Guild Wars 2

Czar Peter.7961:

ANet is aware of the problem and has already solved it with stealth traps. A thief spec’ed for stealth that can’t stealth for 30 seconds is deader than Microsoft’s future ambitions for the OS market.

Refer to the post above yours. To counter thieves/mesmers in keeps with traps would require a significant and constant expenditure of badges and karma, while requiring little to no expenditure on the other side. It would be even more worth it than currently as you’d be draining badges that could be used for siege.

buttski.6135:

Deniara Devious.3948:

There is a very simple solution to this. Change stealth so that stealthed players appear semi-transparent to their enemies, just like they are currently rendered to their allies

This would remove the guess work, but still stealth would have all its benefits (e.g. you cannot be targeted while in stealth).

rofl!

This seems like a good, simple counter. Nothing to be laughed at. This would also address a lot of other complaints about stealth.

Only thing hurting would be the Backstab skill which would become hard to land on an alert target.

Stomping would be somewhat more difficult for thieves/mesmers as the stompee would know how to correctly time interrupt.

Korgov.7645:

This seems like a good, simple counter. Nothing to be laughed at. This would also address a lot of other complaints about stealth.

Its not good at all, since it negate one of the primary purposes of stealth – being stealthy.

You want to know the simplest solution? 2 things:
- Taking direct damage breaks stealth (conditions dont count)
- Exiting stealth put a 4s reveal debuff buff until you can stealth again.

No more blatantly obvious veil rushes (just put a single AoE field in front of them), no more thief chain stealthing, no stealth stomps in the middle of zergs, no more flailing in the air against invisible theives laying downed for 20 seconds because they popped the house, no more thieves or mesmers hiding inside keeps, more more moving 100m+ while invisible, etc and so on.

Would this nerf thieves and mesmers stealthing? Hell yes, that’s the point. In turn, buff the timer the skills to allow them to remain in stealth just a notch longer (if veil last 4s now, make it last 6s or something).

… there are several ways to stop it, you juest need to be alert.

Sometimes is even fun to let the mesmer deploy the portal.

Mesmer/thief team
If mesmer is alive, thief will have to use clusterbomb to keep both stealthed. Easy to counter
If mesmer is dead, thief would be “hard” to capture .. BUT anet already gave you the solution. Build stealthtrap on top of dead mesmer body. Sit next to the trap and drink a wee of tea with your guildies.

I think it was WAR that let you buy special guards with upgrades, they had stealth detection. I liked how it worked there and it might be a good solution to this problem.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Bern.9613:

I will speak on behalf of the thief as my main is one. A thief will not survive an aoe barrage because it has the lowest hp, toughness, survivability of ALL of the warrior classes. They do this because to survive is to eliminate the target before it has a chance to eliminate you. High, fast dps. So unless you’re also suggesting that ANet ups the stats of the thief….

This is a common lie spread on these forums. I was today playing a thief. I went to Bloodtide Coast, which is a level 45-55 area with a level 41 thief. My friend was a level 53 guardian. Guess how many times I died? ZERO… But my guardian friend died.

My guardian friend left and I was killing the monsters and mobs alone. It went a bit slow due getting glancing blows all the time (>= 5 levels higher monsters than me), but there was still no risk of dying. Even when doing group event alone and all the enemy mobs were much higher level than me!! And if you get downed you can still get up so easily (so no armor repairs bills at all). I gained couple of levels.

Thief is among the easiest professions. Amazing survivability and exactly as good armor as engineers and rangers have. You can literally stand next to enemy bosses: blind, stealth, huge damage. Tons of evade, caltrops on dodges, need I go on? In fact I don’t remember the last time when I died playing a thief.

But I refuse to play such a face roll profession against real human players.

This is a common lie too it seems.

Your friend died because he took all the abuse. That is what guardians do. You lived because you kept dumping aggro on him whenever you stealthed.

My mesmer was by far more capable in PvE then my thief. In fact, My mesmer was able to control fights and kill veterans my thief was not able to solo.

