Guild Wars 2

Every MMO that has ever implemented stealth has found these classes become overpowered… yet more MMO companies ended up using the same mechanic over and over again, I don’t understand the logic.

If you are a future game designer please never implement such a poor mechanic into any game were you want serious pvp.

I’m pretty sure someone at ArenaNet stated, in an interview at one point, that they didn’t want thieves to have stealth available at all times, and that’s exactly what they gave them. I noticed in early beta videos at conventions that you choose to play a thief in SPvP, Mr. Peters. ahems

The stealth in GW2 is hands down the worst implementation of stealth I’ve ever seen in any game.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

I’m pretty sure someone at ArenaNet stated, in an interview at one point, that they didn’t want thieves to have stealth available at all times, and that’s exactly what they gave them. I noticed in early beta videos at conventions that you choose to play a thief in SPvP, Mr. Peters. ahems

He mains a warrior but nice try.

Honestly, a thief has way too much stealth ability and nobody can deny the fact that they are the most annoying class to fight. I’m not against their stealth but I would like to see the condition damages affects while they go stealth and escape. For example:

Bleeding – traces of blood on the ground
Poison – green mist/traces of green slime on the ground
Chill – blue mist/traces of ice on the ground
Etc.

I don’t really have an issue with stealth as a warrior. Thieves are squishy and the easiest class to kill. I can’t remember the last time one killed me other than maybe if I was on auto run looking at the map.

Mesmers don’t have stealth enough for it to really matter.

I think that as the skill level of players increase, they will find that the stealth classes are not that strong.

jagabs.5086:

Honestly, a thief has way too much stealth ability and nobody can deny the fact that they are the most annoying class to fight. I’m not against their stealth but I would like to see the condition damages affects while they go stealth and escape. For example:

Bleeding – traces of blood on the ground
Poison – green mist/traces of green slime on the ground
Chill – blue mist/traces of ice on the ground
Etc.

Alot of thieves run condition removal on stealth

jagabs.5086:

Honestly, a thief has way too much stealth ability and nobody can deny the fact that they are the most annoying class to fight. I’m not against their stealth but I would like to see the condition damages affects while they go stealth and escape. For example:

Bleeding – traces of blood on the ground
Poison – green mist/traces of green slime on the ground
Chill – blue mist/traces of ice on the ground
Etc.

I can deny that, thieves are easy, just get your eyes open.

style.6173:

I don’t really have an issue with stealth as a warrior. Thieves are squishy and the easiest class to kill. I can’t remember the last time one killed me other than maybe if I was on auto run looking at the map.

Mesmers don’t have stealth enough for it to really matter.

I think that as the skill level of players increase, they will find that the stealth classes are not that strong.

If you fought a P/D condition thief you will notice they are in stealth basically every 3-5 seconds. You would have no chance trying to kill something you can’t see.

^ Agree with jagabs.5086:
If it was made so that you could see condition effects on stealthd enemies I would have no complaints about it at all.
If they are burning I should be able to see the flame effect.
This way they might actually have to deploy some real strategy and clense before hiding.

Columba.9730:

The stealth in GW2 is hands down the worst implementation of stealth I’ve ever seen in any game.

This, this, and this. I could not agree more. Thieves are not any more squishy than any other stealth class in other MMO’s yet they have the most broken and overpowered stealth mechanics I’ve ever seen. The poor rendering just adds insult to injury.

Bunzy.8674:

style.6173:

I don’t really have an issue with stealth as a warrior. Thieves are squishy and the easiest class to kill. I can’t remember the last time one killed me other than maybe if I was on auto run looking at the map.

Mesmers don’t have stealth enough for it to really matter.

I think that as the skill level of players increase, they will find that the stealth classes are not that strong.

If you fought a P/D condition thief you will notice they are in stealth basically every 3-5 seconds. You would have no chance trying to kill something you can’t see.

Sure you can. Just AOE around the area and use dodges if they stealth. They are quite easy to kill.

Now I will admit that if a thief wants to get away they can. That is actually fine with me. In WvW my objective is to either take a point or to defend it. A thief running away is the same threat as a dead thief…. none.

Tyr.1965:

Columba.9730:

The stealth in GW2 is hands down the worst implementation of stealth I’ve ever seen in any game.

This, this, and this. I could not agree more. Thieves are not any more squishy than any other stealth class in other MMO’s yet they have the most broken and overpowered stealth mechanics I’ve ever seen. The poor rendering just adds insult to injury.

Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out what strategic value Anet was going for by adding stealth to the game (as the assassin from GW1 had that same role as the thief but did not have stealth). So far all the responses I receive from players whenever I ask this just say “GW2 is not GW1 noob!!” or “You were killed by rogues a lot in WoW weren’t you?” And no, I’ve never played WoW.

Columba.9730:

The stealth in GW2 is hands down the worst implementation of stealth I’ve ever seen in any game.

Most other MMOS it has no time limit lol. With the rogue in WoW you just “turn it on”

GW2 is 4 secs and requires a noob to hit on with CnD to make it last

If a 4sec stealth lasts 5mins, your playing bad

I still haven’t seen you or your guild. Do you just hide in a corner till you see an opportunity to gank a solo upleveled ranger with 10 people?

Coz of ill-advised desire to measure up to a certain game with pandas.

GW1 was its own thing, with its own and rather awesome thieves. This…just no.

Seriously all the changes that are needed for a thief without massive overcorrection is to A) fix cloak and dagger so it can’t be chained with steal. Longer cooldown on C&D (the source of the false claims of perma stealth thieves..there is no such thing as ‘perma’ stealth) and C) A short cooldown on backstab (like 1s). See how that goes first. Glass cannon thieves would still kill fast..but at least it would give folks time to react.

Rest of it is definitely a L2P issue. If your running into thieves consistently in WvW maybe you should be using that 20% dmg trait that just screams “thief protection”. And perhaps you should drop one of your ‘l33t’ utilities to carry a pull/knockdown/knockback etc. Or hey if your running into thieves consistently maybe you shouldn’t be running glass cannon “drop at the sound of a fart” builds. The smart players can handle theives because they use those as soon as a thief stealths. It amazes me how folks still can’t even TRY to aoe a shadow refuge despite the fact it has a big ole graphic and you should know thieves have to stay in it for 4 seconds or are immediately revealed.

Those who complain about stealth seem to do so because of their lack of knowledge about it. I play a guardian as my main, and thief as my main alternate. I also have an 80 necro and two level 80 warriors with different build types. I have no issue dealing with thieves because I understand how the stealth mechanic works, and how to predict a thieves movement.

I actually find it well balanced. Thieves have already been nerfed, and they are good in the hands of talented players. But the same thing can be said for any profession.

Go level a thief, or play it in PvP and start learning how to counter them. Do it for every profession if you get the chance and have the time. It’s amazing how much it will improve your skills, even if you never want to play that profession again.

Knowledge is power.

Kirito.8796:

Lol, try fighting thieves from a ranger’s POV. for the second or two you can actually target the thief, 50% of your arrows miss. Don’t even get the luxury to auto attack the air as the arrows go straight down while nothings targeted.

Autoattack works even if in stealth, you do not see it, but the thief receives damage….Sounds strange but that´s the way it works…

Regards,

Haltair

Kirito.8796:

Lol, try fighting thieves from a ranger’s POV. for the second or two you can actually target the thief, 50% of your arrows miss. Don’t even get the luxury to auto attack the air as the arrows go straight down while nothings targeted.

have you heard of weapon switch? try it one day, it will improve your skills

Webley

Most other MMOS it has no time limit lol. With the rogue in WoW you just “turn it on”

That’s true, but in WoW stealth would break on damage and when performing nearly any action (attacking, looting, etc), and you had to be out of combat to “turn it on” (aside from one get-away ability). You even have a chance in WoW to detect a stealthed enemy if you’re close enough and facing them.

In GW2 you can literally turn on stealth with combat attacks, never be seen while stealthed, and with the right build can keep it up nearly permanently while in combat.

I would much rather have WoW’s version than GW2’s version. Limited stealth my eye.

I don’t seem to have too much trouble with stealth. It doesn’t last for very long (3-5 seconds) and it’s fairly predictable when/where they’re going to use it. They can’t really “start” a fight in stealth (ala the WoW rogue), so you’ll see them coming before they vanish. At that point, assume they’re coming for YOU and plan ahead (and for god’s sake, don’t stand still and keep turning so you don’t present them your back as a stationary target). I don’t even play a thief, so I’m not trying to defend “my class,” I just think it’s fine and people should learn to deal with it. It’s harder for some classes to deal with than others, but that’s the nature of the game (i.e., every class has a counter class they loathe). Oh, and if you see them shadow refuge, THEY’RE STANDING IN IT. GO HIT THEM!

