Make stealth cap at 16 seconds, any stealth applied that would go over the cap is ignored.
No, I think that’s a bad idea.
What would be the point of PU’s double duration if you can’t make use of doubling your duration? More preferably, just adjust the duration PU increases rather than create some hidden cap. 25~75% increase instead should be good.
That doesn’t change anything you can just cast your stealth skill 0.1s after stealth expires. It just makes stealth more annoying to use.
No. The easiest solution to PU is to revert it back to what it was without watered down boons and then individually buff Veil to 6s and Mass Invisibility to 8.
Decoy/Torch wouldn’t be so annoying at only 4s each. And let’s not forget, 4s of stealth is still very annoying.
Pretty sure the easier solution is just disable the trait and “forget” to reactivate it. Still won’t stop the QQ.
Forget PU, how do we solve the problem of all these ducking duplicate threads?
We are mesmers. Just cloning them!!
No, I think that’s a bad idea.
What would be the point of PU’s double duration if you can’t make use of doubling your duration? More preferably, just adjust the duration PU increases rather than create some hidden cap. 25~75% increase instead should be good.
I am confused about your second sentence? How wouldn’t you be able to make use of the doubling?
No, I think that’s a bad idea.
What would be the point of PU’s double duration if you can’t make use of doubling your duration? More preferably, just adjust the duration PU increases rather than create some hidden cap. 25~75% increase instead should be good.
I am confused about your second sentence? How wouldn’t you be able to make use of the doubling?
If someones maxing their stealth potential, meaning 22~30 seconds, then they should be able to get the full amount from their maximization. If you’re wanting to decrease the amount of time someone can stay in stealth, its better to just reduce what PU gives instead, is what I’m saying.
No, I think that’s a bad idea.
What would be the point of PU’s double duration if you can’t make use of doubling your duration? More preferably, just adjust the duration PU increases rather than create some hidden cap. 25~75% increase instead should be good.
Actually, it’s a pretty neat idea because it means PU and MI can be used outside of max-stealth-stack-to-the-grim scenarios. Which is a waste currently, because why wouldn’t you?
With such a change there’s still a reason to equip many stealth skills if you want that (since you can use them one after the other), or you can equip slightly less.
This is a horrid idea, for the simple reason that hidden caps on how things work are always bad practice. By hiding basic and important mechanics, it makes the game legitimately difficult for both new and old players to understand (like actually difficult, not the ‘difficulty’ that was touted as the cause for the old new player experience).
If there’s an issue with stealth stacking, then fix it directly by changing how long skills last or how you can boost them. Don’t slap a bandaid on by saying ‘oh, well, you can use all these skills…but surprise!!! they don’t work now. Why? Oh, you know…reasons. How were you supposed to know? Oh, you know…we figured you wouldn’t notice/care.’
The proper way to fix PU would be to nerf it to 50% duration, then buff veil to base of 4s, and MI to a base of 7s.
Edit: And besides, this wouldn’t fix anything anyway, you’d just have to time your stacking a bit more carefully, but you could still sustain it as long as you can now by being careful about not hitting the cap.
Well a more intuitive alternative would be to not make stealth stack, period, Pyro.
I mean it has a square buff icon, those generally don’t behave like boons, so it’s more understandable. Plus if globally stealth never stacks, there’s no real loss.
Only issue is stealth skills with secondary effects, like Prestige. Do they still fire? Or do they fail and have 10s CD or something?
Well a more intuitive alternative would be to not make stealth stack, period, Pyro.
I mean it has a square buff icon, those generally don’t behave like boons, so it’s more understandable. Plus if globally stealth never stacks, there’s no real loss.Only issue is stealth skills with secondary effects, like Prestige. Do they still fire? Or do they fail and have 10s CD or something?
The prestige stealth is unlinked to actually being stealthed, so that wouldn’t be an issue here. If you’re stealthed for 20s, and you use the prestige, it’ll still pop after 3/6. The stealth on it is only relevant to the explosion insofar as creating a timer for the game to follow.
That being said, making stealth not stack would break at least shadow refuge, and probably some other things I’m not thinking of atm.
It would break pretty much the entire thief class as they rely on 3-4s of stealth but stacking it. It would make mesmers more mandatory than thieves for skips and for any surprise attack in any game mode.
Needless to say that preventing stealth from stacking is much like nuking hurricanes to disperse them. A very bad idea.
