Guild Wars 2

So firstly I should explain the title better. That is given the significant negative feedback placed on thief’s due to the rendering/culling issue with regards to stealth is there anyway that ArenaNet can make people respect what a thief does. That is without it feeling like a thief is exploiting something and concurrently not turning the thief into a useless profession?

Specifically even if ArenaNet resolve the issues around stealth will the community forgive and forget? Or has the communities superfluous experiences with thief’s meant that they will always regard thief’s negatively as current threads here indicated.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Most-annoying-class-to-deal-with-in-WvW/first

I actually did a little research on this and found a statement dated 3 March 2011 which really stood out for me.

Fabius Bile said
“this gotta be the first screwup I see them make.

stealth assassin classes in MMOs are always a plain nightmare. They are simply overly popular, and will never have the playerbase happy.

as much faith as I have in ANet, im yet to see ANY developer make a fair rounded and balanced assassin-type class in any MMO, past or current.

They should have avoided stealth entirely".

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/03/11/arenanet-interview-gives-new-details-on-the-guild-wars-2-thief/

The fact that these sentiments were aired over a year ago is interesting. Given the complexity of balancing such a profession it’s REALLY disappointing that ArenaNet has dropped the ball on this one.

I think I should make it clear that I have a level 80 thief and have had some ‘fun’ with it in WvW. I’ve also made alts and been on the receiving end of invisi rendering thief’s and I can honestly say it’s no ‘fun’.

As a community can we <3 thief’s without making them useless?

SoPP.7034:

As a community can we <3 thief’s without making them useless?

No. But I, for sure, will love anyone who drops invisibility from this game.

It’s been over a year overdue, and counting.

Some thieves defend their dominate class by saying “its not the class its the culling issue”
Some thieves defend their extreme burst by saying “don’t build glass cannons – we’re the only ones allowed to do that”
Some thieves defend their ability to escape anytime “we need stealth, SB, SB, passive 25% speed boost because we’re squishy”

Anet’s solution was to reduce the damage of dancing daggers.. “there you go we fixed all the problems.”

sigh.

Thief without stealth? May as well change the name of the profession before remove the stealth out of the game.

Thobek, we have no speed boost in combat. In fact our mobility is rather lacking.

As for the topic, I don’t like damage in stealth. Or the repeated stealth. It’s not conducive to fun gameplay for someone to run around looking for a stealthed person, or to die without seeing your opponent. Stealth ideally should provide superior openers, then let the player settle the score.

If I had an opinion in the ANet dev meeting I would turnk CnD into a reflect/evade mini buff when used, remove the stealth component. Remove the stealth from pistol/dagger combo and then turn thief speed buff into an “in combat” speed buff as well. So they can retain their mobility but not have the protection of continuously stealthing while in combat.

And leave shadows refuge as is, if players don’t know how to combat that one .. then there are larger issues at play.

Altie.4571:

Thobek, we have no speed boost in combat. In fact our mobility is rather lacking.

As for the topic, I don’t like damage in stealth. Or the repeated stealth. It’s not conducive to fun gameplay for someone to run around looking for a stealthed person, or to die without seeing your opponent. Stealth ideally should provide superior openers, then let the player settle the score.

If I had an opinion in the ANet dev meeting I would turnk CnD into a reflect/evade mini buff when used, remove the stealth component. Remove the stealth from pistol/dagger combo and then turn thief speed buff into an “in combat” speed buff as well. So they can retain their mobility but not have the protection of continuously stealthing while in combat.

And leave shadows refuge as is, if players don’t know how to combat that one .. then there are larger issues at play.

Why would thief community accept the removal of stealth just for an in combat speed buff? I mean, seriously, are you freaking kidding me?

The problem with thieves – their skills have offensive and defensive abilities at the same time. So, while other classes must choose what they want to be – a cannon or a fortress, thieves can the both. Their offensive skills provide them defense, stealth and way to escape.

