Guild Wars 2

Hi there. I’m looking for some knowledgable opinions on this situation. I’m still learning all the ins and outs of the game mechanics in WvW and I honestly don’t understand what I saw.

Here’s the situation. Green team owned Quentin Lake tower in EB the other night and we formed up a zerg to take it back. We took the tower (Blue) and then our zerg rushed off to Umber to take it back as well. We reached Umber, took it and then noticed that Quentin was owned by Red. Probably less than 5 minutes had passed.

Huh? I could understand if we had just taken it from Red. Likely a hidden mesmer that we didn’t find. But Green owned the place before us. My best guess is a well hidden mesmer/thieves that had been there awhile.

Ok, whatever. We zerged on back to Quentin and turned the place Blue again then 5 of us stayed behind and started sweeping for stealthed players. This is where it gets weird…… There were 2 dead reds on the wall. While we were standing beside their bodies we noticed their health bars going up. Rezzing. Okaaaaay? How is that possible? They fully rezzed and immediately stealthed on rez. We ran after them with all the AOE in our arsenal and killed both again. And again they rezzed. Again, we killed. Rez. Kill. You get the idea. Finally they teleported out.

So, what happened?

Theory #1: Stealthed player(s) was rezzing them. Ok, this sounds the most plausible, but we were throwing down some heavy heavy AOE on their corpses the whole time they were rezzing. Why didn’t this reveal a player or at least show us damage #s?

Theory #2: Revive Orbs?

Theory #3: Hack. But I really hate to go there unless there truly is no other explanation. I see too many folks cry HACK! when it’s simply that the enemy is a good player that knows a few tricks.

Opinions? I’d like to learn this new trick.

Can’t use revive orbs in WvW.

My guess is they had a very spry thief following them around.

If they were hacking, I doubt they’d even bother with the rez process.

Theory 2 wouldn’t work as revive orbs aren’t allowed….

Theory 1..I would (if I were to back up this theory) assume that they had multiple thieves who can throw down refuge in a cycle. My question to you: did you or anyone see the house thingy pop up? (that would be from a thief) if there wasn’t one present, and the dead were still rezzing, I would have no idea.

If I am being nit picky, however, how would you be able to run after someone who’s stealthed? You can’t see them so how can you run after them? ..blahblah neither here nor there.

It is a really weird thing what happened. I use a thief, and the refuge does have a pretty lengthy cool down (even with proper traits), and to constantly stealth like that is…odd.

Its broken stealth at work again. Just shocks me that Anet leaves such a broken mechanic in the game for such a long time.

BarnabyMalong.7561:

It is a really weird thing what happened. I use a thief, and the refuge does have a pretty lengthy cool down (even with proper traits), and to constantly stealth like that is…odd.

Thieves just make sure they die near NPC’s (Supply camp) or Siege weaponry in the keep, they just keep using Cloak and Dagger to stay stealthed and then when Refuge is up they get like 1 15s stealth (with blinding powder and heal) and just rez bit by bit.

Its annoying as hell, especially with clipping making stealth even worse than it already is.

What kind of stupidity is letting people stealth while in combat or at least not having a cooldown on it.

Trikki.5803:

BarnabyMalong.7561:

It is a really weird thing what happened. I use a thief, and the refuge does have a pretty lengthy cool down (even with proper traits), and to constantly stealth like that is…odd.

Thieves just make sure they die in NPC’s in the keep (supply camp usually), they just keep using Cloak and Dagger to stay stealthed and then when Refuge is up they get like 1 15s stealth (with blinding powder and heal) and just rez bit by bit.

Its annoying as hell, especially with clipping making stealth even worse than it already is.

What kind of stupidity is letting people stealth while in combat or at least not having a cooldown on it.

Point… It’s extremely annoying. Haha yes, coming from a thief, I find the perma stealth extremely annoying. I don’t use refuge in WvW, and the main method of stealth for me is my heal and stealing from another thief. But even with CnD/refuge, you can’t keep rezzing a dead player when a zerg has chased you out of a tower…still strange to me.

