Guild Wars 2

I play every class so this isn’t a bash “fill in the class” thread.

Here are the problems with stealth:

1.) It does not last long enough….yes you heard me right…I’ll explain in a bit.
2.) It is far too easily entered in some situations…at least dagger dagger thieves have to work for stealth.
3.) It offers no built in protection.
4.) Shadow refuge useful, but with beta changes…useless.
5.) You have stealth traps yet no armor traps.
6.) Stealth cooldown is far too short.
7.) Things follow you into stealth “rapid fire to the stealthed face”!
8.) You can be revealed…yet there is no de-armor skill.
9.) Stealth classes are also the classes that get the most teleports.
10.) You move far too fast in stealth.
11.) Stealth attacks are far too weak.

All of the above are related and I could address them one by one, but that would just be stating obvious problems. The problem with stealth in this game is related top the non-fun fact that thieves and mesmers can go stealth over and over and over AND move from one spot to the next instantly. This makes very good stealthers unreasonably hard to kill. It would be one thing that if you encountered a stealth player that they can choose to exit the conflict, but that is not the problem. The problem is that you can’t leave the fight and they can! So they get as many cracks at you as they choose.

To fix the problem I suggest:
1.) Make stealth only enterable by a long delay which you do not move OR a point blank move such as the daggers have….No jumping from a circle…no shadow refuges. Just be still for 5 seconds and you can stealth. or use a weapon or a dust throw etc. No using a torch with no skill needed at all…you get the idea.
2.) Once a player is stealthed the calculation that allows for hits and misses becomes heavily in favor of a miss. AOE’s should have a good chance to hit, direct attacks almost none.
3.) When in stealth reduce speed by 5%.
4.) Melee attacks should have a big opener…if the attacking player stops for 1/2 second before the attack.

I believe this would make for a much better dynamic.

The whole point is stealth should be a very rare thing. Reducing speed in stealth is a good idea, as is reducing the skills that start it.

Then stealth should be fragile, hitting someone in stealth should automatically reveal them.

Mesmers and Revenants should be able to ‘see’ straight through stealth, both classes wear or have worn blindfolds.

Then stealth is a bad mechanic, if a class cannot survive without it then it’s a poor class indeed. Many dungeon running teams depend on stealth to get past mobs.

Reducing speed by 5% doesn’t address the issues. The easy fix is to make stealthed players have to move stealthily, ie 50% movement speed reduction. Using any form of teleport should hit you with a 5 second revealed.

And remove and form of stun/root from attacks out of stealth- it’s no fun being unable to do anything at all in the 0.5 seconds it takes for a thief to macro skill damage you down to nothing.

I have to admit I did have fun using the stealth reveal on engi over the weekend when thiefs were trying to gank the backline:-))

As someone who’s played every single class in PVE, PVP, and WvW… Learn to play. Seriously. If you can’t survive being attacked by a thief, then you probably are not very skilled. For a lot of the players who complain about thieves being OP, they are probably the same people who, when they see a non-stealth class running at them in wvw, choose to run away. Yes, if you’re not a skilled player it’s annoying to get killed by someone you can’t just run away from in advance of the fight.

As it comes to good players: It’s really not that hard to counter mesmer or thief. Guardians and warriors are pretty much safe, as it’s really annoying to hunt people in heavy armor as a thief… they take so much damage!

Necroes: use fear, marks, deathshroud, AOE’s. you’d be surprised how easily you can convince a stealthed player that you’re not a fun target.

Engies: You have two blinds, lots of leaps, confusion, and decent condi cleanse+lots of heals. Use your skills to chill, then AOE blast that thief to death! If the thief tries to SR or Powder shot, use your shield 4 to knock them out.

Rangers: Sorry, ya’ll are still screwed. Anet please buff?

Elementalists: Even if you get surprised you can still outrun a thief or mesmer if you don’t want to fight them. If you’re running staff, then stick to your zerg because honestly anyone should be able to wreck you 1v1 at that point.

Why is it “ok” that thieves can cause mass panic in roaming situations? The only niche that thieves fit into in WvW is roaming. Every other class fits in well to a zerg except thief.

