Guild Wars 2

Would like some community opinions please on Perma-Stealthed Thief’s.
By that i’m referring to thief’s who can fight and kill you and never come out of stealth.
You are fighting an invisible foe who you cannot target during a 3 min fight as the Theif is invisible the whole time.

Also if any of you know of an ANET comment on this issue could u pls post it, or link it.

Here is an example of what just happened to my elementilist @ Wildcreek.

the problem is cloak and dagger. you can keep doing it almost forever with the right build.

also with that many players nearby you essentially get up to about 3 extra seconds on every stealth due to rendering issues.

it doesn’t take skill, it just takes a dagger offhand.

Its mostly the rendering issue. In sPvP this does not happen.

thief vs thief fights in wvw can be kind of silly…its mostly about who can keep their cnd rotation going

That vid demonstrates precisely why Thief is OP and needs to be nerfed into the ground. Show me one class that can survive within a enemy zerg without any danger whatsoever :S Even an OMEGA GOLEM would stand no chance. If one thief can do this, imagine a couple… damage must break stealth, no other way around this.

@zerospin:

There is nothing wrong with the theif stealth mechanic in PvP. A thief cannot physically stealth 100% of the time. Every time they damage you they will pop out of stealth for at least 3 seconds. When he does you can lock him down and kill him. This a WvW specific issue, where the thief does not render on people’s screens during the 3 seconds he is visible because of the large number of people. This makes the thief seem invisible 100% of the time when in realist he is visible in simple 3 second intervals. Once again, this is a WvW specific issue due to the rpoblem GW2 has rendering a large number of people at the same time and in no way necessitates a nerf to stealth of any kind.

Lol, that was great. How can theives argue that this isn’t just a tad silly.

Now imagine if say 3+ thieves was doing that; you would have cleaned that zerg out haha.

As side note, I really dug the music you used. Toe tappin groovin! +1

That video is amazing.

(I’m all for nerfing overpowered stuff but it’s not Thief’s fault they can’t see him, it’s the engine.)

It’s a rendering bug, its not supposed to work that way, hopefully they will fix it. The dead horse is over yonder if you wish to beat on it a bit more.

I still don’t get it. It works fine in spvp. Yet small groups or even 1v1 in WvW and the stealth lasts way too long.

What I’m really frightened of (and not just cuz I spvp thief) is that ANet will nerf thiefs more and more instead of fixing the rendering bug.

Cuz if it worked as intended, people wouldn’t have a problem with it.

The thief in the video was obviously trolling the zerg just, as the dmg he will do is very low.

The only thing he archieved was delaying the enemies to cap the point, but I think that you shouldnt be able to stop capping when you are stealthed… it doesnt work in sPvP/tPvP and I have no idea why it does work in wuvwuv.

Agreed Panacea, shouldnt be able to cap anything, or stop a cap, stealthed.

Your zerg should have instantly started dropping AoE’s stealth isn’t a magical damage immune effect, we take 100% damage while we’re in stealth.

On top of that the rendering issue in WvWvW with stealth is a well known problem, the issue being that reviled lasts for 3 seconds while the server takes 2 seconds to catch up that the thief is out of stealth. Either way UNTIL it’s fixed by Anet, your only option is to start adapting and using a different strat when encountering a stealth heavy thief.

I’ve taught all my groups how to beat it and it works well when people don’t freak out and throw a fit that there is a thief they can’t see.

To summarize. Yes the rending issue with stealth is messed up. Yes it’s a known issue. Yes it WILL be fixed in time, till then adjust your play and have your mindless CoD zerg drop a few AoE’s

As for now Thiefs should probably get locked. Until the issue can be resolved. Those using Thiefs will probably QQ because they can’t perma invis all the time.

Or just remove steal entirely, but I also enjoy using it to revive allies and the such.

Droping AoEs wont work that well as the thief just needs to get close to one person, use cnd and can move out of the aoe.
Something which the zerg could have done was cuddleing up and standing in each other and then AoE the tiny spot at which you stand. Otherwise random AoEs wont work that well if the thief doesnt try to engage you at all, espeacily not if he runs around with 20k HP.