BarnabyMalong.7561:

Theory 1..I would (if I were to back up this theory) assume that they had multiple thieves who can throw down refuge in a cycle. My question to you: did you or anyone see the house thingy pop up? (that would be from a thief) if there wasn’t one present, and the dead were still rezzing, I would have no idea.

If I am being nit picky, however, how would you be able to run after someone who’s stealthed? You can’t see them so how can you run after them? ..blahblah neither here nor there.

Yeah, I kinda knew revive orbs couldn’t be used but threw it out as an option. Who knows what some people figure out can work.

About the house….yes we did see a house pop up but only a split second before the dead guys fully rezzed. It wasn’t there the whole time they were rezzing.

And as far as running after them….yes, you’re right we couldn’t see them but we could see where our damage numbers were falling and we kept running to those. Didn’t take too long to down them since we were throwing a LOT of AOE.

BarnabyMalong.7561:

Trikki.5803:

BarnabyMalong.7561:

It is a really weird thing what happened. I use a thief, and the refuge does have a pretty lengthy cool down (even with proper traits), and to constantly stealth like that is…odd.

Thieves just make sure they die in NPC’s in the keep (supply camp usually), they just keep using Cloak and Dagger to stay stealthed and then when Refuge is up they get like 1 15s stealth (with blinding powder and heal) and just rez bit by bit.

Its annoying as hell, especially with clipping making stealth even worse than it already is.

What kind of stupidity is letting people stealth while in combat or at least not having a cooldown on it.

Point… It’s extremely annoying. Haha yes, coming from a thief, I find the perma stealth extremely annoying. I don’t use refuge in WvW, and the main method of stealth for me is my heal and stealing from another thief. But even with CnD/refuge, you can’t keep rezzing a dead player when a zerg has chased you out of a tower…still strange to me.

Well unless the zerg is completely missing you with its aoe.

The Scarlet Raven.5416:

BarnabyMalong.7561:

Theory 1..I would (if I were to back up this theory) assume that they had multiple thieves who can throw down refuge in a cycle. My question to you: did you or anyone see the house thingy pop up? (that would be from a thief) if there wasn’t one present, and the dead were still rezzing, I would have no idea.

If I am being nit picky, however, how would you be able to run after someone who’s stealthed? You can’t see them so how can you run after them? ..blahblah neither here nor there.

Yeah, I kinda knew revive orbs couldn’t be used but threw it out as an option. Who knows what some people figure out can work.

About the house….yes we did see a house pop up but only a split second before the dead guys fully rezzed. It wasn’t there the whole time they were rezzing.

And as far as running after them….yes, you’re right we couldn’t see them but we could see where our damage numbers were falling and we kept running to those. Didn’t take too long to down them since we were throwing a LOT of AOE.

You wouldn’t see damage numbers on the thief unless you had only your combat window open.

Broken stealth sounds more likely than the other assumptions, but the OP was doing AOE too on the dead players. Not sure!
Also, don’t confuse theory with an guess. A theory is an assumption that has strong scientific evidence for and passed many experimental tests. :)

The Scarlet Raven.5416:

BarnabyMalong.7561:

Theory 1..I would (if I were to back up this theory) assume that they had multiple thieves who can throw down refuge in a cycle. My question to you: did you or anyone see the house thingy pop up? (that would be from a thief) if there wasn’t one present, and the dead were still rezzing, I would have no idea.

If I am being nit picky, however, how would you be able to run after someone who’s stealthed? You can’t see them so how can you run after them? ..blahblah neither here nor there.

Yeah, I kinda knew revive orbs couldn’t be used but threw it out as an option. Who knows what some people figure out can work.

About the house….yes we did see a house pop up but only a split second before the dead guys fully rezzed. It wasn’t there the whole time they were rezzing.

And as far as running after them….yes, you’re right we couldn’t see them but we could see where our damage numbers were falling and we kept running to those. Didn’t take too long to down them since we were throwing a LOT of AOE.

Reviving is quite fast when out of combat. You said you saw the refuge hut appear above them so there was definitely another thief still alive. using Shadow refuge he would have been able to revive a player completely with haste before the stealth wore off.

