Guild Wars 2

babazhook.6805:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Jana.6831:

jdallen.5179:

With respect, jana, you answered a different question; we were doing what you were suggesting.

The question I actually asked was, how does a trapper thief kill 4 or 5 PC’s, given parity in player skill and equipment? What do they equip? What skills do they use? How do they sequence them?

That should highlight either what’s broken, or how to counter it.

AoE skills, every class has them, use them. Dodge, also every class is able to do that, cleanse condis, yet again every class can do that.
In short: Think (not everybody can do that)

That is one of the most blatant example of someone not discussing in good faith. It is FAR from that simple. I play all professions but main an ele and I can tell you right of the bat that my staff ele has tons of AOE and condi cleanse, as you well know, but that it is not making up for the stupidly unfair advantage of perma stealth. Not by a long shot. You are still relatively powerless in front of that kind of build since you cant expect thieves to stay inside your pretty red circles. You are pretty much stuff in a reactive position or at best flailing blindly around crossing our fingers big time.

I’d be curious to see you on other build and professions to see how you deal with that without having to bail or resort to stealth traps.

Not every build is intended to have a counter to every build. Again I have an elementalist whom Thief condition builds have no way of harming. My elementalist does not have stealth.

Now tell me. What harm can that thief do to your ele if the thief perma stealthed?

That all depend on context. I’m not immune to condi and if he strikes me at the right moment it can go down really fast since I have 13kish life. That thief might also not be alone and still able to cap an objective if I decide to bail because I’m powerless. He can do a lot. The point is, he control a situation I can merely react to it and hope or concede.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Ripkord.8567:

… iam realising that you guys who are complaining about stealth thiefs are just to lazy to use anti stealth traps and skills…

If your class has not any chance to reveal a perma stealth thief, go get some anti stealth traps. Or joint with a class that can reveal stealth ( more Classes are able to do that in HoT)…

Now stop ranting about permastealth thief, go and build a build that has CONDITION removal in it. Use it and stop beeing a crybaby.

Anet has already done something against it long ago and even added with HoT more options exactly for this situation.

What kind of non-sense is that? Not all professions have access to so called ‘anti-stealth’ skills/traits and you can’t reasonably expect ppl to always carry supply and traps at all time. Oh, wait mister invisi trapper thief, I have to go to speldan get myself supplies for my stealth trap because I just dropped mine into a ram… brb…

No, seriously ppl drop it with the stealth trap BS. It’s just insulting to ppl intelligence to try that argument.

Perma stealth is kitten period. It provides extremely poor fights on top of being utterly unfair. It’s only fun for trolls and I’m sad ANET feed them so well.

And this is why I call thief the troll’s class of GW2.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

That all depend on context. I’m not immune to condi and if he strikes me at the right moment it can go down really fast since I have 13kish life.

thats what ppl keep sayin: use a condi remove n heal up. its not like he spamms the traps.

vs ppl that do have condi cleanse a ghost thief will use all the condi preassure he can at once or at a short time to hope that the opponent wont cleanse all. after theat he will reach a point where he has like 15-20s everything on cd apart from dogge caltrops. that should be enough time for u to heal up / get ur condi cleanse skill rdy again.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

That thief might also not be alone and still able to cap an objective if I decide to bail because I’m powerless.

if the thief is not alone.. why the hell should u have the given right to win outnumbered? and yes if u retreat he could cap something. but for capping and killing the guards he has to be VISIBLE. if u cant kill the visible ghost thief then u have alot more problems with other condition builds.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

He can do a lot. The point is, he control a situation I can merely react to it and hope or concede.

see that is ur major problem with the build u dont control the fight. thats why i said the only thing about this build that might be ‘OP’ is its annoyance level, but i doubt annoyance is a nerf reason.

Thanks baba and MUD, you said it better than I could.

In general: The current brainless meta has been up for too long – 4 months, and people really think that dishing out 17k with one regular skill while being invulnerable is the norm.

ETA: And that means that people won’t accept that they have to use their brains to fight someone (a ghost thief f.e.) anymore.

MUDse.7623:

see that is ur major problem with the build u dont control the fight. thats why i said the only thing about this build that might be ‘OP’ is its annoyance level, but i doubt annoyance is a nerf reason.

Well, I do think perma stealth should be impossible alone no matter what, and that damage, no matter the source, should reveal your presence.

I’m not for blindly nerfing thieves or whoever. I say give them something of equivalent significance else than stealth to compensate for anything we remove from them. Stealth is too prevalent in fights in this game. It should be a tactical advantage but not a constant combat one. Beside, a skill should be counterable by a skill not only by resources.

Being annoying does lessen gaming experience, and anything that does that should be addressed, IMO.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

and that damage, no matter the source, should reveal your presence.

problem here is unreliable dmg. if i set a trap i can not control when u step into it but would still get reveald if u do, now then its the thief who has not enough control in the fight. also for mesmers they allways need to shatter to stealth then and the trait for clone on dogge is kind of stupid then.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

I’m not for blindly nerfing thieves or whoever. I say give them something of equivalent significance else than stealth to compensate for anything we remove from them.

thieves had something else then stealth with old s/d builds. they got nerfed so that they r not that competitive anymore. now they will get daredevil wich will give them some sort of defense out of stealth back. but the 3rd dogge cant compete with old feline grace, so thief still wont be that good on the defensive side.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Stealth is too prevalent in fights in this game. It should be a tactical advantage but not a constant combat one. Beside, a skill should be counterable by a skill not only by resources.

stealth is not a ‘skill’ its generated multiple skills/traits. and in order to keep up perma stealth u also have to use skills or combos that can fail like smokefiled+leap ..as there is no leap with 0 dmg or CnD which can be dogged/blocked/missed and needs to be timed perfectly. if a warrior is just ignoring the ccs i put on him coz i dont have a boon strip and is also ‘invuln’ to soft cc and just runs away ..i also cant counter that on many chars. u cant counter every skill / trait /whatever with every class. but u can fight any class/build if u build accordingly. maybe u can just build to make it an endless fight situation where no one wins but u dont have to die to any build.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Being annoying does lessen gaming experience, and anything that does that should be addressed, IMO.

see i prefer a ghost thief fighting me 1 vs 1 then these 4-5 ppl groups that keep ganking n chasing single targets. so whats ur suggestion to nerf ppl outnumbering me all the time ? and no ‘run in a group urself’ is not a correct answer..coz that would also fix ur ghost thief problem and still u want it changed

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

MUDse.7623:

see that is ur major problem with the build u dont control the fight. thats why i said the only thing about this build that might be ‘OP’ is its annoyance level, but i doubt annoyance is a nerf reason.

