Guild Wars 2

people rely too much on perma stealth, and it enrages other players. giving every class a chance to counter it is healthy for the game.

Guys come on!
No one ever ever ever ever care about skill that is good for BM Ranger and gives 4 sec of revealed on pet attack (this is how it would work) – avoid pet on the skill animation or switch to defensive behaviour if you get hit by this OWESAME skill.
Still rangers are easy to deal with and as for me kitten stealth.

Sanduskel.1850:

people rely too much on perma stealth, and it enrages other players. giving every class a chance to counter it is healthy for the game.

Almost. You see a skill like this hurts normal stealthers WAY more than perma stealth. In fact this won’t even affect perma builds hardly at all. So once again, ppl cry about perma stealth and anet nerfs EVERYTHING else. Great plan. I can’t wait till I get a skill to disable ele atunement swaps or necro ds. Hmm perhaps a skill to disable mesmers from summoning clones. No skill, one button counters are great!

Well i like theives, and i like the stealth feature when i see a theif i tend to try and go for them first. In 1 vs 1 fighting a theif is quite enjoyable can be challenging against sword/dagger theives. However, as theives I will pose a scenario that should be very familiar to you all: When an enemy zerg shows up the theif stealths and by the time you see where they are,you notice that the theif used infiltrators arrow and is out of harms way from the zerg. However, as a ranger for example, I can use lightning reflexes,monarch’s leap, and swoop in a chain to create space from a zerg allowing me to escape harms way. Unfortunately, although I had situations where I have escaped harms way from a zerg all it took was one theif to decide to keep chasing me. They manage to close the distance and quickly regain initiative to deal the finishing blow usually in the form of heartseeker spams. Of course, there are counters but a theif chases you down and one or two enemies follow the theif. I cannot simply turn around and avoid being backstabbed or heartseekered due to the fact that once I do the theives allies will reinforce either way unless I get to the water or somewhere safe such as spawn I’m dead. Whereas if it was the other way around in which I had two allies chasing a theif, they can tease by continously popping in and out of stealth while creating enough distance t outrun all of us at will. Even with the use of a stealth trap, all it takes for a theif to get away is infiltrators arrow for example. Yet here some of you are acting like theives is not even a class worth playing anymore. Furthermore, if a player that plays a ranger or most other class decide they want a build to survive a lot better, they quickly lose the dps needed to actually kill theives and as a result theives can consistently reset the fight by gaining full health coming out of stealth. I think a ranger having a counter to stealth is useful tool to counteract the abilities of a theif, it doesnt eliminate a theives ability to perform in spvp,tpvp, wvw or even pve. I definitely do not want other classes to have a counter stealth option, but I do like this update simply in regards to allowing rangers to have a counter stealth option which lets not forget is on a cooldown of I think 32s traited with the ability to reduce cd for shouts.

Shemsu.8721:

I can’t wait till I get a skill to disable ele atunement swaps or necro ds.

….
LF gaining skills have to hit… so evade (or… stealth…)
spectral walk/armour only generate LF when hit… so dont attack (stealth and/or go defensive)
dont let anything die near the necro

thats pretty much DS taken care of (outside of signet of undeath, -maybe- tiny bits from reapers precision… already built up life force i see as similar to building up stealth before an encounter)

ofcourse i doubt many people would be able to pull off a 1v1 with a necro whilst preventing them from ever gaining life force; but it is possible

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Shemsu.8721:

I can’t wait till I get a skill to disable ele atunement swaps or necro ds.

….
LF gaining skills have to hit… so evade (or… stealth…)
spectral walk/armour only generate LF when hit… so dont attack (stealth and/or go defensive)
dont let anything die near the necro

thats pretty much DS taken care of (outside of signet of undeath, -maybe- tiny bits from reapers precision… already built up life force i see as similar to building up stealth before an encounter)

ofcourse i doubt many people would be able to pull off a 1v1 with a necro whilst preventing them from ever gaining life force; but it is possible

so basically your saying learn how the class and mechanics work and use them to your advantage? Wow what a novel idea, exactly what thieves have been saying for over a year. Yet still they choose to implement one button hard counter to stealth so you don’t have to learn how to fight against stealth from any class, just press your anti stealth button

i guess you think that anet hates thieves, lol. we have been blessed with extremely strong 1v1 skills, so i cant complain.

nagymbear.5280:

I don’t get what is wrong with giving players a tool against stealth. There are tools against stuns, conditions even boons. I really don’t see how this will result in less interesting, more boring fights. I remember J. Sharp talking about active condi removal regarding rangers. He said he’d like to see more active play, where you try to force your opponent to use his cleansing, sort of a mind game. Thieves will still have evades, dodges, blinds, teleports to defend themselves for 3-4 seconds, and sic’em is on a 40s cooldown untraited, so I don’t see the problem here.

