Guild Wars 2

are supposed to be able to perma-stealth, kill and stomp multiple people, and you never see them?

They can’t perma-stealth, but they can stealth a lot. I think that the problem is that the game client just doesn’t render them fast enough when they come out of stealth.

arminius.5270:

are supposed to be able to perma-stealth, kill and stomp multiple people, and you never see them?

Yup.

spam tab and use a knock down ability soon as u get a target even if you cant see it

I haven’t noticed the stealth issues so much since the patch to fix it.

I’ve had several encounters with thieves lately (WvW) where they are not visible for 90% of the fight, and able to kill -stomp someone before we even see them. Seems amiss, but maybe that’s working as intended.

What I think, is it comes down to skill. I am not good enough at randomly swinging my weapon around at nothing to kill someone I can not see, or spamming tab fast enough, yet controlled enough to stop in the 1 ms I get and hit my knockdown, which they are invis for. I am sorry for this and I will try to get better. I feel everyone else should do the same, because everyone playing a thief is just that much better than everyone else.

Planar refuge will stealth the thief for the stomp but they should t be stealthed 90% of a fight. Well unless its a really short fight:)

I tend to agree with Deer, apparently I’m lacking the skill to kill a player I can’t see, that can kill-stomp me in the span of a few seconds. It wouldn’t be so ridiculous if it was one-on-one, but I’ve seen this among a group of 2-3 players, and the thief is stealth “most of the time” and able to kill-stomp each player. This has to be a bug, or some kind of exploit.

I change my thief build to counter stealth abusers, and it’s working beautifully.

Sadly, it doesn’t let me stealth like nuts anymore, but it’s a small price to pay.

Shame that it has to be a thief that counters thief.

The tactic of the stealthing thieves is to stealth and run the other way of where you think they’d go. That’s what a good/smart thief would do. I started AOEing the place as soon as the thief goes invis and I start backpedalling, just to see a fine red icon appear to finish the kitten.

AOE the hell out of the place, glass canons can’t take much damage

AoEing is one way, but the other way is targeted channeled abilities. They continue during the stealth and will do full damage so long as you start it while you have a fraction of visibility on them.

That’s what NPCs do to thieves in PvE… why can’t we do that in PvP?

That’s what I do with Dual Pistols for high spike damage on a glass cannon(takes half the health of a glass cannon thief). Other classes should look into targeted channeled abilities if they have them. I don’t play them, but what high damage channeled abilities do other classes have?

arminius.5270:

are supposed to be able to perma-stealth, kill and stomp multiple people, and you never see them?

Yes , that’s the general idea my friend & you got it well.

Thieves are fairly predictable if you know they are trying to kill you. One method to deal with them is to start counting – so you know approximately when to start tabbing to find them.

You can always just pick a direction and keep moving while they are stealthed – this way you KNOW generally where they are (behind you), and you’d have a much better chance to AoE. Of course, you should do this only if you have some sort of speed bonus, or time blocks etc so you don’t get backstabbed.

AoE abilities also don’t need to be dropped on the stealthed thief to be effective. Blinds, weakness, cripple, chilled are all good vs thieves just by dropping them on top of yourself. Auto-targetting abilities, like Necro DS #4, can hit thieves during stealth as well.

As soon as you get any sort of CC on the thief the fight’s half over given how squishy they usually are.

My main is a thief.

My level 30 alt guardian can pwn level 80 stealth thieves. Sanctuary, shield of absorption or any other knockdown really messes them up, especially with an AoE radius.

Bam, you’re down. Invis AoE. Someone invisible finishes you.

Weird, right? You had full health just a second ago, and that thief was only visible for about a second before he could use his magi-poof AoE, giving you no time to use your downed-state interrupt.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Bam, you’re down. Invis AoE. Someone invisible finishes you.

Weird, right? You had full health just a second ago, and that thief was only visible for about a second before he could use his magi-poof AoE, giving you no time to use your downed-state interrupt.

This is what I’m talking about. I’m sure there are useful tactics to try and counter this, but at the end of the day there just isn’t much you can do when you are killed and stomped and the only time you actually see the person is as they are finishing the stomp. And oh BTW, he is able to do it to the 2 other people with you as well.

