Guild Wars 2

So duh, this topic has been erm… discussed before.

Thieves and perma stealth.
What in the world is the justification for perma stealth? It’s their class mechanic, but it’s just total, 100% bullkitten, and it hasn’t changed since the game’s inception. Two minutes ago a thief attacked be, and for 2-3 seconds AFTER I was hit, I still COULD NOT SEE THEM. What is this? What reason could there be for insane mobility AND perma stealth? It’s just ridiculous.

Mesmers and clones.
I wouldn’t give a kitten if three was the limit, but what is with 5+ clones running at you at one time from one godkitten mesmer?

I’m so tired of this kitten. This is why I never play pvp, because the classes are so godkitten lopsided.

Aside from the rant, my questions are:
How come the thief was cloaked after he hit me? I couldn’t even see their name.
When did mesmers acquire the ability to produce more than 3 clones at a time?

Make applying damage conditions reveal and problem solved.

Gwaihir has a good solution though. Thief traps get away with not revealing them because they don’t cause direct damage. A good solution to this is to make applying damaging conditions reveal the thieves. This would make Needle trap and caltrops (even though its not stricly a trap) reveal the thief.

As for the mesmers, they can’t have more than 3 illusions at a time, no single mesmer is hitting you with 5 illusion shatters. Its not possible.

OriOri.8724:

Gwaihir has a good solution though. Thief traps get away with not revealing them because they don’t cause direct damage. A good solution to this is to make applying damaging conditions reveal the thieves. This would make Needle trap and caltrops (even though its not stricly a trap) reveal the thief.

As for the mesmers, they can’t have more than 3 illusions at a time, no single mesmer is hitting you with 5 illusion shatters. Its not possible.

Mesmer can have more than three up it’s a weird timing issue due to the Chronophanta and illusory reversion when they pop shatters after each other is the only explanation I can think of, I didn’t think it was possible but I see it every once in a while

There is a traitline called SA that enhances a Thiefs Stealth abilities.

There is a trait inside that line called Hidden Thief which stealths a thief after a steal. On steal a thief can apply poison and confusion .With hidden theif they are then stealthed for 4 seconds. This means the thief can apply his damage and then remain stealthed for those 4 seconds.

If a thief wished they could use a SR to stealth beforehand and then use that same steal with hidden thief.

This has been there since day one and people have learned to deal with it. It has nothing to do with traps. It is a defined class mechanic. One might as well complain that after being attacked by a guardian/warrior he can throw up a block and I can not touch him for several seconds or that on shooting at someone from range the damage just reflected back. Those too are class mechanics.

A DH can stack traps outside a portal and then leave the area. A person stepping on them can take thousands in damage and never see the DH.

I’ve found I’ve stopped worrying about theives/Mesmer. They come to try and burst, counter burst, they run away at an uncachable speed, I go on my way until they come back and I finally get off a killshot.

The mesmer thing is they might have 3 clones/phantasms out which when shattered start running towards you and then the slots for clones are effectively free allowing them to summon up to 3 that will do their normal attacks but not run toward you.

It’s more noticeable now with illusionary reversion and chronophantasma however it was always possible. If they shatter those and resummon more via mirror images or something else you can have 5 running after you and 2 on the field with the mesmer. It’s worth noting that if you have clones running after you n that fashion a simple dodge in the direction of the clones will usually avoid all but 1.

It isn’t a bug because the clones that are shattered are no longer clones, they are suicide bombers. Additionally can you imagine how horrible it would be to play mesmer if you sent 2 clones to shatter on someone and they’re just running away with swiftness unable to be caught and only able to summon 1 clone to fight another person?

babazhook.6805:

There is a traitline called SA that enhances a Thiefs Stealth abilities.

There is a trait inside that line called Hidden Thief which stealths a thief after a steal. On steal a thief can apply poison and confusion .With hidden theif they are then stealthed for 4 seconds. This means the thief can apply his damage and then remain stealthed for those 4 seconds.

If a thief wished they could use a SR to stealth beforehand and then use that same steal with hidden thief.

