Guild Wars 2

So I just read the patch notes…

“Changed the way monsters react to players using stealth.”

Does this mean that monsters are just going to see through my stealth now? If so, what’s the point of using Decoy as a utility over one that just generates two clones in PVE?

“Eased the restrictions on global leash time.” …is also a bit vague. Does this mean that mobs will continue to chase longer or possibly not give up chasing in dungeons? Is this only an open world change, meaning that they will just chase longer outside of dungeons or chase shorter durations?

They clarified it in the notes that “stealth no longer resets a mob’s threat level” or something like that, so all it means is that mobs won’t act like they just met you after you come out of stealth… if that makes sense.

So, yes, it essentially makes it useless. Decoy was an important ability in PvE because it was a much needed aggro dump for the Mesmer.

Really, more than any of the other changes of late, this one is the most irritating.

Faide.6492:

So, yes, it essentially makes it useless. Decoy was an important ability in PvE because it was a much needed aggro dump for the Mesmer.

Really, more than any of the other changes of late, this one is the most irritating.

But is it really such a big deal?
The way I understand it, mobs still ignore you. After 3-6 seconds, you’re far enough away for them to leash back and ignore you entirely.

You can no longer use it mid-fight against a boss to reset threat, but honestly that seems like a bugfix to me. After all, if mobs are to have non-trivial behaviour, they shouldn’t be cheated out of their scripts that easily, no?

Carighan.6758:

But is it really such a big deal?
The way I understand it, mobs still ignore you. After 3-6 seconds, you’re far enough away for them to leash back and ignore you entirely.

You can no longer use it mid-fight against a boss to reset threat, but honestly that seems like a bugfix to me. After all, if mobs are to have non-trivial behaviour, they shouldn’t be cheated out of their scripts that easily, no?

Yes, it IS a big deal.

I do not understand what you mean by ‘non-trivial behaviour’, but I fail to see how dumping aggro via stealth cheats a script any more than runnning away from a mob, and losing damage output in the process, for 3-6 seconds does.

I’d love to know what the thought process behind this seemingly uneeded change is

Well, I’d not say that it became useless. I assume it’s like our illusions when the target stealths. They don’t vanish, but wait (on their current spot) for target to reappear. It’s not like you’d forget about your target when it’s become invisible.

I rather see a problem with clearing aggro from mobs to let your allies respawn. Since the 28th Jan patch we can’t respawn when the party has aggro and now even [Mass Invisibility] wouldn’t help there since the mobs would just wait for you. And our invisibility durations are just to short to do anything else.

Faide.6492:

Yes, it IS a big deal.

But how so? What big change is this? Was your Ranger friend terminally affected by being unable to stealth out of boss aggro? No, she wasn’t. And if 6 classes can do fine without Stealth in PvE, how are the final two supposed to not be fine.
Especially given how much avoidance we already have between our clones and our blurs. Before Stealth we’re already halfway invincible in PvE due to the enemy constantly wasting attacks on the clones, allowing us plenty time to recharge Endurance to dodge more.

Faide.6492:

I do not understand what you mean by ‘non-trivial behaviour’, but I fail to see how dumping aggro via stealth cheats a script any more than runnning away from a mob, and losing damage output in the process, for 3-6 seconds does.

You state yourself why.

And again, I repeat: Have someone using Blast Finishers. Group is stacked up. Engineer drops smoke field. Fight has reset and you can do it all over.
Is that intended behaviour?

Carighan.6758:

Faide.6492:

Yes, it IS a big deal.

But how so? What big change is this? Was your Ranger friend terminally affected by being unable to stealth out of boss aggro? No, she wasn’t. And if 6 classes can do fine without Stealth in PvE, how are the final two supposed to not be fine.
Especially given how much avoidance we already have between our clones and our blurs. Before Stealth we’re already halfway invincible in PvE due to the enemy constantly wasting attacks on the clones, allowing us plenty time to recharge Endurance to dodge more.

