Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone
in this Thread I would like to discuss the effect “Revealed”, specifically granted by the skills I will mention in just a second.
I will post this in the Thief, Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger and Guardian Forum as these are the professions that either (usually) use stealth or have the ability to apply Revealed through their skills (or, in the case of Dragonhunter, will have the ability).

Before replying please read the whole post, I know it’s a lot but there are also important suggestions + notes in the last few sentences. Thank you

Skills/Traits applying Reveal:

• Analyze (Engineer Toolbelt Utility Skill of Utility Goggles: 6s 1200 Range Reveal + 10×8s Vulnerability, 25s CD)
• Lock On (Engineer Tools Major Master Trait: Striking foes in Stealth analyzes them – see above)
• Detection Pulse (Scrapper Toolbelt Elite Skill of Sneak Gyro: 6s 900 Range AoE Reveal, 20s CD)
• “Sic ’Em!” (Ranger Utility Skill: 6s 2000 Range Reveal, 40s CD)
• Light’s Judgement (Dragonhunger Utility Skill: 10 240 AoE Pulses with 1100 Dmg, 8x 1s Reveal and 25×2s Vulnerability, kitten CD)

Why Do We Complain?
In the Thief Forum there have been a lot of suggestions/complaints about these Skills/Traits in particular. While we do know that they are rarely taken, Analyze, Lock On or Sic ‘Em are seen fairly often on Burst Builds.
Especially Thieves are targeted by the Reveal, as Stealth is currently our best defensive mechanic as Acrobatics (the Thief’s dodge trait line) sucks.
Given that we have an entire trait line based on stealth, lots of utilities and weapon combos balanced around it (while Stealth is not a Thief mechanic, Sneak Attacks are).

These skills/this trait pretty much deny us a whole trait line in a fight and with that most of our surviability, while Revealed we don’t have access to as much dmg as usual (which we usually build for) and the only defensive mechanics we then got are:

• Dodges (which every profession got, so these basically don’t count)
• Blind (very Initiative heavy)
• Interrupts (very Initiative heavy)
  Basically the only other two viable options are kiting (= no dmg) and shadow stepping out to wait until Revealed is over (50s CD).

Suggestions
Because of these reasons there have been some suggestions to change the Revealed effect of these skills/this trait:

• Make the skills not apply “Revealed”, but rather an effect called “Spotted”: everyone can see the target(s) while they still gain the benefits from being in stealth (easy to avoid Backstabs or Mirror Blades for example, but Thieves and Mesmers are not totally locked out of stealth traits they may have chosen for survivability).
• Make the skills be AoE and not apply Revealed to the target(s), but simply drop the stealth that’s currently on them. In this case the skills could even get a casting time and an animation in order to make them counterable.

With these changes, Revealed (and therefore possible “locked” chosen traits) could only be achieved by dealing damage from stealth, which at least a lot of Thieves deem fairer.

Many Thieves think that Revealed on Skills is a bad mechanic that wasn’t thought through, just thrown in to give people a counter to the former counterless stealth. Funnily enough, Anet thereby designed a counterless counter.

Another Idea
Also, I personally think that Analyze (and thereby Lock On), Detection Pulse, “Sic ’Em!” and Light’s Judgement should get benefits when hitting targets without Stealth.
For example, if you’d hit a Thief and a Warrior with Detection Pulse while the Thief was revealed, the Thief would get “Spotted” or dropped out of stealth. As the Warrior wasn’t stealthed, a possibility could be for the Scrapper to gain 1s of Stealth (could be 1s of Stealth for every non-stealthed target hit, while prioritizing stealthed targets. Detection Pulse should have a maximum amount of targets then).
With changes like this, I think these skills and traits would see more use (outside of rekking Thieves ) and would also have a more tactical approach.

Before Answering, Please
Please, before answering, consider the following: With this thread or these suggestions I don’t mean to balance any professions or builds, but rather only the skills I talked about and “Revealed”.
Therefore simply saying “No, it should stay, Mesmer and Thief OP” doesn’t contribute at all, as Mesmer’s or Thief’s OPness or not should be balanced by itself (Traits, Weapon Skills,…) and not through Skills of other professions.
I know it can be hard to differentiate (especially as a lot of players hate Thieves and think that Mesmers are OP at the moment).

Anyway, thanks for reading and what do you guys think about my suggestions?

Revealed counterplay is just fine IMO. There is currently no downside to camping stealth, which really goes against the idea behind it in the first place. It should be used to set up attacks or to temporarily disorient your opponent, not as an escape or a primary form of defense.

Anet made a big mistake in choosing not to rework traits that reward you for staying in stealth (like Shadow Rejuvenation and Prismatic Understanding). Bonuses should only be provided upon entering/leaving.