If I had a dollar for every instance wherein a thief stealthed when fighting me, I kept attacking, utilized AOE, and tried to predict his whereabouts only to see him reappear in the downed state, I’d be reasonably wealthy…

I agree this is the worse stealth class system I ever seen in MMO.

Why say you don’t want perma invis class, only to give it to them after?

I prefered the WoW invisible classe, at least you could detect them, see them when in front of you, and they were not able to invis in combat except with a long cooldown ability. And I didn’t even like WoW.

It’s funny how everyone who defend thief seems to have a lvl 80 thief. main/alt, Saying that people have to learn them to counter them. I sure did, and it didn’t help much, you only learn how powerful they are.

Just check Wildbill video. He can take so many players at once. When you have a group, everty players need to dodge at the same time, otherwise one of them will be C&D and here we go again.

“But thief lack survivability!”

What? How are they worse then Elem? Ranger?

• Elem -> Same HP, Clothe armor. They make up for it by having the best mobility in the game and using a lot of boon.

• Ranger -> 4k more hp, Leather armor. They don’t have any special mitigation. They can have a pet blocking for them for 6 sec, other then that they rely on poor mobility and dodge.

Thief have the second best mobility in the game, have stealth, have better damage then both class, have leather armor and really good regen. They also have better condition removal then ranger.

I don’t see how they deserve the stealth more then lets say Ranger? They don’t have less survability. I will trade the 4k hp over stealth any time.

P.S : To those saying just dodge the C&D, say that to a Ranger. Oh You want to dodge my C&D, no worries I’M just going to C&D your pet. Nothing a Ranger can do.

My problem with with the thieves’ stealth isn’t that it’s unbalanced or even difficult to counter, but that it’s incredibly uninteresting and spammy. The way it functions is pretty much “I’m gonna stealth so you can’t hit me. Neener neener!”

The Mesmer’s stealth on the the other hand is done correctly. Decoy along with deceptive evasion can very easily trick opponents in the midst of battle, and they have mechanics to further punish those tricked by this. Mass invisibility can be used to pull off some incredible party tactics. And to top it off, it’s not a spamtastic mechanic.

Bunzy.8674:

style.6173:

I don’t really have an issue with stealth as a warrior. Thieves are squishy and the easiest class to kill. I can’t remember the last time one killed me other than maybe if I was on auto run looking at the map.

Mesmers don’t have stealth enough for it to really matter.

I think that as the skill level of players increase, they will find that the stealth classes are not that strong.

If you fought a P/D condition thief you will notice they are in stealth basically every 3-5 seconds. You would have no chance trying to kill something you can’t see.

This attitude is pretty much the main reason that stealth is effective. Instead of trying to learn how to track, anticipate, and kill enemies in stealth, people shrug and run off or stand around and die. Far too many people in WvW still react to stealth as if they were NPCs and continue to be surprised when thieves kill them like it is PvE.

Stop relying on tab-targeting and go kill them, I get the majority of my thief kills by hitting and downing them while they’re stealthed because I don’t throw up my hands when I lose my tab target. That just isn’t how GW2 combat works.

First rendering needs to be fixed. Also even thou I play a thief you should be able to mark a target when not grouped and that mark should stay on the target. Yes it should go invis when the player does but as soon as the player reappears so should the target.

Outside of that I think the issue comes down to players and humans in general. You don’t remeber scrubs you kill and move on. You for sure remeber the ones who kick you kitten

It happens to me and I will admit it. They have been people from all classes I have fought that make me question game mechanics. Here’s the thing, I go look into it and find out what they are doing and how and if there is a way for me to counter it if I can with the build I have. Sometimes the answer is no and that my spec really has no chance vs them and that is ok because other classes and specs can counter them. That’s the thing you have to know that there are some specs you can’t beat with the spec you run and if you change your spec to beat them there will be other things you will be weak against and that is what we call balance. No single spec is good at everything!

@Kirito

Don’t forget they can freely C&D your pet without any risk of missing.

Here is a video posted on the thief forum :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZpERlZWy5Lc

Watch, and no offence to the maker, but he doesn’t show off any kind of skill. He is an average player at best.

He isn’t Wild Bill, he is only auto attacking, C&D and using heal/utility when in trouble.

Can it get easier then that?

And he still win 1v3 fights.

The new FotM P/D build is even easier then D/D thief, and are more effective.