To me mesmer stealth should be completely removed from the game, and mesmers should get mechanics to mimic between clones (and ofc make clones undead) so they can jump between them, mesmers should be mirror masters, illusionists and not outdone thiefs… Both PU and Shatter mesmers are out of place, and should have removed stealth and implemented different mechanics that would involve playstyle that requires position as every other class. Mesmers have basically no need to position unless you got for that 100 ranger spike, and that’s about it, they don’t even have to face in any direction. So basically mesmers need this, because currently they have to easy job with all this stealth. The only class with stealth should be THIEF or class that uses Runes of Trapper/or if they create some stealth rune in future. No other class not even ranger or engie or mesmer shouldn’t be justified for stealth.
To me mesmer stealth should be completely removed from the game, and mesmers should get mechanics to mimic between clones (and ofc make clones undead) so they can jump between them, mesmers should be mirror masters, illusionists and not outdone thiefs… Both PU and Shatter mesmers are out of place, and should have removed stealth and implemented different mechanics that would involve playstyle that requires position as every other class. Mesmers have basically no need to position unless you got for that 100 ranger spike, and that’s about it, they don’t even have to face in any direction. So basically mesmers need this, because currently they have to easy job with all this stealth. The only class with stealth should be THIEF or class that uses Runes of Trapper/or if they create some stealth rune in future. No other class not even ranger or engie or mesmer shouldn’t be justified for stealth.
Fortunately for lurkers and mesmer players alike, your every point has been refuted in your thread.
To me mesmer stealth should be completely removed from the game, and mesmers should get mechanics to mimic between clones (and ofc make clones undead) so they can jump between them, mesmers should be mirror masters, illusionists and not outdone thiefs…
Honestly I’d far prefer that, but that’d be a huge rework. Bleh.
That’s an odd idea, having a 16seconds cap would be somewhat useless without having ’’revealed’’ applied to you for reaching that cap. It would also be an extremely annoying change to deal with, while nerfing the duration doesn’t involve an extra odd factor like a duration cap.
To me mesmer stealth should be completely removed from the game, and mesmers should get mechanics to mimic between clones (and ofc make clones undead) so they can jump between them, mesmers should be mirror masters, illusionists and not outdone thiefs… Both PU and Shatter mesmers are out of place, and should have removed stealth and implemented different mechanics that would involve playstyle that requires position as every other class. Mesmers have basically no need to position unless you got for that 100 ranger spike, and that’s about it, they don’t even have to face in any direction. So basically mesmers need this, because currently they have to easy job with all this stealth. The only class with stealth should be THIEF or class that uses Runes of Trapper/or if they create some stealth rune in future. No other class not even ranger or engie or mesmer shouldn’t be justified for stealth.
Thankfully you don’t design this game.
Even thematically speaking, the master of ILLUSION has every right to cast invisibility type spells.
The bread and butter for Illusionists IRL is to make stuff disappear. Like the Statue of Liberty, audience volunteers, and even themselves; only to reappear in an unexpected place. Illusion is making you see what isn’t there and believe it is (clones) and not see what is actually there (misdirection, stealth). Seems pretty in line to Mesmer to me.
This is a horrid idea, for the simple reason that hidden caps on how things work are always bad practice. By hiding basic and important mechanics, it makes the game legitimately difficult for both new and old players to understand (like actually difficult, not the ‘difficulty’ that was touted as the cause for the old new player experience).
If there’s an issue with stealth stacking, then fix it directly by changing how long skills last or how you can boost them. Don’t slap a bandaid on by saying ‘oh, well, you can use all these skills…but surprise!!! they don’t work now. Why? Oh, you know…reasons. How were you supposed to know? Oh, you know…we figured you wouldn’t notice/care.’
The proper way to fix PU would be to nerf it to 50% duration, then buff veil to base of 4s, and MI to a base of 7s.
Edit: And besides, this wouldn’t fix anything anyway, you’d just have to time your stacking a bit more carefully, but you could still sustain it as long as you can now by being careful about not hitting the cap.
What on earth are you talking about? This is how normal stealth works now. It is capped at 18-20 seconds. It is Hide in Shadows (mesmer stealth) that is messed up.
As for your edit I will review my math.
Easiest and best solution is to leave it just like it is now and not listen to the whiners.
I actually like the idea of stealth not stackable. Skills that rely on stacking could get their own stealth item (lice Decoy once had… oh good times. Decoy once was immune to revealed^^) and remain stackable. Like shadow refuge. Those things must be mentioned in the description of the skill of course.