I agree, the fight i was in @ WC when i died to a thief using this bug, btw this not the video of my fight but my fight was very similar, but i had little to no chance to drop AOE’s, and i dont really have an issue with thief’s in general. My problem was he was on me for a about 1 min while used up all my cool downs to stay alive and with all the action going on with the zerg’s fighting, i had no clue he was on me. It wasn’t until i pulled back from our zerg, that i saw his ground effect swirl and, having seen the video above, figured out what was going on. I did half kill him, before he finish me off, as the above mentioned his dmg wasn’t much

The culling bug really needs to get fixed before any big change at stealth can be considered.
It will just be very hard to fix it I think as its a result of an anti-cheater mechanism… maybe they could remove that mechanism in wuvwuv while still leaving it active in sPvP, tPvP.

All about culling, barely anyone saw him is more likely because of the slow loading and thieves ability to cycle cloaks so they never actually draw in. Not sure what the culling rate actually is, my guess is around 20 people. Any player entering a pack of that amount or more will have to wait for the enemy (or allies) to draw which at least in my case is around 10-20 seconds when there is a large amount of players in one area; thiefs can get under that using multiple cloaks thus coined as being ‘perma’ invisible.

But, anyways, not really the players fault; the culprit is culling. No suprise theives are capitalizing on an engine/server/bandwidth fault.

As an ele, if I even came close to that pack I would have died instantly. LOL!

Yeah, the problem is a mix of culling and brainafk-zergs.
The only attempt to stop the thief i saw was the guardian at 3:33 and even that looked pretty halfhearted to me.

Kinda reminds me of Skyrim/Oblivion where the NPCs never made an actual attemt to find you if you sneak attack them…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbF9ynGZV0

To be fair, we are seeing in this video from the Thief’s point of view. You see where he is, and what he’s doing. When i was on the other end of it with my rather soft elementalist, i saw nothing but the occasional ground swirl bluish colored until i died. He even capped me invisible, then broke stealth and ran for it to rinse and repeat. To my point of view, i saw nothing when with zerg because of the amount of other effects, and only saw his ground swirl when i had retreated to the back. With 13 years of various PVP mmo’s to my credit, i am no brain dead zerger either, but very aware of my surroundings, and as a DPS exotic spec’d ele, i’m pretty paranoid as my hotbar skills are what keep me alive.

^ and this is what people are complaining about. You can’t attack someone you don’t even see. So thus this theif harried that entire group with ease since he wasn’t even visible to them for the majority of the time. lol.

“You can’t attack someone you don’t even see.”
Thats the fallacy right there.

Maybe it’s because I played a thief for a while, but I have killed my fair share of thieves while they were in stealth in WvW.

The worst thing you can do is standing around letting it happen to you like the guys in the video did. At least you should start spaming your autoattack.

A lot people do not know its possible for a thief to fight and do damage to them while in stealth. I didn’t until i saw the video above posted in our server match forum. I watched it, and went “ah, so that’s what was happening to me”. This last time it happened, after watching the video, i knew what was happening to me. For you to say "

Rengaru.4730

“You can’t attack someone you don’t even see.”
Thats the fallacy right there.

your right, you can attack, but can you attack someone you don’t even know can stay invisible and attack you?

Combat timer prevents stealth, problem = solved.

So…your solution is to promote glass cannon thieves that 1-shot and down people with quickness in 2 seconds before anyone realizes they are there and can respond? Good ‘fix’.

Better fix:
Fix the render bug in WvW.

FrozeNuggz.7219:

A lot people do not know its possible for a thief to fight and do damage to them while in stealth.

That’s because it is impossible for a thief to do that. The instant a stealthed thief damages anyone he is out of stealth and visible. The “infinite stealth” is not stealth, it is a bug that is caused by the GW2 engine being slow to render people when there are large numbers of people in the vicinity. Whenever a stealthed thief does damage he becomes “revealed” and cannot stealth for 3 seconds. The problem is that when there are a large number of people in the same area, which is really common in WvW, the thief will take something close to 3 seconds to appear on your screen after he loses stealth. This makes the thief appear invisible for the entire duration because your screen isn’t drawing the thief while he is visible. This is a known bug and has nothing to do with the in built stealth mechanics, which do not allow a thief to fight or deal damage while stealthed.

Thank you for the nice explination. As i said earlier i have no problems with thief’s. Just this glitch/bug.