How your zerg sweep and 5man guard didn’t spot the remaining thief is beyond me. There are obvious telltale signs of a thief trying to remain in stealth. C&D on guards being the main one. Next time, instruct your 5man team to guard the NPCs near the dead bodies, guard those bones like a rabid dog and using aoe and knockbacks when you finally see the shadows appear or hear the CnD land. Elementalists, Guardians, Warriors and Engineers all have good AoE Knockbacks availble for situations like this and would make the best guard dogs.

This is only if there was no foul play. Hard to tell sometimes imo. As a thief, I dislike these kinds of stealth tactics, I wish we had more utility and could sub a few stealth skills for protection tbh.

There has to be signs of a thief. You can’t just assume a thief is there, perma stealth isn’t actually “perma stealth”, because there are signs. Random blind clouds, shadow refuges on the ground, NPCs acting strangely. If none of those are present, there is no thief, but rather something else going on. Now if you failed to see it, that’s a different story…

Another broken stealth mechanic. Send screenshots to anet.

They had to be using shadow refuge for this. One knockback as soon as that shadow refuge is dropped would instantly knock them out of stealth and apply “revealed”. They are confined to that radius.
There is no practical way to stealth enough to do this with blinding powder as it has a limit of hitting 5 players and only applies 3 secs of stealth (so 15 secs if rotated perfectly by all 5 thieves) with a 30 sec CD.

Well, a few days ago I saw a thread in the Thief forum where someone was able to achieve permastealth by C&D a wall, which they couldn’t hurt so no Reveal debuff, and with enough ini regen they could easily maintain it.
Could’ve been that.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Well, a few days ago I saw a thread in the Thief forum where someone was able to achieve permastealth by C&D a wall, which they couldn’t hurt so no Reveal debuff, and with enough ini regen they could easily maintain it.
Could’ve been that.

Someone should replicate this and bugreport it if that is the case. Doesn’t sound like something it is designed to do.

it could be perfectly timed cloak and dagger + refuge, but op also said that there were heavy aoes thrown on the dead, that triples the reviving speed and puts the thief’s life at risk. how did the thief survive ur heavy aoe is beyond my knowledge.

They’re doing this

You don’t need to use Shadow Refuge, and you can stay perma stealthed doing it.

Sure but can they do rezz while doing that? I highly doubt it.

Adaneshade.2409:

Sure but can they do rezz while doing that? I highly doubt it.

Nope they cannot. If OP saw no shadow refuge, no blinding powders, it’s extremely unlikely that it was a thief.

Also, the wall cnd glitch is apparently a known bug, hopefully anet fixes it.

It depends on how long they had been at it, and how many of them were doing it. If they had been at it for quite a long time, they could’ve stacked up enough stealth to match a full Shadow Refuge, or more, and then used that spare time to rez them before getting back to CnD.

There is a hard cap on stealth duration that can be stacked. Nothing in the OP’s description of events would be possible (assuming skills were being used without exploits) without the use of shadow refuge.

To fix this:
Allow defenders to target/damage the health bar of defeated players so you can at least prevent the res from ticking up, just as it works vs downed enemies.

Lifewaster.5912:

To fix this:
Allow defenders to target/damage the health bar of defeated players so you can at least prevent the res from ticking up, just as it works vs downed enemies.

Actually, I believe that rezzing players should only be doable outside combat. Reviving is fine in combat. This would help in more ways than one…for example, how many times have you gone to revive a downed player only to have the system autotarget and start rezzing a dead player which takes much longer.

I propose that while in combat, players who have been fully killed simply not be interactable until combat drops.

I’ve seen this before. Its cloak and dagger on a wall, which triggers no revealed debuff, so you can continue to stack it up to the cap. This is on any wall that can be damage by siege, it seems. And like the OP saw, its possible to rez someone inside the tower. It also makes it impossible for any sweep team to find the thief, except for melee spam looking for attack chains.

A fix for this would be to trigger revealed debuff while using cloak and dagger in stealth on a wall.

Eslakon.8149:

I’ve seen this before. Its cloak and dagger on a wall, which triggers no revealed debuff, so you can continue to stack it up to the cap. This is on any wall that can be damage by siege, it seems. And like the OP saw, its possible to rez someone inside the tower. It also makes it impossible for any sweep team to find the thief, except for melee spam looking for attack chains.