And lastly.. you are comparing pve to pve. Really? Moots your whole argument right there. But then we all know you don’t play a thief.

Dawdler.8521:

Korgov.7645:

This seems like a good, simple counter. Nothing to be laughed at. This would also address a lot of other complaints about stealth.

Its not good at all, since it negate one of the primary purposes of stealth – being stealthy.

You want to know the simplest solution? 2 things:
- Taking direct damage breaks stealth (conditions dont count)
- Exiting stealth put a 4s reveal debuff buff until you can stealth again.

No more blatantly obvious veil rushes (just put a single AoE field in front of them), no more thief chain stealthing, no stealth stomps in the middle of zergs, no more flailing in the air against invisible theives laying downed for 20 seconds because they popped the house, no more thieves or mesmers hiding inside keeps, more more moving 100m+ while invisible, etc and so on.

Would this nerf thieves and mesmers stealthing? Hell yes, that’s the point. In turn, buff the timer the skills to allow them to remain in stealth just a notch longer (if veil last 4s now, make it last 6s or something).

Do you not realize the stupidity of nerfing a class because you do not like the way two classes work?

What we need is for the people who play little to no pvp to stop making useless comments on the forums. All I do is pvp. I would far rather fight a thief then a mesmer. Mesmers have crazy utility and abilities. I should know since I play one as well.

But funny thing is I never call for a nerf on classes that give me a hard time. I just learn to play better. You all might try that.

Niim.9260:

I think it was WAR that let you buy special guards with upgrades, they had stealth detection. I liked how it worked there and it might be a good solution to this problem.

Better solution is for you to quit the game. Otherwise thieves will get armor piercing to offset warrior and guardian armor levels. Thieves will also get an ability to always stay on target to the mesmer when he pops illusions. The thief will also get increased toughness and hitpoints to offset their inability to survive.

You understanding what I say here?

Ralathar.7236:

Situation mesmer/thief team well versed in perma-stealth and hiding is in your keep after a flip. How do you reliably counter this? There isn’t a reliable counter currently.

Permastealth mesmer portal teams need a reliable and viable counter. Currently the best available “counter” is to try and throw enough people at the teams and hope you get lucky and hope they are not good. IE sweeping. Otherwise you might as well hand the keep back over.

I’ve spent alot of time trying to think up and test viable counters. I’ve asked many people about viable counters. I’ve been part of countless discussions on viable counters. I even made a thread on the mesmer forum asking for viable counters. I’ve put in the time trying to find the answer but there is currently no reliable counter in existence to the best of my knowledge. This is untrue of any other tactic in the game that I know of.

Mesmer thread located here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Portals-Objectives-Play-and-Counterplay/first#post2052825

So ya, please give a reliable counter to this tactic so that it has valid play and counter-play. Currently it’s just frustrating, luck based, and requires a heavy investment of people vs an extremely light investment of their people (2) if they are good.

Like the guy below you said. It is easy to spot. The abilities are blatantly obvious when they are going off. Me thinks you guys are not doing actual mesmer/thief sweeps because you are too lazy, so you come here to complain.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Mesmer/thief team
If mesmer is alive, thief will have to use clusterbomb to keep both stealthed. Easy to counter
If mesmer is dead, thief would be “hard” to capture .. BUT anet already gave you the solution. Build stealthtrap on top of dead mesmer body. Sit next to the trap and drink a wee of tea with your guildies.

Congrats, it just cost you 2-3 pieces of siege and multiple to many people spending their time camping a dead body to stop 2 people. Oh and I hope you placed it exactly right or he can still rez from outside of the narrow radius of the trap.

Either way a definitive win for the 2 people tying you up, making you waste siege badges, and having the potential to still succeed if you get distracted and don’t watch for the bar to stop a cleverly positioning rez.

Oh and, I’m sure he doesn’t have shadow step equipped at all….

