (if not all, with the exception of Cloak and Dagger of course) stealth skills have 30+ second cooldowns.

Wait a sec … I don’t play thief so I’m probably wrong, but from the description of C&D thief needs to hit something to get into stealth … thats much different than more than one “thief” hunt I saw where thief was visible for a 2-3s max and then stealthing again never hitting anything not even “white” mobs around as most of them happened inside of the keep.

If thief can get stealth only on 30s CD … there will be no (or not much) talking about stealth as it’s now …

nekitten234:

Gix.9742:

Food for thought: Most (if not all, with the exception of Cloak and Dagger of course) stealth skills have 30+ second cooldowns.

Wait a sec … I don’t play thief so I’m probably wrong, but from the description of C&D thief needs to hit something to get into stealth … thats much different than more than one “thief” hunt I saw where thief was visible for a 2-3s max and then stealthing again never hitting anything not even “white” mobs around as most of them happened inside of the keep.

If thief can get stealth only on 30s CD … there will be no (or not much) talking about stealth as it’s now …

The only means for stealth without a target come from using smoke fields (Black Powder, Smoke Screen) along with Leap Finishers (Heartseeker) to get into stealth.

The problem is, Black Powder + Heartseeker costs a total of 9 Initiative, or 7 with traits. To maintain that over a longer period of time, you need to trait for full initiative regeneration, which means using Patience, Infusion of Shadow and Infiltrator’s Signet. Which means either no regeneration or condition removal in stealth.

The non-weapon skills that Thieves have for stealth are:

• Blinding Powder (40s CD, 32 if traited)
• Shadow Refuge (60s CD, 38 if traited)
• Shadow Trap (30s CD, 24 if traited)

Sunflowers.1729:

Stealthed players, however, can still move around avoiding area damage almost completely. This doesn’t even take into account targeted abilities which are completely useless against someone who has stealthed.

The reason that these are ‘counters’ to Thieves isn’t because stealth somehow makes you more vulnerable to them, it’s simply because we have low hp and few stun breakers. They are not, however, counters to stealth

Also, most D/P thieves will take +2 initiative on stealth, allowing for near constant BP-HS spam. I use HiS and Blinding Powder as well for even higher uptime, and there’s almost no situation which I cannot easily access stealth (except during revealed, of course).

No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.

If a stealth player deals any Direct Damage they are revealed for 3 seconds. If that isn’t enough for you to react/retaliate thats your own downskilled issue. In spvp, or wvw stealth hardly affects me. In fact, from the amount of posts about this topic, I’d bet a lot of people have found counters to stealth and have no issue with them.

L2p. Or ask H2P. If you cannot counter stealth at this point you have done nothing to help yourself but post a stealth counter thread. Which has lead to nothing, because stealth comes down to player skill.

Olba.5376:

nekitten234:

Gix.9742:

Food for thought: Most (if not all, with the exception of Cloak and Dagger of course) stealth skills have 30+ second cooldowns.

Wait a sec … I don’t play thief so I’m probably wrong, but from the description of C&D thief needs to hit something to get into stealth … thats much different than more than one “thief” hunt I saw where thief was visible for a 2-3s max and then stealthing again never hitting anything not even “white” mobs around as most of them happened inside of the keep.

If thief can get stealth only on 30s CD … there will be no (or not much) talking about stealth as it’s now …

The only means for stealth without a target come from using smoke fields (Black Powder, Smoke Screen) along with Leap Finishers (Heartseeker) to get into stealth.

The problem is, Black Powder + Heartseeker costs a total of 9 Initiative, or 7 with traits. To maintain that over a longer period of time, you need to trait for full initiative regeneration, which means using Patience, Infusion of Shadow and Infiltrator’s Signet. Which means either no regeneration or condition removal in stealth.

The non-weapon skills that Thieves have for stealth are:

• Blinding Powder (40s CD, 32 if traited)
• Shadow Refuge (60s CD, 38 if traited)
• Shadow Trap (30s CD, 24 if traited)

Thanks for the information

From the above it seems to me that “solution” may be hitting those skills or adding even more disadvantage to them.

Note: I don’t mind being killed by stealthed thief, on the contrary, it adds additional flavour while running around not knowing when someone will attack — I just wish for the some way to counter stealth after attack is started, trying to hunt/fight with someone who is only visible (and targetable) within 2-3s window is the thing which causes much of the “thief hate” IMHO.

Olba.5376:

warchanter.9574:

Don’t allow them to heal while in stealth. They nerf healing for eles in mist form. I understand its different but stealth is just over abused. And fighting someone and getting them to about 10% of there health and then invs you aoe and miss them and they reappear full health. Healing should reveal them.

The thing is, to get that, you need a few things:

• Hide in Shadows
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation
• TONS of Healing Power

That already limits you a lot, since Hide in Shadows has a 30 second cooldown and Shadow’s Rejuvenation requires 30 points into Shadow Arts. And no, you do not heal fast enough with Shadow’s Rejuvenation alone.

Now, Healing Power comes with the following combinations:

• Healing Power / Power / Toughness
• Healing Power / Precision / Vitality
• Healing Power / Toughness / Condition Damage
• Toughness / Boon Duration / Healing Power
• Vitality / Condition Damage / Healing Power

Notice that there is no combination with Healing Power and two damage modifiers. No Condition damage with Precision, no Power with Precision. This means that a Thief who specs for Healing Power lacks damage.

Also, regaining health in stealth means that you’re not dealing damage, unless it’s conditions.

Thus, the only spec available is a P/D bleed spec. And let me tell you, the damage those guys do in comparison to a full berserker Backstab thief is weak.

My point is that you cannot get both damage and massive stealth regeneration.

Shadow Arts trait line. The trait line to improve your stealth ability. This also happens to be your +healing and +toughness trait line. Since you’d want to reach Shadow’s Rejuvenation, then you will have +300 healing before you even consider gear. Not to mention the +300 toughness before you even start to factor in gear

Honestly all ANet has to do is give the Acrobatics trait line the +toughness and +healing. This way, if they go the stealth route, it should cost them survivability while out of stealth.

I mean honestly. Thief players have basically become out right delusional now if they think they are made of glass and if they weren’t see through they would shatter.

Watch and learn.

No, this is not me.

Quarktastic.1027:

Make all incoming damage remove stealth. Problem solved.

Make all in coming damage disable one of your strongest skills, cut your armour in half and remove all defensive and healing effects.

Seriously, the reason stealth doesn’t have a statistical counter is because it isn’t a statistical defense. It’s a magic trick, and like all magic tricks, it’s significantly less amazing when one figures the trick out. If it were anything more then a trick, thieves likely wouldn’t be considered terrible at PvE.
As it stands, a stealth counter skill is literally a thief shutdown skill. No class has a shutdown skill against them, so neither should thieves.