Scorpio Shirica.1286:

My main is a thief.

My level 30 alt guardian can pwn level 80 stealth thieves. Sanctuary, shield of absorption or any other knockdown really messes them up, especially with an AoE radius.

I would love to see a video of your lvl 30 guardian taking down level 80 stealth thieves. BS meter is off the charts.

It’s not by myself. I am part of a WvWvW guild. I generally have damage dealers around me to finish them off.

=/

Obviously, a pure tank isn’t going to kill someone while they are knocked down. But that’s my point, WvWvW isn’t a class versus class or 1v1 game. It’s a 150vs150vs150 game.

not sure but
Cloack and dagger- 6 initiative – stealth you for 3 seconds
20 points on shadow arts trait :
-gain 2 initiative when you use an skill that stealth you
-Stealth last 1 second longer
-Stealing gives 2 second of stelth
5 points on trickery
stealing gives you 3 initiative
with 30 points on acrobatics you got 2 extra initiative /10 seconds (base regen is 1/sec) and 3 initiative on weapon swap
So yes Sir , cloack and dagger stealth is spammable
And regarding aoe Spam on them – will not work vs all thiefs
they got 2 seconds of shiftness on dodge roll +25 % move speed (over any other class)

Rayya.2591:

So yes Sir , cloack and dagger stealth is spammable

I wonder if you know that , when you get out of stealth there is a debuff that immunes you to get into stealth again for a while.

So , no sir.You can’t just spam any kind of stealth.

Quentin Fields.1295:

Rayya.2591:

So yes Sir , cloack and dagger stealth is spammable

I wonder if you know that , when you get out of stealth there is a debuff that immunes you to get into stealth again for a while.

So , no sir.You can’t just spam any kind of stealth.

that is untrue.

you only get the revealed debuff when you attack from stealth.
if you do not attack while stealthed you can IMMEDIATELY restealth. and with reaction times being what they are and the thief knowing the timing it is effectively stealth back to back.

this is how we hold supply camps solo with 20 people in them for minutes at a time.

fivekiller.1432:

Quentin Fields.1295:

Rayya.2591:

So yes Sir , cloack and dagger stealth is spammable

I wonder if you know that , when you get out of stealth there is a debuff that immunes you to get into stealth again for a while.

So , no sir.You can’t just spam any kind of stealth.

that is untrue.

you only get the revealed debuff when you attack from stealth.
if you do not attack while stealthed you can IMMEDIATELY restealth. and with reaction times being what they are and the thief knowing the timing it is effectively stealth back to back.

this is how we hold supply camps solo with 20 people in them for minutes at a time.

The point being. The skill isn’t spammable if you have to time it right.

Quentin Fields.1295:

Rayya.2591:

So yes Sir , cloack and dagger stealth is spammable

I wonder if you know that , when you get out of stealth there is a debuff that immunes you to get into stealth again for a while.

So , no sir.You can’t just spam any kind of stealth.

you get this debuff only if you attack when you are in stealth / if you spam only cloack and dagger once at 3 seconds (4 with trait) you got 0.1 seconds of visibility every 3/4 seconds . and is insignifiant since majority play wvw with under 20 frames
sorry my mistake is not perma stealth is 99% of time stealth on paper, and in combat is 100%
i want to see this debuf for 10 seconds , and the drama will start
If anybody need confirmation take 5 min make an lvl 2 thief and try this on mists

Rayya.2591:

Quentin Fields.1295:

Rayya.2591:

So yes Sir , cloack and dagger stealth is spammable

I wonder if you know that , when you get out of stealth there is a debuff that immunes you to get into stealth again for a while.

So , no sir.You can’t just spam any kind of stealth.

you get this debuff only if you attack when you are in stealth / if you spam only cloack and dagger once at 3 seconds (4 with trait) you got 0.1 seconds of visibility every 3/4 seconds . and is insignifiant since majority play wvw with under 20 frames
sorry my mistake is not perma stealth is 99% of time stealth on paper, and in combat is 100%
i want to see this debuf for 10 seconds , and the drama will start
If anybody need confirmation take 5 min make an lvl 2 thief and try this on mists

Cloak and Dagger spam to remain invisible 90% of the time is an incredibly easy to counter strategy though. For one, using one skill every 3 seconds means you’re not going to be able to kill anyone, so it’s only real application is stopping captures or invisi-stomping people who are downed on the fringes of a zerg, which shouldn’t happen if people are paying even slight attention.