I’m glad I found this thread and this deserve to brought to attention by devs.
This is NOT a rendering issue I’m referring to here. Only the thief I encountered was able to remain in stealth indefinitely while he was attacking without breaking stealth, and the rest of the enemies were clearly visible and appearing normally. This is a severe case and should be on their top priority list of fixing. It has caused serious imbalance in PvP and needs to be addressed ASAP.

Eh just died to another Thief perma-stealth exploiter. Sad part was he took down 2 others before me, and i died cause i ran to help them. All well, this is the tip of what is gonna be a huge iceberg i think.

Mystiq it IS a rendering issue. Just because other people are loading fine, does not mean coming out of stealth is rendering fine. I have fought theives with no one even in the area and still it didn’t render properly.

You shouldn’t be able to block the cap in WvW while stealthed. Doesn’t work in sPvP, shouldn’t work in WvW. Obviously an oversight/bug.

(In before: NO UR WRONG ITS FINE!!!)

LOL that video was awesome!

The real problem with thief stealth is that pretty much only a thief knows how to deal with stealth. The simple solution is AoE. You do not need to know where they are just AoE and do it a lot, the thief dies, yay you won!

For instance when i end up one on one with another thief most of the time at some point they will go stealth with that group AoE stealth, then i switch to my short bow and spam 2 into the red circle. Most of the time they are dead before the stealth runs out and if not they are running for their life.

In the case of your video those baddies were so busy fighting the dolyaks or standing around doing nothing you had free rein on them lol.

Ah, tis explain why i was killed in bordenland base camp entrance in 3 sec without seeing any enemy.

Nice kittening game!

AoE doesn’t work. With the right spec, Thief have very high regen in stealth which makes aoe damage pretty much pointless considering he can dodge most of them.

That video shows a ton of bad people who had no idea what was going on around them.

Pretty sad when not one person in the zerg did anything when the circle was green.

Thieves die very often in stealth, maybe instead of complaining about the class you should:

1. Pressure developers to fix the rendering issue (maybe by removing the mobs from maps)

2. Pressure developers to use the mechanic for capping from SPvP (no stealthed can prevent cap…even as a thief myself I support this)

3. Bind a hotkey for nearest target

4. Stop complaining about berserker thieves when you are full glass cannon. Guess what? Whoever gets the jump in glass cannon fights will probably win. Guess which class is designed to get the jump on other classes? Best counter to thieves is to mitigate their damage, most run around with only about 10k hp.

5. Have fun in WvWvW! I’m sure that thief in the video was.

I’m so leveling up a theif!

It’s because of culling as everyone has said. Thieves are actually fine when it works properly but this bug is troublesome. Fix the bug, thieves are fine.

Also saying AoE as such is useless is a load of turtle kitten I’ve died many a time because of a well placed meteor shower after skirting around the edges of a zerg finding a low level glass cannon to pick off.

I still think the biggest pain in the bottom class in WvW is the Elementalist.

I agree with the poster above. Here’s where most zergs fail and most teams triumph.

1. First and foremost — teamwork. Whenever a player goes down in the middle of the team, thief gets called out in chat channels and all AoEs and CCs are coordinated and targeted right on top of the downed player. In a zerg army the lings just run mindlessly to raise the downed player, only to be in the prime spot to be the next target in line.

2. Key Binds — if you want to play competitively, get pro-gaming equipment. Work on your APM and mouse precision. By now if one don’t have back camera; turn; strafe; anti-collision; and the entire targeting system hot-keyed and specced, please accept the fact this is a mediocre player and a local thief will be collecting 2 badges from him. If you want to start to get better at gaming in general, please watch this video here:

http://goo.gl/xs3Kh

3. Use CC wisely. Time your knockback/dragdown/immobilize wisely. Use foodstuff/oil/sharpening stones — I am sure 1s64b can buy one plenty of consumables for one to perform better.

4. If everything fails, play a thief. Fight back, don’t be a victim.

Meanwhile, get a shirt here — http://goo.gl/B8MRJ

aaron.4317:

Combat timer prevents stealth, problem = solved.

Damage should pull you out of stealth and DoTs should prevent stealth. Stealth is a viable combat tactic, but damage should prevent it. Thieves are meant to hit quick, hit hard, stealth and fall back. Not stealth and hang around forever in the middle of a big fight.