Stealth in this game doesn’t make the profession invulnerable to damages as in other games. I am playing S/D thief. Countless times, I spammed AOE around the stealth spot by spamming #1 sword skill. Few seconds later I found my fellow enemy thief on the ground, gasping for air.

Because everyone knows that stealthed thieves don’t ever dodge, move, and simply stand right on the spot where they cloaked, waiting to get AOEd.

Ah. Right. They don’t.

Ok then, nothing to see here.

Wasabee.5031:

Stealth in this game doesn’t make the profession invulnerable to damages as in other games. I am playing S/D thief. Countless times, I spammed AOE around the stealth spot by spamming #1 sword skill. Few seconds later I found my fellow enemy thief on the ground, gasping for air.

I have never seen a game where stealth made you immune to damage. This is the only game where receiving damage while stealthed, didn’t break stealth though.

Here are a few possible fixes to stealth:

- Make it only available when out of combat
- Make it break when a thief receives damage
- Thieves take double damage while stealthed

Implement any one of these changes and I think stealth would be much more balanced.

SoPP.7034:

The fact that these sentiments were aired over a year ago is interesting.

These sentiments have been aired for years. This is a (unfathomably) common pitfall in design.

Personally, I’d favor some sort of attribute that countered stealth. In order to make a thief super-stealthy enough to reliably thwart that attribute, it would have to be at the cost of effectiveness in other areas. Conversely, in order to make that attribute potent enough to see thru most stealth, sacrifices would have to be made elsewhere in the build.

Call it “Detection” or something. Give it to Rangers and Engineers.

I have an 80 Warrior, 80 Ranger, 80 Thief, 80 Guardian, and 43 Mesmer so please read everything I post before jumping to conclusions.

If you remove stealth, or give stealth detection you need to give the Thief a ranged weapon beyond 900 range, but instead one that has 1200 range for zerg on zerg fighting. When you do this, you’ll also need to give the Thief the ability to gain health besides stealth/initiative for their more defensive builds.

Honestly if they wanted to truly fix the stealthing issue with thieves, they need to remove Cloak and Dagger, change the traits associated with it, and give the Thief a stun or something in its place. That alone would fix all the stealthing issues people have with the perma-stealth thief.

I’ve created a bunker build for all my toons, where each has over 3500 Armor, higher than normal hit points, and so on just to test some things out. People say; “get toughness”, or “get more hit points”, but with this much defense I’m regularly hit for 5k-11k damage from glass canons, without the ability to kill them because to get this much defense, you have to give up all of your damage. THAT IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE WITH THIS GAME. Toughness, and Vitality are worthless when you can get the best survivability in the game from precision, and the 66% lifesteal from food, and 30% lifesteal from a Superior Sigil. Once I realized this, I’ve built glass canons that can survive far, far better than any of the bunker builds floating around out there.

In my opinion they need to make toughness, and vitality far more valuable than it currently is, but that is a different debate all together.

But fix Rangers first in my opinion……..

jkctmc.8754:

But fix Rangers first in my opinion……..

Yeah! By giving them and their pets an innate passive ability to see through stealth up to 900 range

Altie.4571:

Thobek, we have no speed boost in combat. In fact our mobility is rather lacking.

You don’t use a signet of shadows?

“Passive: Grants a 25% increase in movement speed.
Active: Blind foes near your target. "

They all seem to run like the wind to me on top of that they are stealthed and inflitrator arrow twice while you can’t even target them. One minute they are there, the other – half way across the map.

I like the thief, but what ive noticed with the backstab from nowhere and chain attacks, by the time I notice it im usually at mid health. Maybe a aftercast delay after a stealth attack could give the defender time to react, but still an advantage to the thief for the stealth opener.

The execution of stealth in this game is the worst I’ve ever seen. Doesn’t break on damage, can instantly stealth while under attack and can perma stealth thanks to culling bugs. Horribly broken.

If more thieves would admit that the stealth mechanic is broken, I’d be sympathetic. However, just do the l2p chant, so I will root for nerfs.