Well, I do think perma stealth should be impossible alone no matter what, and that damage, no matter the source, should reveal your presence.

I’m not for blindly nerfing thieves or whoever. I say give them something of equivalent significance else than stealth to compensate for anything we remove from them. Stealth is too prevalent in fights in this game. It should be a tactical advantage but not a constant combat one. Beside, a skill should be counterable by a skill not only by resources.

Being annoying does lessen gaming experience, and anything that does that should be addressed, IMO.

I find mesmers clones annoying. I find eles using water/diamong skin and all those cleanses annoying. I find engineers spamming grenades annoying. You can not use annoying as a reason to neutralize another classes entire traitline which is what ever more reveals do.

Again I have en ele that no p/d condition theif can harm in any meaningful way. He can come out of hiding with his sneak attacks or get a BA and poison on me but due to diamond skin and comibinations of cleanses and heals he will rarely get my health down to a level that a threat. He will run out of INI and need to stealth and heal up before I run out of those cleanses and heals.

This can be annoying to that theif so what is the difference when a person stealths so as to “not to be killed” as compared to heals and cleanses and diamond skin. ?

Much of this is to do with perceptions. The person trying to inflict damage on a stealthed character gets no feedback on what he is doing and so think he accomplishes nothing. I have been downed onmy thief after stealthing by AOES and random swings and still been able to healup because the person thinks I am gone and heads off.

I liken it to this. You are in three lanes of traffic barely moving. One guy is frustrated as he sits in his lane advancing bit by bit. Another is swapping lanes every time he sees a gap in another lanes traffic. When you get to the next light that person swapping lanes is no further ahead than is the person who stayed in his lane. He just felt that because he was passing cars he was making progress. He is less “annoyed”

That you can SEE a person and see damage inflicted on him even as he can heal off whatever your through at him and you are never a danger to him , does not mean you are making progress just as passing cars in stop and go traffic does not mean you are making progress. You just “feel” that you are. For the person not seeing his damage , he is annoyed.

It really up to the player to decide what annoys him. This can not be designed into a game. Perma stealthed characters can not harm me and perhaps I can not harm them. What is the issue? Just move on. If worried that he will decap as soon as you do than just stay there. It then becomes a matter of patience on each of yours parts and who wants that spot the most and who is willing to wait around twiddling thumbs the longest. If it that stealthed thief then he waited for you to go away just as long as you waitied for him to come out and and more and he should decap it.

There is no RIGHT on your part to be able to kill him. If that persons main goal and task is to decap that spot he should use the methods available and not exclude them because you find them annoying.

Invisibility is a bad mechanic. Trapper runes just exacerbate that to the extreme. Arguing about what counters are available, or how powerful builds are or aren’t is completely missing the point. Game play with a notable amount of stealth suffers for everyone, regardless of whether it’s balanced or not in terms of efficacy and power.

Stealth is poor design, lazy design really. The original designers when they unveiled stealth for the thief were met with an outcry, rightly so, that it would be bad for the game; they in turn assured that it would not be the primary mechanic for the thief (or any profession), and it would be a short, tactical, a minor part of combat at most.

That design intention was completely forgotten by time the game released, and has only gotten worse. Fighting several professions involves constant, tedious (and in a crowded fight, difficult) retargeting as they pop in and out of stealth. Win or lose, it’s not fun.

Pikka.6023:

Invisibility is a bad mechanic. Trapper runes just exacerbate that to the extreme. Arguing about what counters are available, or how powerful builds are or aren’t is completely missing the point. Game play with a notable amount of stealth suffers for everyone, regardless of whether it’s balanced or not in terms of efficacy and power.

Stealth is poor design, lazy design really. The original designers when they unveiled stealth for the thief were met with an outcry, rightly so, that it would be bad for the game; they in turn assured that it would not be the primary mechanic for the thief (or any profession), and it would be a short, tactical, a minor part of combat at most.

That design intention was completely forgotten by time the game released, and has only gotten worse. Fighting several professions involves constant, tedious (and in a crowded fight, difficult) retargeting as they pop in and out of stealth. Win or lose, it’s not fun.

yes ppl demanding rework of stealth for like 3 years now. Anet should be aware that many ppl dislike their stealth system. but as it is going on for 3 years and would require a lot of work to be done and redesign most of the classes u cant expect that to happen soon.

so yes it has to be discussed if this build is balanced and just annoying or OP as some ppl claim. coz we can rather expect minor changes to some skills/traits/runes or what ever then a complete rework of the stealth mechanic.

at the end ur statement contains only that u dont have fun playing or playing against stealth builds ..so they r annoying to u or what ever – babazhook.6805’s last post explains pretty well why this cant be a reason for a change.

P.S: ppl being able to fight me 5 vs 1 is also a bad mechanic ..pls fix it

There is nothing inherently wrong with stealth – any mechanic in excess is bad. Lots of long invulnerabilities are equally bad and lazy design. Easy, spammable boon access is bad. Large spammable AOEs, bad design.

Issues with stealth only arise when there is too much easy access to it. Look at the pre nerf prismatic understanding trait on mesmer. Trapper runes are the only issue here, it is breaking thief balance because it was never factored into the class design. It is laughable to even suggest that a class be balanced around a rune set.

No one on a decent build should be losing a fair 1v1 to a thief at the moment outside this cheesy trapper build. The class as a whole is not in a good spot, you only have to look at the pvp forum to realize that.

I would also question why rangers / dragonhunters should get such easy access to so much stealth considering the utility slots and traits mesmers and theives have to sacrifice for comparable up time.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

And if he was that bad as to die in dire gear, he would have died even with the stealth while playing squishier.

Unless of course, you don’t personally know how to play against stealth. And based on the fact you can easily kill a war and not a thief who is healing for pretty much the same amount while stealthed, it doesn’t sound like you know how to.