Also, in my experience playing thief, players running cheese builds are very easy to kill. If you slap a few pieces of soldiers gear on, all of a sudden that’s a different story. Theoretically it’s kinda fair that a player who has foregone taking any extra health or damage reduction shouldn’t be very damage resilient when faced by another “cheese” build.

Lastly in my experience I’ve noticed that most players run for the hills when they get attacked by a stealth build. If you never learn to fight/counter a stealth build then you will probably never beat someone playing one.

Lastly pt. 2: When Anet tests classes for balancing they have the best players play the builds. If the best players end up playing balanced between classes then theoretically losing to a class simply means you are less skilled than that player.

TL:DR stop QQ’ing over stealth when it really isn’t that hard to fight.

Robert.6790:

If you can’t survive being attacked by a thief, then you probably are not very skilled. For a lot of the players who complain about thieves being OP, they are probably the same people who, when they see a non-stealth class running at them in wvw, choose to run away. Yes, if you’re not a skilled player it’s annoying to get killed by someone you can’t just run away from in advance of the fight.

you seem confused in my opinion. It appears to me that the complaints are not about the thief directly, but thee stealth abuse they can be capable of at times.

Example :

https://youtu.be/nfsylqFPJuE

https://youtu.be/jpOb3YO0p8c

Lmao Robert i am insulted by your put down of rangers!
I no joke one shot a thief today who thought i was an easy target with a 14k maul to the face.

Sure legolas rangers suck but many rangers are about too that can melt thief, condi for sure.

As for stealth i think it should be permanent with little entry to it in combat.
Ive played gw2 since launch and i have also mes and thief alts i just disagree with gw2s version of stealth classes.

All that in combat stealth gain is bad for pvp.

This seems to be mostly targeted towards thieves… I think the Thieves are wrong about being to weak in PvP but if you made any of those changes Thieves would be worthless. Mesmers shouldn’t have the amount of Stealth they do, however Thief stealth and teleports are fine – if anything I would buff certain skills like Shadow Refuge and make it so you can’t force them out of it with reveals.

Any changes to stealth like a lockout would require a complete rework of the class from the ground up (which might even make the class better). It is a bit late for that though.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Robert.6790:

If you can’t survive being attacked by a thief, then you probably are not very skilled. For a lot of the players who complain about thieves being OP, they are probably the same people who, when they see a non-stealth class running at them in wvw, choose to run away. Yes, if you’re not a skilled player it’s annoying to get killed by someone you can’t just run away from in advance of the fight.

you seem confused in my opinion. It appears to me that the complaints are not about the thief directly, but thee stealth abuse they can be capable of at times.

Example :

https://youtu.be/nfsylqFPJuE

https://youtu.be/jpOb3YO0p8c

The players losing in those videos clearly don’t know how to fight a thief/play the game in general.

Robert.6790:

As someone who’s played every single class in PVE, PVP, and WvW… Learn to play.

lol what ? You should clearly take your own advice dude and play a bit without or against stealth. The amount of burst stealth classes can dish out is obscene with no real counterplay. Other classes in contrary to the thief for example have cooldowns on their skills. Do you know what a cooldown is dude ? We can not spam something until our class ressource pool is empty.

The amount of stealth thiefs and mesmers have access to makes it super easy, even for only decent players, simply to hit and run until most of your stuff is on cooldown and if they come to the conclusion that you are not a “fun” target they simply stay in stealth and teleport happy away. Stealth is perfect easy mode game play in GW2 because there is no skill based gameplay involved other that “stay away from red circles” Really dude, even a monkey can learn that.

Some of the points the OP made are really the most overpowered crap i´ve read. Longer lasting stealth ? Protection in stealth ? Dearmor non stealth classes ? and my favourite “No reveal” ? Wow this is ridiculous. How many classes can reveal now ? Ranger and Engie afaik. With hot Revenant too. So three professions out of nine and that´s too much for you, come on i dare you……….