Deamhan.9538:

Shadow Arts trait line. The trait line to improve your stealth ability. This also happens to be your +healing and +toughness trait line. Since you’d want to reach Shadow’s Rejuvenation, then you will have +300 healing before you even consider gear. Not to mention the +300 toughness before you even start to factor in gear

You have to be kidding me. Shadow’s Rejuvenation scales at 0.1 healing per healing power point. That 300 healing power makes it go from 293/s to 323/s. And that’s not much at all.

Heck, even if you add Shadow Protector for the Regeneration, that’ll still be 490 hp/s.

Now add in the consideration of Revealed and you’re down to regenerating 1,292+ 835 = 2,127 every 7 seconds, for an average of 303 hp/s.

For a comparison, that’s less than Burn does without any traits.

And besides, majority of all backstab thieves are not going with 30 in Shadow Arts because that comes with the implication that you’ll be backstabbing as infrequently as possible, which means crap damage.

Honestly all ANet has to do is give the Acrobatics trait line the +toughness and +healing. This way, if they go the stealth route, it should cost them survivability while out of stealth.

Yeah and give Shadow Arts the Vitality and Boon Duration? Shadow Arts is the traitline with the most access to Regeneration on Thief. Good job, you just gave thieves nearly permanent regeneration and 3000 more hp. Oh and FYI, most of the extremely-defensive thieves are already going 15+ points into Acrobatics.

I mean honestly. Thief players have basically become out right delusional now if they think they are made of glass and if they weren’t see through they would shatter.

Not necessarily made of glass, but not really balanced either. To last in a battle, a Thief needs that stealth regeneration. Going that way, however, means your direct damage route is impaired beyond all repair. That means your best spec is going to be P/D.

Watch and learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kjN4Swgn3k

No, this is not me.

Oh how nice, a non-stealth bleed spec. Did I mention that P/D, the other bleed spec is the most popular high-stealth build?

Also did you notice that he’s ticking 120+ per tick on his bleeds and has 20k hp? That kinda means he’s running a full set of Carrion armor. Now tell me, what would be the non-condition equivalent of that? Because I’m seeing Soldier’s. And trust me, I’m running backstab with full soldier’s and 30 in Shadow Arts. The damage isn’t great.

Well, i like the stealth thing, kinda new to this game so dont know fully about how stealth works, but when i am against a sin 1v1 i basecly win almost every time, prob because i am a tanky ele xD but whatever they do they have to come up close to be able to do anything “after what i know,” and all of thoese aoe i got normaly stops/dmg them alot, even if they try to run away ussing stealth, they normaly cant get so far away be4 stealth runs out and you can hunt them down.
I wouldnt imagine a warrior would have troubles with them either, since they are fairely tanky and dmg alot to, just dont see this as a OP thing but more like who is against who, if that thief who you lost to switch over to a war and you switch over to a thief there and you can see that he isnt winning then it might be a big problem, but as i see it now, its quiet easy to take down a thief, unless if doesnt have the same mass lag as i do with my old laptop xD

NinjaEd.3946:

No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.

I’d argue that if the Thief keeps walking in a straight line, they deserve to get hit by area skills. I almost never get hit by AoEs in stealth, because you just have to play a bit unpredictably, then nobody can really guess where you are.

Even though it’s true that people need to ‘learn to play’ against stealth, Thieves can’t just say “oh he L2P-ed I can’t do anything”. There are a lot of things that a Thief can do to stop people from countering them. Most thieves, however, can’t be bothered, so they just say the class sucks.

Engineer Glasses should see a stealth thief for a very short time when activated. Unable to target, but at least see where he is.

damage shouldn’t remove stealth, that would make it completely useless. I’m still in favour of hard cc’s to remove stealth, as those are rather limited and mostly targeted on a small radius (say 300-600) or cone before you. if you know well enough where the ‘hidden’ thief is to place a hard CC, he played badly and should be punished like every other player who makes mistakes with another class.

or make it a boon to be stripped. this of course would favour mesmers and necros against thiefs and the former already are rather strong against them, so I guess they’d have to be nerved next.

either way: thiefs need some buffs on other weapons to make different builds equally interesting as the typical permastealth-troller or partialstealth-gc-threehit-wonder

ZudetGambeous.9573:

AOE = dead stealth player

Arrow Cart = Destealthed and dead stealth player

Back up 10 steps = destealthed player (by the time he gets to you)

Move away from smoke fields that allow thieves to stealth = no stealth for stealth player

Immobilize = stuck in 1 spot stealth player

Spin attacks = stealth player who has to run away

Stand in an AOE field = stealth player takes damage just to get to you

There are literally dozens of ways to counter stealth, being lazy and asking for a nerf is unfortunately the most used method.

That’s what I’m seeing and I’m not even a PVPer LOL

They’ve done enough to stealth they don’t need to do anymore. It’s fine how it is. All people need to do is use AOE’s more often when a stealth is nearby or use prot or other such buffs to reduce damage to themselves. I can think of plenty of ways to kill stealthed enemies heck I’ve had to myself in PVE those critters that stealth are a pain but they aren’t invincible and die even if I can’t see them. /bombkit

AirWick.1769:

Stealth um there is just no real counter except the hope of landing aoe damage which usually there using stealth to get out of the area.

Why is there no counter to this?

I have no clue not even a skill from maybe even one profession that can counter this.

Players say that stealth is not a problem but really they are just stealth users themselves.

I have seen certain stealth users that are really good able to fight 2-3 opponents alone.

Im not saying there opponents are bad or anything but stealth with a good player makes even another good player without stealth have real trouble in a duel even lose most of the time.

Why is stealth not considered a boon? I bet if it was a removable boon it would make sense.

Telling me stealth is required for the profession? I feel that they feel that way cause of the fact their using berserkers. You might even tell me you expect me to fight without stealth as a thief or mesmer? I have been in and seen fights with thieves that have actually fought and won without stealth. There wasnt spectate at the time so I could never check their build out.

Mesmers they already got a truckload of mechanics that makes them one of the most dominate professions. I have already had my share of mesmers that are ridiculously powerful with stealth and a whole lot of other stuff their capable of depending on their build.

I agree with you 100%. Everyone says to use aoe or melee around or whatever. But why should we have to do this. And a stealth’d thief does not always come out of stealth when attacking. I can’t count the times I’ve been downed from damage from a stealth’d thief that spammed the number 1 skill while still in stealth. And the Ranger “Entangle” has absolutely no effect on a stealth’d thief. I know I’ve tried it almost every time a thief has stealth’d near me. And the damage output while stealth’d IS OP!!!! period. Backstab causing enuf damage to down a player who HAS NOT COUNTER TO DAMAGE DONE BY STEALTH’D PLAYER is ridiculous. And one thing that absolutely needs to be taken out is the thieves ability to “finish them” while stealth’d. After all, if they can’t claim sentry points or any area while stealth’d, then why can they finish off a player while stealth’d. I don’t care if a player stealth’s to hide. But there has to be a counter to the damage output from that stealth.
This isn’t nerfing a thief it’s making it balanced for other professions that can’t stealth. I’ve been saying that a stealthing profession is unbalanced as long as there is NO SPECIFIC COUNTER to that stealth by other professions.
And I don’t want to see any comments about running from the area cuz I don’t run from fights or using aoe or whatever BECAUSE IT DOESN’T WORK. I’ve only seen it work maybe a maximum of 20-25 times since Guild Wars 2 began. And this is not counting the um…(at risk of having this comment deleted)…hackers that seem to stay in stealth for very long periods of time only to attack you when you believe them to be gone. Once I stood there for almost 5 min with a few other players watching for a stealth-ed player who never came out of stealth until we began leaving and the thief started attacking again.

