Guild Wars 2

I post this in WvW forum, cause I imagined it in a WvW scenario and I have no idea how it would turn out in PvE or PvP anyway^^

To prevent missunderstanding
Before you start flaming already, please hear me out. I do not intent in any way for every profession perma stealth abilities. Rangers, Mesmers and Thieves are already equiped with stealth in one ot the other way, so they wouldn’t need that improvement.

I stealth and am gone, or am I?
Now my idea is, that every profession has access to stealth. Stealth for a couple of seconds and in a low frequency. Each profession might have access a different way with different lore behind hit. While the necromancer uses the power of darknes, the elementelist hides in magical smoke and a warriors use their knowledge of the battlefield to cloeak themselves from the enemy.

Reasoning behind that
While thief and mesmer have the strongest access to stealth, with thief being the top stealth profession (and it should stay that way), this is a mechanic that is truely powerful and should be accessed by other professions as well in a limited ammount and significant trait investment. One must think about ballance, but I can imagine warriors using stealth to prepare burst (like thief, but in a much lower frequency) and Necomancers having a chance to disengage from a fight (at least with some chance).

One must on the other hand keep in mind, that with cross profession combos and via team composition stealth is already available for theoretcally all professions. However, I just thought it might be nice for non stealth clases to be able to stealth by themselfes. How does the community feel about that?

I think the group stealth from mesmers and thieves is enough personally. In a wvw setting, you will mostly be running with a group, which is likely to contain a thief or mesmer that can stealth the group if needed.

For individual stealth, I think it is best to leave it as is, as something that is special to thief (and mesmers to a lesser extent). We don’t want the professions all to slowly meld into an indistinguishable blob because one class has a powerful mechanic.

Banners are powerful, but should stay with the warrior, pets are powerful, but should stay with the ranger. Stealth is powerful, but should stay with the thief. Variety is the spice of life.

As a side note though, I do think stealth needs some tweaking. The ability of a d/p thief to gain stealth from leaping through a smoke field is too easy. cloak and dagger can be blocked or blinded, wasting initiative, but the heartseeker can’t, and i think that is where a lot of the grievances over steath come from. My suggestion is that leap finishers should only apply their effect if the attack hits an enemy. That way if the thief is blinded/blocked/immobilised, they are effectively countered.

Orrrr, they could make the spy kits work again in WvW.

My problem is stealth WITH shadow step and other teleport skills. That much movement while invisible is silly.