Excuse me ? avoidance through clones? You must have a different GW2 than me because when I use clones, the mobs just run straight through to me.
In some rare cases the do attack the clone.
When downed mesmers now even more can lay still and wait to die (just like Necro’s) coz the mobs just keeps on hitting you, the teleport is insufficient to give any advantage, if they now even look less at your invisibility, well I’m getting totally disappointed in the mesmer

BIG bad Bull.5690:

Excuse me ? avoidance through clones? You must have a different GW2 than me because when I use clones, the mobs just run straight through to me.
In some rare cases the do attack the clone.
When downed mesmers now even more can lay still and wait to die (just like Necro’s) coz the mobs just keeps on hitting you, the teleport is insufficient to give any advantage, if they now even look less at your invisibility, well I’m getting totally disappointed in the mesmer

In beta, the mobs indeed saw through our clones. But since release, they aggro clones just fine. Not always, mind you, but we aggro rarely enough to be nigh unkillable in PvE as stated.
But yeah, now when downed, we’ll probably die. Like almost every class out there, so it hurts, but it isn’t necessarily undeserved.

Carighan.6758:

Have someone using Blast Finishers. Group is stacked up. Engineer drops smoke field. Fight has reset and you can do it all over.
Is that intended behaviour?

I have to admit that I had not considered the use of group stealth to reset encounters. Ive never done it, and so it never really occurred to me.

running my thief and mesmer yesterday through CoF, I realized that if I pop a stealth an NPC who was already hitting me will continue to follow me and attack, even when I’m stealthed… is this supposed to happen?

Well this mechanic definitely seems to help out poor Rangers in Thief fights since I believe they keep pets Aggro even after going stealth (which makes *sense *since animals have other acute *senses;)

But yea, it does NOT make decoy “useless” take about hyperbole -__- you still get a nice amount of time to regroup/finish cooldowns (and snag a few Boons) when getting overwhelmed. With all the things Mesmers have going for us it’s looks pretty silly to me seeing someone react like that to a change that’s not a big deal.

The point of stealth has always been to give you more time. Time that can be spend on changing position, waiting for a skill to recharge, channel mantras, or using a healing skill without the fear of being interrupted. If you use stealth correctly, this change doesn’t make any noteworthy difference.

In CoF there is one mob that likes to use a channeled flamethrower skill. Because it’s channeled it’ll follow you through stealth.

I use stealthy usually, like i use it in pve. To give me a couple of secs to think of my next move and to start setting up my next move.

So this does not effect me at all.

Actually I lied, I am loving this change. Before I accidently use decoy are something when not meant to. Then boss got off me and went to group or use decoy for just a couple secs to reset up my next move and then lose mobs.

Because of this I took decoy off, and not I can use it again in PvE(Ps,,, I am a tank)

I genuinely missed how stealth worked before this patch. I just enjoyed it much more. I just don’t enjoy this new stealth. I just don’t like it.

I see this as an improvement. Mobs will no longer run away and regen if I want to kill them while stealthed. Rare, but annoying.

SteepledHat.1345:

In CoF there is one mob that likes to use a channeled flamethrower skill. Because it’s channeled it’ll follow you through stealth.

I have wondered if that is intended. Also, I noticed this the other day when fighting a flame legion caster. I stealthed, then dodged to the right and was still hit by a fireball that curved in midair to my new location before stealth wore off.

I was not sure that was how it is meant to be, whether it is a bug, or if I just had a moment of freaky lag.

As for the stealth no longer dropping aggro, I have no problem with that, so long as they (and the projectiles) still can’t see me when I move.

Decoy is still working the same for me now. Mobs still attack my clones when I stealth and when the stealth ends, agro is still on my clones if they are haven’t been destroyed. I like the way stealth works now, it makes much more sense and means I can stealth mid-way through battle without the risk of mob reset. Stealth is now a method of creating a temporary agro lull instead of removing it entirely. It also makes sense that enemies would at least either wait for you to de-stealth or search for you instead of acting like you were never there.