I agree 100% that there should be a counter to stealth…the thiefs (assassin really…) duo of highest/quickest burst damage, plus stealth is way, way OP…

The only thing stealth needs is a glimmer like in starcraft. That balances it perfectly, puts in the skill for both thief and opponent.

marnick.4305:

The only thing stealth needs is a glimmer like in starcraft. That balances it perfectly, puts in the skill for both thief and opponent.

It would be awesome if you could see the thieves movement if you concentrate on the ground where he’s walking. Stealth doesn’t make you disappear only invisible. This doesn’t mean something you hit, walk on, move or interact doesn’t get affected.

Dual.8953:

Make all in coming damage disable one of your strongest skills, cut your armour in half and remove all defensive and healing effects.

First of all, the armor and healing effects need not be removed if brought out of stealth by incoming damage.

Seriously, the reason stealth doesn’t have a statistical counter is because it isn’t a statistical defense. It’s a magic trick, and like all magic tricks, it’s significantly less amazing when one figures the trick out. If it were anything more then a trick, thieves likely wouldn’t be considered terrible at PvE.
As it stands, a stealth counter skill is literally a thief shutdown skill. No class has a shutdown skill against them, so neither should thieves.

Secondly, a stealth counter is not a thief shutdown skill. It’s just a way to reveal the thief. After all, if you read what Anet had said about the thieves to the magazines and press etc. “The Thief stealthing is meant for the thief to get away and heal”, not to inflict crap loads of damage. Oh, but I guess that statement was completely forgot about. If every other profession can fight and survive without stealthing then I guess a thief can too unless the player’s skills are lacking. Rangers use medium armor and engineers use medium armor just like the thief, if the thief can’t figure out how to survive without stealth or being revealed, then it is the fault of the thief and not a thief shutdown skill or any other excuse a thief would use to being able to keep stealthing. I do not have a thief character and will not make one as other players over using stealth and the egos that go along with it have really got me to hate the thief profession, besides, I’m not scared enuf to hide in order to attack.

Olba.5376:

Deamhan.9538:

Shadow Arts trait line. The trait line to improve your stealth ability. This also happens to be your +healing and +toughness trait line. Since you’d want to reach Shadow’s Rejuvenation, then you will have +300 healing before you even consider gear. Not to mention the +300 toughness before you even start to factor in gear

You have to be kidding me. Shadow’s Rejuvenation scales at 0.1 healing per healing power point. That 300 healing power makes it go from 293/s to 323/s. And that’s not much at all.

Heck, even if you add Shadow Protector for the Regeneration, that’ll still be 490 hp/s.

Now add in the consideration of Revealed and you’re down to regenerating 1,292+ 835 = 2,127 every 7 seconds, for an average of 303 hp/s.

303 hp/s regen before gear and you say it as if that’s bad? As I said, delusional. Fighting thieves in WvW they, quite literally, spend half the fight in stealth. In a 1 min fight, they will be in stealth 30s accumulative time. So let’s just look at the 303 hp/s. That’s 9k. Since they can pretty much keep up the shadow dance indefinitely (I’ve had encounters last a couple minutes with no sign of slowing down until other factors came in to disrupt the situation), then at least half hp is coming back unhindered.

Compare that to a ranger. We can, if spec’ed go all out regen tank to get 600 hp/s. That’s a grand total including the right gear. It also leaves our damage quite low. We rely on our pet to deal the damage. You know, that animal that won’t ‘guess’ at where you are and try to AoE areas you ‘might’ be after you go stealth. We’re constantly exposed so while those condition fall off of you (whether they get removed or the time on them expires), we get application after application put onto us.

Also, I’d like to know what you consider good damage.

I agree with Deahman mainly cuz when I’ve been in fights with thieves on my ranger who is very high crit chance and very high crit damage and very high power along with life steal consumables etc etc. where the thief’s regen was faster than the damage I could inflict with the longbow skill 2 rapid shot. And that’s 10 shots of accumulating damage tied with crit and life steal, and to have the thief’s regen surpass that, it’s just plain ridiculous. I’ve had the accumulating numbers top out well over 9-10k by the 10th shot and still the thief is at half to 3/4 hp. And at that point I say mofo bullkitten and let the thief kill me. Obviously if I couldn’t down the thief with the same skill and damage I can drop warriors and guardians with by the 7th or 8th shot then the regen is way too high.

Edit: And this is without the thief going into stealth or when going into stealth brought immediately out from the rapid shot and thief not being able to dodge quick enuf. Now whether or not rapid shot is supposed to bring a thief out of stealth is not my prob. if it does then it does. It doesn’t happen all the time tho. And when it doesn’t happen is when the thief backstabs and essentially one-shots me even having 19k hp. Now that is op.

Deamhan.9538:

303 hp/s regen before gear and you say it as if that’s bad? As I said, delusional.

Well yes, it is bad, compared to what you’d get if you went full out Healing Power.

Fighting thieves in WvW they, quite literally, spend half the fight in stealth. In a 1 min fight, they will be in stealth 30s accumulative time. So let’s just look at the 303 hp/s. That’s 9k. Since they can pretty much keep up the shadow dance indefinitely (I’ve had encounters last a couple minutes with no sign of slowing down until other factors came in to disrupt the situation), then at least half hp is coming back unhindered.

FYI, a Warrior can easily get 320 hp/s regeneration and no one ever thinks that’s too high. In fact a lot of folk think it’s too low.

Also, I’d like to know what you consider good damage.

Well 806 damage every 7 seconds sure isn’t what I consider high. Not when Eviscerate is 1006 every 8/10s and Axe autoattack is 1,648 every 3.6s.

Note that I am not saying that CnD + Backstab doesn’t deal high damage. I’ve been hit for some 18,117 dmg by a good thief before I could do much. I’m just saying that the myth of a Thief that spends 50% of the time in stealth and deals massive dps doesn’t exist. After all, camping in stealth is the opposite of high dps.

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

If every other profession can fight and survive without stealthing then I guess a thief can too unless the player’s skills are lacking. Rangers use medium armor and engineers use medium armor just like the thief, if the thief can’t figure out how to survive without stealth or being revealed, then it is the fault of the thief and not a thief shutdown skill or any other excuse a thief would use to being able to keep stealthing.