A fix for this would be to trigger revealed debuff while using cloak and dagger in stealth on a wall.

Actually my own experiments have found that it does give you revealed sometimes(50%, in my experience), but you don’t leave stealth, however you are immune to entering further stealth. It’s very very buggy. I still do not think stacking CnD would have explained it though, as it would take all his CnDs to get around 7-8 seconds of stealth, in which time he has to get to the body, rez, make it back, and find the initiative to get more CnDs. Simply spamming CnD off the wall in quick sucession is not a sustainable perma stealth. It requires a lot of intricate timing of the second you leave stealth. He had to use something else.

I guess the question now is, OP, did you see any shadow refuge, blinding powder, ect?

If not, was most likely not a thief

Stealth in itself is not broken, only a certain bug with an Cloak and Dagger being able to stealth you. The bug you are seeing here is from this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Perma-stealth-via-Cloak-Dagger-vs-Wall

There are two TC thieves doing this bug to cap towers. From my stand point I disapprove of this method. just be on the look out for them.

Doomdesire.9365:

Eslakon.8149:

I’ve seen this before. Its cloak and dagger on a wall, which triggers no revealed debuff, so you can continue to stack it up to the cap. This is on any wall that can be damage by siege, it seems. And like the OP saw, its possible to rez someone inside the tower. It also makes it impossible for any sweep team to find the thief, except for melee spam looking for attack chains.

A fix for this would be to trigger revealed debuff while using cloak and dagger in stealth on a wall.

Actually my own experiments have found that it does give you revealed sometimes(50%, in my experience), but you don’t leave stealth, however you are immune to entering further stealth. It’s very very buggy. I still do not think stacking CnD would have explained it though, as it would take all his CnDs to get around 7-8 seconds of stealth, in which time he has to get to the body, rez, make it back, and find the initiative to get more CnDs. Simply spamming CnD off the wall in quick sucession is not a sustainable perma stealth. It requires a lot of intricate timing of the second you leave stealth. He had to use something else.

I guess the question now is, OP, did you see any shadow refuge, blinding powder, ect?

If not, was most likely not a thief

If you have auto-attack on, its likely the revealed debuff you’re getting is caused by an accidental backstab on the wall, and if you have a stealth based build (say regen initiative in stealth, get 2 initiative on stealth skill usage, and extra second duration per stealth skill) its possible to reach the stealth cap with ease.

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

Xsorus.2507:

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

You didn’t read the posts people made? You can’t CnD like that while reviving, especially when they are spamming AoEs next to the body. Your video shows a stationary thief, CnDing a wall, not trying to revive someone, whilst somehow dodging AoEs. There is no way a thief did all of that, without leaving stealth for half a second, which is all it would take for a veteran archer on the wall to start hitting him with channeled attacks, which would have made it obvious that it was a thief, none of that mentioned by OP.

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

You didn’t read the posts people made? You can’t CnD like that while reviving, especially when they are spamming AoEs next to the body

I can build up close to 20 seconds of stealth before I bother ressing, at that point all I have to do is hit it a couple times to keep doing it.

CnD on wall and CnD on guards still do not answer the fundamental question of… how are they remaining in stealth AND reviving the dead? I’m sure you can’t CnD the air (stupid as it may sound) and bring the dead up. Especially when they’re being chased by OP’s zerg. If the zerg has chased them out, there would be no wall to CnD, and that from which to go stealth. Let’s say there were things like doe and grub that they can hit; but that would require them to CnD, go stealth for 3 seconds, and revive 2 seconds out of the 3 and rinse and repeat. But if you have a zerg throwing down AoEs on the dead body, relatively quickly, the said doe/grub would die—no way to CnD now. Yet their health bars are still going up? …frustratingly confusing, this whole business..haha I’d like to know this secret!

Xsorus.2507:

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

You didn’t read the posts people made? You can’t CnD like that while reviving, especially when they are spamming AoEs next to the body

I can build up close to 20 seconds of stealth before I bother ressing, at that point all I have to do is hit it a couple times to keep doing it.

Build up 20 seconds of stealth using CnD on a wall?

