Guild Wars 2

8/8/16 in WvW, faced a thief who I saw only once. Most I saw thereafter was the smoke circles every once in a while. It was a charr thief from Maguuma, who literally never broke stealth during the entire encounter other than when I saw him on the horizon. He was pure condi/traps. Moving or standing still all I heard was the backstab sound effect. and literally he would within a second lay 3 traps on top of me. I cleansed and gained stability and retreated to a held camp. Again smoke field sound effect and traps on top of me. The Npc guards there were taking damage but not aggroed or put into an attack stance, probably because there wasn’t any target. I hung around the camp trying to figure a way of attack but basically every 10 seconds trap spam condi-nuke. More of his server folk came I retreated back to my base camp the whole way getting condi-nuked.

Didn’t they nerf trap rune a bit back to avoid this scenario? And regardless how would he maintain stealth once traps are triggered? Or even still is this a loophole in the design or a hack?

Saw this Friday night / reset in T4. You will never see them but will see the trip wire or blinks here and there.

Trapper runes have been adjusted to 2 seconds of stealth with the release of HoT.

Go look in thief forum, search for perma stealth. I think a post is there from the start of Aug. Not sure why you post here though instead of there or general.

Ty Crapgame…posted here because WvW allows buffs and gear slightly different from PvE and PvP (Bloodlust for ex. ). So expecting the build to not be necessarily possible in other formats. Additionaly, the build would affect roamers like myself more so than a zerg or pt capture in PvP.

Kilrik.6320:

Ty Crapgame…posted here because WvW allows buffs and gear slightly different from PvE and PvP (Bloodlust for ex. ). So expecting the build to not be necessarily possible in other formats. Additionaly, the build would affect roamers like myself more so than a zerg or pt capture in PvP.

Fair enough – not like I’m policing the forums – lol. I guess I sounded gruff, sorry.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Condi-from-Stealth-is-Damage/first#post6266055

Yes, it’s there, they’re all over the place. It’s not hard to survive them but they’re like mosquitoes, annoying and you have to question why they exist.

It never left. It’s just gotten more popular now that, thanks to reward track nonsense and dailies, we have more pve clowns running around on the borderlands, and since they are not there to engage in person v. person combat, nor could they handle it if they did, they run this garbage.

And since it doesn’t involve the gem shop or spvp, nothing gets done about it.

Enjoy.

Honestly, there is no excuse for the game having such mechanics. It’s a disgrace.

Yeah this is a bull kitten cheese build.

On the positive side, I bet you made his montage video.

Never left, and yeah they unnecessarily nerfed trap runes when that want the problem, all that did was hurt other builds.
What needed to happen was to have direct damage added to the traps so they reveal the thief when activated.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Never left, and yeah they unnecessarily nerfed trap runes when that want the problem, all that did was hurt other builds.
What needed to happen was to have direct damage added to the traps so they reveal the thief when activated.

To be honest stealth as a mechanic in this game is very poorly implemented especially in WvW where there’s no point capture mechanic to reign it in like in PvP.

The other side of the problem is they’ve made 2 classes very reliant on stealth for deception, survival and generally to land burst. So any changes would require some pretty hefty work on that end.

That doesn’t mean it’s ok for things like the scepter/torch condi mesmer which can spend 90% of it’s time invisible, condi trapper thief or SA thieves that roam in packs staying invisible for 90% of the time they aren’t ganking.

Are you sure it wasn’t a scrapper? They have more stealth the a thief now. Maybe the runes are bugged and mines were acting like traps.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Never left, and yeah they unnecessarily nerfed trap runes when that want the problem, all that did was hurt other builds.
What needed to happen was to have direct damage added to the traps so they reveal the thief when activated.

Problem with this is that its a flawed way of thinking given current implementation of stealth. Ok, so thief is revealed with direct damage on the trap. Then what? Smoke field, leap and thief is gone the next second. Wont be seen until the next trap.

Unless reveal is changed so that a thief (or any class thats in stealth) cannot stealth again for say 15s after having done damage, then yeah maybe I will agree with you.

msalakka.4653:

It never left. It’s just gotten more popular now that, thanks to reward track nonsense and dailies, we have more pve clowns running around on the borderlands, and since they are not there to engage in person v. person combat, nor could they handle it if they did, they run this garbage.

The players getting killed by that build are the PvE clowns.

It’s predictable and only kills you if you are standing still and don’t use any condi cleanse.

Jerus.4350:

It’s not hard to survive them but they’re like mosquitoes, annoying and you have to question why they exist.

True!

First, Anet themselves removed direct damage from thief traps to promote this kind of gameplay.

Second, the ability to clear conditions regularly renders this kind of build almost useless. If someone doesn’t carry condition clear they are dead regardless of whether the player is attacking from stealth or not. What people who don’t play condition builds don’t understand is that condition builds must regularly apply conditions, in sufficient quantities, in order to overcome both condition clears and healing. A trapper build generally cannot apply sufficient conditions without leaving stealth and a few condition clears will mean there is zero pressure on the target.

Third, there are anti-stealth abilities on the ranger, on the scrapper, and on the anti-stealth trap. There is also stealth, which itself is a counter to someone using stealth. These abilities exist for a reason in a game where one of the main classes was originally designed around using stealth to both evade damage and deal damage. Calling for an end to stealth is basically asking Anet, unreasonably, to re-invent the entire class to make PvP easier for you.