Jitters.9401:

Like the guy below you said. It is easy to spot. The abilities are blatantly obvious when they are going off. Me thinks you guys are not doing actual mesmer/thief sweeps because you are too lazy, so you come here to complain.

You mean like the ledges and cubbies in the cliff wall of bay that are high up out of normal LOS and you have to jumping puzzle to? (but they can see you coming from like 30 seconds away) Is it obvious there? How about spots that provide you no LOS on them but they can see you coming a mile away in Hills? Is it obvious like that? What about animation draw distance, yes it’s happening but how far away can I see it from? (See references to some of the out of the way spots without LOS from your end, but they have LOS to you)

Good teams can see you coming before you see them and then act accordingly. The spots chosen are well suited to it. Videos showing people do it in plain sight of others are videos done by folks who were either lazy or rookies. Ironically this still works a good portion of the time since even once found you have to chase them down with a multitude of people, these folks are built to run/hide/survive after all. You have to invest quite a bit more to kill them than they do to make you need to kill them.

The reason this seems like an easy counter to alot of people is usually one of 4 things:

1. They are a mesmer or thief trying to protect their tactic.

2. You simply don’t know about alot of these clever hiding spots that provide all of the advantages to the people hiding. Back in the day they used to be able to glitch into walls (I’m talking terrain walls not keep walls even) and stuff so you couldn’t see them period. But it was still “fine” to a great many mesmers.

3. You don’t know how mobile they are between their nice spots at need. It’s not a “hidden” or “found” win or lose game. They have many pre-chosen spots to hide for a brief moment, or longer, to reapply stealth to get across a keep undetected. Thus if you actually check they spot they were in they can just move on and you have to guess which way they might have went out of their many options (including doubling back). That is if you even stumbled across them visible instead of stealth (in which case they can just LOL and stay there if you don’t stay at that spot long enough)

4. You’ve killed bad mesmers and teams and think they are all that easy. They are not. Even when discovered the good ones have a very good chance of losing you and hiding again without overwhelming force. Doubling back right through you in stealth is ALWAYS an option, remember that.

I could easily list out multitudes of spots like those mentioned, spots that mesmers don’t want you to know about. But I think that should be enough to make my point.

Here are some pictures of the 1st point I mentioned. Notice how you have to specifically look for that spot to notice it, notice also the pain it takes to get up there, by which time they are shadow refuged and gone to another one of their spots, easily jumping right past your without you having a clue if they so wikitten’s not even that sneaky without stealth. But I hope you have stability because otherwise all of the LOL mesmer pulls will just make them laugh and they are within an extremely short distance of wall>>>outside for portaling.

Everyone makes this sound like this is the easiest thing to do. It takes a ridiculous amount of coordination and experience to pull off a well versed stealth mesmer portal let alone a stealth thief / mesmer ‘permastealth team’.

Ralathar.7236:

Jitters.9401:

Like the guy below you said. It is easy to spot. The abilities are blatantly obvious when they are going off. Me thinks you guys are not doing actual mesmer/thief sweeps because you are too lazy, so you come here to complain.

You mean like the ledges and cubbies in the cliff wall of bay that are high up out of LOS and you have to jumping puzzle to? (but they can see you coming because they DO have LOS) Is it obvious there? How about spots that provide you no LOS on them but they can see you coming a mile away in Hills? Is it obvious like that? What about animation draw distance, yes it’s happening but how far away can I see it from? (See references to some of the out of the way spots without LOS from your end, but they have LOS to you)

Good teams can see you coming before you see them and then act accordingly. The spots chosen are well suited to it. Videos showing people do it in plain sight of others are videos done by folks who were either lazy or rookies. Ironically this still works a good portion of the time since even once found you have to chase them down with a multitude of people, these folks are built to run/hide/survive after all. You have to invest quite a bit more to kill them than they do to make you need to kill them.

