Guild Wars 2

Oh GUESS WHAT GUYS.
You can’t even use Sick’Em while the target is hidden, because you can only use it when you have the enemy targeted.
Way to make a useless gimmick. What’s the point of popping it if you can only apply the reveal while the enemy isn’t hidden yet?
Words cannot describe my level of annoyance.

It’s a shout people. Why do I need a target to SHOUT.

To be honest this is what I expected and I dont have a problem with it really, except that 4s isnt long enough.

That’s how we all expected it to work. If it’s broken, it cancels other abilties. Can someone in the know check if its really broken? OP is new around here.

I assumed the whole point of adding the reveal to the skill was to prevent thieves who A) wanted to try revealing in a sticky situation and REVEALED hidden thieves.

Why would it make sense to have to rely on using it on another enemy JUST to reveal the thief you want? That limits the usefulness of this skill to team fights or guessing when the thief is about to pop stealth, which in this case 4s is largely inadequate.

At this point Rapid Fire is still leagues better than Sick’Em for dealing with stealth, and it doesn’t require me to drop a utility for some gimmicky crap that will only work based on specific battle conditions.

No you misunderstand. You prevent the thief from stealthing by targeting him and casting reveal.

Chopps.5047:

No you misunderstand. You prevent the thief from stealthing by targeting him and casting reveal.

If this is truly the way it was meant to be designed then I don’t see it worthwhile for taking over a stunbreaker or something else much more useful in all round situations.

Either the duration should be extended or the cooldown reduced. OR they should make the change to not requiring a target for this skill to work, and applying the reveal debuff over the entire affected radius. 2000 radius is still too much to be honest for reveal debuff to have any significant results. Your pet isn’t going to reach/damage anyone at that range and your bow isn’t touching that far either.

thats the problem. it’s not worth taking this. that’s what everyone was saying when the patch notes leaked. ranger utilities are pathetic. if take anything other than signets and muddy terrain, you’re gimping your survivability and utility. we never needed the reveal debuff to kill thieves. we have tons of immobilize and hard CC for this.

instead of balancing and improving trait lines they add useless mechanics that arent even worth taking…

I think you’re suppose to use it while the thief is visible. When fighting a thief they usually have a pattern of DPS before they feel the need to stealth heal. Depending on how reckless the thief is, sometimes they get a little low before they stealth. Usually you can predict when a thief is about to stealth and hit Rapid Fire to continue to hit them in stealth and track their location. Now you can hit Sick Em and follow up with Rapid Fire when Sick Em’s reveal is about to end.

Personally I still think it’s not worth a slot on the bar, but it’s still useful. It’s a proactive counter to stealth. Honestly I doubt it will make much of a difference in most fights so this is probably a weak buff, and if you had trouble with stealth before I doubt this will change much for you, but it’s basically four more seconds the thief is vulnerable.

It’s hard to say much about this patch. Underwhelming is an understatement.

I still think Sic’ Em needs it’s functionality changed entirely. Instead of requiring a target, why doesn’t it just give a base damage/movement buff to our pet for any action it does? Why does the buff go away when I use F2? Why can’t the destealth occur in a AoE form 600 radius around the pet? Shouts are so lackluster right now, no self-respecting Ranger could possibly use it without some backlash involved.

Shiren.9532:

I think you’re suppose to use it while the thief is visible. When fighting a thief they usually have a pattern of DPS before they feel the need to stealth heal. Depending on how reckless the thief is, sometimes they get a little low before they stealth. Usually you can predict when a thief is about to stealth and hit Rapid Fire to continue to hit them in stealth and track their location. Now you can hit Sick Em and follow up with Rapid Fire when Sick Em’s reveal is about to end.

Personally I still think it’s not worth a slot on the bar, but it’s still useful. It’s a proactive counter to stealth. Honestly I doubt it will make much of a difference in most fights so this is probably a weak buff, and if you had trouble with stealth before I doubt this will change much for you, but it’s basically four more seconds the thief is vulnerable.

It’s hard to say much about this patch. Underwhelming is an understatement.

What I found to be more effective is using Zephyr’s Speed when they are about to stealth along with rapid fire. The burst is unhealable and if you were to compare the two utilities, quickness > reveal in any number of situations.