Stealth itself is only problematic on trapper thief. Otherwise it’s usually the effects associated with it like PU and SRejuv that make it over the top. Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

I would also question why rangers / dragonhunters should get such easy access to so much stealth considering the utility slots and traits mesmers and theives have to sacrifice for comparable up time.

The stealth from trapper rune is very unreliable for ranger/DH, because unlike thieves they are revealed, when somebody steps into those traps.

DeceiverX.8361:

Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

Stealth skills (at least some, not even all) can be countered, but not the invisibility itself (with the exception of engi with lock on, and stealthtrap – the latter is not very practical during fights though). And no, guessing/randomly spamming skills is not a reliable counter.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

I would also question why rangers / dragonhunters should get such easy access to so much stealth considering the utility slots and traits mesmers and theives have to sacrifice for comparable up time.

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth. And trapper runes are not the same problem on this professoins like on thieves, because the dragonhunter and ranger traps do physical damage. So very trap that hits reveals, you cant deal damage and stay stealthed.

And thats the biggest problem with the trapper condi thief imo. Giving thief-traps a small amount of physical damage would solve the problem, i think.

Umbra was faster! My bad!^^

JimmydT.7281:

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth.

I nearly cried when reading this – so sad – you guys have to do so much to either get or destroy stealth – no thief has to give up anything to benefit from other skills- it’s so unfair!

Btw: LB 3

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Stealth skills (at least some, not even all) can be countered, but not the invisibility itself (with the exception of engi with lock on, and stealthtrap – the latter is not very practical during fights though). And no, guessing/randomly spamming skills is not a reliable counter.

in order to keep up invisibility u need to use stealth skill which u agree can be countered.
invisibility itsself.. well i also cant counter invuln or immunities not even with a special trait like lock on for stealth.

Jana.6831:

JimmydT.7281:

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth.

I nearly cried when reading this – so sad – you guys have to do so much to either get or destroy stealth – no thief has to give up anything to benefit from other skills- it’s so unfair!

Btw: LB 3

Never said something like that its unfair or something else. I responded to someone else, who mentioned that “dh and rangers have so easy access to stealth, considering the utiliy slot and traits thieves and mesmers have to sacrifice for it”.
What i said is true, because traps are utlities.

So if u want to insult me, learn to read properly first. If u only had a bad a day, nevermind. There will come brighter days, even for ur stealthy class. ^^

JimmydT.7281:

Jana.6831:

JimmydT.7281:

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth.

I nearly cried when reading this – so sad – you guys have to do so much to either get or destroy stealth – no thief has to give up anything to benefit from other skills- it’s so unfair!

Btw: LB 3

Never said something like that its unfair or something else. I responded to someone else, who mentioned that “dh and rangers have so easy access to stealth, considering the utiliy slot and traits thieves and mesmers have to sacrifice for it”.
What i said is true, because traps are utlities.

So if u want to insult me, learn to read properly at first. If u only had a bad a day, nevermind. There will come brighter days, even for ur stealthy class. ^^

LB3 is pretty easy access, so.. I don’t really see your point =)

Edit: Before you claim that “thief have got easy access to stealth”, roll one and see for yourself how easy it is.

But you’re right; I should’ve ignored your post.

Jana.6831:

JimmydT.7281:

Jana.6831:

JimmydT.7281:

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth.

I nearly cried when reading this – so sad – you guys have to do so much to either get or destroy stealth – no thief has to give up anything to benefit from other skills- it’s so unfair!

Btw: LB 3

Never said something like that its unfair or something else. I responded to someone else, who mentioned that “dh and rangers have so easy access to stealth, considering the utiliy slot and traits thieves and mesmers have to sacrifice for it”.
What i said is true, because traps are utlities.

So if u want to insult me, learn to read properly at first. If u only had a bad a day, nevermind. There will come brighter days, even for ur stealthy class. ^^

LB3 is pretty easy access, so.. I don’t really see your point =)

I recognize, u really cant see it. Thieves and mesmers have also weapon skills, that give access to stealth, the same easy way as the ranger LB 3. Dragonhunters have not. And the guy i responded to was talking about traps, as i mentioned before.

So, tell me whats ur point!

Dragonhunters and rangers should not have any access to stealth? Or not so easy? Or thieves should have more?

If u only want to give some salty responses, its up to u. I will not answer any more. If u cant see my point, its propably your problem. I pointed it out very clearly. If u want to discuss in a polite and serious way, you are welcome.

Greets

Jimmy

Edit:

Edit: Before you claim that “thief have got easy access to stealth”, roll one and see for yourself how easy it is.

But you’re right; I should’ve ignored your post.

Never claimed this! Only in this post is paraphrase about that in comparison to your “easy-access-stealth-ranger-LB 3”. What u claimed btw. If u cant read, its not my fault.

But in one point we totaly agree: U should have ignored my post. Like every other post which is beyond your reading ability.

Good night!

MUDse.7623:

in order to keep up invisibility u need to use stealth skill which u agree can be countered.
invisibility itsself.. well i also cant counter invuln or immunities not even with a special trait like lock on for stealth.

As i wrote, not all stealth skills are counterable. Steal, HiS and stealth from traps are not counterable (yes i know, theoretically you can avoid steal and interrupt HiS and the traps, but good luck avoiding an instant skill and interrupting an invisible target). So how much stealth can a thief get from those skills? I don’t know, if SA trait affects the stealth duration from the rune, so i assume 3 sec per trap. So 9 seconds from traps (2x needle + 1 other, usually shadowtrap – potentially more from improv, but lets ignore this, because it is too random), 3 from steal, 4 from HiS, total of 16 sec stealth. 4x HS into smokefield adds 12 sec. During this combo the thief is “vulnerable” for about 4 seconds. As long you are near enough and/or have access to aoe cc, and the thief still has to make mistakes (hitting you with HS/getting hit by cc).

So for 4 seconds every ~ 28 seconds the thief has to be careful. If he gets revealed somehow, you have to lock him down with cc/immob and burst immediately. Otherwise he can SB5 away, and/or stealth again after 3 seconds. And if he uses shadowtrap to port away, you can do absolutely nothing.