Not to mention that stopping a C&D spammer from holding a supply camp is incredibly easy. The key is to realize that they need to hit you to stay invisible, and not let them hit you. The easiest way to do this is to ball up in one location. At that point, warriors with Fear Me or Stomp, guardian bubbles, elementalist Static Fields, etc can all be used to stop the thief from hitting anyone. If the thief can’t hit you he has two options, leave while stealth lasts, in which case you get the camp or keep trying and die, in which case you get the camp.

@Enenion

While you are correct that a zerg balling up and countering the thief is absolutely effective. The issue is whether you feel a large group of people having to employ group tactics and teamwork to this degree to counter one individual is balanced or not.

do you truly believe it is? especially when considering this is the only class that this degree of teamwork must be employed to overcome. or am i wrong in this assumption?

the solution seems obvious to me though, revealed debuff each and every time a thief leaves stealth would fix this problem completely.

So for a Zerg to maybe kill one single player, they have to all be coordinate, ball up, all use their defensive cooldown and hope they catch him?

Seems practical.

At first when I saw GW2 was having a Thief classe without a long duration stealth, I was happy. But now, I see it’s even worse. They can spam stealth in combat.

They are ridiculous but you can counter it. Rather than tell you what I do since you’re likely not an engineer ill tell you the best way to learn to counter any profession.

Make one.

Make one and play itin sPVP until you don’t suck with it anymore. Pay attention to the things that screw you over and cause your death. Now you are prepared to come up with a game plan on how to counter one.

Roll a guardian. I have no problems with theives :-)

Rinzler.8072:

Roll a guardian. I have no problems with theives :-)

i doubt that would be the ideea
half server thieves , half guardians

Several People In This Thread

Just spam tab target

This is the wrong advice to give. The correct advice for countering stealth is to simply remember that stealth does not make a thief invulnerable. Becoming overly reliant on tab targeting is why so many people have a problem with stealthed enemies in the first place.

Oh no, that thief stealthed on top of your downed buddy, guess it is time to go make a sammich? It sounds inane but when I play a thief I see players reacting like NPCs to stealth constantly, the second they lose their locked target, they wander off to find something else to do. Things like thieves instantly downing someone and trying to stealth finish are easy to counter, if they downed their target fast then they’re glassy enough to die in a couple seconds of standing over the downed guy and auto-attacking the air.

Also, your big shiny damage numbers won’t show up on a stealthed thief, but your attacks and procs still work fine. I can’t count how many times I’ve downed a stealth opponent hitting them with my sword auto attack and tracking their movements via heal procs.

tl;dr – Stop reacting like NPCs, you don’t need a tab-target to hit someone, learn to read stealth and use your attacks. Spam autoattack costs nothing.

It needs to be balanced. Yes, a zerg vs 1 theif can likely at some point kill the thief. Also, all 1v1s vs a stealth thief does not mean the thief lives…but a good thief often will at the least run away rather than die.

However, today I and a group of ~12-14 (our entire map’s “zerg”…yay for outmanned!)encounted a group of 6-7 thieves and 1 mesmer. They chained their shadow refuges, mass invis, etc and were almost always perma stealthed aside from the mesmer that died on occasion to later be stealth rezzed if nobody was watching that one spot the entire time.

They could quickly kill 2 people via stealth openers and stealth finishers (and the lag before we can see them)…occasionally hurt or down more, then run….stealth up….kill 2 more…etc etc. It was utter BS. I think 1 thief died, and a couple more were downed. They killed us repeatedly, but never the entire group….so basically was a stalemate but they had many more kills. Then the enemy zerg arrives and we couldn’t even get to the first camp outside our spawn.

