Guild Wars 2

I’ve found that culling adds about 2 seconds to the duration of every Thief Stealth because of the time it takes to render.

This is especially noticeable with the popular Pistol/Dagger builds but also the others builds.

I believe until this issue has been fixed…..although there have been countless attempts to fix this issue already….it is impossible to objectively assess the relative power of Thieves compared to other professions.

Agree with the assessment part of the statement, but also would like to point out that the culling is only an issue when you play as part of a zerg, fight a zerg or a zerg passes by whilst you are fighting.

I have no issues at all seeing thieves during standard small scale Wvw.

The reality is that if culling can’t be fixed adequately they will have to balance around it. Meaning reduce stealth times, maybe give the thief more survivability outside of it. In order to not hurt them in PVE, dungeons, etc.

its definitely an issue on small scales, my computer is somewhat low end (now) and i see the black smoke puff well before i see the thief actually render. knowing my enemy’s bearing as he destealths is an important factor in choosing my next button. and dropping 2 grand on a new rig isnt an acceptable solution.

/sigh

Bind a key for ‘closest enemy’. Problem solved.

This is definitely a massive problem for me and i have noticed 0 changes even after whatever patch where they addressed it, i play from Australia so anywhere from 200-400 ping and D/P thieves seem to be invisible 90% of the time, i see the graphic of the black powder and such. But when it comes to rendering it very slowly renders the thief in, even 1v1 with no-one around.

Im getting unloaded upon and he finally renders, briefly, then disappears again, i may get off 1 or 2 spells, yes i use nearest target but even so it seems he is invisible 90% of the time. Pretty much guarantees my death.

And i have an average rig, core i7, 8gig RAM, running GW2 on SSD, 2 GPU’s

Everyone needs to stop thinking this is a hardware issue. This is a networking issue on Arenanet’s end. The issue has nothing to do with your computer.

This makes thieves incredible overpowered. I’ve run into thieves that abuse the hell out of it by running the dagger/pistol combo that gives them the stealth combo. They will remain completely invisible the entire fight and will just constantly wear you down without even being seen. It’s exploiting at this point and I hope something is done about it.

EvilSardine.9635:

Everyone needs to stop thinking this is a hardware issue. This is a networking issue on Arenanet’s end. The issue has nothing to do with your computer.

This makes thieves incredible overpowered. I’ve run into thieves that abuse the hell out of it by running the dagger/pistol combo that gives them the stealth combo. They will remain completely invisible the entire fight and will just constantly wear you down without even being seen. It’s exploiting at this point and I hope something is done about it.

Generally, I beleive most of the WvW3 community has learned how to defeat the average thief player even with the perma-stealth due to culling. The really skilled thief’s abusing the culling are almost untouchable.

Anet stated culling was a game engine issue. I can’t understand why they do not rebalance the stealth mechanic in order to keep stealthing possible for the class, but to do so in a way makes them visible according to the actual skill description.

I also think they should balance thief around the culling issue.

Last update, they changed the code so the game load ennemies before loading allies. You know why they did that? Because this is prolly a very difficult bug to solve, and it won’t be solve for a long time.

Might as well balance classes around it.

By balance, I don’t mean NERF THIEF STEALTH. I mean change the stealth a bid, and boost there survivability.

A Nerf for a Buff.

Just get rid of stealth all together on every class

I don’t understand why they don’t just have a slider that lets me set the number of players to render. I’ll judge my own network connection bandwidth and system performance, thanks.

That said, the thief stealth issue is pretty entertaining for me. You can usually nail those that aren’t very good at it, but the really good thieves are actually pretty impressive to watch. Er, you know what I mean — I suppose watching them is sort of impossible.

I don’t enjoy getting owned by them, but hunting for them and ae’ing everything around you in a mad attempt to break their stealth can be kind of fun.

Deria.9158:

I don’t enjoy getting owned by them, but hunting for them and ae’ing everything around you in a mad attempt to break their stealth can be kind of fun.

