Guild Wars 2

1. When casting Winds of Chaos (staff auto attack) if you stealth while any of your attacks are still en route to their target, you immediately break stealth when they hit and have the “uncovered” condition. Is this intentional? It’s lame.

2. When casting a phantasm from stealth, formerly you would not break stealth. Since the last patch though, if you cast a phantasm, such as Phantasmal Mage (Torch 5) while stealthed, you begin auto-attacking, which can break stealth. The workaround is that you can face away from your enemy which prevents autoattack, but doesn’t prevent you from casting the phantasm. Then you must lose your target and reaquire the target when you turn to face them. It seems like a clumsy mechanic and doesn’t feel like playing “as intended.”

3. Shatter skills don’t seem to break stealth. Am I seeing this right? It also doesn’t seem to make sense, and feels powerfully unbalanced in my favor, as a mesmer.

Comments?

1. Yeah it’s annoying but that’s a learn to play issue. Get used to not stealthing after using auto with staff.

2. Turn of auto attack and auto target.

3. As corrected by Pyro below. When a Mesmer shatters, you should think of the clones as large, slow projectiles that the Mesmer shot at something. Despite the damage being produced when a clone finds the target, the Mesmer is the ultimate source of all shatter effects.

To make it easier you just need to know the source of the damage. If the sources of the damage is in stealth it will become revealed. If you are not the source of the damage, you do not get revealed.

Forgot to mention, it only affects direct damage, if you apply a condition but didn’t do direct damage you will not be revealed.

Edited in light of Pyro’s post.

@Apharma:

That’s not correct. When a Mesmer shatters, you should think of the clones as large, slow projectiles that the Mesmer shot at something. Despite the damage being produced when a clone finds the target, the Mesmer is the ultimate source of all shatter effects. This can easily be seen through a second or two of testing, either with stealth/revealed or by using the scepter block/counter on a shatter.

anyhow, up above first it says, if a mesmer shatters from stealth, but the own shatter doesn’t hit the target it won’t reveal him, is that correct or incorrect?

DHawk.2687:

anyhow, up above first it says, if a mesmer shatters from stealth, but the own shatter doesn’t hit the target it won’t reveal him, is that correct or incorrect?

I addressed that in my first response.

well then i don’t see where the problem is, if a shatter, no matter in what scenario reveales, that’s fine
and i personally don’t mind the high stealth uptime
but what bothers me a bit, i was roaming with friends yesterday, one of them PU mesmer, he had the trait, that everytime he gets stealth, it decreases his torch cd’s
the thing is, when we stacked stealth as thieves ( Pistol #5 + Shortbow #2) it also reduced his cd, so fast that he could spam the skill as much as he wanted
that imo needs to be tweaked, so only stealth from either yourself or mesmer stealth decreases the cd

AlphatheWhite.9351:

DHawk.2687:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

DHawk.2687:

are you kidding me xD
after reading that the mesmer can, by the info provided by the patch above, i was asking if he felt that as bing too strong, hence op, it was a simple question that is it
furthermore acting up about a simple question and insulting me because of that is worth reporting

1. No, the OP was asking thoughts about some specific issues with stealth that he noticed, two of which were a detriment to mesmers, one a benefit. In either case, the OP was not bringing up some general question of balance.
2. Anyone who has perused this board lately knows the “MESMERS ARE OP OMG” is a particular hobby horse of yours right now, and you are fighting it in several threads already. Trying to bring that particular fight in here is in poor taste and clearly risks derailing the thread, which is disrespectful to the OP and to the forum in general, and is generally harmful to the ability of posters on this forum to discuss a variety of topics related and unrelated to your particular beef.
3. I only deliver insults related to the conduct of people. I don’t know much about your personal character, but I do know that the choice you made with that post suggests bad things about you. Anyone can make mistakes, so I haven’t said anything about your character directly, but that doesn’t change what your actions say about you. I won’t hesitate to point that out, any more than I will ignore when people point out inappropriate behavior on my part.

then how about you show me where i supposably spam the “mesmer is op”
the only thing I’ve done was try to DISCUSS balancing issues without calling bs on anyone or anything, my main issue as i have said many times is that the blind on shatter is imo too strong and that condi mesmers are a joke IMHO

now correct me if I’m wrong, but if i see a lot fo qq on other threads and i simply ASK for an OPINION there is nothing wrong with that.
and in a post titled “Stealth balance and gameplay issues?” this question was totally legit.

Keying off a tagline while ignoring the actual post is exactly what I meant about disrespect to the OP.

Yes, you are wrong, seeing a lot of qq on other threads and bringing that subject into a thread that is NOT about that qq is bad until it becomes clear that the OP really is tied into the qq (for example, if we figured out by discussion that the OP’s third issue was actually one of the main reasons for the problems people are having with Mesmers—unlikely, as no one has really been talking about this particular issue). In fact, as I mentioned already, you risk bringing that qq war into a thread that is about specific issues, which would by experience result in derailing this thread.

Are you…are you really asking me to go digging up your posts? I’m even one of the people you were arguing with!

Given that blind on shatter only happens if you hit with your shatter, and a stealthed mesmer who hits with the clone shatter but not the personal shatter is wasting blind time by staying stealthed, and has wasted a shatter on a blind instead of an alpha strike, and has most importantly given away the element of surprise that is probably the biggest problem people have with stealth in general, no that doesn’t qualify a general question of balance as on-topic, especially as that general question brings the threat of expanding the qq war to this thread!