Kirito.8796:

Webley.1295:

Kirito.8796:

Lol, try fighting thieves from a ranger’s POV. for the second or two you can actually target the thief, 50% of your arrows miss. Don’t even get the luxury to auto attack the air as the arrows go straight down while nothings targeted.

have you heard of weapon switch? try it one day, it will improve your skills

I’m a ranger, I like to use SB and LB. should I change my weaponset of choice because 1 class has cheap mechanics? lol

If you took SB and LB that’s your own fault. You also put yourself at the mercy of reflects with that setup. Does that make those cheap too?

Kirito.8796:

Webley.1295:

Kirito.8796:

Lol, try fighting thieves from a ranger’s POV. for the second or two you can actually target the thief, 50% of your arrows miss. Don’t even get the luxury to auto attack the air as the arrows go straight down while nothings targeted.

have you heard of weapon switch? try it one day, it will improve your skills

I’m a ranger, I like to use SB and LB. should I change my weaponset of choice because 1 class has cheap mechanics? lol

Yes, or you can accept the fact that you will be weak against said class well being more powerful against classes that have limited range choices.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

I’m pretty sure someone at ArenaNet stated, in an interview at one point, that they didn’t want thieves to have stealth available at all times…

Putting aside thieves can still permastealth (or they could a while ago, maybe they fixed it?, yesterday was the first time I’ve played in weeks), in exchange for perma stealth they have created the most OP stealth class I have ever played (at least in WvW), for a couple of reasons:

1 – In most games I’ve played, damage breaks stealth, in many DOTs prevent stealth, not in GW2. This makes it worse than permastealth, especially in WvW, as any thief with at least 9 brain cell will not run off in the obvious direction.

2 – Most games rightly recognize in-combat stealth as a get out of jail free card, so there is normally only one skill for this and it is on a long cooldown (2 mins or something), yet in GW2 there are multiple skills for this all on relatively short cooldowns, some simply reliant on having initiative and striking any opponent.

What then makes the two points above even more OP is that the thief class has the best mobility in the game, so from the point of view of say getting away in WvW, it is no different to permastealth, because most of the time a player of a different class will not be able to catch a thief.

They should of made the stealth, non-stackable, plus with a longer no-stealth debuff between, so you would use it as a way to confuse, change your angle of attack, get an advantage, etc, but not being out of view half the fight as with some thief builds or as a near guarantee to escape (when combined with the mobility) when you muck up, the risk vs reward is totally off as a thief, if I play my engineer glass cannon I am punished if I muck up, if I play my thief much of the time I am not, hence why so, so many thiefs run glass cannon compared to other classes.

And this is without even going into the culling issues…

Bunzy.8674:

style.6173:

I don’t really have an issue with stealth as a warrior. Thieves are squishy and the easiest class to kill. I can’t remember the last time one killed me other than maybe if I was on auto run looking at the map.

Mesmers don’t have stealth enough for it to really matter.

I think that as the skill level of players increase, they will find that the stealth classes are not that strong.

If you fought a P/D condition thief you will notice they are in stealth basically every 3-5 seconds. You would have no chance trying to kill something you can’t see.

you obviously didn’t play stealthers in other games … and you obviously are a bad player if you are not able to kill a thief (or at least to deal with) as an elementalist.

Sixpax.8360:

Webley

Most other MMOS it has no time limit lol. With the rogue in WoW you just “turn it on”

That’s true, but in WoW stealth would break on damage and when performing nearly any action (attacking, looting, etc), and you had to be out of combat to “turn it on” (aside from one get-away ability). You even have a chance in WoW to detect a stealthed enemy if you’re close enough and facing them.

In GW2 you can literally turn on stealth with combat attacks, never be seen while stealthed, and with the right build can keep it up nearly permanently while in combat.

I would much rather have WoW’s version than GW2’s version. Limited stealth my eye.

I can’t wait for the day that stealth in GW2 = WoW’s stealth version. If your wish comes true, that would be heaven on WvW for thieves! Imagine a group of stealth thieves trolling from place to place undetected (thieves will not have to sacrifice ton of traits/utilities to have permanent stealth) and when thieves appear in front of your eyes, you’re dead. I for sure will camp 24/7 at the BL entrance or at any critical choke points along with other thieves, waiting to send people back to the way point!

The stealth mechanic for thief in GW2 is so weak, in order to get longer stealth, thief has to sacrifice a lot to achieve it.