The reason this seems like an easy counter to alot of people is usually one of two things:

1. They are a mesmer or thief trying to protect their tactic.

2. You simply don’t know about alot of these clever hiding spots that provide all of the advantages to the people hiding. Back in the day they used to be able to glitch into walls (I’m talking terrain walls not keep walls even) and stuff so you couldn’t see them period. But it was still “fine” to a great many mesmers.

I could easily list out multitudes of spots like those mentioned, spots that mesmers don’t want you to know about. But I think that should be enough to make my point.

Those hiding spots in the cliffs at south bay were fixed patches ago. Just saying.

Xavi.6591:

Those hiding spots in the cliffs at south bay were fixed patches ago. Just saying.

The blatantly broken ones letting you actually break terrain so NOBODY could see you, yes. The ones where you can still possibly find someone but they can easily LOLrun from you, no. 90% of players don’t even know you can get up there so don’t think to look up there and even if you do depending on your graphical options you might not be able to see skritt or you might be able to see the animations if you strain intensely and watch it for awhile, assuming clusterbomb. Anything else is black on black.

No real way to be sure though. After all gone or dead looks exactly the same as stealthed.

Keep in mind that with culling gone, it seems you can see farther distances now and make out the red invaders tag a lot easier. It is a lot harder for Mesmers to hide anywhere now than it was in the past.

Xavi.6591:

Keep in mind that with culling gone, it seems you can see farther distances now and make out the red invaders tag a lot easier. It is a lot harder for Mesmers to hide anywhere now than it was in the past.

This is true depending on your settings and the number of people around you. If you are running a mass sweep after take or repel with 50 other people you might easily be culled from seeing distant people for example. So too will those not fortunate enough to have good computers.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I was doing well ALONE as well at Bloodtide Coast, so it is a good comparison. No trouble handling monsters who are 5+ levels higher than me when there was no other human players nearby, despite my thief’s attacks were doing just glancing blows. And my gear wasn’t even optimal.

I also went later alone with my level 43 thief to Southsun Cove. That place is very much soloable with a thief.

It really seems there forums are full of people who are bad at playing thief, but good at defending broken mechanisms like stealth.

Still, comparing PvE content to a PvP scenario doesn’t hold much weight, and that last comment just makes you look asinine.

Currently, the only people that I have seen have issues with thieves are:

A. People that don’t play a thief and/or understand their mechanics.
B. People who are specc’d in a way that does not optimally gear them for roaming, so they die easily to a thief that is.
C. People that want something to complain about.

I play nothing but WvW, every day, as much as i can. I have 7 80’s, all geared, with different armor sets to go with different builds.

There are several classes that when i run group builds, they are more susceptible to a thieves burst and may not have many, if any, lock downs. They die pretty easily, and when I die, I rez and run back again.

When I roam, I build all my characters so that they can combat thieves if needed, and rarely, if ever, do the die to just a thief alone. Normally thieves get bored when they realize they dont have an easy kill and go away, but usually, they get overzealous and like pin them down and kill them.

Thieves aren’t overpowered or “godmode”. There are a few classes that are underpowered, and sometimes, you need to go outside of the standard group builds.

I prefer retaking a keep over trying to find some bloody mesmer/thief duo. I appreciate the amount of skill that goes into the hiding and god knows I can’t do it. It’s good to see there’s still something in wvw that requires skill over numbers.

multivira.7925:

I prefer retaking a keep over trying to find some bloody mesmer/thief duo. I appreciate the amount of skill that goes into the hiding and god knows I can’t do it. It’s good to see there’s still something in wvw that requires skill over numbers.

There is plenty that requires skill over numbers. Numbers only become insurmountable with imbalances in excess of 2:1 or 3:1 depending on the capability of the groups involved.

Otherwise you can easily eat people with lesser numbers with good play and good tactics.

iCryptik.1496:

Currently, the only people that I have seen have issues with thieves are:

A. People that don’t play a thief and/or understand their mechanics.
B. People who are specc’d in a way that does not optimally gear them for roaming, so they die easily to a thief that is.
C. People that want something to complain about.