Now, i don’t think ghost thief is really op, because it is possible to stay alive/run away with enough condi remove (+ reliable immob remove) and careful playstyle. I just think, being able to attack and kill while being permanently stealthed is terrible game design. Creating a class/build, which can’t work otherwise, is terrible too …

Edit: Invulns/immunities are (mostly) balanced because of low duration/long cd – some doesn’t even allow to attack (f.e: elixir s, mist form). I’m not a fan of the passive ones, but that’s an other issue. The only exception is diamond skin – which i don’t like, because again – perma anything (powerful) is not good.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

The stealth from trapper rune is very unreliable for ranger/DH, because unlike thieves they are revealed, when somebody steps into those traps.

Yes, but stealth was never really a “profession mechanic” of rangers / guards. By profession mechanic I refer to thieves stealth attacks and the entire shadow arts trait line. How would guards / rangers feel if the random reveals from trap damage disabled one of their weapon skills and a handful of their traits?

JimmydT.7281:

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth.

Yes, but they don’t sacrifice as much. Rangers still have their pet skills, and guardians their virtues. Both are far better than steal.

Comparing a full trapper ranger build, with the 20% reduction trait I work out up to 35 seconds of stealth every minute. A thief cannot access 35 seconds of stealth using their non trap utility skills; even fully traited a thief can only reach up to 28 seconds or so without traps. Traited thief traps work out at about 32 seconds stealth / min. Most importantly, why are utilities designed solely to stealth a thief inferior to a single rune bonus? The answer is simple, trapper runes OP.

Profession level mechanics like stealth, invulnerability etc should not be easily accessed via runes. Look at the mess vampire runes have made in PvP. I am not saying that ranger nor dragonhunter should not get stealth access. The issue is a rune set giving very easy access to thief tier stealth. Of course the issue is exacerbated on thief, mostly due to d/p in addition to the trap utilities.

By all means, add damage back to thief traps. But they would need a huge defensive buff to make them viable again. Currently you will never see non trapper trap thieves. There is a reason that thief trap damage was originally removed: thieves simply cannot survive without either reliable stealth or evades.

Nonetheless, I still think complete removal of the stealth component from the runes would be warranted. If stealth + traps is a thing Anet wants to see, they should be added to the respective classes trap traits. This way balance issues can be resolved on a class by class basis. Thief simply does not need any more nerfs.

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

I have no problems killing people in stealth. You should learn to read a post. I stated that the elementalist I was using was setup for zerg fights so as to offer healing support rather than for damage. Even at that when the thief in question came out of hiding wearing his Dire armor I outdamaged him significantly with just attacks that need a target to be used.

In order to defeat him in stealth I would need to get more damage into the build.

The stealth offers more protection because many eke attacks need a target and those that can be used AOE fashion have to hit harder because they easier to dodge and when you do it you have to make it count.

And if he was that bad as to die in dire gear, he would have died even with the stealth while playing squishier.

Unless of course, you don’t personally know how to play against stealth. And based on the fact you can easily kill a war and not a thief who is healing for pretty much the same amount while stealthed, it doesn’t sound like you know how to.

Stealth itself is only problematic on trapper thief. Otherwise it’s usually the effects associated with it like PU and SRejuv that make it over the top. Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

I have no problems killing people in stealth. You should learn to read a post. I stated that the elementalist I was using was setup for zerg fights so as to offer healing support rather than for damage. Even at that when the thief in question came out of hiding wearing his Dire armor I outdamaged him significantly with just attacks that need a target to be used.

In order to defeat him in stealth I would need to get more damage into the build.

The stealth offers more protection because many ele
attacks need a target and those that can be used AOE fashion have to hit harder because they easier to dodge and when you do it you have to make it count.

And if he was that bad as to die in dire gear, he would have died even with the stealth while playing squishier.

Unless of course, you don’t personally know how to play against stealth. And based on the fact you can easily kill a war and not a thief who is healing for pretty much the same amount while stealthed, it doesn’t sound like you know how to.

Stealth itself is only problematic on trapper thief. Otherwise it’s usually the effects associated with it like PU and SRejuv that make it over the top. Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

You obviously did not read my post. I have no issues fighting a person in stealth. I stated that I was using a build that was based around zerg support and healing rather then damage.

I pointed out that even with this low damage build compared to a thief wearing sure to maximize his conditions, when he did come out of hiding I damaged him far faster than he could me.

In order to be effective against a thief that uses stealth I would have to rely on AOE attacks coupled with stuns and the like to ensure he remained locked in that area. Since I was low damage the build in question was ineffective against a stealthed opponent as you have to make those attacks count.

I used this as example to show that other classes can make builds that are hard to kill just as a thief can.

One more time my low damage built to heal build would defeat said thief if that thief did not have stealth in spite of his Dire armor. Stealth saved him.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

I have no problems killing people in stealth. You should learn to read a post. I stated that the elementalist I was using was setup for zerg fights so as to offer healing support rather than for damage. Even at that when the thief in question came out of hiding wearing his Dire armor I outdamaged him significantly with just attacks that need a target to be used.

In order to defeat him in stealth I would need to get more damage into the build.

The stealth offers more protection because many ele attacks need a target and those that can be used AOE fashion have to hit harder because they easier to dodge and when you do it you have to make it count.

And if he was that bad as to die in dire gear, he would have died even with the stealth while playing squishier.

Unless of course, you don’t personally know how to play against stealth. And based on the fact you can easily kill a war and not a thief who is healing for pretty much the same amount while stealthed, it doesn’t sound like you know how to.

Stealth itself is only problematic on trapper thief. Otherwise it’s usually the effects associated with it like PU and SRejuv that make it over the top. Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

You obviously did not read my post. I have no issues fighting a person in stealth. I stated that I was using a build that was based around zerg support and healing rather then damage.

I pointed out that even with this low damage build compared to a thief wearing sure to maximize his conditions, when he did come out of hiding I damaged him far faster than he could me.

In order to be effective against a thief that uses stealth I would have to rely on AOE attacks coupled with stuns and the like to ensure he remained locked in that area. Since I was low damage the build in question was ineffective against a stealthed opponent as you have to make those attacks count.

I used this as example to show that other classes can make builds that are hard to kill just as a thief can.

One more time my low damage built to heal build would defeat said thief if that thief did not have stealth in spite of his Dire armor. Stealth saved him.

My ele was not in dire and could not be killed by said thief. My ele does not have stealth. Ample heals , diamond skin and oodles of condition cleanses played the major role.