To activate dagger #5, thief has to be in melee range of the target to do it. Keep distance and don’t fight among weak npc because thief will use those weak npc to stealth. Also, pay attention to the ground, you will see kinda like shadow blink on the ground when thief is about to come out of stealth or re-stealth while in stealth using d/p. With that you can predict the direction of the thief and AOE at that spot or dodge away from it.

Fix it so Rangers and their pets have an innate passive ability to see through stealth. Every class needs to have a counter right?

@wasabee don’t bother telling people how to kill thieves there are thread after thread that tells people what to do. The problem is no one wants to change there spec. They feel that what ever spec they have should be effective vs what ever and once the crusade for thieves is done (either nerf or not) the same people will complain about a different class/spec. I mean its even in this thread. Bows suck vs stealth and someone chooses to run two bows, is this a bad choice for him? Nope it’s that thief is op! Duh!

every class can see through stealth … infact if you look at a stealthed thief you can perfectly see what there is behind him

Kirito.8796:

Dual.8953:

Kirito.8796:

Webley.1295:

Kirito.8796:

Lol, try fighting thieves from a ranger’s POV. for the second or two you can actually target the thief, 50% of your arrows miss. Don’t even get the luxury to auto attack the air as the arrows go straight down while nothings targeted.

have you heard of weapon switch? try it one day, it will improve your skills

I’m a ranger, I like to use SB and LB. should I change my weaponset of choice because 1 class has cheap mechanics? lol

If you took SB and LB that’s your own fault. You also put yourself at the mercy of reflects with that setup. Does that make those cheap too?

remind me of a class that can have relfects up every 5 or so seconds?

Mesmers can get pretty close to that. And they don’t need to breath down your neck to do it.

The number of people in here who don’t have the slightest clue about how thief works (but don’t let that stop them from demanding their fix!) is appalling.

Some basics:

All thief weapon skills work off of initiative, not cooldowns. Cloak and Dagger doesn’t have a “cooldown.” If you have enough initiative, you can use it. If you don’t, you can’t. What that means is, once a thief drops under 6 initiative (which is basically immediately if he’s used CnD on you), the use of any of their attacks will increase the effective “cooldown” for CnD. In other words, if he’s going to use it again, he has to stop using any other weapon skills and only use it. If a thief is “permastealthing” he’s simply not doing any amount of damage to you that’s worth mentioning.

“Backstab” is just a dagger auto-attack used while in stealth. It does double damage if used from behind. When using backstab, or any other ability that forces a thief out of stealth, they’re hit with the revealed debuff for 3 seconds which makes it impossible to return to stealth. If they’re hitting you, they can’t reenter stealth until that goes away.

Ultimately, there’s a couple issues that people have with thief:

1) Glass cannons don’t think there should be a cost for their complete shunning of defensive stats and skills. These players are upset because thieves actually expose the weaknesses of those builds.

2) Culling causes issues when interacting with stealth. This is a technical issue with the game itself (not thieves or stealth) that Anet will hopefully find a fix for.

3) Once a thief goes invisible, most players throw up their hands in defeat and let the thief kill them. Stealth does not grant any form of invulnerability. Just because you can’t target something doesn’t mean you can’t hit it. Traps, necro marks or wells, ground target AoE, cone based auto-attacks, even simply waving your weapon in front of you at random will still hit thieves. Thieves are squishy as hell. Hitting them just a couple times with auto-attacks will force them to retreat or die.

4) Thieves can escape. This is a huge one people don’t ever seem to figure out. If you’ve forced a thief to run away, you won. No, you didn’t get loot. You didn’t get that measly bit of experience either, but you won. Too many people see a thief run away and either decide the thief won (even though the non-thief is still alive and completing their objective) or they make the worst decision possible and run off alone, trying to chase. But the thief had to run away to not die. They’re likely going to be stuck in combat, and unable to heal for a bit (because of some poor behaving mechanics between living targets and stealth) and they likely burned all their initiative and cooldowns. All this without actually achieving anything.

Now, of these issues, #1 is just a whine issue (and combined with #3 make up the vast majority of thief complaints), #2 is an issue with the game engine that’s being worked on. It would be a massive mistake to try to balance the class around a temporary issue somewhere else in the game. #3 is just l2p. #4 is a problem with player mentalities. Notice that none of these things actually have anything to do with the mechanics of the class itself.