I feel like that as well, Shadow Rejuvination should heal when you reveal yourself through attacking and when you gain stealth.
Nevertheless I think that reveal from other classes don’t help much at balancing this because it basically makes these traits unusable for 6s, completely throwing of a Thief’s defense

Light’s Judgment is 139 damage 8 times over 8 seconds.
10 Vulnerability for 2s per pulse.
1s of Revealed per pulse.

Of all the skills to reveal stealth it is the worst for 1v1 by far, it’s meant to reveal a large group of enemies that can’t quickly re-stealth (like a WvW zerg that veiled).

As for stealth counters, stealth is massively powerful in this game, it’s easily accessible and quick to be able to re-enter even after being revealed. You can stealth in combat with any stealth ability unlike other games.

And when you mess up or get countered during stealth like someone Blinding, Blocking or Dodging your Backstabs it doesn’t matter, you can just push 1 till it connects for massive damage as you don’t get revealed! So easy.

At least reveal doesn’t effect stability or blocking so all those reveal traits will be totally useless against a warrior.

Ezrael.6859:

Light’s Judgment is 139 damage 8 times over 8 seconds.
10 Vulnerability for 2s per pulse.
1s of Revealed per pulse.

Of all the skills to reveal stealth it is the worst for 1v1 by far, it’s meant to reveal a large group of enemies that can’t quickly re-stealth (like a WvW zerg that veiled).

As for stealth counters, stealth is massively powerful in this game, it’s easily accessible and quick to be able to re-enter even after being revealed. You can stealth in combat with any stealth ability unlike other games.

And when you mess up or get countered during stealth like someone Blinding, Blocking or Dodging your Backstabs it doesn’t matter, you can just push 1 till it connects for massive damage as you don’t get revealed! So easy.

I personally think SA should get a rehaul making stealth camping way less optimal than right now.
What would you suggest, 1s CD on BS?

Agemnon.4608:

At least reveal doesn’t effect stability or blocking so all those reveal traits will be totally useless against a warrior.

And that’s exactly what I’d like to see changed (look at Another Idea)
Currently these abilities are useless against any class apart from Mesmer and Thief (and against the latter it can mean an easy insta win on a burst or condi burst build).

What about stealthed players that attack into a Block or the enemy Evades, shouldn’t the attacker be ‘spotted’? ;)

Vikkela.7261:

What about stealthed players that attack into a Block or the enemy Evades, shouldn’t the attacker be ‘spotted’?

That actually sounds like a decent idea, better than making BS have a CD or drop stealth immediately… and it would makes sense.

I can agree with most of this, including the following comments suggesting that Stealth-related bonuses should really only apply upon entering/leaving stealth, so that camping it is less encouraged. The OP’s idea for “Spotted” is pretty good, as well as the following suggestion that stealth-attacking into a block/distortion/dodge/etc. should apply “spotted” to the attacker. I also like the idea of some bonus for hitting non-stealthed players with the various revealing skills.

I would suggest that “Spotted” in general should have a longer duration and/or more ways to apply it than the current “Revealed” mechanic, but it should have a limited effective range: Once the “Spotted” player has gotten far enough away from the player who applied spotted to him, the effect should be dropped. Possibly, even breaking Line of Sight for more than a second or two should drop the effect.

RebornbyFire.7913:

I can agree with most of this, including the following comments suggesting that Stealth-related bonuses should really only apply upon entering/leaving stealth, so that camping it is less encouraged. The OP’s idea for “Spotted” is pretty good, as well as the following suggestion that stealth-attacking into a block/distortion/dodge/etc. should apply “spotted” to the attacker. I also like the idea of some bonus for hitting non-stealthed players with the various revealing skills.

I would suggest that “Spotted” in general should have a longer duration and/or more ways to apply it than the current “Revealed” mechanic, but it should have a limited effective range: Once the “Spotted” player has gotten far enough away from the player who applied spotted to him, the effect should be dropped. Possibly, even breaking Line of Sight for more than a second or two should drop the effect.

Nice ideas! And yeah, the guardian forum seems to support my suggestions way more than the other forums
Gonna collect all of the ideas that were posted in a few days/a week or two, quite some nice suggestions in between.

The reason it’s not as fought in the Guardian forums is cause a thief is not really a threat to most Guardians one in one, they’re mostly annoying at most.

IMO Revealed is fine as it is. Personally, I don’t see an issue with a thief camping stealth during a fight. It’s a delay tactic like any other class can do. AOE counter pays that. My primary issue with it is the way it allows a thief to come and go between points with no penalty. Revealed allows some counter play to a thief making poor rotation choices.

A small part of that might be resentment since for Guardians, every rotation choice is do or die for the most part. Lol