Yea after fighting thieves for awhile now in WvWvW they are definitely OP regardless of the cause and they look like they are super fun to play.

I just experienced a thief rip through about 15 players trying to cap a supply point and he took down players here and there with impunity while preventing the cap. The thief did this regardless of the fact that we were laying AoE all over the place and the guards were already dead. Any other class by themselves like that would have been dead in under 5 seconds.

So yeah I’m definitely rolling a thief for the lulz of it

The people who are saying the thief will be visible for 3 seconds don’t understand the mechanics or how these people operate. I have seen people killed by a thief who was never not in stealth once he engaged.

It actually is possibly to “infinite stealth”. If you hit CnD just as it ends, “revealed” never triggers and stealth never ends. This is what a lot of these people are doing.

You were hit for 5,743 damage by Unknown using Steal.
You were hit for 13,782 damage by X using Backstab.

- RiP -

How can this be fun for anyone? You kill people in a second with quickness.. you’re not even enjoying dueling or a battle. It’s just 1-2-RiP. Where is gameplay in that? And how can it be fun for dead person? You die instantly before you use a single skill.

Ianervan.3415:

You were hit for 5,743 damage by Unknown using Steal.
You were hit for 13,782 damage by X using Backstab.

- RiP -

How can this be fun for anyone? You kill people in a second with quickness.. you’re not even enjoying dueling or a battle. It’s just 1-2-RiP. Where is gameplay in that? And how can it be fun for dead person? You die instantly before you use a single skill.

You must not run with many thieves… They like big numbers to fill their big egos. They are not ever looking for a fair fight, they are looking to insta gib you, talk smack or brag, then move on to the next victim. It’s been the same in every MMO. Thieves are just dirty, mean, nasty people…

/Sorry to any past, present, or future guildies that run a thief class.

Back on topic, I am not 100% sure it is totally a rendering issue as I have seen (well not seen) thieves do this in WvW where there are only about 10 people near. Thought the rendering max was for like 40 people or something like that.

That video does an excellent job of showing how the thief is the most grotesquely overpowered class in the game right now.

He goes in solo against a zerg of enemy players and manages to kill several of them, live, run away, and repeat the process. no other class can even come close to doing this.

It also gives the complete lie to people who claim that ‘the thief is squishy and will die to random aoes’.

he survived just fine in the middle of a hostile zerg for minutes on end.

The thief has the most burst damage of any class in the game paired with the highest survivability of any class in the game.

Note that many people in the zerg tried to swing their weapons at thin air in the hopes of hitting the thief, but he easily avoided them. Note also the aoe’s they threw down left and right to try to hit the stealthed thief, but he easily avoided those or just took the damage.

I thought CND required too much initiative to keep spamming like that – what build is he using?

See here: How to perma-stealth

There was so much bad in that video that I found it hard to even focus on what the thief was doing.

Nevron.9413

There was so much bad in that video that I found it hard to even focus on what the thief was doing.

You say that, but there is no other profession that can just troll a large group of bad players toe to toe, exploiting their inexperience in WvW. Any other class which is in that situation would have to run (or die in <30 seconds); not a thief. They just abuse the fact that Stealth lingers for 1-2 seconds after it’s actually over.

Ok, since many see what is happening in the video but don’t actually understand it I will summarize:

- A Thief with the level 2 or 3 Orb buff is hiding in an enemy zerg while they are busy fighting the allied zerg.

- The Thief is dealing around 2k on average every three seconds, focusing on squshies/low health enemies.

- The culling issues prevents the Thiefs model to render, he can still be attacked but most of the enemies don’t bother.

- At 3:21 the enemy zerg finally catches on and probably kills the Thief (look at the time on the minimap).

To all the people complaining about Thieves, please play one before complaining. Once you really understand how stealth works go and fight another Thief.
It will make that much of a difference.

TL;DR If you notice a Thief disappearing, stop standing around and start hitting your autoattack.

Anything to punish zergs. If griefing makes people split off in to smaller groups, please, grief the zergs more.

MrPicklez.6473:

Anything to punish zergs. If griefing makes people split off in to smaller groups, please, grief the zergs more.

The thief is just delaying so his own zerg shows up. So much for punishing zergs?