This has been there since day one and people have learned to deal with it. It has nothing to do with traps. It is a defined class mechanic. One might as well complain that after being attacked by a guardian/warrior he can throw up a block and I can not touch him for several seconds or that on shooting at someone from range the damage just reflected back. Those too are class mechanics.

A DH can stack traps outside a portal and then leave the area. A person stepping on them can take thousands in damage and never see the DH.

Hahaha wat?!

Have you ever actually fought ghost thief?

The steal stealth and what little condi it does is the least of your concerns. By them dumping all the traps in a well timed strike you will have ~6-8 conditions and a hefty amount of immobilize. Fail to cleanse that immobilize or have kittenty passives that doesnt cleanse/reduce condi effects and you will die where you stand without ever seeing the thief, end of story.

Dawdler.8521:

babazhook.6805:

There is a traitline called SA that enhances a Thiefs Stealth abilities.

There is a trait inside that line called Hidden Thief which stealths a thief after a steal. On steal a thief can apply poison and confusion .With hidden theif they are then stealthed for 4 seconds. This means the thief can apply his damage and then remain stealthed for those 4 seconds.

If a thief wished they could use a SR to stealth beforehand and then use that same steal with hidden thief.

This has been there since day one and people have learned to deal with it. It has nothing to do with traps. It is a defined class mechanic. One might as well complain that after being attacked by a guardian/warrior he can throw up a block and I can not touch him for several seconds or that on shooting at someone from range the damage just reflected back. Those too are class mechanics.

A DH can stack traps outside a portal and then leave the area. A person stepping on them can take thousands in damage and never see the DH.

Hahaha wat?!

Have you ever actually fought ghost thief?

The steal stealth and what little condi it does is the least of your concerns. By them dumping all the traps in a well timed strike you will have ~6-8 conditions and a hefty amount of immobilize. Fail to cleanse that immobilize or have kittenty passives that doesnt cleanse/reduce condi effects and you will die where you stand without ever seeing the thief, end of story.

The OP complained about not seeing h thief for several seconds AFTER he was attacked. This can happen without a Ghost thief build.

I have fought Ghost Thieves and they rather easy to deal with. They can not even touch my warrior. they can not do anything to my own power thief. (vault /bound aoe does not need a visible target and those little dodge cicles that go up and fields of smoke seen when stealth stacked make the ghost thiefs location visible)

These types of thieves are all over the place in WvW. I do not recall ever dying to one.

As I have stated many times before that build has little to do with traps or trapper runes. It premised on stealth stacking via D/p .

“All the traps” is one trap. That is needle trap. None of the other traps do much good for a ghost thief. This trap applies three bleeds and one poison along with the immob. That is less damage then the 2 poison and 5 confusion off steal will do.

A Ghost thief can apply up to 11 confusion on a steal /heal combo if they wished, again more damage then the needle trap gives. The bulk of the damage off the needle comes if one can immob in a caltrops fields. Those fields are visible. You do not have to see the thief to get out of them. If you can not break an immob than that a problem with how you are traited, In a 24 second period said thief has access to two immobs. If you can not deal with that look at your build.

If you are unaware you are in a caltrops circle when that circle of red goes up then you have other problems.

eye floater.7140:

When did mesmers acquire the ability to produce more than 3 clones at a time?

First Chronomancer sets up an attack: Illusionary Leap, Echo of memory, Deja Vu. Now there are 3 illusions up. Mind Wrack shatter will send the illusions walking towards you and they no longer count towards the 3 illusion limit. The illusions will not explode instantly but only after they reach their target. The traits Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma re-create one clone and one phantasm and you will briefly see 5 illusions in total.

The shatters have always worked that way. Only the F4 shatter makes the illusions explode instantly.

The Chronomancer trait Time Catches Up helps illusions reach their target in a timely fashion by giving them superspeed. The shattered illusions seem to explode in thin air after a second or two if their target runs away from them.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

OriOri.8724:

Gwaihir has a good solution though. Thief traps get away with not revealing them because they don’t cause direct damage. A good solution to this is to make applying damaging conditions reveal the thieves. This would make Needle trap and caltrops (even though its not stricly a trap) reveal the thief.