i was fighting another mesmer in PvP and i found out that the stealth worked rly great as i lost sight of her and didnt know who she was amongst all the clones for a moment, however lvling up as a low lvl mesmer, and being really used to the very mundane standard attacks like: Warriors hits you with things, rangers shoots you with things, and this does obvious dmg. whilst the thought of being a Mesmer that makes illusions and does magical dmg not entierly similar to a standard Mage/wizard/sorcerer etc etc is a great thought for most active mmo gamers to try out. however when making a mesmer with next to no knowledge of any class similar to a mesmer or its functions from any games whatsoever, learning to play a mesmer isn’t so easy as most " hardcore or Pro " players seemingly proclaim it is or the way that they talk. mesmer being magic dmg, ofcourse the normal first thing most do is find out wich weapon they’d love to use right.. warriors with greatsword or sword n shield etc etc.. that wont necessery work as a mesmer.. as iv’e learned that almost all magically ranged weapons: Staff, scepter to mention two, does very puny passive dmg with atk nr.1.. the other atks like Phase retreat to mention one adds fun gameplay, but when you put hard cold fact to the table.. over 50% of the time the illusions just does " NOT " get any aggro from the mob.. and they run straight through them and keep attacking me. iv’e noticed most of my illusions does " 0 " dmg to my enemies and only the phantasms like with the sword or gun etc are the ones doing dmg while the others just look fancy and can soak some aggro and dmg in the small % of the time when they DO get aggro.. so that leaves me with either dealing with really bad aggro magical ranged puny dps.. or go melee weapons or pistol ranged or combined.. wich does basically the same direct dmg as warrior or ranger, wich makes me think that its pointless as i might aswell be playing a warrior or a ranger if im going in that direction.. wich forces me to use the staff or scepter combined with a pistol in emergency direct dmg situasions or a Torch for stealth and fire DoT to add it up faster.. overall the start if you’re a Normal player that just wanna sit down n play, Mesmer will most likely make you either annoyed or Angry in some cases because its too confusing and not simplified enough OR severly nerfed.. now i did mention i havent had a mesmer in high level.. so im not talking from a 1-80 experience here.. but i believe strongly that a class, any class should be fun and entertaining but also very Appealing and Gaining from lvl 1 all the way to lvl 80.. if they fail at that.. then there is something Wrong here and it should be corrected.. Period. It would be like.. you buy a CD to play music but unless you know how a CD work in detail combined with the CD player then i cant enjoy the cd even if i just pop it in ?… i just wanna sit down and enjoy myself. Mesmer start.. is not that. Main ISSUE: Need to lose more aggro, and divert it over to Illusions or phantasms without having to be a genious or having to check it out on the internet.. should make it obvious ingame. wich you’d think would be Stealth for a few seconds so the mob attacks ur clones but NOOO.. totally useless.. better run for your life and hope the Condition dmg does its job before they do it to you xD!.. for the next 40-50 lvls or more!.. now thats a FUN class yesss…. also if you actually Read all this i Salute you. bows

Thanks for reading all of this.

Holy necro. No I didn’t read your wall of text in an ancient thread about a different topic.

How did you even find this thread?! Periods and spaces and paragraph breaks are your friend! Bullets and numbered lists don’t bite either >_<.

^What pyro said.

I read about 4 sentences of that rambling post and had a sinking feeling it went on forever. Scrolled page and yeah…

Annern, are you manic?

How did I get here.

Must be the thread necros.

Nretep.2564:

Well, I’d not say that it became useless. I assume it’s like our illusions when the target stealths. They don’t vanish, but wait (on their current spot) for target to reappear. It’s not like you’d forget about your target when it’s become invisible.

I rather see a problem with clearing aggro from mobs to let your allies respawn. Since the 28th Jan patch we can’t respawn when the party has aggro and now even [Mass Invisibility] wouldn’t help there since the mobs would just wait for you. And our invisibility durations are just to short to do anything else.

Anet DOESNT want player to run their way trought dungeon skipping everything to begin with. Right now in their mind mass invisibility is highly missused because before anything else right now its a running tool. This will also make some mesmer think twice about dealing to much damage because this time you wont be able to just go glassy phantasm spam and still win without an effort from constantly disengaging

at first i got all worked up that stealth got a nerf…but then i realized that i hopped in the DeLorean and went back in time…thanks for that

Its not useless, there is a trait that gives you buffs while invisible; I highly reccomend taking it. Those 3 seconds of stealth can give you regen, aegis, and armor and getting buffs can mean all the difference sometimes. Also the stun-breaker element of this skill is useful in itself.

I love reading the original post and a few responses and THEN looking at the date…