First off you are grossly misrepresenting the mechanics of stealth because you are not including traits, which when used properly can give a thief perma stealth by reducing initiative cost/increasing initiative regen.

Point #1 – P/D regularly beats bunker builds as well, because they only appear for several seconds and basically can never be attacked, and since most specs build for heal on entering stealth, it is impossible to take the untargetable repeated healing thief down.

Point #2 – Culling is a technical problem, but including a mechanic that allows explotation of it is problematic. It may take a long time to resolve or may not be technically possible. If so the mechanic will have to change to reflect the limitations on the technology.

Point #3- This is silly, yes you COULD damage a thief when they go invisible, but this is a bit problematic because you don’t know where to target them because you cant’ see them. You COULD get lucky, but chances are a non brain dead thief should be able to easily avoid your attacks.

Poitn #4 – this is not a player mentality issue, this is a fundamental violation of the risk/reward paradigm essential to balanced gameplay. If a thief can engage in combat without risk that is a problem because it breaks gameplay. It is especially problematic that due to thief mechanics and the lack of “cooldowns” on their abilities a thief can “reset” an encounter multiple times against other players.

The mechanics of this class are busted and will be changed as every broken spec has in every MMO since the dawn of the genera. Count on it.

Syeria.4812:

The number of people in here who don’t have the slightest clue about how thief works (but don’t let that stop them from demanding their fix!) is appalling.

Some basics:

All thief weapon skills work off of initiative, not cooldowns. Cloak and Dagger doesn’t have a “cooldown.” If you have enough initiative, you can use it.

One person has mentioned a cooldown for Cloak& Dagger, mentions of cooldown by others are in relation to non-weapon skills like Blinding Powder, skills in other games, etc.

Syeria.4812:

Ultimately, there’s a couple issues that people have with thief:

1) Glass cannons don’t think there should be a cost for their complete shunning of defensive stats and skills. These players are upset because thieves actually expose the weaknesses of those builds..

The only people who think there should be no cost for the shunning of defensive stats are the bad gamers who defend the flawed OP thief design. If I play my engineer as glass cannon, I accept if I muck up or misjudge a situation or someone simply plays better, I will get punished for that, the same can’t be said if I play glass cannon on my thief, where often I able to escape the same situation due to the flawed class design of numerous in-combat stealths + huge mobility.

It seems some people can’t grasp the fairly fundamental notion of risk vs reward (and yes this applies to your point 4), something totally out of line on my thief, which is precisely why you will see more glass cannon thieves than any other class.

@Wasabee

Are you really Wow invis was better then GW2 invis?

• Wow :
  – Perma stealth out of combat.
  – Slower movement speed while stealthed.
  – Can be detected by skills or being too close/in front of people.
  – Can be used in combat only once with a 2 min cooldown.
  – No Culling
  – Average mobility

• GW2 Stealth
  – Temporary stealth, except if using combo.
  – No movement speed penalty, can trait for +33% movement speed
  – Can’t be detected
  – Can be used in combat every 5 sec.
  – Culling issue (I don’t think they will resolve it anytime soon, so it’s a real issue)
  – 2nd best mobility in the game.

I agree with you, give all thief in GW2, the same stealth that rogue had in WoW. I’m all for this idea.

Kirito.8796:

Dual.8953:

Kirito.8796:

Dual.8953:

Kirito.8796:

Webley.1295:

Kirito.8796:

Lol, try fighting thieves from a ranger’s POV. for the second or two you can actually target the thief, 50% of your arrows miss. Don’t even get the luxury to auto attack the air as the arrows go straight down while nothings targeted.

have you heard of weapon switch? try it one day, it will improve your skills

I’m a ranger, I like to use SB and LB. should I change my weaponset of choice because 1 class has cheap mechanics? lol

If you took SB and LB that’s your own fault. You also put yourself at the mercy of reflects with that setup. Does that make those cheap too?

remind me of a class that can have relfects up every 5 or so seconds?

Mesmers can get pretty close to that. And they don’t need to breath down your neck to do it.

You pulled that one out of thin air, why? because its not true.

Focus + Warden’s Feedback, Masterful Reflection, Mirror, Feedback.

I run a thief. D/D. Not glass. It’s mostly tough/condition/heal, with some vit/lower. We can be squishy as any class. Just as we can be defensive. Traits/gear people.