As for the mesmers, they can’t have more than 3 illusions at a time, no single mesmer is hitting you with 5 illusion shatters. Its not possible.

Mesmer can have more than three up it’s a weird timing issue due to the Chronophanta and illusory reversion when they pop shatters after each other is the only explanation I can think of, I didn’t think it was possible but I see it every once in a while

Yes, but it will never be more than 3 illusions for a single shatter, which is what I thought OP was talking about.

First, stealth stacking needs a massive nerf.

Second, yeah the clone wars are annoying particularly from chronomasters.

Gwaihir.1745:

Make applying damage conditions reveal and problem solved.

This would break many things for thieves. Starting from stealth on steal trait becoming useless. And traps revealing thief would be even worse, since thief traps are already terrible and only used in ghost thief gimmick build.
Caltrops on the other hand could be given initial damage when dropping and it would kill off the perma stealth thiefs. But then again, ghost thiefs aren’t really meta so I don’t see why it needs to be gutted anyway. Isn’t enough people already playing d/p because of lack of viability of other builds? Just because ghost thief is annoying and hard to kill doesn’t mean it’s very effective. If it was so op then everyone would be playing it. Until then I don’t think ghost thiefs are problem.
One could also argue that one-shot thief builds also need nerf (well, every class can pull off one-shots if you make such build) because technically you don’t see it coming and you’re downed instantly (ghost thief needs time to kill and you really need to be unaware of what’s happening to die). But these are mostly gimmick builds and aren’t meta for reason.

martin.1653:

This would break many things for thieves.

That’s how you fix things.

You break what’s broken.

martin.1653:

Gwaihir.1745:

Make applying damage conditions reveal and problem solved.

This would break many things for thieves. Starting from stealth on steal trait becoming useless. And traps revealing thief would be even worse, since thief traps are already terrible and only used in ghost thief gimmick build.
Caltrops on the other hand could be given initial damage when dropping and it would kill off the perma stealth thiefs. But then again, ghost thiefs aren’t really meta so I don’t see why it needs to be gutted anyway. Isn’t enough people already playing d/p because of lack of viability of other builds? Just because ghost thief is annoying and hard to kill doesn’t mean it’s very effective. If it was so op then everyone would be playing it. Until then I don’t think ghost thiefs are problem.
One could also argue that one-shot thief builds also need nerf (well, every class can pull off one-shots if you make such build) because technically you don’t see it coming and you’re downed instantly (ghost thief needs time to kill and you really need to be unaware of what’s happening to die). But these are mostly gimmick builds and aren’t meta for reason.

So if these traps are already terrible and only used in ghost gimmicky teef builds, why are you against to add some damage to it so it reveals, and completely destroys the ghost build?

Or just delete thiefs from game. Best fix. Just to be sure they don’t sneak into competitive gameplay any time soon.

In my opinion teef is hands down the worst implemented class i ever seen in an MMO. And please don’t take this too personally teef players.

martin.1653:

And traps revealing thief would be even worse, since thief traps are already terrible and only used in ghost thief gimmick build.

You’ve never tried using needle trap on a condi evade spam build. You can pre-cast it with steal to load them up with immob, confusion, poison and bleeds. It’s also unblockable so you can bypass things like aegis. Once they blow their clears you hit them with basi venom and load them up again.

Needle trap is highly underrated. It’s also the only thing that makes ghost thief in any way effective and it should absolutely have some direct damage added to it. The other traps/caltrops are fine as is.

eye floater.7140:

Aside from the rant, my questions are:
How come the thief was cloaked after he hit me? I couldn’t even see their name.
When did mesmers acquire the ability to produce more than 3 clones at a time?

The Thief can ‘cloak’ again 3 seconds after inflicting damage on you. However, the ghost Thief build can apply condition bursts without becoming visible, so maybe it was that you came up against. The ghost Thief is rather abusive but you can ignore it for the most part.

As for Mesmer illusions, it’s the same now as it’s always been. What you’re seeing is just active illusions Vs shattered illusions. If a target is far enough away but still in range, you can get >6 illusions up by using subsequent shatters.

martin.1653:

Gwaihir.1745:

Make applying damage conditions reveal and problem solved.