Fourth, this build is a short range build. This means traps that you lay down are going to be effective. Using abilities when the traps go off that can disrupt stealth stacking may reveal the thief without having to do anything. A DH might, for example, use a knockback arrow aimed at the blackpowder circle to stop the thief from stacking stealth.

Finally, you can also see the traps when they are initially placed down. Dodge through the trap to not get hit at all. I’ve done this several times against a thief, not perma stealth but with high uptime, who was using traps on me. Seeing the traps was huge, I didn’t even need to cleanse because evading through the trap negated the damage completely.

Dawdler.8521:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Never left, and yeah they unnecessarily nerfed trap runes when that want the problem, all that did was hurt other builds.
What needed to happen was to have direct damage added to the traps so they reveal the thief when activated.

Problem with this is that its a flawed way of thinking given current implementation of stealth. Ok, so thief is revealed with direct damage on the trap. Then what? Smoke field, leap and thief is gone the next second. Wont be seen until the next trap.

Unless reveal is changed so that a thief (or any class thats in stealth) cannot stealth again for say 15s after having done damage, then yeah maybe I will agree with you.

Oh yeah, 15 seconds sounds absolutely reasonable…. maybe they should also change it so you can’t use any weapon skills while revealed, that would be another good balance change…

Trapper thief is an incredibly mediocre build. The problem is they can’t make the traps any better than they are because of the cheesy ghost thief.
If they added direct damage so the thieves would get revealed they could buff the traps to something worth using in a real build.

saerni.2584:

First, Anet themselves removed direct damage from thief traps to promote this kind of gameplay.

Second, the ability to clear conditions regularly renders this kind of build almost useless. If someone doesn’t carry condition clear they are dead regardless of whether the player is attacking from stealth or not. What people who don’t play condition builds don’t understand is that condition builds must regularly apply conditions, in sufficient quantities, in order to overcome both condition clears and healing. A trapper build generally cannot apply sufficient conditions without leaving stealth and a few condition clears will mean there is zero pressure on the target.

Third, there are anti-stealth abilities on the ranger, on the scrapper, and on the anti-stealth trap. There is also stealth, which itself is a counter to someone using stealth. These abilities exist for a reason in a game where one of the main classes was originally designed around using stealth to both evade damage and deal damage. Calling for an end to stealth is basically asking Anet, unreasonably, to re-invent the entire class to make PvP easier for you.

Fourth, this build is a short range build. This means traps that you lay down are going to be effective. Using abilities when the traps go off that can disrupt stealth stacking may reveal the thief without having to do anything. A DH might, for example, use a knockback arrow aimed at the blackpowder circle to stop the thief from stacking stealth.

Finally, you can also see the traps when they are initially placed down. Dodge through the trap to not get hit at all. I’ve done this several times against a thief, not perma stealth but with high uptime, who was using traps on me. Seeing the traps was huge, I didn’t even need to cleanse because evading through the trap negated the damage completely.

You can’t see the traps being placed if the thief is already stealthed.
Rangers need a target to use sic’em, it doesn’t work if they are perma stealthed.
Knock back projectiles like point blank shot are nearly impossible to land without a target, hell even with a target you end up being obstructed by the air 50% of the time.

most of the people defending this kitten are thief players, also most of them dont know kitten about it, like saerni…

No, you can see the trap being placed, even while the person is in stealth. I’ve fought them before. Like, this isn’t hard. Ranger has a knockdown trap that can probably disrupt the perma stealth long enough to get Sic Em off.

And being obstructed by the air is a big problem. It’s also a bug. I can’t assume a bug as the baseline for my suggestions. And I’m not saying all my suggestions have a 100% success rate either. Or that they are easy. Rather than simply say “learn to play” I’m trying to offer constructive ideas for how a person might fight someone who is trolling around on this build.

And for the record, any thief who wants a stronger condition build should be appearing and attacking. There is a lot more condition pressure available that way. Trapper thief is, quite frankly, inferior.

It’s just an insanely annoying build. Seems to come in waves though and most of them are terrible at it. Guessing people actually good at thief have more fun wrecking people outright with more standard builds.

msalakka.4653:

It never left. It’s just gotten more popular now that, thanks to reward track nonsense and dailies, we have more pve clowns running around on the borderlands, and since they are not there to engage in person v. person combat, nor could they handle it if they did, they run this garbage.

And since it doesn’t involve the gem shop or spvp, nothing gets done about it.

Enjoy.

It’s one of the more viable options for thief now with the heavy-handed nerfs between 7/26 and today’s patch.

The only thing left to play is D/P.

Trapper Ghost isn’t very good except for when the opponent is hellbent on staying in the fight, and it’s just plain annoying, but I speak broadly in that most of the serious non-trolly thieves have at this point given up entirely with ANet and now succumb to the BS they allow just to help the game dig its grave.

Everyone hates it because it’s not fun/fair to fight but the people who hate it most are the ones who insist on fighting it.

I ran into a couple of them. It sucks when you don’t have good cleanse and they get to watch you try to get somewhere where they can’t stomp you before go down.