Stuff like that just illustrates that with some basic strategy and stealth abuse it is really all but impossible for a slightly larger group to do anything about. If people think that is “balanced” then all classes should have some often usable abilities that can be op when used like that (and I mean a group of 5 or so that all comprise 1 class can take a force 2x the size and of same skill…kill them repeatedly, while losing nobody).

OP is really, really, really mad. If I’m guessing right, he will probably show up in this next video I’m editing.

Just for kicks, the intro will be a 1v2 versus 2 stealth-spamming melee thieves in it, and at the end theyre dead and I’m at over half hp. So you can then see, without a doubt, that you’re bad.

Stealth is the only real defensive mechanism thieves have, and it only avoids targeted+ranged attacks. Eyesight is not the only way to tell where someone is.

Stealth is NOT over powered, It’s three seconds until we hit someone. We can use it only every three seconds. There are plenty of ways to stop of thief, which I will not tell in this forum for obvious reasons. When people kill me, they don’t realize what they just did is the most efficient to kill me. They won’t learn from it so I keep stealth and killing.

Often times, spamming tab doesn’t work. When the thief actually pops up, he usually has no nametag, and pressing tab doesn’t select him. The only way to select him is to actually move your mouse and click on him. Lasts for a few seconds but is really annoying.

Kyton.3815:

It needs to be balanced. Yes, a zerg vs 1 theif can likely at some point kill the thief. Also, all 1v1s vs a stealth thief does not mean the thief lives…but a good thief often will at the least run away rather than die.

Personally this is what bugs me most.

I have fought several thieves and hurt them more than they hurt me. But most of them just decided to use a longer stealth and ran when they realized that I was not a squishy/easy kill. Stealth is very annoying when you don’t see your enemy coming, but it is infuriating when the thief can surprise attack you and then walk away if the fight isn’t going there way.

I miss older MMO’s like DAOC where stealthy classes were annoying because they jumped you and kill squishy classes but if they didn’t manage to kill you, they would be easily killed because stealth was an out of combat only thing and thieves were squishy.

Yes! that is it. I knew there was something about the thief skills I didn’t like. It is the fact that they can use stealth in combat, while you are staring directly at them and trying to hit them.

I agree. Having stealth only work out of combat will fix many of the issues that thieves have.

“I have fought several thieves and hurt them more than they hurt me. But most of them just decided to use a longer stealth and ran when they realized that I was not a squishy/easy kill.”

I have the same issue with Mesmers. Who, with teleports, distractions and invisibilities can also seem to escape whenever they kitten well please.

Its simply not an option to give a profession both the the ability to pick and choose his fights, and then also give him an undo-button to get out of a wrong choice. That eliminates all the skill (for as little as it is skill) involved with choosing your battles.

Kalemar.4873:

Yes! that is it. I knew there was something about the thief skills I didn’t like. It is the fact that they can use stealth in combat, while you are staring directly at them and trying to hit them.

I agree. Having stealth only work out of combat will fix many of the issues that thieves have.

Wow. I honestly can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or seriousness….well done!

I don’t think the “stealth only out of combat” works in this model, as in theory it is supposed to be occasional short periods of it that can be gained. Not permastealth prior to combat and then having a hard time getting back in. I really don’t want that in this game.

Thieves need a way to survive. I don’t get the impression that they have any invicibility/block moves, so they rely on evasions and the stealth mechanic. The issue is that currently they can be stealthed near indefinitely with the moves they have, combinations with other classes or more thieves, and the client not showing them before they can restealth it is incredibly frustrating to play against. This also allows them to have very high damage whereas other classes have to trade survivability traits/skills for less burst or other utility.

I agree you CAN hit stealthed thieves, but it is basically playing whack-a-mole where you can’t see the mole or the holes they come out of. You occasionally see a small bit of feedback when you get lucky but by the next shot they could be anywhere again.

If they don’t want to rework the entire mechanic I feel they should lengthen the revealed debuff (double it?) to account for the lag for them to show up on opponents screens. Then put it back if they fix the issue. That way, if a thief is built for burst they can quickly down another glass cannon. Against a tougher/higher vit opponent, they would have to then survive for awhile via evasions/dodges before being able to restealth. This would also eliminate the ridiculous ability for them to hit 1 person from full hp→dead in a small or large group of enemies as they would then be able to see them and focus a solo ganking thief……as it should be vs any other class trying to solo kill people in a group.