Now if a mob of people showed up from the other side a thief would be able to escape such a situation better then an ele but there nothing wrong with that. There has to be advantages to picking a specific profession. For a thief one of those is stealth access.

The problem of stealth is being overstated,

This is only a problem with Thief traps as Ranger traps apply a small damage tick when triggered.

babazhook.6805:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Going to have to agree somewhat. Even if you know his location if he himself isn’t braindead he should be able to survive almost anything.

I frontline glass cannon thief without any defensive traits or abilities in 40v40 and usually come out alive. I have been asked by commanders in server chat/TS how I stay alive and have been frequently used as an engage signal for the rest of the blob to follow after I am first to dive in. I quit solo roaming recently because it become a matter of extremely cheesy and unfun build decisions and frankly, I think D/P and SA are extremely boring, passive, and easy ways to play the thief and the game itself.

If people die playing dire thief to any extent in anything less than 25 people, or mesmer, they are straight bad.

I still kill dire thieves, although it’s easier to do it with a stealth trap, yes, but 4 experienced people should be able to kill them.

Not sure what your zerg experience has to do with it, but I’m doing the same actually – you have to know how the zergs will move and I don’t know how I can tell, experience or instinct, no idea. Guess it’s the same with D/D as well, there’s not much time to think.

You’re fighting really bad dire condi players then tbh, granted most of them are because of the fact they typically use it as a crutch to get free kills. A friend of mine used to run it before I taught him D/D signets. He went from being able to solo pretty much anything under a 7v1 to dying to almost anything. He’s since become quite distinguished in my book and plays a more generic D/D and D/P build these days, but for funsies he went back to dire conditions recently for a day. I watched him solo 15 people down and never drop below half. I tried the same for shiggles and lasted only a few seconds. We swapped, and our success flipped almost identically.

Really, anyone playing dire conditions has no excuse to die unless massively outnumbered by an army of mesmers all coordinating ranged stealth stunlocking and reveal traps.

And the other day I was on my elementalist when I ran into a dire p/d condition thief. I was not set up for damage but for healing support for zergs and was just running about resetting siege.

He had no chance whatsoever of ever defeating me. Nothing he had in his build could ever get past all the healing I had and the diamond skin.

When he did come out of stealth I could attack and wear him down (even as he wore dire) faster then he could wear me down . I was not wearing dire. His dire armor was not saving him. He would stealth and reset when he got near death and recover his health.

We could have fought forever me with no stealth and no dire and he with his stealth and with his dire and not gotten anywhere. That is the nature of builds structured around bunkering and sustain.

You can also get a whole pile of people trying to kill two eles who just team off one another switcihing to water in sequence . They do not need stealth or dire.

I’ll say it again, bad thief.

Really. Maybe he couldn’t kill you in particular being based to counter his build, but there is absolutely no way in hell I’d argue you should have rightfully been able to whittle him down if he played even remotely decently.

I don’t think people understand just how completely absurd dire gear is when played by any half-competent player, especially paired up with the unbelievable defense SA gives.

Well you would be wrong. He recovered from stealth not from his dire. If he did not have stealth he would have died in time because his heal can not keep up with the damage inflicted on him. It is as simple as that. If dire was as powerful as you claim no theif would ever need stealth. Dire does nothing against a condition build that Shamans does not do. The toughness on dire and vitality on dire does not give a thief more health or damage mitigation thhen what a warrior gets in solders. I can kill warriors that wear soldiers. The difference between a warrior and a thief is the stealth not the armor.

one of my current theif builds uses a blend of Shamans/Apothecary. Along with SA this guy every bit and more survivable then is your thief in dire.

I have no problems killing people in stealth. You should learn to read a post. I stated that the elementalist I was using was setup for zerg fights so as to offer healing support rather than for damage. Even at that when the thief in question came out of hiding wearing his Dire armor I outdamaged him significantly with just attacks that need a target to be used.

In order to defeat him in stealth I would need to get more damage into the build.

The stealth offers more protection because many ele attacks need a target and those that can be used AOE fashion have to hit harder because they easier to dodge and when you do it you have to make it count.

And if he was that bad as to die in dire gear, he would have died even with the stealth while playing squishier.

Unless of course, you don’t personally know how to play against stealth. And based on the fact you can easily kill a war and not a thief who is healing for pretty much the same amount while stealthed, it doesn’t sound like you know how to.

Stealth itself is only problematic on trapper thief. Otherwise it’s usually the effects associated with it like PU and SRejuv that make it over the top. Invisibility is really easy to counter once you learn how to play it and subsequently against it, though.

You obviously did not read my post. I have no issues fighting a person in stealth. I stated that I was using a build that was based around zerg support and healing rather then damage.

I pointed out that even with this low damage build compared to a thief wearing sure to maximize his conditions, when he did come out of hiding I damaged him far faster than he could me.

In order to be effective against a thief that uses stealth I would have to rely on AOE attacks coupled with stuns and the like to ensure he remained locked in that area. Since I was low damage the build in question was ineffective against a stealthed opponent as you have to make those attacks count.

I used this as example to show that other classes can make builds that are hard to kill just as a thief can.

One more time my low damage built to heal build would defeat said thief if that thief did not have stealth in spite of his Dire armor. Stealth saved him.

My ele was not in dire and could not be killed by said thief. My ele does not have stealth. Ample heals , diamond skin and oodles of condition cleanses played the major role.

Now if a mob of people showed up from the other side a thief would be able to escape such a situation better then an ele but there nothing wrong with that. There has to be advantages to picking a specific profession. For a thief one of those is stealth access.

The problem of stealth is being overstated,

I never said you shouldn’t have killed him or that he should have killed you. I said he never should have died to begin with. Please tell me if that same build can go toe-to-toe with a soldier’s warrior and win with relative ease. The warrior with HS is statistically tankier with better healing than the thief while stealthed.

AOE isn’t the be-all-end-all to counter stealth. Knowledge and skillful play against stealth are. I would estimate around 75% of my kills against thieves occur using single-target single-hit skills against them while they are still invisible. If they are particularly good, they will trick me. Otherwise, they almost always die unless they spam Shadow Shot’s blind as soon as I get near. Unless you were playing a scepter (which I doubt since you mentioned support), I really don’t see why you’d be unable to attack him.