If my spec or a variation is ‘permastealthing’ they truly are doing very little damage, unless we stacked you with bleeds… and you dont cleanse…

We can annoy, and harass 3, 4, 5, even more depending, but if youre letting us walk all over you, youre either a spec we counter or you suck. Ive battledabout one of. Every class who can do this. They are specced to hold up small groups, cause mayhem from behind enemy lines, and be avble to escape. Any time youre focusing on a build like this from any class theyve won. 4 chasing 1 thief or ele? Come on. You couldve taken and defended a supply camp by now.

Stealth is fine. Ive been downed in it enough. Culling/rendering fixed=less fuss. You should be able to see us for at least 3-5 seconds then. Why stealth? Why adrenaline? Why moa? Why so many damn clones? Why so mad bro?

Once again Bunzy posts an off topic thread in the WvW forums. It’s like a broken record with this kitten. No mention of a fix and nothing to help the community but tears. WvW wasn’t designed for “serious” pvp and Anet did a great job in explaining this prior to launch. It’s designed for casuals and should always be. Trying to make it into something different showcases the selfishness of players and their wants. I’m glad you’ve educated the developers on what they should do with your thought out discussion of past MMO’s and pointed to the numerous amounts of failures those games had due to the stealth mechanic. The true intent of his post was to get people to complain about thieves which has worked masterfully.

I thought early on they proclaimed they did not want stealth at all. But almost every company caves in to the demand of the assassin/solo rambo player base that just has to have such a class. In the process almost always producing a balance nightmare.

Worst thing, they put in the stealth, but forgot to put in the counter-measures. You never have stealth with no counters. And by counters, I mean things that can detect and reveal them by an opponents action, not spamming AOE around where you last saw someone stealth.

Syeria.4812:

All thief weapon skills work off of initiative, not cooldowns. Cloak and Dagger doesn’t have a “cooldown.” If you have enough initiative, you can use it.

“Backstab” is just a dagger auto-attack used while in stealth.

The problem first of is that cloak and dagger actually hits for a lot of damage (several thousand). So you do still have decent damage while you go in and out of stealth. Furthermore part of the issue with thieves is the initiative system. If any other class misses and important ability they get up to a 35 second cool down on it. If you are fighting a thief who misses their cloak and dagger, they can just use it again. Initiatives regen also rate means that even if the thief misses CnD twice they can use it again much faster than any other class would because of cool downs.

Personally I never understood why they designed CnD to do damage. It is a utility attack, it applies vulnerability and stealth it should cost initiative but not do the higher damage. Part of an initiative system should be choosing when to use an attack and a hard hitting ability that sets up a combo and gives you the defense of stealth is too powerful. Personally with the different specs I used on my thief I rarely used any attacks outside of auto attack, the attack from stealth (both 0 initiative), steal and CnD. So I am not sacrificing my initiative by only attacking with CnD.

Backstab is another issue due to the fact it can be used every 3 seconds, hits very hard, uses no initiative and if you miss it doesn’t break stealth. This means the thief is a lot more forgiving of mistakes than any other class, who if they miss an important attack get a cool down.

Syeria.4812:

1) Glass cannons don’t think there should be a cost for their complete shunning of defensive stats and skills. These players are upset because thieves actually expose the weaknesses of those builds.

I agree here to an extent. But what I have seen quite a few thieves define glass cannon different than most others would. There was a video posted the other day of an elementalist with over 2500 armor and 19k health, they died in seconds and where told they are too glassy. They wore full toughness and vitality gear. This is a problem because that should not be considered glassy.

Syeria.4812:

2) Culling causes issues when interacting with stealth. This is a technical issue with the game itself (not thieves or stealth) that Anet will hopefully find a fix for.

Agreed

Syeria.4812:

3) Once a thief goes invisible, most players throw up their hands in defeat and let the thief kill them. Stealth does not grant any form of invulnerability. Just because you can’t target something doesn’t mean you can’t hit it. Traps, necro marks or wells, ground target AoE, cone based auto-attacks, even simply waving your weapon in front of you at random will still hit thieves. Thieves are squishy as hell. Hitting them just a couple times with auto-attacks will force them to retreat or die.

I disagree with this. I made a thief because everyone was saying how they are fine when you learn to counter them. After playing it I can tell you a good thief who knows how to dodge and not stand in red circles can get away from an attack in stealth. Once you move the people only have a very small chance to hit you in stealth because they are swinging blindly. Not to mention several classes only have a few AOE attacks that have cool downs. Also not all thieves are squishy.