Video or it didn’t happen. Your video posted shows you barely maintaining stealth before running low on initiative.

Barnaby, all it would take is their ally dead on the wall. Use cloak on wall, revive a bit, use cloak again. Rinse, repeat. If the area starts to get aoe’d like crazy, go hide for a bit until it cools off.

BarnabyMalong.7561:

CnD on wall and CnD on guards still do not answer the fundamental question of… how are they remaining in stealth AND reviving the dead? I’m sure you can’t CnD the air (stupid as it may sound) and bring the dead up. Especially when they’re being chased by OP’s zerg. If the zerg has chased them out, there would be no wall to CnD, and that from which to go stealth. Let’s say there were things like doe and grub that they can hit; but that would require them to CnD, go stealth for 3 seconds, and revive 2 seconds out of the 3 and rinse and repeat. But if you have a zerg throwing down AoEs on the dead body, relatively quickly, the said doe/grub would die—no way to CnD now. Yet their health bars are still going up? …frustratingly confusing, this whole business..haha I’d like to know this secret!

You don’t need a target, you just need to be near a targetable enemy wall, so yes they could actually CND the air and stay stealth.. All they’d have to do is whenever they got full init, is spam CND, and go back to ressing, you can perma keep it up.

The Zerg didn’t chase them out either, It was done inside a tower..

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

You didn’t read the posts people made? You can’t CnD like that while reviving, especially when they are spamming AoEs next to the body

I can build up close to 20 seconds of stealth before I bother ressing, at that point all I have to do is hit it a couple times to keep doing it.

Build up 20 seconds of stealth using CnD on a wall?

Video or it didn’t happen. Your video posted shows you barely maintaining stealth before running low on initiative.

did you watch the whole video?

cause it sounds like you didn’t.

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

You didn’t read the posts people made? You can’t CnD like that while reviving, especially when they are spamming AoEs next to the body

I can build up close to 20 seconds of stealth before I bother ressing, at that point all I have to do is hit it a couple times to keep doing it.

Build up 20 seconds of stealth using CnD on a wall?

Video or it didn’t happen. Your video posted shows you barely maintaining stealth before running low on initiative.

Yeah, and then he switched to ini regen during stealth and easily maintained it while keeping ini up, and steadily gaining stealth duration.
CnD gives 4s stealth when traited, and costs 4 ini after the refund of 2. 1.33s/ini regen means it costs 1 every 4s. Just ini regen during stealth (1 ini/3s) gives enough to counter that, and then the signet and the standard ini regen trait gives another 3 ini/10s, which allows you to steadily increase its duration.

Plus, if no one’s near you at all, you are free to fire off a Shadow Refuge to fill it all the way up to make it easier.

Xsorus.2507:

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Doomdesire.9365:

Xsorus.2507:

Whats sad is I posted a video of me doing it and some people are still questioning it.

You didn’t read the posts people made? You can’t CnD like that while reviving, especially when they are spamming AoEs next to the body

I can build up close to 20 seconds of stealth before I bother ressing, at that point all I have to do is hit it a couple times to keep doing it.

Build up 20 seconds of stealth using CnD on a wall?

Video or it didn’t happen. Your video posted shows you barely maintaining stealth before running low on initiative.

did you watch the whole video?

cause it sounds like you didn’t.

Actually I just finished watching the entire video, and I do have to admit that I stand corrected.

Withdrawn

Hopefully the developers will fix

Xsorus.2507:

BarnabyMalong.7561:

CnD on wall and CnD on guards still do not answer the fundamental question of… how are they remaining in stealth AND reviving the dead? I’m sure you can’t CnD the air (stupid as it may sound) and bring the dead up. Especially when they’re being chased by OP’s zerg. If the zerg has chased them out, there would be no wall to CnD, and that from which to go stealth. Let’s say there were things like doe and grub that they can hit; but that would require them to CnD, go stealth for 3 seconds, and revive 2 seconds out of the 3 and rinse and repeat. But if you have a zerg throwing down AoEs on the dead body, relatively quickly, the said doe/grub would die—no way to CnD now. Yet their health bars are still going up? …frustratingly confusing, this whole business..haha I’d like to know this secret!