I hate stealth. I really do. Frankly, I only use stealth because I have to for backstab to be usable. I’m a thief main and frequently request nerfs to the bonuses gained from being in stealth (across both the thief and mesmer classes). I can tell you now, though, that the problem with dire trapper thief isn’t the stealth/invisibility itself but the stats gained from dire gear and trapper runes offering way too much synergy. Think if the mesmer got traps in its elite spec. Would it be balanced as well? I don’t think so. Actually, it’d be mathematically better for them than thieves. The runes shouldn’t offer stealth, and dire gear is OP. End of story. Now trapper thief isn’t OP and if the trap buffs are substantial on the runes as an alternate effect, more traps become better.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Yes, but they don’t sacrifice as much. Rangers still have their pet skills, and guardians their virtues. Both are far better than steal.

Thats a different story imo. Wether or not virtues/pets are better than steal has nothing to do with stealth.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

By all means, add damage back to thief traps. But they would need a huge defensive buff to make them viable again. Currently you will never see non trapper trap thieves. There is a reason that thief trap damage was originally removed: thieves simply cannot survive without either reliable stealth or evades.

Nonetheless, I still think complete removal of the stealth component from the runes would be warranted. If stealth + traps is a thing Anet wants to see, they should be added to the respective classes trap traits. This way balance issues can be resolved on a class by class basis. Thief simply does not need any more nerfs.

I totally agree with this. Also dragonhunters and rangers wont take traps (or lets say more than one trap) in their utility bar without trapper runes. Traps are too unreliable. If noone steps in, u are simply caught with your pants down. Give traps something to rely on while setting it (boons, stealth, whatever, … something that fits to the profession) would make them viable for these classes even without trapper runes and solve the balancing problem. But until that, trapper runes are pretty much necessary for survival on a trapper build.

Thiefs dont need a nerf, thats right. But i dont think hiding in stealth all the time should be the future of thief-gameplay. Thats boring, for thieves and all other classes. Less stealth, more survivability without stealth, thats the way to go imo.

@ Gallant Pigeon
Overall i can agree with your point of view, or at least understand it.
Just a few points:

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

How would guards / rangers feel if the random reveals from trap damage disabled one of their weapon skills and a handful of their traits?

As a ranger i know very well, how it feels, if skills and traits get (more or less randomly) disabled – completely independent from traps :p

But yes, stealth is more important for thieves than for other classes.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Yes, but they don’t sacrifice as much. Rangers still have their pet skills, and guardians their virtues. Both are far better than steal.

A trap ranger has to sacrifice as much as a trap thief – utilities and rune – and gain less benefits, because their stealth is less reliable and doesn’t provide additional advantages outside of the invisibility.

And saying, pets and virtues are better than steal … well no, this is VERY situational and not true in general.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Most importantly, why are utilities designed solely to stealth a thief inferior to a single rune bonus? The answer is simple, trapper runes OP.

Which utilities are solely designed to stealth a thief? Most don’t provide stealth at all, and those which do, have additional effects.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

The issue is a rune set giving very easy access to thief tier stealth. Of course the issue is exacerbated on thief, mostly due to d/p in addition to the trap utilities.

Ranger/DH don’t gain “thief tier stealth”. They can only stack lots of stealth outside of fights – where the stealth isn’t neccessary …

UmbraNoctis.1907:

As i wrote, not all stealth skills are counterable. Steal, HiS and stealth from traps are not counterable (yes i know, theoretically you can avoid steal and interrupt HiS and the traps, but good luck avoiding an instant skill and interrupting an invisible target).

if the thief wants to hit u with those traps he will have to set em around u and as u correctly said they can be interrupted, all trapper thieves i met with my mesmer i could just interrupt their setting trap with chaos storm and they were revealed shortly afterwards.

if the thief is putting them traps down further away coz he just tries to escape ..let him escape lol ..i also cant chase a revenant if he has enough targets to port to or those usain bolt warriors.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

So how much stealth can a thief get from those skills? I don’t know, if SA trait affects the stealth duration from the rune, so i assume 3 sec per trap. So 9 seconds from traps (2x needle + 1 other, usually shadowtrap – potentially more from improv, but lets ignore this, because it is too random), 3 from steal, 4 from HiS, total of 16 sec stealth. 4x HS into smokefield adds 12 sec. During this combo the thief is “vulnerable” for about 4 seconds. As long you are near enough and/or have access to aoe cc, and the thief still has to make mistakes (hitting you with HS/getting hit by cc).

as u can only stack 5x stealth the thief wont do hs into smokefield right after the other stuff so u got time to get rid of the immob. then when he can stack stealth with the combo u can preassure the filed by going into there as he has only few seconds of stealth left at this point. so to remain in stealth will cost him alot iniative if he only manages to put 1 hs into that field and still is very risky if the oponent has higgh mobiity to get into ur field fast.

and getting hit by cc or haveing to avoid ur cc is not a mistake of the thief its a good move of the one fighting the thief.

yes u might not be able to take down such a build in 5 seconds but u can take it down or force him to retreat.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

So for 4 seconds every ~ 28 seconds the thief has to be careful. If he gets revealed somehow, you have to lock him down with cc/immob and burst immediately. Otherwise he can SB5 away, and/or stealth again after 3 seconds. And if he uses shadowtrap to port away, you can do absolutely nothing.

a thief will likely put at least 2 traps below u assuming he put shadow trap on range to escape. as each of them can be interrupted u can interrupt the thief at the 2nd trap or if he uses steal first u might interrupt him even on the 1. trap. so no he is not only vunlnerable when he is doing his somkefield + hs. and well with that lockdown and burst..every thief can just get away if u dont lock em down and they want to get away.