The whole point of applying reveal is so that you can burst your thief to a downed state within those 4 seconds. If you can’t burst (Rapid fire is often a little too slow on regular speed), then why take reveal?

Use sic em only when you need to… You can’t spam it, thieves will be waiting for it. You need to get them when they’re ATLEAST <20% and you have viable burst ready for them coupled with lockdown. Keep in mind also their shadow’s embrace trait which helps them remove conditions got nerfed to 1 every 10 seconds instead of 3 seconds while in stealth. It’ll be alright jsut be smart with the skill.

Give the utility 5 stacks of might and fury for 15 seconds for the player and its nearby allies. Increase the revealed debuff to 5 seconds. Everyone down the thief!

I confirm: sic em is bugged. If you press “Sic Em” and then stealth your jaguar, the stealth overrides the sic em buff. So you still have to cast things in the proper order. Really this is a huge problem because it’s not clear to people that this happens. It’s never clearly explained anywhere. You could use this combo and not know that for a while. So, just a warning out there, be sure you don’t cancel if you use it.

if something its broken with sic ‘em it’s that it will get cancelled if you give any other commands to your pet, so it doesn’t work together with many F2 skills..
but why should they fix it, instead they give it a useless stealth detection.

Henner.1209:

if something its broken with sic ‘em it’s that it will get cancelled if you give any other commands to your pet, so it doesn’t work together with many F2 skills..
but why should they fix it, instead they give it a useless stealth detection.

It’s not “if”. It is broken in the manner you describe, no doubt about it.

Chopps.5047:

Henner.1209:

if something its broken with sic ‘em it’s that it will get cancelled if you give any other commands to your pet, so it doesn’t work together with many F2 skills..
but why should they fix it, instead they give it a useless stealth detection.

It’s not “if”. It is broken in the manner you describe, no doubt about it.

I am really starting to get kitten ed, because all those problems are known for so long. Like the howler i got for my ranger doesn’t stop “howling” at night when using certain skills which gets annoying really fast.. when i googled the problem i found a topic from 6 MONTHS ago which described the exact same problem.
Then they “rework” the legendaries but dont fix it. Now they “rework” sic’em and don’t fix the real problem

Short summary of the replies:

It’s useless. It’s like a dev’s bad joke on rangers.

Cufufalating.8479:

except that 4s isnt long enough.

EVERYONE has this sentiment…

Except for that one guy who says it’s fine b/c they only want to use it when Stomping —> If you’re taking any total-trash utility skill just for Stomping…. then you’re missing the entire point of “Utility” and therefore missing out on Downing a lot more people than you could be saving up potential for the Stomp itself. …If you’re really good at timing stuff, then you don’t need any crutch to Stomp.

You expected a skill that would hard counter an entire profession? Sic em is now a skillful play. When you see or predict them about to cloack and dagger, shadow refuge, or black powder → HS and you throw revealed on them so they waste skills.

Sic em has its place for higher dps builds to fight thieves and in small group play to guarantee stomps imo.

Eurantien.4632:

You expected a skill that would hard counter an entire profession? Sic em is now a skillful play. When you see or predict them about to cloack and dagger, shadow refuge, or black powder -> HS and you throw revealed on them so they waste skills.

Sic em has its place for higher dps builds to fight thieves and in small group play to guarantee stomps imo.

I really don’t mind if they take reveal away from sic’ em. We didn’t even ask for this. Would much rather have proper buffs to rangers.

sic´em is all right, just learn how to use it…..and this skill doesnt only affect thieves, but every class, wich have access to stealth (mes, ranger, engi….and all other classes, wich could be probably be stealthed by other classes like thieves, or mes, or with combos)

mistsim.2748:

thats the problem. it’s not worth taking this. that’s what everyone was saying when the patch notes leaked. ranger utilities are pathetic. if take anything other than signets and muddy terrain, you’re gimping your survivability and utility. we never needed the reveal debuff to kill thieves. we have tons of immobilize and hard CC for this.

Give them a break guys. The reveal is a new mechanic they’re adding to the game, and the ranger skill is their inaugural attempt at it. They’ll put it in, see how it plays out, and tweak it based on how that paytesting goes. It’s not like they said “this is how it’s going to be and we’re never going to change it, ever.”