I don’t mean to imply you’re in any way among the worst of the qqers, I’ve appreciated so far your intelligence and clarity of expression in the other threads. In particular, your personal experience as a thief has dramatically outmatched most of the whiners in specificity and relevance.
In general I’ve found you far more reasonable in general than certain others I could name, but this post was out of place and inappropriate.

As Fay suggests though, I’m gonna leave it there.

Fyi i wanted to know his opinion about the mesmer being to strong to ask him if yes, what anet could do to balance that, since I’ve been introducing little ideas in other forums, e.g. nerfing DP so other sets on tief are more viable
instead of running to conclusions right away a simple question why I’ve asked would have been better

DHawk.2687:

well then i don’t see where the problem is, if a shatter, no matter in what scenario reveales, that’s fine
and i personally don’t mind the high stealth uptime
but what bothers me a bit, i was roaming with friends yesterday, one of them PU mesmer, he had the trait, that everytime he gets stealth, it decreases his torch cd’s
the thing is, when we stacked stealth as thieves ( Pistol #5 + Shortbow #2) it also reduced his cd, so fast that he could spam the skill as much as he wanted
that imo needs to be tweaked, so only stealth from either yourself or mesmer stealth decreases the cd

Yeah, I and I believe Apharma (?) noticed that the other day, and have been pointing it out when we can.

Double stealth gives double benefits from The Pledge.
It’s worse though!
You probably didn’t realize it, but he was gaining cdr on his torch stealth at 3 times the rate it is supposed to!

Permastealthing with mesmer stealth at the moment puts the cooldown of Torch 4 at 12s, which means The Pledge is cutting off a whopping 18s from the cooldown if you can keep up stealth that whole time. As far as damage this is still outperformed by Engineer Blowtorch, but the stealth uptime you get as a result is ridonkulous.

But add in thief stealth doubling the benefit, and all bets are off. That’s an aoe blind+confusion and burn coupled with high stealth on something like a 6s cooldown (less??).

It’s too much, and worse, it exacerbates the general problem with The Pledge: it incentivizes exactly the kind of stealth camping behavior that people are having a problem with.

IMO, we can’t even begin to truly evaluate the real impact of PU until The Pledge is fixed or even changed entirely, because the increase to personal uptime that mesmers get is off the charts.

For perspective, by the official numbers, the maximum stealth I can get on a Mesmer by taking torch, PU, The Pledge, Decoy, Veil, Mimic and MI (read: dedicating absolutely everything possible to stealth) is 50s. That’s still a little high, but for sacrificing build viability to get there, and the fact that The Pledge is still contributing abt 32% cdr at that point, it’s not terribad. Viable mes stealth would be far less.

But with a broken The Pledge, I’m only 2s or so off of permanent stealth. In any map that’s not totally open, it would be child’s play to find a nice corner to chill in for the occasional second that I’m visible.
That’s too much, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the complaints are a product of that excessive torch stealth.

Either way, I’m not sure we can be sure either way until it’s fixed and we give it some time to see.

Fay.2357:

@Apharma:

That’s not correct. When a Mesmer shatters, you should think of the clones as large, slow projectiles that the Mesmer shot at something. Despite the damage being produced when a clone finds the target, the Mesmer is the ultimate source of all shatter effects. This can easily be seen through a second or two of testing, either with stealth/revealed or by using the scepter block/counter on a shatter.

I stand corrrected, thanks for the info as always Pyro. I’ll edit my post accordingly.

Just a note, I don’t mean Apharma and I are talking about the double-cdr via thief and mesmer stealth. As an isolated issue, there is no situation in which you don’t gain more stealth for both characters by chaining stealth than by doubling up on it[edit].

The issue we’ve noticed is the extreme over-cdr from The Pledge, which should be 1.5%/s of stealth, but is actually ticking closer to 4.5%.

Doubling up thief/mes stealth puts that at something like 9% cdr per second, which is stupid, and brings the side effects of The Prestige into play, namely the aoe blind and burn. I actually don’t know how viable tactically such a combo would end up being, but the interaction is totally broken from a numbers perspective.

DHawk.2687:

well then i don’t see where the problem is, if a shatter, no matter in what scenario reveales, that’s fine
and i personally don’t mind the high stealth uptime
but what bothers me a bit, i was roaming with friends yesterday, one of them PU mesmer, he had the trait, that everytime he gets stealth, it decreases his torch cd’s
the thing is, when we stacked stealth as thieves ( Pistol #5 + Shortbow #2) it also reduced his cd, so fast that he could spam the skill as much as he wanted
that imo needs to be tweaked, so only stealth from either yourself or mesmer stealth decreases the cd

I created a thread about that trait, perhaps you could comment on it and make sure your voice is heard. I also feel a lot of the “high stealth PU OP mesmers, plz nerf” from other people (not you) is in relation to the torch trait which is just plain old bad.

@Winds of Chaos problem: That’s it! I’ve been wondering this whole time what’s causing that.
It kind of makes auto-stealth almost pointless as an advantage, doesn’kitten I mean, it can’t be interrupted, but now I can’t decoy/prestige to get away from a thief/warrior, because I’ve gotta wait for my last aa to actually hit? Worse, because Winds of Chaos is slow, and bounces. Ugh.

The worst part is that reflect reveals its super annoying basically with manipulation trait you can’t use mass inv in combat vs so e classes