You realize the ranger life pool is significanlty higher than thieves? Engineer has almost permanent vigor, and they can recover from damage, and become immune to conditions when below 25% health and their life pool is higher than thieves. Stealth is our defence, dodging multiple times can be done by any of the adventurer classes. You really have no place to be talking about thieves “needing skill” if you cannot find effective counters to stealth. Most thieves are complete crap in 1v1, probably because they go by your mentality that they can live w/o stealth and rush 1v10 after killing some pug in the field who just joined…

Really, L2p. You havn’t spent a second of your time researching or asking questions, you just got killed by a thief couple of times and decided they are impenetrable. Make a thief, learn how their traits/skills work. This goes to all who think thieves are still,“op”. If you sit around all day calling calling something stupid or broken your no better than a 1st grader complaining about his/her first school project. Sit in the mists lobby and ask thief questions if you gata, don’t hotjoin and rage quit because a player was “stealthed the whole time” and you couldn’t figure out what to do.

Deamhan.9538:

Olba.5376:

warchanter.9574:

Don’t allow them to heal while in stealth. They nerf healing for eles in mist form. I understand its different but stealth is just over abused. And fighting someone and getting them to about 10% of there health and then invs you aoe and miss them and they reappear full health. Healing should reveal them.

The thing is, to get that, you need a few things:

• Hide in Shadows
• Shadow’s Rejuvenation
• TONS of Healing Power

That already limits you a lot, since Hide in Shadows has a 30 second cooldown and Shadow’s Rejuvenation requires 30 points into Shadow Arts. And no, you do not heal fast enough with Shadow’s Rejuvenation alone.

Now, Healing Power comes with the following combinations:

• Healing Power / Power / Toughness
• Healing Power / Precision / Vitality
• Healing Power / Toughness / Condition Damage
• Toughness / Boon Duration / Healing Power
• Vitality / Condition Damage / Healing Power

Notice that there is no combination with Healing Power and two damage modifiers. No Condition damage with Precision, no Power with Precision. This means that a Thief who specs for Healing Power lacks damage.

Also, regaining health in stealth means that you’re not dealing damage, unless it’s conditions.

Thus, the only spec available is a P/D bleed spec. And let me tell you, the damage those guys do in comparison to a full berserker Backstab thief is weak.

My point is that you cannot get both damage and massive stealth regeneration.

Shadow Arts trait line. The trait line to improve your stealth ability. This also happens to be your +healing and +toughness trait line. Since you’d want to reach Shadow’s Rejuvenation, then you will have +300 healing before you even consider gear. Not to mention the +300 toughness before you even start to factor in gear

Honestly all ANet has to do is give the Acrobatics trait line the +toughness and +healing. This way, if they go the stealth route, it should cost them survivability while out of stealth.

I mean honestly. Thief players have basically become out right delusional now if they think they are made of glass and if they weren’t see through they would shatter.

Watch and learn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kjN4Swgn3k

No, this is not me.

i wish i only need 1 button…

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

Dual.8953:

Make all in coming damage disable one of your strongest skills, cut your armour in half and remove all defensive and healing effects.

First of all, the armor and healing effects need not be removed if brought out of stealth by incoming damage.

Seriously, the reason stealth doesn’t have a statistical counter is because it isn’t a statistical defense. It’s a magic trick, and like all magic tricks, it’s significantly less amazing when one figures the trick out. If it were anything more then a trick, thieves likely wouldn’t be considered terrible at PvE.
As it stands, a stealth counter skill is literally a thief shutdown skill. No class has a shutdown skill against them, so neither should thieves.

Secondly, a stealth counter is not a thief shutdown skill. It’s just a way to reveal the thief. After all, if you read what Anet had said about the thieves to the magazines and press etc. “The Thief stealthing is meant for the thief to get away and heal”, not to inflict crap loads of damage. Oh, but I guess that statement was completely forgot about. If every other profession can fight and survive without stealthing then I guess a thief can too unless the player’s skills are lacking. Rangers use medium armor and engineers use medium armor just like the thief, if the thief can’t figure out how to survive without stealth or being revealed, then it is the fault of the thief and not a thief shutdown skill or any other excuse a thief would use to being able to keep stealthing. I do not have a thief character and will not make one as other players over using stealth and the egos that go along with it have really got me to hate the thief profession, besides, I’m not scared enuf to hide in order to attack.

1) I used that as an analog, because unlike other classes, thieves don’t get your fancy protection boons, and are in the lowest HP bracket. Making stealth drop on damage is the same as making all those things happen to any other class on damage.

2) Every other class has means to mitigate damage. Ample access to protection, or blocks, or reflects, or better scaling healing power, or aegis. Thieves have limited to no access to all those things that allow classes to facetank in the open. They’re fragile as all heck. It’s the main reason they’re not wanted in dungeon parties, the intense amount of CCs and AoEs kill them stealthed or unstealthed. On top of that, weapon sets like P/D are completely focused around their stealth skill. Not even P/D’s auto attack is worth using.

3) The fact that you don’t have a thief shows. You have absolutely no idea how thieves survive as opposed to other classes, and judging by your outlook, you take your class’ defenses completely for granted.

Olba.5376:

Deamhan.9538:

303 hp/s regen before gear and you say it as if that’s bad? As I said, delusional.

Well yes, it is bad, compared to what you’d get if you went full out Healing Power.

Fighting thieves in WvW they, quite literally, spend half the fight in stealth. In a 1 min fight, they will be in stealth 30s accumulative time. So let’s just look at the 303 hp/s. That’s 9k. Since they can pretty much keep up the shadow dance indefinitely (I’ve had encounters last a couple minutes with no sign of slowing down until other factors came in to disrupt the situation), then at least half hp is coming back unhindered.

FYI, a Warrior can easily get 320 hp/s regeneration and no one ever thinks that’s too high. In fact a lot of folk think it’s too low.

Also, I’d like to know what you consider good damage.

Well 806 damage every 7 seconds sure isn’t what I consider high. Not when Eviscerate is 1006 every 8/10s and Axe autoattack is 1,648 every 3.6s.

Note that I am not saying that CnD + Backstab doesn’t deal high damage. I’ve been hit for some 18,117 dmg by a good thief before I could do much. I’m just saying that the myth of a Thief that spends 50% of the time in stealth and deals massive dps doesn’t exist. After all, camping in stealth is the opposite of high dps.

A warrior is constantly visible, targetable and thus engageable. That’s the defining differance.

You know what, I don’t even have to reply to any of this directly. Show me a video of you holding a stalemate vs 5 players who are not up leved and are fully geared (I’m assuming your warrior is fully geared?) then we’ll talk. I have yet to see a warrior hold up against a 5 man in WvW. They can’t out heal the damage and can’t escape. I’ve seen thieves hold a stalemate against 5 mans consistantly in WvW.

Deamhan.9538:

Olba.5376:

Deamhan.9538:

303 hp/s regen before gear and you say it as if that’s bad? As I said, delusional.

Well yes, it is bad, compared to what you’d get if you went full out Healing Power.