I agree that hidden caps are not a good idea. I always hear that this and that only stacks to a certain degree, but I never remember which stacks how long/often, because it isn’t mentioned in the game anywhere (unless I read it over).
PU was never op because of the duration of stealth, it WAS because of the lack of bad boons you have gained. A long invis uptime is nice to protect yourself, but it’s far from op. Would it be the old PU, hehe that’d be op.
I actually like the idea of stealth not stackable. Skills that rely on stacking could get their own stealth item (lice Decoy once had… oh good times. Decoy once was immune to revealed^^) and remain stackable. Like shadow refuge. Those things must be mentioned in the description of the skill of course.
That’s a pretty intuitive way to convey this. If Prestige, Decoy Veil and MI all have stealth effects with different names, they’d be in effect in parallel instead of stacking in duration.
I actually like the idea of stealth not stackable. Skills that rely on stacking could get their own stealth item (lice Decoy once had… oh good times. Decoy once was immune to revealed^^) and remain stackable. Like shadow refuge. Those things must be mentioned in the description of the skill of course.
That’s a pretty intuitive way to convey this. If Prestige, Decoy Veil and MI all have stealth effects with different names, they’d be in effect in parallel instead of stacking in duration.
Yeah, this was the case with Decoy in the beginning of GW2. If you would sit in stealth and pop decoy, it would not stack, but have a parallel effect with the decoy icon. And if popped early enough, decoy stealth would run out, before you regular stealth (from MI for example) would end.
So we could give all stealth skills their own stealth, which will be shown with a stealth icon using the skill’s image. Stealth from SR and conbo finisher on the other hand could remain with the usual stealth icon and keep stacking with itself.
crossposting this from the other thread:
Regarding the idea that stealth in general is anti-fun for those without it:
What about a reverse Revealed?
When you first enter stealth, you gain a stack of Hidden.
Hidden decreases the likelihood of [penalty X]. Hidden weakens over time, and after [time y] goes away completely.
What is penalty X?
Interesting suggestions I’ve seen include a slight blur effect up close, a probability of being spotted proportionate to distance from the target (like stealth in WoW), being revealed more easily by more things, being revealed by creating illusions, etc.
That way, we can provide some level of counterplay to extreme stealth durations, while conserving the reasons stealth exists in the first place (combat-scale positioning, defensive utility for mesmers and thieves, something to keep pvpers on their toes).
It doesn’t punish low-duration stealth at all, and it doesn’t remove long-duration stealth.
Mesmers who rely on extremely long stealth (especially the full 50s you could get with a full spec) still get that stealth, but it becomes increasingly difficult to use that stealth to burst someone, as the risks grow up close the longer you wait, up to a certain point.
Many of the suggestions we’ve seen would be disastrous for thieves in general, and mesmers in high-tier pvp play.
Capping stealth is just bad design, as has been pointed out.
But a tapering Hidden buff allows total preservation of existing stealth mechanics that depend on it (backstab), continued value to PU, while still granting counterplay to the more extreme results of PU.
My personal favorite candidate for Penalty X is a blurring effect when a non-Hidden, but stealthed, player comes close to another player. The magnitude of the effect can be scaled with stacks of Hidden, reaching its most pronounced when Hidden fully expires. Furthermore, the range of vision of the effect can be scaled with Hidden as well.
By tuning the full extent of the blurring once Hidden has expired allows careful management of the potency of long-term stealth.
If Anet finds that longer stealth is countered too easily, they can just reduce the visibility of the blurring, or cut back on its range. And vice versa.
A clever player can still catch ambush people after long stealth, but if the ambushed player is also clever, they have a better chance to counter it. This wouldn’t work all that well without Hidden, because as has already been noted, high-tier pvpers will probably spot the blurring every kitten time, completely neutering stealth as a combat tactic.
Players spacing out their stealth instead of stacking it in order to refresh Hidden are creating exactly the opportunities for counterplay that we desire: moments when they are visible.
An additional possibility after Hidden runs out is a chance to be revealed (or at least unstealthed) when taking damage from an enemy.
The point is, Hidden allows many different ways to soften longer stealth without punishing shorter stealth, and allow relatively long stealth abilities like PU-Mass Invis and Shadow Refuge to be valuable without creating most of the problems we’re seeing from 30-50 second stealth cheese.
The very nature of it also pushes players away from the counter-productive mentality of camping in stealth in sPVP, as it rewards more up-front stealth play.