This would break many things for thieves. Starting from stealth on steal trait becoming useless. And traps revealing thief would be even worse, since thief traps are already terrible and only used in ghost thief gimmick build.
Caltrops on the other hand could be given initial damage when dropping and it would kill off the perma stealth thiefs. But then again, ghost thiefs aren’t really meta so I don’t see why it needs to be gutted anyway. Isn’t enough people already playing d/p because of lack of viability of other builds? Just because ghost thief is annoying and hard to kill doesn’t mean it’s very effective. If it was so op then everyone would be playing it. Until then I don’t think ghost thiefs are problem.
One could also argue that one-shot thief builds also need nerf (well, every class can pull off one-shots if you make such build) because technically you don’t see it coming and you’re downed instantly (ghost thief needs time to kill and you really need to be unaware of what’s happening to die). But these are mostly gimmick builds and aren’t meta for reason.

No, it wouldn’t. Stop being melodramatic. Change the stealth on steal trait to apply conditions before stealthing the thief. Instantly not a problem. Its almost like magic somehow.

The roaming seen is littered with thieves. Occasionally you’ll find another class, but my observation has been 4/5 thief to everything else. Half the thieves run that ‘ghost’ gimmick. Its not that they don’t die like the squishy bugs they are, but it points out what a terrible balance the classes are in.

Offair.2563:

In my opinion teef is hands down the worst implemented class i ever seen in an MMO. And please don’t take this too personally teef players.

It’s a worst-best and a best-worst. Take out the cheese and stealth-stacking, and mechanically/balance-wise the profession is probably the best-designed in the game. Aside from the bogus stuff, every thief build out there (and even including some bogus stuff) makes pretty major tradeoffs for damage/defense and so on. There’s no build that “has it all” – and that’s why it’s not seen as particularly OP as a profession in general.

The problem is that none of the other professions are that well-implemented and as such the cheese is required to keep the profession even halfway viable.

So unless ANet plans to

- Nerf/remove the rest of the dumb mechanics on all professions in the game

and

- Nerf/remove the thief’s cheese and poorly (and I mean very poorly-designed elements) as well

and

- Buff the thief in areas it needs it which to not stem from abusive chains/spam

and

- Do all of this perfectly without balance disparities and be willing to take the flak from PvE players.

Nothing will ever change.

The same is said for mesmers, too, though it’s not as significant.

OriOri.8724:

martin.1653:

Gwaihir.1745:

Make applying damage conditions reveal and problem solved.

This would break many things for thieves. Starting from stealth on steal trait becoming useless. And traps revealing thief would be even worse, since thief traps are already terrible and only used in ghost thief gimmick build.
Caltrops on the other hand could be given initial damage when dropping and it would kill off the perma stealth thiefs. But then again, ghost thiefs aren’t really meta so I don’t see why it needs to be gutted anyway. Isn’t enough people already playing d/p because of lack of viability of other builds? Just because ghost thief is annoying and hard to kill doesn’t mean it’s very effective. If it was so op then everyone would be playing it. Until then I don’t think ghost thiefs are problem.
One could also argue that one-shot thief builds also need nerf (well, every class can pull off one-shots if you make such build) because technically you don’t see it coming and you’re downed instantly (ghost thief needs time to kill and you really need to be unaware of what’s happening to die). But these are mostly gimmick builds and aren’t meta for reason.

No, it wouldn’t. Stop being melodramatic. Change the stealth on steal trait to apply conditions before stealthing the thief. Instantly not a problem. Its almost like magic somehow.

Read again what you wrote and tell me again how that would work.

Stealth on steal already works in a way that it applies damage (if you have it traited) before stealthing. That’s why you can do that 2k damage and stay in stealth when stealing. That’s why you can heartseaker from smoke field, do damage and stealth.
It works because it’s a single hit. Condi hits every second.
If condi would break on damage then second tick would reveal thief because it’s still ticking damage. And every single tick of condi on target would reveal which would kill the stealth as mechanic in general.