Syeria.4812:

4) Thieves can escape. This is a huge one people don’t ever seem to figure out. If you’ve forced a thief to run away, you won. No, you didn’t get loot. You didn’t get that measly bit of experience either, but you won. Too many people see a thief run away and either decide the thief won (even though the non-thief is still alive and completing their objective) or they make the worst decision possible and run off alone, trying to chase. But the thief had to run away to not die. They’re likely going to be stuck in combat, and unable to heal for a bit (because of some poor behaving mechanics between living targets and stealth) and they likely burned all their initiative and cooldowns. All this without actually achieving anything.

The problem with this, and what annoys me when I play my other characters is the thief runs, leaves combat and returns within a minute to try the fight again. This is what bugs me, thieves can keep attacking until they get their way and win the fight. This is annoying because your most likely best case scenario is they give up and you spent a long time dealing with someone multiple times for now reward.

@Kardiamond

Are you really Wow invis was better then GW2 invis?

I wouldn’t say one is better than the other. However, I would dream to have WoW invis in GW2.

• Wow :
  – Perma stealth out of combat.

Vanish will enter permanent stealth when in combat. Also, Vanish/cloak of shadow put thief out of combat immediately so he can run at normal stealth speed.

- Slower movement speed while stealthed.

Not really, if you trait correctly, you run like a rabbit while in stealth!!

- Can be detected by skills or being too close/in front of people.

Yes, you only have “a sense” when thief being too close/infront of you. However, by the time you “detected” the thief presence, his daggers already sank in your back.

- Can be used in combat only once with a 2 min cooldown.

Not really, with trait, you can use it twice with shorter cooldown.

- No Culling

This is Server issue.

- Average mobility

WoW has mounts. It is hard to measure any class mobility. If WoW removes mounts. Thieves will be king.

• GW2 Stealth
  – Temporary stealth, except if using combo.
  Agree
  – No movement speed penalty, can trait for +33% movement speed

Only partial time, not permanent of +33% moment speed. permanent +25% speed, yes.
No speed boost while in combat. Stealth doesn’t put thief out of combat, unless thief wastes a trait for moving faster while in stealth.

- Can’t be detected
Can be detected when about to come out of stealth.

- Can be used in combat every 5 sec.

If target allows thief to execute the skill!

– 2nd best mobility in the game.
Agree.

P/D thieves are countered by avoiding one or two C&Ds. It’s a L2P issue guys. Not everyone class/build has the same abilities to avoid C&D sure. Ranged players for example have little issues for that while melee need to be more creative. Aegis works but if you don’t have it, well try to blind or use a block skill.

Or dodge. Everyone can dodge. Do not dodge the pistol attacks. Dodge the C&D attack instead. Just that. The pistol attacks are only dangerous with the bleed stats so you purge those. Purge bleeds, dodge C&D and stay out of melee range if you can. Here, you countered the P/D bleed stealth spam build.

My only problem with stealth as a mesmer is the culling issue. If the thief renders, I normally have a decent enough shot at killing them. But there is the occassional time where the thief will crit me from stealth, do massive damage, and before they render they get a few extra attacks off. So, the only issue I find with stealth isn’t the stealth itself, but the same culling issues. Even if they pop back into stealth, I at least know they are there and can normally deal with it. Thieves troll me by stealth hitting me, I troll them back with lots and lots of confusion! MUAHA

Thieves aren’t scary they hide in stealth because they’re scared of us…

It isn’t even about whether they are counterable. It’s just not a fun mechanic to play against, even if you know their skills up and down and regularly defeat stealth characters.

Past MMO’s and GW2 figured out that long CC is not fun for players, because no one likes not having control of their character for long portions of a fight. As such GW2 doesn’t have CC remotely as punishing as some other games. Unfortunately fighting half a battle against something you can’t see is equally as frustrating as long CC and not very fun. Gee, I’ll swing at the air over here until this guy pops up visible again…

Bunzy.8674:

Every MMO that has ever implemented stealth has found these classes become overpowered…

You did not play that much MMO’s, did you..?

Bunzy.8674:

…
If you are a future game designer please never implement such a poor mechanic into any game were you want serious pvp.

Sure, future game designers drop by here frequently, and WvWvW is serious pvp.-.-

Bunzy, you are my hero – D/D ele and still starting a whinethread whenever a thief teaches you a lesson. Very entertaining those threads, with all those no-cluers jumping on your train at once. Thanx.