Fighting thieves in WvW they, quite literally, spend half the fight in stealth. In a 1 min fight, they will be in stealth 30s accumulative time. So let’s just look at the 303 hp/s. That’s 9k. Since they can pretty much keep up the shadow dance indefinitely (I’ve had encounters last a couple minutes with no sign of slowing down until other factors came in to disrupt the situation), then at least half hp is coming back unhindered.

FYI, a Warrior can easily get 320 hp/s regeneration and no one ever thinks that’s too high. In fact a lot of folk think it’s too low.

Also, I’d like to know what you consider good damage.

Well 806 damage every 7 seconds sure isn’t what I consider high. Not when Eviscerate is 1006 every 8/10s and Axe autoattack is 1,648 every 3.6s.

Note that I am not saying that CnD + Backstab doesn’t deal high damage. I’ve been hit for some 18,117 dmg by a good thief before I could do much. I’m just saying that the myth of a Thief that spends 50% of the time in stealth and deals massive dps doesn’t exist. After all, camping in stealth is the opposite of high dps.

A warrior is constantly visible, targetable and thus engageable. That’s the defining differance.

You know what, I don’t even have to reply to any of this directly. Show me a video of you holding a stalemate vs 5 players who are not up leved and are fully geared (I’m assuming your warrior is fully geared?) then we’ll talk. I have yet to see a warrior hold up against a 5 man in WvW. They can’t out heal the damage and can’t escape. I’ve seen thieves hold a stalemate against 5 mans consistantly in WvW.

Guardians can, bunker ele can, thieves arn’t the supereme holder of the universe as you make it out to be. If 5 players cannot coordinate cc on a thief then they havn’t got anything to show for as a group, and are probably new to wvw.

On the other hand, warriors can live fairly long. In spvp, where people arn’t spec’d into large group fights, I held off atleast 4 opposing enemies for atleast a minute. Wasn’t a stalemate, but in something where every minute is huge, I made a dent in their team. Shield, rampage, mace, shout build, these things can boost your survival tremendously. The reason you don’t see warriors excelling at this is because they can’t recover from damage that well (shouts don’t come back THAT quickly) and also their ability to dodge/evade is minimal. Warrior being visible means nothing, because they can control you over and over if they please, thieves just mess with you and if you’re incapable of dealing with 1 (like really, 1 thief? really? how sad it this) then you should rethink your strategy. My group comes across these “1 thieves” roaming around every now and then, we know how to cc. They hardly cause any damage, they only annoy you for a little bit.

If your problem with thieves is 1v1 well, you arn’t providing anything useful to suggest thieves arn’t working as intended. Thieves excel at 1v1, that is their thing. They do nearly nothing in group fights aside from a good source of blast finishers (not many reliable aoe skills). Any adventurer profession can dodge a ton, and stay alive well. They may not dodge as much as a thief but they excel in other fields. Nothing wrong with a thief, l2p.

Thief here. I can backstab, use smoke field, wait 3 seconds (in which I have all 3 dodges for ranged attacks) and go stealthy again for another backstab without using any slot skill. Every backstab hits for 6k. While im in stealth, I got regen and regeneration from Shadow’s Grandmaster trait, for a total of 253 hp/seg. It’s a slow fighting method, but it guarantees that I will not be hit except for aoe attacks and snares that I can counter with the Acrobatics Master trait that removes both cripple and weakness every ten seconds, a time vastly inferior to the cd of most disables. Finnally, I use Stealth to strip 2 boons from my foe, get 3 of my own, backstab him with petrify and spam 2 for a while.
Stealth is the only thing in-game without a counter. And if you are thinking aoe skills and stuns, consider that dodging does not remove stealth either. Why would I want ANet to nerf a skill I use and abuse over and over? I think anyone could answer that question.

Use stealth to strip boons? Wut? I call bs. Larcenous Strike isn’t a stealth skill and Bountiful Theft procs on Steal when traited for it, not stealth.

CC is a straw man. It does not work.

I have seen on rare occasions, two thieves hold a stalemate vs 20+. I see one hold a stalemate against 5 or so consistently. I have yet to see, even bunker Guardians, hold a stalemate. Sure, I’ve seen them hold out for a few minutes but eventually they either went down, escaped somewhere (into a keep or tower), or had aid come to assist them.

Show me a video in WvW (not spvp) where a thief that is spec’ed and geared properly fails to hold their own against 5 people, and I’ll show you a dozen where they do.

Seeing is believing, and not reading some arrogant, conceited, and obviously biased and jaded post.

Speaking of seeing. There is nothing like cycling through targets in a zerg and seeing;

Thief, thief, mesmer, thief, ele, guardian, another thief, another mesmer.

People are naturally lazy and the stealth mechanic is certainly a low risk for high reward mechanic which is why they are the most represented class in WvW.

I’m leveling a thief and I’m just lvl 18 with it. Up level doesn’t mean anything. It just means I’m a lvl 80 who is only in masterwork quality gear (assuming it too becomes equal to wearing lvl 80 masterwork or else it is still lvl 14 masterwork) and only has 8 trait points to play with and haven’t unlocked the third utility slot skill or elite slot skill as well as not having unlocked the all the utility skills themselves yet.

Already I can go toe to toe and often down non up leveled and geared players (1 on 1). Provided they are not total bunker as I can only maintain the shadow dance for about a min.

Thank you Arcatar for being upfront and honest. Clearly most thief players are as deceitful as the the profession is and it is nice to see one that is not.

I like playing thief because the minute I go stealth everyone stops doing anything and absolutely no one tries throwing any more attacks around even though they know the exact location I’ll be heading to, fun times, fun times…

Seriously… people talk like its total invincibility and removes you from existance up until the point you 1 shot an upleveled glass cannon idiot in WvW. The fact that all those bonus on stealth often come out as something other classes get ALL THE TIME, not just around 50% of the time (if the thief has decided they don’t actually want to do damage)

Dasorine.1964:

I like playing thief because the minute I go stealth everyone stops doing anything and absolutely no one tries throwing any more attacks around even though they know the exact location I’ll be heading to, fun times, fun times…

Seriously… people talk like its total invincibility and removes you from existance up until the point you 1 shot an upleveled glass cannon idiot in WvW. The fact that all those bonus on stealth often come out as something other classes get ALL THE TIME, not just around 50% of the time (if the thief has decided they don’t actually want to do damage)

Exactly. We get our bonuses from stealth, not from being revealed (talking about condi removal, regen, inti regen, etc). Other professions traits can provide benefits past their mechanics. Ele attunement swap effects last a while longer even after swapping to another attunement, warrior can benefit from spending, or holding onto adrenaline (I’m not spec’ed into either, but I hear the traits for holding adrenaline are far superior). Engineer uses a toolbelt skill and yet they still have that skill availible. Thief is either getting buffs from stealth, or they are wide open, not to mention their incredibly low health pool and weak healing. Thieves sustain from stealth, and in rare builds, som. If they didn’t have stealth or if stealth reveal was an option for a profession (not including the wvw AC skill or traps) thieves would be near useless.