My major problem is very short cooldowns. Thieves can just attack you and re-stealth while you cannot attack back.

Also some ppl don’t seem to realise it’s not a drawing problem when you don’t see them attacking. It’s a class feature. It allows some wtfspike builds to practically kill you at the moment you can finally see them.

Initiative should not build while you are stealthed. This way if you choose to stealth for defensive reasons it will have an offensive drawback.

Relentliss.2170:

Initiative should not build while you are stealthed. This way if you choose to stealth for defensive reasons it will have an offensive drawback.

oh! I really like this idea. That way they won’t be able to infiltrator strike half way across the map in stealth after their burst failed to blow someone up in one second.

I don’t know how many of you played Star Wars galaxies, but I always found their version of the stealth class (Spy) to be balanced and fun. The reason was, it wasn’t ever intended to beat other classes 1v1. It was mean to be a spy.

The class had perma stealth, and was hard to catch, but there were also counter measures any class could use to search for them. They eventually added some burst skills and that made them better for killing, but I can’t say if they became over powered or not, as I stopped playing shortly after.

I always found the lack of killing power my spy had was balanced by my ability to actually spy on the enemy, relay info to my allies, and add combat support when needed.

Because of my experiences with the stealth class in SWG, I’ve come to realize that stealth really isn’t what makes a class OP… it’s the ability pop in and out of it, while doing way too much damage.

Fabius Bile said
“this gotta be the first screwup I see them make.

stealth assassin classes in MMOs are always a plain nightmare. They are simply overly popular, and will never have the playerbase happy.

as much faith as I have in ANet, im yet to see ANY developer make a fair rounded and balanced assassin-type class in any MMO, past or current.

They should have avoided stealth entirely".

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/03/11/arenanet-interview-gives-new-details-on-the-guild-wars-2-thief/

I agree completely. I’m sorry for the insult guys (I played a Shadowblade in DAoC for 4 years) but stealth assassins = dumb developers.

Wasabee.5031:

Thief without stealth? May as well change the name of the profession before remove the stealth out of the game.

Nah just give them stealth on approach and only one restealth like any reasonable stealth class. Pistol thief:5-7 seconds -shorter if you consider culling- visibility inbetween stealths =/ . Having the ability to initiate an attack twice almost uncontested with high damage should be enough. Asking for more is just silly.

XII.9401:

Spaceman.1063:

Because everyone knows that stealthed thieves don’t ever dodge, move, and simply stand right on the spot where they cloaked, waiting to get AOEd.

Ah. Right. They don’t.

Ok then, nothing to see here.

I play a thief and I think you need to L2P, QQ more noob and some other 14yo replies =D.

Honestly, at this point, every time someone starts their apology with “Let me say I play a thief and I think that there is nothing wrong with the thief class”, something inside my soul dies faster than a thief downing a full bunker tank build out of full stealth (before instantly recloaking for a finisher).

So, well, it’s like two seconds we’re talking about, isn’t it.

Here is how you kill a thief.

See the house? Use a AoE knock back he will get the exposed debuff from leavin the area to soon.

Stack conditions on the Thief.

Time his stealths and use a channeled ability on him they will keep hitting him in stealth.

The heal that gives stealth has a cast time. Interrupt it.

Dodge c&d it cost five init.

Time your cc + burst and attack as soon as he comes out of stealth.

Lastly at Anet. Make name tags render first so people can still target the thief even if his toon has yet to render.

Assassin was fine in GW1, sure, you had things like BB sins, and later BB wars once it got adjusted, but that still took a knowledge of timing to be able to do well. It wasn’t a “set up and win” class like thief is now. Maybe, just maybe, ANet will wake up and modify thief to something much like assassin from GW1, a strong class when used properly, but nothing that stands out from other classes in the hands of a bad player.

honestly I have no idea how GW2 is going to recover from thieves the way they were released. Any newbie with a green arrow is just fresh meat whether in a group or not. Not exactly beginner friendly. Who knows how many people soured on the game after getting griefed for the fifth time in a row after giving WvW a try.