(To that point, I’d love to see the The Pledge reverted back to a flat 20% cdr, as the current mechanic encourages players to abuse PU as much as possible. It takes 13.3s of stealth to get 20% cdr on torch skills right now, which is getting pretty close to the 16s a lot of players are suggesting as a cap. In other words, The Pledge encourages stealth cheese, which exacerbates the PU issue)
Either Anet will nerf it or give other classes tools to compensate. No matter what idea people think is the best or what massive change in mechanic they come up with history probably has the answers you are looking for. Expect a nerf or a general buff to revealing traits. Until then compensate.
People should start gearing the discussion towards the actual issues of PU instead of the other useless arguing going on about it. PU disproportionately makes The Presitge & Decoy much stronger in conjunction than Mesmer’s other stealthing capabilities in Veil, Mass Invisibility & Desperate Decoy. Any nerf/buff to PU will… you guessed it, disproportionately effect those two groups of utilities/traits.
The simple answer to an OP stealth mechanic is to make Reveal more accessible/available to some classes: Thief, Mesmer, Ranger and Engineer come to mind [along with Dragonhunter].
If stealth is as big of an issue as some people would like you to believe, competitors will start choosing skills to counter it. It would be a way to bring specifically Rangers closer into meta since I imagine they would get the most access to it via traps. Same with Engineers. Maybe it could be added to turrets someway considering they are trash now.
PU is working as intended.
Honestly the idea that stealth is predator-mode-only could be really good and allow for a lot of interesting buffs to stealth skills and traits.
HotS has this on their stealthers, and it makes them more varied to play as you cannot guarantee to not be seen unleeeeess you’re holding still.
I said it in another thread and I’ll say it here. We just need a few more ways to flush people out of stealth. Not saying add it to everything, just add it to one or two ok skills and you’ll be good. I’d love it if AoE reveal was added to one of the ranger F2 traits so they could be the snoopers.
Guards are getting a reveal trap with dragon hunter which does good damage and bleeds so it’s one way forward. The engy trait is…ok but competes against something a lot better imo. Could add AoE reveal to fear me or something so rather than thieves simply steal thing up to heal up and avoid damage they can have the blanket removed so the warrior can finish them.
Then, and this is the important thing, we can stop needing thieves and buff them a little.
PU is working as intended.
So PU is intended to make the mesmer basically godmode and able to one shot anytime they want? At least without PU you can predict the burst because the stealth duration is lower. I think making it back to 1 second but buffing veil to 3-4 seconds and MI to 7-8 seconds should be enough.
PU is working as intended.
So PU is intended to make the mesmer basically godmode and able to one shot anytime they want? At least without PU you can predict the burst because the stealth duration is lower. I think making it back to 1 second but buffing veil to 3-4 seconds and MI to 7-8 seconds should be enough.
I’ve been saying this for weeks. Veil should be 6 seconds. 7 with PU. Mesmers only go through Veil twice when they’re dueling. And if you need to go through it again, it’s because you attacked out of stealth typically…
Thing is 1s extra of stealth isn’t a “build defining” grandmaster trait and the boons are so watered down you can’t rely on them.
PU in that state wouldn’t be worth taking over the other 2 traits and in no way comes close to other classes defence line traits when looked at in their relevance to the class.
Thing is 1s extra of stealth isn’t a “build defining” grandmaster trait and the boons are so watered down you can’t rely on them.
PU in that state wouldn’t be worth taking over the other 2 traits and in no way comes close to other classes defence line traits when looked at in their relevance to the class.
I must respectfully disagree with you. PU has always been a strong trait before the revamp. 4s on Decoy/Torch is still very strong.
Thing is 1s extra of stealth isn’t a “build defining” grandmaster trait and the boons are so watered down you can’t rely on them.
PU in that state wouldn’t be worth taking over the other 2 traits and in no way comes close to other classes defence line traits when looked at in their relevance to the class.
I must respectfully disagree with you. PU has always been a strong trait before the revamp. 4s on Decoy/Torch is still very strong.
Yeah, I agree. PU was never in any need of a buff whatsoever to begin with. That they thought it would be a good idea to double duration makes me wonder if they play their own game outside pvp.
Sadly pu is just hated. Left alone add 1 second double whatever the case is will never be enough. If you can count to base level stealth then am I wrong in to assume one can count higher if using pu? I am not opposed to a nerf but I think if damage was looked at across all classes first it might actually help the situation before nerfing class specifics.
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