Now, the sic’em buff being overwritten by any other pet-affecting skill, that’s a long-standing and oft-reported bug. They fully deserve our criticism for not fixing that a year ago.

Zetus.1476:

It’s a shout people. Why do I need a target to SHOUT.

The idea is that you’re telling your pet to catch the scent of a particular target, so the pet can keep track of them (thus revealing them to everyone else) if they stealth.

Shiren.9532:

Personally I still think it’s not worth a slot on the bar, but it’s still useful. It’s a proactive counter to stealth. Honestly I doubt it will make much of a difference in most fights so this is probably a weak buff, and if you had trouble with stealth before I doubt this will change much for you, but it’s basically four more seconds the thief is vulnerable.

Yeah, I don’t think the problem is so much that the reveal is useless, it’s that the sic’em skill simply isn’t worth loading 99.5% of the time. Fixing the overwrite bug with it would help considerably. But the damage boost from it really needs to be increased.

The warrior shout For Great Justice gives 8 sec of fury and 3 stacks of might for 25 sec on a 25 sec cooldown. Just the might alone is +105 power, which for a 2100 power build is +5% damage over time. And it affects up to 5 people, not just yourself.

+40% pet damage for 10 of 40 sec works out to an average +10% damage. But it’s only the pet. If you figure the pet does 40% of your total damage (which is being generous – only the cats come close to that), then it’s a net +4% damage over time. And it only affects 1 entity, 2 if you take a GM trait. The skill needs to be improved to do more damage, or its duration lengthened, or its cooldown reduced.

Sic Em should be a normal shout that affects the pet and allies: allies should get fury and might stacks from it or something. The shouts act too much like weak versions of signets. Now, I get what you’re saying about how good reveal can be. I’m just saying, the shouts don’t function very well right now.

Realistically, Protect Me should give AoE stability and regeneration as well as clear 1 condition from allies. Stuff like that would make shouts a lot better and gameplay a lot more fun.

Right now rangers are bland in terms of utilities. The potential is there but the dev team failed to deliver on this patch. I give it a D+ for the inattention to detail and neglect of bug fixes.

Eurantien.4632:

You expected a skill that would hard counter an entire profession?

LOL @ this guy who just said Thieves have Stealth and ONLY stealth and nothing else to fall back on….. Most thieves with any kind of real skill would find that insulting.

Well Sic ’em was next to useless and Sic ’em in now next to useless. Problems with the way it works are not even worth mentioning because guess what…

Six ’em is next to useless

ilr.9675:

Eurantien.4632:

You expected a skill that would hard counter an entire profession?

LOL @ this guy who just said Thieves have Stealth and ONLY stealth and nothing else to fall back on….. Most thieves with any kind of real skill would find that insulting.

Professions, builds, whatever. Point is the OP wanted a skill that hard countered entire specs (only thief build with no stealth is s/d which is already OP and requires little skill) like almost every thief build and a lot of stealth based mesmers.

Well. I don’t know about you guys but have you guys ever thought that thief is not the only class that rely on stealth.

Mesmer has a very similiar mechanic that grant them stealth as well. But unlike thief, mesmer can’t go invis all the time. Roaming mesmer used decoy and/or veil. Mass invis has duration of 5 sec and cast time of 1.75s.

Also if you guys have not tested this yet, apparently the “revealed” debuff is casted the moment you cast it. So you don’t actually have to wait for you pet to hit the target for the debuff to take effect. But again 4 sec debuff is not that great but a good start to control invis mesmer. I don’t expect this to be able to counter thief just yet since they have way to many skill that allows them to be stealth. They even have field for it.

there are other problems with this skill among other things.
hope they do a better job when they move on to providing engies with stealth detection.

1 – it is single target, all thieves have to do now is run in packs and bait rangers into blowing that one skill, than bring in the cavalry of stealth abusers.
2 – the debuff is to short. thieves already have a 4sec. debuff, unless it stacks duration it’s pointless
3 – needs a target to work. this is the most ridiculous part of it all, it should be an AOE ground target or the pet scans an AOE area instead of needing a target

makes me think about swtor’s stealth detection on powertech class.
now that was skill based stealth detection.