DAOC nerfed the living crap out of archers for an entire year (made them free kills for rogues) soon after release. They were not nearly as IMBA as thieves are right now in WvW. At least when the archer two-shot someone he had a long restealth timer and no speed at all (scout).

SoPP.7034:

im yet to see ANY developer make a fair rounded and balanced assassin-type class in any MMO, past or current.

^That, the entire concept of stealth->huge burst->ability to disengage combat is just an utterly flawed premise to design a class on, it it not unique to GW2, it causes issues in many MMOs which usually results in the said class see-sawing between OP & UP, it is bascially impossible to balance, especially in open world type envrioments.

In some ways the GW2 is especially bad, as they have removed some of the inbuilt weaknesses ths class type has in other games, such as:

- In most games, in-combat stealth is rightly considered a big deal, it is a free get out of jail card, so these are typically a single skill, that is also on a long cooldown (2mins or somthing), in GW2 in-combat stealth is virtually available on demand.

- Damage breaks stealth in other games, in many dots prevent stealth, not GW2.

Then on top of that they have also given out the best mobility (or joint top with some Ele builds if you want to argue).

It is hilarious when I compare my Thief in GW2 to my Burglar in LOTRO, a class that was rightly considered OP in that game, the burglar had little mobility, no faceroll teleport to target stuff, had good burst, but did not do the damage of a DPS class, virtually no range, virtually no AOE (one skill on a long cooldown), had 1 in-combat stealth and was much, much more complex and demanding to play.

What they should of done, is made thief an attrition class and if they are going to go with the multiple in-combat stealths, then they all need to be short (shadow refuge stealth lasts too long), plus the no-stealth debuff between stealths is too short (Nor should stealth stack), they also gave way too much mobility, having a class that can initiate better than others and also disengage / escape better is just moronic, combat is too much on one classes terms.

It is also bad for the thief class, because it will result in lots of trips to Nerfville.

The only game I’ve played where they do stealth right is EVE, but in part that is down to the game mechanics (gates), but they also realize you don’t give a stealth class top tier damage.

I realise the pre-release talk is rather hollow now, but it is funny one of the things stated was that GW2 was going to be different, yet for the most part it is the same old same old, certainly with Thieves.

Tell me something… How can a thief stay invisible for up to 14-18 seconds?

I’m asking this because a few days ago a group of ~8 people fought 1 thief who managed to remain invisible for a very long time (my video showed up to 14-18 seconds at two points during the fight) and we simply couldn’t kill him at all.

Not only that, afterwards he was seen at ~20% health and shooting himself to the bridge, did his stealth-heal, and he had full health again 3-4 seconds later.

How do you fight something like that?

Sorry, but there are some serious issues going on and in my opinion it is not a ‘QQ moar n00bs L2P’ issue as clearly this ‘Revealed’ debuff isn’t working.

Aveneo.2068:

Tell me something… How can a thief stay invisible for up to 14-18 seconds?

I’m asking this because a few days ago a group of ~8 people fought 1 thief who managed to remain invisible for a very long time (my video showed up to 14-18 seconds at two points during the fight) and we simply couldn’t kill him at all.

Not only that, afterwards he was seen at ~20% health and shooting himself to the bridge, did his stealth-heal, and he had full health again 3-4 seconds later.

How do you fight something like that?

Sorry, but there are some serious issues going on and in my opinion it is not a ‘QQ moar n00bs L2P’ issue as clearly this ‘Revealed’ debuff isn’t working.

Clearly a L2P issue here. I bet you don’t even know what revealed does or how it is trigger.

Hint – Just b/c someone is stealthed doesn’t mean they will get the releaved debuff after coming out of stealth. /wink /wink

Hello every one,

There is already a thread dedicated for the thief here : The thief and its gameplay – Your feedback

Therefore this one is now closed.

Thank you.