Damage doesn’t break stealth, though they do still get hit.

People need to learn the difference between “culling” and “rendering.” Just a pet peeve of mine…

Stealth doesn’t last longer because of culling (that’s a zerg not showing up), they last longer because of rendering.

Goobaaa.8241:

Just get rid of stealth all together on every class

Do this and you will effectively destroy thief. This is not a good suggestion.

Bsquared.3421:

Stealth doesn’t last longer because of culling (that’s a zerg not showing up), they last longer because of rendering.

This. Go fight a mob in PVE that uses stealth, it suffers the same rendering problem.

Static.9841:

/sigh

Bind a key for ‘closest enemy’. Problem solved.

Because it’s not possible that thieves will engage you with NPCs around (causing you to pull enemy mobs onto you when spamming closest enemy) as well as thieves guild. You solved no problem and in fact make this situation worse.

Why does stealth cause us to render them a second time any way? Why does stealth treat them the same way as if they had just entered our screen. This is causing pistol dagger thieves to easily fight groups of five because they are invisible 90% of the time. More and more people are abusing this.

Unfortunately, it’s a core engine issue. The reason why Tyria looks so amazing is largely because of this same issue. The game program renders things close by you and leaves the things farther away vague. The problem is the sheer volume of calculations that go on every second to determine which things you should see and which things you shouldn’t. Obviously, there are some unforeseen flaws with stealth and how fast the game sort of “decides” it’s something you should see right away.

I see this being a problem for a long time without some hefty code tinkering. :/

Old news I’m afraid. Was just watching / frapsing a thief that was only visible for maybe 1-2 seconds before “stealthing” again. Honestly it’s just broken and i’m pretty sick of watching this crap. It gives that player an advantage over others and arena net can’t fix it. Don’t expect it to get fixed any time soon.

Really wow. I never knew abut this thing called culling. Thank god someone posted it on the forum or I would have never heard about it.

Heh im leveling my thief now, people can have their crazy steal/c&d/backstab, ima be rocking D/P. I found this sad and amusing at the same time.

edit hmm link works fine when i copy paste it, dunno whats up with this forum fail.

I had a fun battle 2 vs 1 perma-stealth thief near Redwater (we were Red). My friend however, left the borderland in frustration (after an almost 10 min fight where he would down one of us, one run back from waypoint while it’s 1v1, down another, run back etc) because we really couldn’t see him more than 1 second at a time, and he had time to regen more health between those than we could damage him.

It is really an issue with rendering/culling/whatever, because when I see videos of thiefs doing this exact same thing, they are not stealthed for as long as we see on our end, and it doesn’t seem that “OP”, and pretty counterable.

Having only a chance of one attack each 3-4 seconds, more if he waits longer in stealth, while he regen is frustrating, but I agree that the mechanic needs a fix, not the class itself.

Some classes can AoE and channel a lot, so they can deal with it better, as the one attack they’re permitted to land (before he stealth again) counts. Classes that can’t deal with it however will disappear from WvW if the trend continues, because lately it’s almost the only class I see (or not).

I couldn’t agree more with saying let’s fix culling! Leave AoE alone (I feel they should remove the cap…but this thought is for another thread) b/c it is the only chance we have in combatting perma stealth.

Seems to me you can either keep complaining… or make your own thief and join the bandwagon.

I started one. I’m pretty sure I’ll get to be the object of complaint for a long time before it’s ‘fixed’.

Why is asking for a broken game mechanic to be fixed grounds to be mocked? You sir have fallen to the dark side of culling abuse. There is still time to come back to the light.

Seriously, it isn’t fair to keep changing skills, stats, and other mechanics of our builds until culling is fixed because you can’t honestly evaluate proper balancing until it’s done. I really do not think thieves would be OP if culling didn’t exist. However, by the time Anet makes it a real priority and fixes culling they will have rebalanced all classes to exist with culling and break a lot of classes and other game mechanics during that time.