Ppl still complain about stealth lel there will be more then enough reveal after xpac and more effective group stealth coming from scrapper.It seems the problem is that you are kinda mad about not being able to kill stealth classess when they try to reset or run away.
I like the “super easy stealth” vs cd argument lmao, pls go play thief vs good player with different classess and come back then i`m sure you will change ur opinion at least for that class that thief has nothing else then stealth atm.

mordran.4750:

Robert.6790:

As someone who’s played every single class in PVE, PVP, and WvW… Learn to play.

lol what ? You should clearly take your own advice dude and play a bit without or against stealth. The amount of burst stealth classes can dish out is obscene with no real counterplay. Other classes in contrary to the thief for example have cooldowns on their skills. Do you know what a cooldown is dude ? We can not spam something until our class ressource pool is empty.

The amount of stealth thiefs and mesmers have access to makes it super easy, even for only decent players, simply to hit and run until most of your stuff is on cooldown and if they come to the conclusion that you are not a “fun” target they simply stay in stealth and teleport happy away. Stealth is perfect easy mode game play in GW2 because there is no skill based gameplay involved other that “stay away from red circles” Really dude, even a monkey can learn that.

Some of the points the OP made are really the most overpowered crap i´ve read. Longer lasting stealth ? Protection in stealth ? Dearmor non stealth classes ? and my favourite “No reveal” ? Wow this is ridiculous. How many classes can reveal now ? Ranger and Engie afaik. With hot Revenant too. So three professions out of nine and that´s too much for you, come on i dare you……….

“No real counterplay”

Try anticipating where the thief is. I don’t main thief but they aren’t that hard to counter. All you have to do is anticipate where they are. Which is really easy.

I agree that what the OP said is a bit ridiculous (cue rogue from WoW).

My main point, which you seem to have missed, is that if you know how to play your class it isn’t hard to counter a thief of EQUAL skill. Considering that the thief class relies entirely on their stealth mechanic to be viable, this makes them easy to counter because you know how they will attack you. Learn the timing between attacks/stealth durations and you have yourself an easy fight.

Btw I don’t main thief, so I know what it’s like to play against them.

if you see a powder go down (red circle)

Stand in it. auto attack and you’ll knock the thief right out of stealth.

#themoreyouknow

Honestly invis has counter play why aren’t people more upset with invulnerable abilities like elixir s, mist form and the like. You can still hit invisible units with attacks, there are abilities that ‘track’ people when they invis ranger rapid fire for example. There are a few direct abilities that can prevent invis by applying revealed. If you had the option of invis or invulnerable what would you chose? I’m sure some would still take invis but most would want the invulnerable.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

Honestly invis has counter play why aren’t people more upset with invulnerable abilities like elixir s, mist form and the like. You can still hit invisible units with attacks, there are abilities that ‘track’ people when they invis ranger rapid fire for example. There are a few direct abilities that can prevent invis by applying revealed. If you had the option of invis or invulnerable what would you chose? I’m sure some would still take invis but most would want the invulnerable.

My experience, invuln is nowhere near as kittentealth is in this game. Cleaving invis people would be a decent counter, if your movements were actually impeded in stealth instead of being able to blink halfway across the map. Track abilities like rapid fire would be a decent counter, if every class had a track ability as strong as rapid fire. Reveal abilities would be a decent counter, if every class had a reveal instead of just 2 classes (of which most reveals are target abilities that require you to use it before a stealthy stealths).

What does invuln have that’s so bad? Most invulns are only a couple seconds long, condis that were applied before a target pops invuln still tick on them, you still take fall damage in invuln, most invuln states wont let you use skills during it, and most are around a min long cooldown.

Also, don’t generalize what most people would go unless you can back it up.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

My experience, invuln is nowhere near as kittentealth is in this game. Cleaving invis people would be a decent counter, if your movements were actually impeded in stealth instead of being able to blink halfway across the map. Track abilities like rapid fire would be a decent counter, if every class had a track ability as strong as rapid fire. Reveal abilities would be a decent counter, if every class had a reveal instead of just 2 classes (of which most reveals are target abilities that require you to use it before a stealthy stealths).