yes if he uses A GOOD PLACED shadow trap he will be instant out of combat. sadly u get stuck like everywhere with that trap. but if u just look into older posts of mine in this thread i already confirmed that a good shadow trap is an OP ‘oh-kitten’ button, thats why i used it in wvw in any thief build.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Now, i don’t think ghost thief is really op, because it is possible to stay alive/run away with enough condi remove (+ reliable immob remove) and careful playstyle. I just think, being able to attack and kill while being permanently stealthed is terrible game design. Creating a class/build, which can’t work otherwise, is terrible too …

thing is ppl want a nerf to ‘fix’ a bad mechanic thats prob one of the main reasons this thread is going to no where. u cant demand a nerf for something that is not OP. u can demand a change of the mechanic tho .. i think one page earlier i said the best option to ‘fix’ this is moving the condi preassure from utilities / passives to weapon skills, cause atm they dont offer enough condi preassure for the risk of getting reveald while fighting wich happens when u use ur weapon skills.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Edit: Invulns/immunities are (mostly) balanced because of low duration/long cd – some doesn’t even allow to attack (f.e: elixir s, mist form). I’m not a fan of the passive ones, but that’s an other issue. The only exception is diamond skin – which i don’t like, because again – perma anything (powerful) is not good.

stealth skills r also mostly balanced coz of their duration/cd. and even stacking multiple to get a long stealth duration is not a problem because if u do anything lethally dangerous u get reveald..as u already agreed to a ghost thief is not as op as he would kill anyone with condi removes and any other build with stealth gets reveald at some points in the fight.

and now for the ‘make thief visible when u step into a trap’ guys:

if u die to 4-6x needle trap + stealth from the condi preassure..then revealing a thief wont do anything. just place 2x needle + shadow trap on a gateway ..go faaar away and u dont even need to be stealthed where u wait (10k range – thats 2x portal range). then when someone steps into it welll u get 3s reveal if u were stealthed or not ..then use shadow persuit from shadow trap(carefull with bad computer..coz over 5k range u get a loading screen) to appear next to ur vicitm stealthed and place another 2 ..well u get revealed at that point but u should stand some seconds with dire equip. after that reveal use steal and move along / stomp ..

the only thing that changes with that is people who can already ignore u easily (coz they have tons of condi remove) can preassure u now. but people who do have a problem with those builds coz they die will still die. so its not a fix ..its more a ‘i cant kill him, he cant kill me , he is annoying, so let me kill him anet’. also it will increase the amount of insults the thief will get pmed with coz they get a chance to get his name.

so pls stop posting : ‘add direct dmg to traps and its fine’ coz if u only add a bit direct dmg to em its not a good ‘fix’

I think that something is not right with this kind of build. Several times already have I encountered perma invi trapper thieves, especially one that was acompanied by mesmer. Still most of times we were more against them, yet we spent most of time ressing each other and attacking wind. On this particular example, one could see ridiculosity of said thief build. While we managed to down and kill PU mesmer that acompanied thief several times, we killed said thief only once (he prolly got too kitteny), and bear in mind we had to fight him for, well, like 20 minutes… that’s just not right and none of those arguments supporting such builds convinced me that it somehow is.

When mesmers had their unnerfed PU’s many individuals, some of them thieves (see mesmer better thief than actual thief topics) were well, arguing over this forums that it’s unfair because mesmers would inflict condi and then vanish and you would either die or if not they would reappear and finish you (I oversimplified this of course).

One could also say that those mesmer builds, especially condi bunker ones could have been owned by right ammount of condi cleanse and anti condi food, and… yea it’s true, well, not completely but yes. Yet PU was nerfed by 50%, and somehow I believe that this nerf was right thing to do. Yet here we have build that can be perma invi builds running around that can inflict dmg without even having to reveal themselves. With regards to recent PU nerf i think it would be right to something about this build too, i’m not sure what but…

diffrence is tho that a pu mesmer still has alot more defense when revealed then a ghost thief.

MUDse.7623:

if the thief wants to hit u with those traps he will have to set em around u and as u correctly said they can be interrupted, all trapper thieves i met with my mesmer i could just interrupt their setting trap with chaos storm and they were revealed shortly afterwards.

So … a skill, with relative long cd, obvious animation, which sometimes randomly applys dazes (and sometimes not …) “always” interrupts those invisible thives exactly at the right time – well either you were incredible lucky or those thieves were incredible bad. Both luck and bad opponents are not reliable counters …

MUDse.7623:

a thief will likely put at least 2 traps below u assuming he put shadow trap on range to escape. as each of them can be interrupted u can interrupt the thief at the 2nd trap or if he uses steal first u might interrupt him even on the 1. trap. so no he is not only vunlnerable when he is doing his somkefield + hs. and well with that lockdown and burst..every thief can just get away if u dont lock em down and they want to get away.

Those thieves i met usually opened with needletrap + steal out of stealth. No way to (reliable) avoid this combo, so i’m forced to cleanse. The thief will try to apply more pressure. At this point i can try to cc him. But most likely it won’t do much, because it doesn’t hit at all (he dodges/he is not in range, …) or if hit him, he has still enough stealth, so he can just wait till the cc ends and then continue to stack stealth. All this time i have to play very careful, otherwise his condis can kill me.
Also getting into the smokefield fast enough isn’t alwasy easy. Super speed allows fast repositioning and i never know, in which direction the thief moves. So countering a ghost thief involves mostly luck/guessing instead of reacting to what he is doing. While he can see, what i’m doing, which makes it easier to counter me.

MUDse.7623:

thing is ppl want a nerf to ‘fix’ a bad mechanic thats prob one of the main reasons this thread is going to no where. u cant demand a nerf for something that is not OP.

Changing does not necessary mean nerfing. I never said, thieves should be nerfed. I actually think, it should be the opposite. Buffing them, so they don’t need this stupid perma stealth any more.

MUDse.7623:

stealth skills r also mostly balanced coz of their duration/cd. and even stacking multiple to get a long stealth duration is not a problem because if u do anything lethally dangerous u get reveald..as u already agreed to a ghost thief is not as op as he would kill anyone with condi removes and any other build with stealth gets reveald at some points in the fight.

Just because it is possible to survive against ghost thief, doesnt mean, he can’t be dangerous. Underestimating their dmg is the best way to die …

MUDse.7623:

also it will increase the amount of insults the thief will get pmed with coz they get a chance to get his name.