I feel that would be fair because other classes have to either choose high damage/low defense, vice-versa, or a balanced build.

I don’t think having out of combat stealth would work for the way they designed the thief in this game either, but I still miss the philosophy of older games.

I agree that the way that would make most sense to me, for the way the thief was designed in this game, is having a revealed debuff last longer.

Kalemar
I agree. Having stealth only work out of combat will fix many of the issues that thieves have.

Sorry but I think this is a rather short-sighted way of fixing the problem. I like the fact that thieves can use their stealth in combat. Plus, it’s not like they have a button to activate stealth whenever they want. They have to use a stealth related skill in order to do so. Simply preventing them from going into stealth while in combat would pull off an important part of how the thief class is played. It would be sad to get to this point without having found any other viable solution.

I think there are things less “class core related” (aka, that are not inherent to a class, and can thus be modified without hurting to much the playstyle of a profession) that could be modified to get us to a more balanced ground.
- Firstly, I don’t understand why you can stomp somebody and remained stealth. This should be considered as an attack, and thus should remove stealth from you. – Secondly, I don’t really like the quickness mechanism, and I would prefer it to be removed from the game (which wouldn’t disrupt to much the way people play, I think), but I can settle from something like “quickness doesn’t work when stomping someone”. I think the downed state mechanism is rather interesting, and for (almost) every class, once you’re downed you have one chance to prevent an immediate stomp. But quickness kills that only chance. I find it a bit unbalanced.
But well, sorry about that remark on quickness. It’s been about a month that everyone says this needs to be fixed rather than fixing other stuff that work a bit to well with quickness, but it seems to be a sacred ground for the devs. So, I guess until they see the light, there is no use addressing this issue anymore…

Now, small question : I need a confirmation about something I noticed while playing my thief. The stealth boons get stacked, right ? Like, if you stealth, and for example you use two other stealth skills, duration will stack and will keep you stealth for the duration of all your skills, right ? If that’s the case, wouldn’t some kind of diminishing return be interesting, to prevent perma stealth, and force the thief to use his stealth skills over a longer time ?

I really don’t get how you can be giving suggestions to “fix” thieves when the culling issue isn’t even fixed.

If it’s still this big of an issue after that then we can see.

Stealth attacks are what thieves are designed for, and the only thing they are good at. Nerf it, and the thief class essentially becomes squishy warriors in leather.

“Balance” isn’t about every class being able to do what another can, there wouldn’t be any point in “classes” then. Each class has its own set of special abilities, and when applied correctly, can help flip battles and achieve other goals in their own way. People don’t get mad over other classes being OP, because most of the time, the truly battle flipping things aren’t even directly noticeable until everyone around you finds themselves running, and even then, you might not even know what originated the flip.

The widespread vendetta against thieves is a lot more personal, because at one point or another, people have experienced distinctly identifiable harassment tactics by thieves that may have taken out several people out of your group, and then go around thinking “OMG 1v15 and the thief is owning us. This is absolute BS blabla”. If you’re in a largish group and find yourselves unable to kill a single thief, then you really do need to rethink your tactics. WvW isn’t all about free karma/xp farming, and if you can’t fix a little blip in your zerg with some basic tactics, you don’t deserve to be zerging. WvW is a war zone, so don’t expect things to be nice, fair and orderly. Pitched battles were last century, guerilla tactics are now all the modern rage. If you think a single thief going up against a large group and coming out of it unharmed is OP, then consider the fact that it’s about the only battle flipping thing a thief can do. It just happens to be up close, personal and dirty, which invites all the hate. Learn to play your class and play up your strengths instead of crying about balance all day, and you can similarly flip battles in your own way.