What does invuln have that’s so bad? Most invulns are only a couple seconds long, condis that were applied before a target pops invuln still tick on them, you still take fall damage in invuln, most invuln states wont let you use skills during it, and most are around a min long cooldown.

Also, don’t generalize what most people would go unless you can back it up.

I think blinks in general need to be looked at but that is a different discussion. Also I think you are talking about s2 invulns that aren’t quite invulns when talking about conditions still hitting. Also it’s not like you can attack from stealth (you can but you will lose stealth and be removed from it). You still take fall damage in stealth too. I agree splitting up the revealed and giving more options to other classes would be a decent way to go that isn’t really changing stealth. Some of the bigger stealth moves (the easy ones to use that don’t require hitting a target) have long cooldowns as well.

Basically what I’m getting at is some classes get invunerability, some get invis, both work as a defensive option and both have strengths and weaknesses. In my opinion stealth has more counter play than invulnerable.

Stealth is crab and should be removed completely…

I only dont like how mesmers got more stealth then thieves. Condi mesmers are in stealth 80% of the time, put conditions on you and bam they are gone in stealth.

Ragnarox.9601:

I only dont like how mesmers got more stealth then thieves. Condi mesmers are in stealth 80% of the time, put conditions on you and bam they are gone in stealth.

Have you encountered a ghost Thief at all? The ones who slather on conditions while never leaving stealth? Anyway, the PU nerf and reveal only makes it harder for glassy Mesmers, condi PU is still faceroll. But its not just because of stealth, it’s a combination of that and the blinks, blocks, blinds, toughness, the silly changes to some of the conditions – confusion being a prime example, perplexity runes, the mere existence of torment in a action based combat system like GW2 etc etc. The list can go on but it’s not just stealth (as annoying as it can be).

I already posted on this, read it here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Hate-Stealth-Here-is-your-counter/first#post5592293

Tl;dr – Playing against stealth in current implementation, is not a fun experience.

The only real issues that ever existed with stealth have been when something else in the game makes them useful to frontload or when there have been too great a distance between the various stealth classes.

So what does that mean? Well, stealth exist as an alternative defensive measure to tanking (I’m leaving the discussion about evades, blocks and mobility out because there is so much overlap on the classes, so it would only complicate the discourse) and it has mostly become an issue when there is such an overabundance of defenses that you can use your stealth offensively in a wasteful manner.

One typical example lie in how conditions only scale with two stats yet have been improved to challenge power-builds relying on three stats.

This has been common among most condi-builds on Mesmers, Thieves and Engineers, where stealth uptime in many cases have been better on condition options than power options. It is also especially true for the new trapper builds on Rangers as they don’t rely very much on crit to apply conditions.

Another typical example lie in when condition uptime-to-cooldown and superior management access lead to situations when players can pressure offensively and still have escapes or out-stealth opponents and yet have continued pressure and escape.

The summer fling Mesmers were a typical example of this, where abilities that were once mainly defensive (or were used offensively at great risk, overextending yourself and blowing cooldowns to attempt ending a fight) all of a sudden saw use in the offensive with alot of mediocre players turning to overly successful use of assassination builds. It is also commonly seen on Thieves who blow multiple cooldowns (step-leap combos etc.) and still maintain in-combat re-stealth pressure and escapes. It makes the wasteful useful.

So if there was ever any two issues they should have fixed, those would be it – making sure condition-versions always had access to less stealth and making sure doubling up on offensive uses was less useful. I find that interesting because it is essentially the opposite of what the OP is suggesting in how ways to deal with the latter would be shorter stealth times and lower ambush damage to force stealth to be used for quick escapes, similar to dash-styled evades, more often (and not as full resets either). Many classes have to make choices in that regard, to the offensive or defensive, while builds on some classes do not.

Robert.6790:

As someone who’s played every single class in PVE, PVP, and WvW… Learn to play. Seriously. If you can’t survive being attacked by a thief, then you probably are not very skilled. For a lot of the players who complain about thieves being OP, they are probably the same people who, when they see a non-stealth class running at them in wvw, choose to run away. Yes, if you’re not a skilled player it’s annoying to get killed by someone you can’t just run away from in advance of the fight.