6k bs? Prolly against high toughness in high cd gear. If your opponent is kitten enough to take consecutive backstabs without any sort of retaliation then they are new to stealth, and don’t understand its ways. Stealth is like bushes in League of Legends. If you ignore it and turn your back to it, you’ll likely be ganked. I doubt anyone, and I mean anyone, who started pvp for the first time in this game was an expert at stealth counters. They took their time and practice made them better. I also doubt many people were kiting 5v1 as a thief the first time they picked a thief in a pvp battle, they also took practice (same for bunker ele). Bunker ele never goes invisible, they just go invulnerable and nuke you down wearing defensive stats(nerfs helped, but mist form is getting to be too effective in wvw). Nothing wrong with that I guess :/

No… thieves op. Invisible = invincible. Brain=rock.

Introducing Traps in World vs. World
Traps are fiendish items that can be purchased from the new Traps and Tricks Outfitters on each WvW map. We’re starting with anti-stealth fields and traps that remove supply from enemy players, but in the months ahead we’ll introduce even more ways to spread mayhem in the Mists!’

/endthread

Arcatar.5974:

Thief here. I can backstab, use smoke field, wait 3 seconds (in which I have all 3 dodges for ranged attacks) and go stealthy again for another backstab without using any slot skill. Every backstab hits for 6k. While im in stealth, I got regen and regeneration from Shadow’s Grandmaster trait, for a total of 253 hp/seg. It’s a slow fighting method, but it guarantees that I will not be hit except for aoe attacks and snares that I can counter with the Acrobatics Master trait that removes both cripple and weakness every ten seconds, a time vastly inferior to the cd of most disables. Finnally, I use Stealth to strip 2 boons from my foe, get 3 of my own, backstab him with petrify and spam 2 for a while.
Stealth is the only thing in-game without a counter. And if you are thinking aoe skills and stuns, consider that dodging does not remove stealth either. Why would I want ANet to nerf a skill I use and abuse over and over? I think anyone could answer that question.

Thank you, for being the one honest non-drama queen rocking the thread.

I rolled a thief just so I could figure out reliable counters to stealth. Reliable/ There are none.

A) Swing madly with your melee weapon, hoping to connect or force them away from you.

B) Drop all your AoE at your feet and pray they’re stupid enough to stand in it.

C) Die.

The whole reason I stopped playing the thief in WvW is because there was never any true threat. I could pick each battle, leave whenever I felt threatened, and so long as I pay attention to my initiative, there’s no reason, ever, to lose.

This is a fail mechanic. Adding visible footprints, or a silhouette, or something, would be far better than the complete invisibility on demand that is currently in game. People denying this is OP in WvW are either lying through their teeth, or haven’t played the other classes.

stale.9785:

Arcatar.5974:

Thief here. I can backstab, use smoke field, wait 3 seconds (in which I have all 3 dodges for ranged attacks) and go stealthy again for another backstab without using any slot skill. Every backstab hits for 6k. While im in stealth, I got regen and regeneration from Shadow’s Grandmaster trait, for a total of 253 hp/seg. It’s a slow fighting method, but it guarantees that I will not be hit except for aoe attacks and snares that I can counter with the Acrobatics Master trait that removes both cripple and weakness every ten seconds, a time vastly inferior to the cd of most disables. Finnally, I use Stealth to strip 2 boons from my foe, get 3 of my own, backstab him with petrify and spam 2 for a while.
Stealth is the only thing in-game without a counter. And if you are thinking aoe skills and stuns, consider that dodging does not remove stealth either. Why would I want ANet to nerf a skill I use and abuse over and over? I think anyone could answer that question.

Thank you, for being the one honest non-drama queen rocking the thread.

I rolled a thief just so I could figure out reliable counters to stealth. Reliable/ There are none.

A) Swing madly with your melee weapon, hoping to connect or force them away from you.

B) Drop all your AoE at your feet and pray they’re stupid enough to stand in it.

C) Die.

The whole reason I stopped playing the thief in WvW is because there was never any true threat. I could pick each battle, leave whenever I felt threatened, and so long as I pay attention to my initiative, there’s no reason, ever, to lose.

This is a fail mechanic. Adding visible footprints, or a silhouette, or something, would be far better than the complete invisibility on demand that is currently in game. People denying this is OP in WvW are either lying through their teeth, or haven’t played the other classes.

I play warrior, and thief in wvw, spvp, pve. Out of all those, I havn’t come across, or felt, like thief was op. At first, maybe. There was some hate, and well deserved, and those things have been changed (hs, pistol whip, in spvp now thieves are revealed for 4 seconds). Even on my warrior, who although is kitten crap at spvp, I can kill thieves quite easily (note, spvp has teamates with usually half a brain at least). Just immobilize them, if they shadowstep away or break it there is usually a teamate on my side who has better mobility than me but even so I have sword main hand and can usually get within range to toss another immobilize or kd. Point is, cc is the thieves enemy.

I watched a video (its up to date) on a thief soloing multiple enemies. He was Db, vs jq and sos (irrelevant really but incase you’re looking for the video for reference). From what I saw, 99% of the enemies he fought we’re either

A. Idiots. Like true idiots.

B. Upleveled

Was the thief doin good? Yeah he knew thief, and recovered from multiple hits well enough. Thats not to say his opponents were remotely on his level. I mean at one point he had 2 d/d ele on him and they couldn’t figure out how to coordinate their cc so their idea was just to throw EVERYTHING at him at once which failed because he used [Shadowstep]. My point being, people arn’t that skilled apparently in dealing with thief and their idea of a “counter” is either throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks or plea for a reveal skill because they simply cannot l2p. Is there a “reliable” stealth counter? Not a usable spell/attack, its called skill. Once you learn to handle stealth which there are various ways to, you will find its not bad.

To those who supposedly main thief and think they’re op, are you fighting skilled players or just random militia and catching them off guard? If you find a good pvp player in wvw you will see how much your thinking changes (had a stalemate with a bunker ele, until his other ele friend joined and somehow outran me… weird how ele has better mobility than a thief :S)

Thieves are squishy, and once they are cc (stun, immobilize, kd) they are sitting ducks. If you suspect they have shadowstep, don’t just toss cc onto them. Wait for them to break free and throw another. My hammer warrior completely shut down a stealth thief because of my aoe cc (stomp out of shadow refuge ended him/her). If the warrior, on a non-pro warrior player can stomp thieves then idk what to tell you. You’re doing something horribly wrong or arn’t at all prepared to accept that you may be bad at pvp encounters.

@ NinjaEd

I hope you don’t mind that I use your comment as a reference. I completely agree with you. There is always a counter to everything. If you don’t know your enemy, then become them.