@Johnson, stealth DOES stack, but it’s far from giving you perma stealth. A thief has only about 3 utility stealth skills which take 45-60 secs to recharge, so you wouldn’t be able to stack it to make much of a difference anyway. It’s reserved sparingly for emergency uses and escaping out of tricky situations. The “perma stealth” thing everyone is talking about isn’t true perma stealth. It’s just a well timed and executed series of CnD, which involves getting out of stealth organically first, before hitting someone again with the skill and going back to stealth for another 3 secs. Contrary to common misconceptions, this is a very tricky thing to do, takes a lot of skill, leaves a huge window for error, and can be prevented by other players fairly easily. Any other class with players behind it who are just as skilled can cause similarly large amounts of damage. (mesmers, necromancers and warriors come straight to mind.)

Is this post useful to you?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Something-changed-with-either-Revealed-or-Vital-Shot/first#post540678

has anyone of u played thief in wvw or are u talking only from your experience in spvp?

@Opc : Ok, thanks for the explanation. As a side note, few minutes after I posted, I actually found that some changes were not in the patch note, and as a matter of fact, there was something about stacking stealth ^^

“Stealth now only stacks up to five times consecutively, meaning you can’t bombard yourself with massive stealth applications to become invisible for extended periods of time.”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-Undocumented-Nerf/540643

It seems that it was a common thing for Anet to stack up stealth more than 5 times. I do not often come across thieves that can do that (I guess it requires at least 3 thieves working together to do so, because as you said, there are not many skills that allow to do so), but they do. Time will tell us if it was a good way to change things, or not. I would have prefer a less “hidden cap” mechanism to do that.

About the perma stealth, I must say I only say “perma” as a figure of speech. It’s more of a way to put an emphasis on “long stealth” opposed to “short, multiple, stealth”. I think the latter is a more interesting way to play rather than the foremost. Attacking someone and trying to stay invisible all the time seems less interesting for me than having an “open” fight and using the stealth ability as a way to confuse your opponent. I find it to be more satisfactory gameplay wise, but it’s just my way of seeing things, as I prefer a good fight that last a bit, rather than a 3-shots action easy win/failed attempt (depending if it goes well or not).

Still on this subject, I agree with what you said, except that I’m not really in favor of such a playstyle that consists only in picking a weak target, killing it and fleeing, in some lone-wolf kind of way. I prefer to be more supportive of my group, helping them finish some target with a little burst here and then, but staying with my team mates throughout the fight rather than leaving once I get my kill. I find it to be a less selfish and more rewarding way of playing. But I recognize it’s part of how a thief has to play sometimes (especially if you don’t have a group to play with), and I don’t mind if people want to play that way.

Yea and while we take away stealth from thieves , lets take away warriors & guardians defensive skills/utilities.Oh and we should take away mesmers illusions/clones/phantasm since they are annoying.But we shouldnt forget to take away rangers signet , engis flamethrower , elementalists mist form and finally all condi damages from necro!

Since they are all good spells of those classes.

I luv how people don’t do the math.If you take a thieves stealth and make it only out of combat etc. nobody will be playing it.Coz only thing they can do is about stealth.

They have only 10k base hp at lvl 80 if they are playing glass cannon boi.Only one CC and you can 2-3 hit them in a second.

Oh and because you don’t know how or you just can’t deal with their stealth doesn’t mean stealth is OP!

Confirming stealth is op and needs nerfed into the ground. Move along now; nothing else to see here.

Just curious, how many whiners in WvW moan about thieves but aren’t level 80? Every class i’ve played at low levels gets stomped by every other class at high levels, regardless of it being a thief.

I play a thief and am level 75 now and haven’t actually had issues with other thieves. Backstab is the easiest thing in the world to dodge, as is heartseeker. Also, without that damage a thief is trash….
I start WvW and on my lvl 20 necro I think I have 25k hp. At that level on a thief I believe I had 12.5k hp. Should the thief do more damage? HELL YES! You breath in the right direction, dead thief. Stealth is the only thing that keeps you alive, if you break it you’re dead unless you’ve dealt enough damage already.

And i’ve tried investing at my now higher level, 20 into vit and toughness and on a thief it still doesn’t make enough difference. The class is just squishy no matter what, don’t moan if they do a lot of damage. If you want them to do less, change initiative and their survival. As is, initiative regen isn’t fast enough for a sustained fight and your stealth abilities only grant you so long to get it back up. And of course, our survivability isn’t high enough either.