Really big and stupid statement there. I would fight them, if they didn’t keep going invisible and running away. That is the whole problem. I have to be lucky every time and they just have to be lucky once.

If we’re fixing stealth we should also fix the classes that use them so they don’t have to rely on them.

every player using stealth is being hated kinda since launch coz most ppl dont seem to enjoy fighting vs stealthed players. now nerfing stealth will IMO only hit thieves – mesmers will get tons of invuln with HoT. PLS go to thief forums alot of thieves complain about thief now being a +1&decap class in pvp and UNABLE to 1 vs 1 even skilled player that is not a mesmer/thief ( who have access to stealth). Many ppl in thief forums think its oke coz its not thiefs role to 1 vs 1 but now if u also want to remove or totally destroy stealth the only thing that is going to happen: ‘Oh a thief! are u going to suicide or do i have to put out an evil look?’

MUDse.7623:

every player using stealth is being hated kinda since launch coz most ppl dont seem to enjoy fighting vs stealthed players. now nerfing stealth will IMO only hit thieves – mesmers will get tons of invuln with HoT. PLS go to thief forums alot of thieves complain about thief now being a +1&decap class in pvp and UNABLE to 1 vs 1 even skilled player that is not a mesmer/thief ( who have access to stealth). Many ppl in thief forums think its oke coz its not thiefs role to 1 vs 1 but now if u also want to remove or totally destroy stealth the only thing that is going to happen: ‘Oh a thief! are u going to suicide or do i have to put out an evil look?’

Shame, if thiefs have to actually learn to play rather than rely on stealth and immob as crutches then cry when it gets hard to insta gib people down….those thiefs complaining are complaining as they are no longer able to have it all their own way, and have had easy mode for so long they have forgotten how to play a real fight.

My issue is the immob from stealth from 2000 range away – unless you’re superman and can spot them coming while they are invisible there is little chance to time any sort of dodge and if steal hits your pretty much toasted or forced into using your heal before you can even move. Of course it’s not a problem if I’m on guardian…

Baldrick.8967:

Shame, if thiefs have to actually learn to play rather than rely on stealth and immob as crutches then cry when it gets hard to insta gib people down….those thiefs complaining are complaining as they are no longer able to have it all their own way, and have had easy mode for so long they have forgotten how to play a real fight.

apart from i dont get why u quote my post, i said in thief forum many ppl claim that thief is not a 1 vs 1 strong class atm. thats not about easy mode its about being able to fight another class played by an even skilled player.

Baldrick.8967:

have had easy mode for so long they have forgotten how to play a real fight.

whats a real fight for u? both come close in melee range and press 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 till one dies? every class has its mechanics and thief has stealth and some immobilize – u can remove it if u also give up ALL ur blocks and blinds on ur guard in return.

Baldrick.8967:

My issue is the immob from stealth from 2000 range away – unless you’re superman and can spot them coming while they are invisible there is little chance to time any sort of dodge and if steal hits your pretty much toasted or forced into using your heal before you can even move. Of course it’s not a problem if I’m on guardian…

actually with a bit of experience ull know when the thief will attack but if the thief is stealthed and u dogge his attack he wont get revealed. if the thief only used a short invis u can use ur aegis buffs to block his attacks till he gets revealed and then smash him , if he starts with shadow refuge on range as many do ..just walk away and keep an eye on ur aegis – if it gets removed use some blind n smash a bit around u. if i read ur description correctly u talk about very offensive thieves they should die in few of ur autohits. if the thief uses his steal u open on u through ur aegis , then he just used his best interrupt skill ( at least many trait it that way) and will have it on cd quite a while.

for ur l2p argument i beg u to play a thief for a while and pls make videos how u kill decent players with easy mode. coz i know a bunch of ppl who used to complain about thieves, then tried it them selves and shut up

last i want u to describe how a thief should fight without using stealth and immobilizes and still be able to have a fair chance in winning the fight. or u also want thieves not to port / dogge next coz its too op ?