Ghost thief is problem only because people usually encounter it for the first time (because it is rare) and by the time they realise what hit them it is too late to recover. People who already encountered such build usually don’t have problem with it.

martin.1653:

OriOri.8724:

martin.1653:

Gwaihir.1745:

Make applying damage conditions reveal and problem solved.

This would break many things for thieves. Starting from stealth on steal trait becoming useless. And traps revealing thief would be even worse, since thief traps are already terrible and only used in ghost thief gimmick build.
Caltrops on the other hand could be given initial damage when dropping and it would kill off the perma stealth thiefs. But then again, ghost thiefs aren’t really meta so I don’t see why it needs to be gutted anyway. Isn’t enough people already playing d/p because of lack of viability of other builds? Just because ghost thief is annoying and hard to kill doesn’t mean it’s very effective. If it was so op then everyone would be playing it. Until then I don’t think ghost thiefs are problem.
One could also argue that one-shot thief builds also need nerf (well, every class can pull off one-shots if you make such build) because technically you don’t see it coming and you’re downed instantly (ghost thief needs time to kill and you really need to be unaware of what’s happening to die). But these are mostly gimmick builds and aren’t meta for reason.

No, it wouldn’t. Stop being melodramatic. Change the stealth on steal trait to apply conditions before stealthing the thief. Instantly not a problem. Its almost like magic somehow.

Read again what you wrote and tell me again how that would work.

Stealth on steal already works in a way that it applies damage (if you have it traited) before stealthing. That’s why you can do that 2k damage and stay in stealth when stealing. That’s why you can heartseaker from smoke field, do damage and stealth.
It works because it’s a single hit. Condi hits every second.
If condi would break on damage then second tick would reveal thief because it’s still ticking damage. And every single tick of condi on target would reveal which would kill the stealth as mechanic in general.

Ghost thief is problem only because people usually encounter it for the first time (because it is rare) and by the time they realise what hit them it is too late to recover. People who already encountered such build usually don’t have problem with it.

I know exactly what you wrote, you need to go back and read the rest of this thread.

@Gwaihir specifically said that applying damaging conditions should break stealth. No one in this thread said anything about condition ticks breaking stealth.

So I guess this is the same situation like that thread where people complain about trailblazer gear: 2-3 specs overperforming in that gear so it’s logical to nerf all condis rendering average performing specs in gutter, right? Same thing here, you call for general nerf on stealth which would kill the thief, when it’s much easier to tune few skills.
But hey, go ahead, nerf everything without much thinking about consequences on other stuff that will be needlessly gutted in the process. I bet that solved many problems before!

Ghost reefs, bunker druids,Condi warriors, burn guards and Condi mesmers are just not fun to fight period that’s my issue with the meta. They all have way too much quality of life and all end up you looseing to cool downs.

Ghost teef not a problem in a 1v1 however there’s alot of em and they’re quite annoying when your fighting someone else or there’s 2 of them and you just like we’ll their goes all my cleanses. (In a 1vx the people you don’t want to set off your reveals and for ranger you have to target the teef first)

Bunker druids and eles if your not Condi your not killing them, they will out sustain you until help comes or you run out of skills.
mainly the stupid kitten stats in wvw at work, I really enjoy PvP right now more since there’s actually downsides to taking certain stats

Condi war and burn guard you get punished for cc ing or hitting them (warrior heals guard burns) and both will end you quickly before you can end them and it’s always about not having enough cleanses

Condi mesmer – all of these problems in 1

Most groups today super support and Condi bombs

The biggest problems with these classes are you aren’t looking to player skill rather just losing to numbers. In PvP it’s one thing but wvw man you can build into your stats so much it creates some broke kitten kitten.

The reason condis are constantly berated by the older players is because fighting against numbers not other players is not fun. When I’m forced to look at my Condi bar which is also weak and poorly done (I can’t cleanse the important stuff)
Than other player that’s not fun at all.

Think about it power you have to weave in and out and make your bursts count. (Now there’s too much aoe) that made it fun made guild wars feel closer to a fighting game then an mmo