You don’t need a target, you just need to be near a targetable enemy wall, so yes they could actually CND the air and stay stealth.. All they’d have to do is whenever they got full init, is spam CND, and go back to ressing, you can perma keep it up.

The Zerg didn’t chase them out either, It was done inside a tower..

ahhh, I was under the impression that they were chased out of the tower. I do suppose that the CnD wall tactic is what’s being in play? Most plausible scenario, I guess.

I rewatched Xsorus’ video, and it led me to want to ask to OP: how long did it take for everything to occur? ie: how long was it from when you killed them-rezzing-kill-rez…etc? In the video, it took roughly 1.5 minutes to stack ~20 seconds of stealth. The dead wouldn’t be rezzed within this fram of 1.5 minutes..unless multiple thieves were at work?! Ahhhhhhhhh to hell with this, back to calculus homework xP

Remove stealth when target gets hit would solve so many problems.

Caedmon.6798:

Remove stealth would solve so many problems.

Kittism.3085:

There are two TC thieves doing this bug to cap towers. From my stand point I disapprove of this method. just be on the look out for them.

Hmmm, from the conversations in this thread, I think i have my answer. The dead players were indeed TC. The stealthed thieves were likely using this trick to stay hidden within the tower. The rezzes weren’t fast and the first time I wasn’t even sure if he was rezzing at first. I’d glance at the corpse and see some red on the bar, then a little bit more, but still not sure if it was more health or just my imagination. Soon though you could tell he was gaining health.

Overall probably took around a minute or so to fully rez these guys.

As far as what skills I saw, I can’t answer that. I haven’t played a thief much and I’m not familiar with their skills. I don’t know exactly what Shadow Refuge is or what it looks like (But I’ll find out). I just know that it’s possible for thieves to stay stealthed for a long time. However i thought they would still take damage if you managed to blindly hit where they are standing.

I think i need to start playing my thief more and learn their mechanics better.

The Scarlet Raven.5416:

Kittism.3085:

There are two TC thieves doing this bug to cap towers. From my stand point I disapprove of this method. just be on the look out for them.

Hmmm, from the conversations in this thread, I think i have my answer. The dead players were indeed TC. The stealthed thieves were likely using this trick to stay hidden within the tower. The rezzes weren’t fast and the first time I wasn’t even sure if he was rezzing at first. I’d glance at the corpse and see some red on the bar, then a little bit more, but still not sure if it was more health or just my imagination. Soon though you could tell he was gaining health.

Overall probably took around a minute or so to fully rez these guys.

As far as what skills I saw, I can’t answer that. I haven’t played a thief much and I’m not familiar with their skills. I don’t know exactly what Shadow Refuge is or what it looks like (But I’ll find out). I just know that it’s possible for thieves to stay stealthed for a long time. However i thought they would still take damage if you managed to blindly hit where they are standing.

I think i need to start playing my thief more and learn their mechanics better.

They do take damage if they are hit, stealth or no stealth, but it doesn’t knock them out of stealth.

The Scarlet Raven.5416:

Kittism.3085:

There are two TC thieves doing this bug to cap towers. From my stand point I disapprove of this method. just be on the look out for them.

Hmmm, from the conversations in this thread, I think i have my answer. The dead players were indeed TC. The stealthed thieves were likely using this trick to stay hidden within the tower. The rezzes weren’t fast and the first time I wasn’t even sure if he was rezzing at first. I’d glance at the corpse and see some red on the bar, then a little bit more, but still not sure if it was more health or just my imagination. Soon though you could tell he was gaining health.

Overall probably took around a minute or so to fully rez these guys.

As far as what skills I saw, I can’t answer that. I haven’t played a thief much and I’m not familiar with their skills. I don’t know exactly what Shadow Refuge is or what it looks like (But I’ll find out). I just know that it’s possible for thieves to stay stealthed for a long time. However i thought they would still take damage if you managed to blindly hit where they are standing.

I think i need to start playing my thief more and learn their mechanics better.

There is 4 of them sometimes 5 from the same guild…So if 2 of the baddies were dead, that left 2 or 3 using this bug to stay hidden while they ressed, Just swing randomally along the wall, Cause that’s where they’re usually at.