I play nothing but WvW, every day, as much as i can. I have 7 80’s, all geared, with different armor sets to go with different builds.

I have no doubt that you are above average player and that you know about the game, BUT you are completely missing my point and the original point of this discussion, which was stealth + teleportation.

A. I do also play a thief and I have tried many of the most popular builds (yes, I also went to Heart of Mists to do experiments). And contrary to the common lies spread on these forums: Not all thieves are squishy. If make your character a complete glass cannon, that is your choice, but it shouldn’t be used as an argument to defend stuff in a totally illogical way: “Stealth is balanced because they are so squishy”. Any profession geared up full berserker can inflict huge damage, but generally dies easily as well. Thieves still have the superb advantage to reset the fight. Get away without any need to start from the way point and pay the armor repair bill. That is unfair.

B. I rarely ever die to a single thief. In fact single thieves attacking me usually very soon run away. But thieves generally run in pairs or groups of 3. They might be mixed burst and condition damage pressure. Most professions don’t have that easy access to stun breaks (compared to e.g. thieves ;-) ). So if you already used on stun break e.g. to escape basilisk venom burst, you are pretty much dead meat while that stun break is on cooldown for 60 s.

C. The point was that stealth and teleportation/shadowstep are both completely broken and overpowered game mechanisms, which both lack a hard counter.

sdsakuragi.8170:

I’d say certain conditions should be able to remove stealth. Like if a burn or bleed is applied to a stealthed player, then it breaks their stealth. It’d actually make logical sense; it’s hard to hide if you are leaving a smoke trail or bleeding all over the place.

Complete removal would be a bit more than necessary- just make the particle effects of burn/poison etc visible to enemy players when stealthed, a la tf2- they can keep the stealth benefits and even be untargetable, but if they got lit on fire, you can track them down.

Ralathar.7236:

multivira.7925:

I prefer retaking a keep over trying to find some bloody mesmer/thief duo. I appreciate the amount of skill that goes into the hiding and god knows I can’t do it. It’s good to see there’s still something in wvw that requires skill over numbers.

There is plenty that requires skill over numbers. Numbers only become insurmountable with imbalances in excess of 2:1 or 3:1 depending on the capability of the groups involved.

Otherwise you can easily eat people with lesser numbers with good play and good tactics.

Which is why certain servers tend to only fight when they outnumber you 2:1 or 3:1. Sorry I brought up the numbers thing, don’t mean to derail this thread as it’s a legitimate cause for concern.

I’m mainly wondering how many people enjoy the stealth mechanics and hunting down these thieves and mesmers. I can imagine that some people will like the thrill of the chase and all that, but I’m not sure. If people on both sides of the engagement enjoy it, then mechanics are fine in my opinion, but if only one side enjoys the mechanics, something needs to be done.

multivira.7925:

I’m mainly wondering how many people enjoy the stealth mechanics and hunting down these thieves and mesmers. I can imagine that some people will like the thrill of the chase and all that, but I’m not sure. If people on both sides of the engagement enjoy it, then mechanics are fine in my opinion, but if only one side enjoys the mechanics, something needs to be done.

Not a whole lot and the vast majority of people are completely ineffective at sweeping. You have to pretty much study the spots or be a mesmer that does it to stand a chance outside of completely random luck.

Because the average player is not going to know to sweep that spot that mesmers have invested literally hours upon hours trying to break the geometry and such to find. You’ll still see mesmers spend hours jumping and blinking trying to get to new spots even after the game has been out this long.

It took about 6 months to remove most of the exploits they were using like teleporting through the gate, jumping into the lord room of hills from the cliff above (circumventing both walls), and many other things. But ironically portaling has been considered “fine” the entire time by the mesmer community. “Something in this game finally takes skill”, “It’s easy to see and stop”, “It takes coordination”, “It lets small amounts of people fight the zerg”.

Same exact arguments you see now with perma-stealth teams, no surprise.