Its simple to do so, but the recent generation of gamers are lazy and would rather faceroll themselves into the leaderboards. I love the challenge of developing rarely used but effective builds. Does that mean I am skilled? Not entirely, because the effectiveness of a class all depends on the person playing it. This is especially true in a game where there is always a counter to everything, even good players.

Very few professions have an AoE that can toss a thief out of Shadow’s Refuge. Most are single target based and require you to have a target. Shadow’s Refuge also heals for a decent amount per tick (per second) and this is in addition to the regen they already have for being in stealth. It would take a minimum of two condition build players to put down enough marks, traps, etc. to stack enough conditions to actually do any good.

Arcatar pretty much called out how it is. So at this point, NinjaEd, you are just trolling.

Deamhan.9538:

Very few professions have an AoE that can toss a thief out of Shadow’s Refuge.

Shadow Refuge also has a clear area and if the Thief does end up outside of it, they become visible. Against more than 1 person, Shadow Refuge is often pretty much a suicide.

You don’t need an knockback to kill a Thief in Shadow Refuge. I’ve killed plenty just by running around using auto-attack and observing whether it changes to the next attack in the chain, which would indicate I hit them.

Shadow’s Refuge also heals for a decent amount per tick (per second) and this is in addition to the regen they already have for being in stealth.

Not sure whether 1420 with 0.9 scaling counts as decent, considering the cooldown of 60s and the downside of being fully visible.

Honestly, I see people complaining about stealth, but how many are actually playing against stealth? Revealed has a 3s cooldown, stealth lasts 3-4s, most thieves get a benefit for attacking your backside. It’s not really that hard to figure out how to play against it.

Of course you’re going to die if you don’t pay attention to Revealed.

Deamhan.9538:

Very few professions have an AoE that can toss a thief out of Shadow’s Refuge. Most are single target based and require you to have a target. Shadow’s Refuge also heals for a decent amount per tick (per second) and this is in addition to the regen they already have for being in stealth. It would take a minimum of two condition build players to put down enough marks, traps, etc. to stack enough conditions to actually do any good.

Arcatar pretty much called out how it is. So at this point, NinjaEd, you are just trolling.

Hardly call player skill observations, trolling. I know many people, and hear many people, who have found ways to handle stealth(this is without adding some kitten reveal skills). The fact that some people havn’t picked up on them because they are either not willing to l2p/ask for help, or they think they are “good” and shouldn’t be getting stomped by mediocre class mechanics because they don’t understand them is ridiculous.

When I first joined pvp (you’ll get a laugh about this) I thought 100b zerker warriors were unstoppable. I was new to spvp, and constantly ranted about how impossible they were to deal with from their burst(if you stayed in it, it’ll do the same if not more than a thief burst excluding #2 spam). Before quickness got nerfed, I learned from my mistakes and improved and 100b became a thing of the past. In fact, I would often just turn around and stomp them because 50% more damage was huge. Then they nerfed quickness and now 100b is downright pitiful.

Also I had troubles dealing with wellomancers (I think thats what they’re called) and trap rangers. Why? Because I was spec’ed in melee and they would sit ontop of their pulsing aoes. How did I overcome this? Build around both melee and ranged. I 1v1 a wellomancer on my condition thief and completely shut them down through stacking poison, bleed, and weakness. Maybe they were bad to begin with, but I jumped that obstacle with flying colors.

Point is, most people for w/e reason (either new to the game of first time joining wvw/spvp) havn’t had to deal with player stealth and have no clue what to do. ASK AROUND. Stop pretending like you’re not clueless and ask. Pretty sure school taught us to ask questions if we didn’t understand, where did those 12 years go? There is no cheatsheet in gw2 (hacks), so you’re going to have to actually work on something for a change. If thats too much then play another game or stick to pve, you’re clearly not willing to learn at this point.

NinjaEd.3946:

No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.

If a stealth player deals any Direct Damage they are revealed for 3 seconds. If that isn’t enough for you to react/retaliate thats your own downskilled issue. In spvp, or wvw stealth hardly affects me. In fact, from the amount of posts about this topic, I’d bet a lot of people have found counters to stealth and have no issue with them.

L2p. Or ask H2P. If you cannot counter stealth at this point you have done nothing to help yourself but post a stealth counter thread. Which has lead to nothing, because stealth comes down to player skill.

There is no skill to hitting a completely invisible player. It’s about dumb luck. Will he go right or left? No way to know in an open area. Now if thieves flickered in and out of stealth I’d be more inclined to agree with you but perfect stealth is as the name implies perfect.

The new WvWvW traps directly counter stealth, slapping down AoEs hoping to ensnare the thief obviously does not. As ArenaNet saw it fit to include a direct stealth counter, albeit in a very limited form, they obviously do not agree with your assessment and if you’re so afraid of actual counters being gradually introduced perhaps you are the one who needs to learn to play?

Good thieves will buckle up. Bad thieves will continue being overly reliant on stealth.

See that perma-stealth theif in WvW? Ya, thats me. And again, nothing wrong with stealth. And you guys are getting what you asked for. WvW traps will have the ability to un-stealth theives. Now you can leave it alone. The mechanic was a mechanic, like all others. Nothing is wrong with or was. Now, can we leave this alone now? If you still don’t like it, I suggest you L2P. :-) – lots of love – Necrid

Fungalfoot.7213:

NinjaEd.3946:

No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.

If a stealth player deals any Direct Damage they are revealed for 3 seconds. If that isn’t enough for you to react/retaliate thats your own downskilled issue. In spvp, or wvw stealth hardly affects me. In fact, from the amount of posts about this topic, I’d bet a lot of people have found counters to stealth and have no issue with them.

L2p. Or ask H2P. If you cannot counter stealth at this point you have done nothing to help yourself but post a stealth counter thread. Which has lead to nothing, because stealth comes down to player skill.

There is no skill to hitting a completely invisible player. It’s about dumb luck. Will he go right or left? No way to know in an open area. Now if thieves flickered in and out of stealth I’d be more inclined to agree with you but perfect stealth is as the name implies perfect.

The new WvWvW traps directly counter stealth, slapping down AoEs hoping to ensnare the thief obviously does not. As ArenaNet saw it fit to include a direct stealth counter, albeit in a very limited form, they obviously do not agree with your assessment and if you’re so afraid of actual counters being gradually introduced perhaps you are the one who needs to learn to play?

Good thieves will buckle up. Bad thieves will continue being overly reliant on stealth.

But thats just it, its only luck if you do nothing to try and control the thief, you’ll always generally know where they are going, either your back or away from you, you can then control those routes yourself.

If they are going to your back you can move and position yourself in such a way that they have to go the direction you want, if they are running away you again can move and position yourself in a way that sends them in a more specific direction, this is also helped if you keep an eye on your surroundings (which you should be doing in a pvp situation) so you can move to more advantagous area’s in combat (closer to your own side towers/zergs etc, into more confined spaces that limit the enemies movement etc etc)

If it was just “luck” then all the people that can beat thieves wouldn’t be able to do so with the consistency that they do.