Others get raged at too, so maybe everyone should run arround with perma stealth, it would certainly solve many problems :p

UmbraNoctis.1907:

snip

i actually did wrote answers to all ur pragraph but that will lead to nowhere again.
so ill just cut the problem down as i did 1-2 pages ago.:

ghost thief is not OP , nor is the rune.
but fighting against a ghost thief is very annoying. most ppl in this thread that made suggestions how to ‘fix’ this annoying game play demanded changes in terms of reveal or higher cd / less stealth without suggesting buffs in return so they r just demanding nerfs for a build that is not OP.

changes that were suggested so far:
1) reveal on tripwire/needle trap but in return increase the conditions inflicted by them (Raiden)
2) move the main condi preassure from utilities to weapon skills so its worth using ur weapon to attack ur opponent in a condi build and not just steal + traps. (Me)
3) make traps to be triggered actively by the one who placed them and reveal if hits an enemy doing so (cant remember who suggested that)

all suggestions for chaging got still problems :
1) a reveal on triggering the trap will cause that the thief is unable to use his hidden weapon attack. a condi thief that is also playing visible will play with a pistol mainhand in one of his weapon sets and so he will want to use the stealth of the trap to get his sneak attack on the enemy for extra bleeds. a reveal controlled by the oponent who steps into the trap would disable the thiefs class machanic of stealth attacks.
2)problem here the traps will prob be useless again apart from OP shadow trap
3) oh well combined with 1) it might be an okeisch solution. but for me ..i wouldnt call em trap anymore then. more a controlled , delayed aoe. so its just a worse aoe as u r not so flexible with the position of it.

maybe on page 20 this thread will have a good suggestion on how we can change the thief for this build to be less annoying ( as changing the rune wont do much coz thief still can stay stealthed during that fight)

sadly altho a majority agrees that this build is not OP most of this thread is about why and how one can / cant / will / will not / did / did not get rekt by a thief. stop trying to tell why u get rekt by a non OP build and instead make suggestions how to change (not nerf!) skills/traits what ever to make it a challanging but not purely annoying to fight build.

Just make it so thieves can’t use trapper runes. Problem solved!

Gotejjeken.1267:

Just make it so thieves can’t use trapper runes. Problem solved!

intresting suggestion, tho i doubt they will do that coz then ppl will demand stuff like : make it so ele cant use cele stats and so on.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Just make it so thieves can’t use trapper runes. Problem solved!

Condi trapper thief was viable with other runes than trapper – I killed two warriors with a trapper build using krait runes; true they weren’t that great, but I accessed stealth by other means and dodged/sb5 most of their attacks.

The “easy” access stealth just means you’re very difficult to find.

I fought a condi trapper thief last night in wvw as a power thief; I was never that close to death – though he was, just couldn’t quite get the last few blows in. After about 8 minutes of fighting I think we’d both got bored.

The thing is realising… dropped traps show animation even if they’re stealthed, and there is a sound; so you can see where traps are dropped IF they’re dropping them around you.

You can dodge into that trap space to invalidate their traps (sets them off without hitting) though obviously doesn’t invalidate their stealth.

As d/p I also had easy access to blinds, which again will invalidate a trap (blind = miss) if they try dropping it on you or you teleport to them with pistol 3 and their response is to drop a trap.

As a warrior I had to run away – as I had burned through all of my condi removal and not really done much in return. Got a few stuns in with the hammer, but could never capitalise fast enough due to their high health.

I’m not a fan of a small damage on the trap to reveal because it affects any thief build using a trap – perma stealth or otherwise. However, traps are deadly on a condi build if you don’t cleanse.

A suggestion would be to remove the thief trait “drop trap on use of heal skill”. That’d remove 3s of stealth and one deadly trap – it synergizes too well with a condi thief build and I think gives far more damage than anticipated; those traps can do 10k condi damage if not cleansed, and since most people will use cleanses on a trap – two traps staggered at 12s = well… try keeping up with that eh. Remove that trait and suddenly they’ve got just 1 needle trap (every 24s) instead.

removing that trap from heal also affects any condi build not just perma stealth so what do u want to give the thief in return?

MUDse.7623:

removing that trap from heal also affects any condi build not just perma stealth so what do u want to give the thief in return?

Nothing really… it’s relatively OP and not talking perma stealth but for condi in general.

As I said way back in this thread (seeing as I main thief and have played trapper build) – traited, built, food’d up – that’s a heal which can do 10k condi damage to the opponent.

Chips.7968:

As I said way back in this thread (seeing as I main thief and have played trapper build) – traited, built, food’d up – that’s a heal which can do 10k condi damage to the opponent.

i also did play thief long enough tho lately i wouldnt say i main it anymore and i also did play trapper build for a few days.
yes i do aggre with u that a heal skill should not do 10k condi dmg, but a condi thief (doesnt matter what condi build) imo has less condi preassure compared to most other condition builds on other classes. so imo thieves should recive more options to apply contions for example with some of their weapon abilities in return of removing that trap.

but hey as i dont really play thief anymore ..ur the thief who has to play with it and less condi preassure of urs is better for me

Thief has excellent condi pressure, it just doesn’t have a condi “bomb” (imo). The trap gives said condi bomb – albeit slower acting. Condi thief requires near constant hits to put it’s pressure, but it reapplies a condi (or stacks existing ones) on every single attack.

A condi thief is definitely a build that chips away at an opponent, and not a direct burst – hence being able to shadow-step away whilst putting on the torment.

A doubled up needle trap provides that “burst” on top of sustained pressure for normal condi builds. It’s compounded by then being able to stay in stealth throughout.

Remove that extra trap and i do think a trapper thief will need to use other condi pressure (through weapons) in order to get the kill, rather than just traps and dodges. That’d prevent this non stop stealth condi build from being … non stop stealth. Not unless it was happy with not actually killing anything.

This wouldn’t require a change to the runes, wouldn’t require a change to the traps – and therefore not interfere with others builds. If a change was made to traits, perhaps give a little extra condi flavour somehow (perhaps a condi application on crit chance considering condi builds often have low precision (think mine was 8%?), to give a potential incentive to build change for that bonus!)

MUDse.7623:

diffrence is tho that a pu mesmer still has alot more defense when revealed then a ghost thief.

What do you mean ? Do you refer to boons that PU gives you or something else ? “Than revealed ghost thief” funny that, during time we fought against said thief acompanied by mesmer he got revealed, once ?

All this build seems to need is PVC, so toughness or defence should not be a problem for such thief, it’s not like you can burst and quickly kill full bunker character of any profession regardless of other defensive capabilities. In case of thief, it’s best defence seems to be it’s mobility which is exeptional.

I do believe this build still needs to be rationalized, current state is unreasonable.