*it has an area of effect, where it scans the area for 10-15 seconds for stealth characters.
only you and your team can see the area being scanned, once a stealth character trips into it, the hurting starts and he cannot stealth for 10 seconds, well there is one cooldown they could blow and still go stealth but it only lasts for 3 seconds and has a huge cooldown.

but at least, stealth worked better there than it has ever worked here that’s for sure.
it still baffles the mind that the game had no counter to stealth for 12 months, other than run away if you can !

I played with it some

Its not that great for 1v1 fights, Thieves will still get away just as easily, and it won’t really be of use.

However if you’re zerging around on Ranger, Please for the love of god, Use this ability..

I caused the death of quite a few thieves I just happen to run across that went for the stealth at half life..

It doesn’t make us more more valuable, just more kittenish, and to be honest, there needs to be a kittenish class in this game to annoy thieves.

Xsorus.2507:

I played with it some

Its not that great for 1v1 fights, Thieves will still get away just as easily, and it won’t really be of use.

However if you’re zerging around on Ranger, Please for the love of god, Use this ability..

I caused the death of quite a few thieves I just happen to run across that went for the stealth at half life..

It doesn’t make us more more valuable, just more kittenish, and to be honest, there needs to be a kittenish class in this game to annoy thieves.

If they had left it at 3000 range it might have been of some use in tagging one guy to show where a just veiled zerg was moving to but by 2000 units they are already veiled and will be on top of you a second later.

Yea, Not great for using against Veil, Its more for trolling thieves

I also hoped that “sick’em” could reveal already stealthed creatures despite them not being targeted. A bit annoying yes. It should be an AoE effect to it (no targetting required).

Never expected it to reveal something you didnt have targeted, this was never implied.

Watch their reveal buff. When it blinks really fast, press button. Boom 8 second reveal.

Eurantien.4632:

ilr.9675:

Eurantien.4632:

You expected a skill that would hard counter an entire profession?

LOL @ this guy who just said Thieves have Stealth and ONLY stealth and nothing else to fall back on….. Most thieves with any kind of real skill would find that insulting.

Professions, builds, whatever. Point is the OP wanted a skill that hard countered entire specs (only thief build with no stealth is s/d which is already OP and requires little skill) like almost every thief build and a lot of stealth based mesmers.

First of all, you’re making a wrong assumption. Never did I say I was expecting the skill to be a hard counter for the entire profession or spec. Thieves have many tools available to escape that don’t necessarily rely on stealth. A 4 second window to shadow step away while under the reveal debuff is a very short window.

What I had in mind when I created the topic was that the skill left a lot to be desired and needs tweaking for it to be useful. Even if the aoe non targeting tweaks were granted, thieves should still have enough mechanics to escape. It’s on a 40 second cool down.

Kilger.5490:

Never expected it to reveal something you didnt have targeted, this was never implied.

They never stated that it needed to target someone to work and their wording of “sniff out” to describe it implies finding something already hidden aka stealthed.

Substance E.4852:

Kilger.5490:

Never expected it to reveal something you didnt have targeted, this was never implied.

They never stated that it needed to target someone to work and their wording of “sniff out” to describe it implies finding something already hidden aka stealthed.

The entire usage of the word “reveal” is to make something apparent that wasn’t already so. With that said, the concept of revealing a non-stealthed player to keep them unstealthed is a blatant misuse of the word and has led to my general sentiment of disappoint in the change.

Has it been tested to see if blind affects its reveal debuff?

After visiting the their forms. They would produce enough poop to crap not only their pants but yours too if it worked like op said.

They are funny

“The entire usage of the word “reveal” is to make something apparent that wasn’t already so. With that said, the concept of revealing a non-stealthed player to keep them unstealthed is a blatant misuse of the word and has led to my general sentiment of disappoint in the change.”

It’s always been called revealed. Nothing has changed with Sic’em. Why do people get all high and mighty about stuff like this?

If you were expecting this skill to be an I win button against thiefs in a 1v1 situation then lol. This skill is really great in group play and has cause the death of many thiefs.