The fact that the new WvW traps and tricks are most likely just going to be AoE’s again means your still just “slapping down” aoe’s in the hope of finding them and thats IF they are instant use things and don’t need constructing with supply etc, they are probably not going to be “anti-thief” tools but anti-stealth so you can prevent groups stealthing up with mass invisibility and such and sneaking past all your ballista’s into combat range on points your defending or to prevent groups sneaking in behind you as you take down a gate and such etc. If your not able to handle thieves stealthing currently your still not going to handle it after (unless anet does something really silly) though I could also see them introducing traps that strip off other forms of defense and I bet there would/will be an outcry when the field that removes boons/block/invuln and prevents the skills being reused for a while gets made.

1420 / 4 sec = 355 hp/s + any additional hp/s from any other sources. CC’ing them in SR is actually doing them a favor since they want to be in it.

Also, the SR skill is for 4 seconds, minus the time it takes you to place AoE DoT. Travel time is as little as already being there up to 2 seconds away for an average of 1 second. Then there is the cast time. Average of 1/2 a second. Then there is reaction time that I would also say averages 1/2 a second (reaction time includes ping as well as the players time to react). 2 out of the 4 seconds of SR is done by the time you get just one AoE down.

The only other tactic that you can counter is Black Powder and Heart Seeker combo which combos both jumping out of and back into the field. Here CC’ing the smoke field would work, oh wait, no it won’t. They just don’t have to jump back into it. It only lasts for 3 seconds and will only stack time if you are traited to stay in stealth for longer than what the combo gives you by default. While the increased time is nice, it’s not something you depend on.

Now they are putting in traps that players can use to create an anti stealth field. Sounds to me like they are coming to realize that they F’ed up when it came to how they worked stealth in and now they are coming up with round-about ways to counter it.

Honestly, they just needed to change the combo field on Black Powder to something that doesn’t grant stealth and reduce the stealth duration on SR.

Deamhan.9538:

1420 / 4 sec = 355 hp/s + any additional hp/s from any other sources. CC’ing them in SR is actually doing them a favor since they want to be in it.

Also, the SR skill is for 4 seconds, minus the time it takes you to place AoE DoT. Travel time is as little as already being there up to 2 seconds away for an average of 1 second. Then there is the cast time. Average of 1/2 a second. Then there is reaction time that I would also say averages 1/2 a second (reaction time includes ping as well as the players time to react). 2 out of the 4 seconds of SR is done by the time you get just one AoE down.

The only other tactic that you can counter is Black Powder and Heart Seeker combo which combos both jumping out of and back into the field. Here CC’ing the smoke field would work, oh wait, no it won’t. They just don’t have to jump back into it. It only lasts for 3 seconds and will only stack time if you are traited to stay in stealth for longer than what the combo gives you by default. While the increased time is nice, it’s not something you depend on.

Now they are putting in traps that players can use to create an anti stealth field. Sounds to me like they are coming to realize that they F’ed up when it came to how they worked stealth in and now they are coming up with round-about ways to counter it.

Honestly, they just needed to change the combo field on Black Powder to something that doesn’t grant stealth and reduce the stealth duration on SR.

SR heal really isnt all that great, hence why you don’t see everyone leaping in it when its thrown down in a group situation, compared to other classes secondary or even tertiary healing abilities its rubbish (yeah convenient how everyone elses ability to heal is so often left out in these discussions) and while for some it can be difficult to counter SR the simple fact is it IS counterable in a way that no other defensive move is.

And again I think your miss understanding the purpose these traps are meant to take, I very much doubt they are there to invalidate stealth entirely, they will most likely be there to add a bit more strategy to WvW giving groups options to guard area’s against tactics such as mass invis pushes and such.

But then Im not sure why I bother replying to you, you clearly got killed a few times by a thief decided your the best player ever and thus they were cheap and over powered because they killed you and have decided all stealth should be rubbish and have a lot of its access removed, maybe they should lower the duration of all defensive skills and remove all combo fields completely because someone somewhere is getting use out of them!

Deamhan.9538:

1420 / 4 sec = 355 hp/s + any additional hp/s from any other sources. CC’ing them in SR is actually doing them a favor since they want to be in it.

Also, the SR skill is for 4 seconds, minus the time it takes you to place AoE DoT. Travel time is as little as already being there up to 2 seconds away for an average of 1 second. Then there is the cast time. Average of 1/2 a second. Then there is reaction time that I would also say averages 1/2 a second (reaction time includes ping as well as the players time to react). 2 out of the 4 seconds of SR is done by the time you get just one AoE down.

The only other tactic that you can counter is Black Powder and Heart Seeker combo which combos both jumping out of and back into the field. Here CC’ing the smoke field would work, oh wait, no it won’t. They just don’t have to jump back into it. It only lasts for 3 seconds and will only stack time if you are traited to stay in stealth for longer than what the combo gives you by default. While the increased time is nice, it’s not something you depend on.

Now they are putting in traps that players can use to create an anti stealth field. Sounds to me like they are coming to realize that they F’ed up when it came to how they worked stealth in and now they are coming up with round-about ways to counter it.

Honestly, they just needed to change the combo field on Black Powder to something that doesn’t grant stealth and reduce the stealth duration on SR.

Pretty sure the anti stealth trap was aimed as a counter to stealthed zergs (mesmer veil, mass invis) Thieves arn’t that good at party wide stealth, due to the fact that it’s either very limited in numbers or it requires you standing still which in some cases, is really bad. Not to say stealthing zergs won’t be valid anymore, but they will have to tred carefully if they don’t want to be spotted as they try flanking the enemy.

Do you really think anet would make anti stealth traps in wvw just to reveal that 1 pesky thief?

Btw, perma stealth = no damage. If they are actually in stealth all the time they are either doing no direct damage which hurts no one, or they’re throwing down condition fields which hardly tickles. They can hop back and fourth in a smoke field or sit in Sr, but until the appear they havn’t done anything. SR only lasts about 11 seconds (4 seconds of it you must stay inside) and you’re a sitting duck until it the field disappears. Static field actually fits all around sr, stomp knocks them out, use cc. If they use SR they are in there, and if you harass them with cc they will likely die. Sr is a suicide skill in most cases, the only place it is valid is against a wall where if they try to launch/fear you out you’ll just hit the wall. It’s quite easy to counter sr, it deserves no nerfs at all.

Quarktastic.1027:

Make all incoming damage remove stealth. Problem solved.

ur a kitten

May 14th.

/endthread

There’s no counter to stealth really, but it’s fine, thieves are given it because they are given horrendous base stats. Likewise, they are given high damage because they are an extremely vulnerable melee class that has few access to boons.

There are some…“soft” counters to stealth. For example, if you had channeled skills, like illusionary duelist, volley, rapid fire, attacking the thief before he stealthed, you will continue to do so. On the other hand, there are some attacks that will home into thieves in stealth, like for example focus 4 from the guardian and GS 5 from the guardian.