Because stealth’s durations an internal cooldowns are SPECIFICALLY balanced to account fo there not being external hard counters. This is because it’s effectively impossible to design hard counters against an opponent who can’t be predicted because they are invisible.

Basically, Stealth already has a hard counter: Stealth

Designing counters to stealth necessitates redesigning stealth itself.

Stealth isn’t an uncounterable juggernaut of pain and never was. It’s a moderately effective defensive tool. Burst builds weren’t broken because of stealth, they were broken because of damage compression. Permastealth isn’t borken because it does stealth right. Permastealth is broken because it specifically gets around the core design of stealth (that it is short term and reactive)

Revealed proliferation doesn’t counter stealth, it obliterates stealth builds, that’s the difference.

If Stealth builds were some sort of oddball gimmick this would be just fine and dandy, but they aren’t. Thief Stealth builds comprise a massive portion of the entire class design. It’s not just a tacked on thing people are abusing.

I abandoned stealth a while ago because I saw the direction balance was going. This is more of the same, and what’s more, Thieves haven’t been adequately adjusted to remain in fights long term for what’s been removed from their burst ability when relying on one of two avaliable defensive methods.

This is literally half of all thief builds. The other half uses evasion for defense. It’s not “a skill” to be countered. That’s how stealth is used on other classes. It’s “Countering all of your DPS uptime, condition removal, and defensive traits.” It’s is literally neutering an entire mechanic in a way that can’t BE counterplayed.

You can’t REMOVE revaled, you can’t COUNTER revealed, it JUST WINS.

That’s the problem. Thieves have been dealing with the problem since launch, we have a 5 point trait that kills us with revealed and there is NOTHING we can do about it. Giving another player the ability to create that situation with a button press is a horrible idea. Stealth just plain falls apart when the user doesn’t have control of the revealed state, and when stealth falls apart on a stealth thief, there are no other options.

other thieves manage to do just fine without using perma stealth. learn to do so. too much stealth makes johnny a bad player.

Sanduskel.1850:

other thieves manage to do just fine without using perma stealth. learn to do so. too much stealth makes johnny a bad player.

This will not affect perma-stealthers at all. Get your head out your kitten and think. This will hurt short term situational stealth builds, this will hurt offhand dagger. Perma-stealther will be just fine, don’t worry. They are nerfing everything EXCEPT perma-stealther

i will impact perma stealth. you are incorrect.

Sanduskel.1850:

i will impact perma stealth. you are incorrect.

Spectacular argument there. It’s a targeted ability. How’s it gonna Target someone staying in stealth? However backstage builds will have at minimum twice the duration between stabs, sword daze builds will have even lower daze uptime. Perma stealth won’t even get targeted

I seriously suggest that you go try a low stealth reliant thief then come discuss this.

Sanduskel.1850:

I seriously suggest that you go try a low stealth reliant thief then come discuss this.

Not every build that uses stealth is a permastealth build. That’s the point.

Thief builds rely on one of two things for all of their defense. Evasion or Stealth. Literally half of all thief builds are heavy stealth users because that is how the class is designed.

You play an evasion build, I play an evasion build, but not everyone should be forced to play an evasion build. Stealth is getting dangerously close to being an unviable, and even detrimental build choice for the only class in the game able to build stealth specs. Do you see the problem now?

No I don’t see the problem at all. Getting revealed wont eliminate stealth, but throttle it so that the game is a little challenging for thieves. WvWvW really is t very challenging with stealth being impossible to counter. I really don’t mind a decent challenge.

Shemsu.8721:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

Shemsu.8721:

I can’t wait till I get a skill to disable ele atunement swaps or necro ds.

….
LF gaining skills have to hit… so evade (or… stealth…)
spectral walk/armour only generate LF when hit… so dont attack (stealth and/or go defensive)
dont let anything die near the necro

thats pretty much DS taken care of (outside of signet of undeath, -maybe- tiny bits from reapers precision… already built up life force i see as similar to building up stealth before an encounter)

ofcourse i doubt many people would be able to pull off a 1v1 with a necro whilst preventing them from ever gaining life force; but it is possible

so basically your saying learn how the class and mechanics work and use them to your advantage? Wow what a novel idea, exactly what thieves have been saying for over a year. Yet still they choose to implement one button hard counter to stealth so you don’t have to learn how to fight against stealth from any class, just press your anti stealth button

sigh as ive already said several times; ranger NEEDs this to stand a chance against stealth thieves on anything but a GS/LB spec (oddly what i use in wvw… because thieves are god kitten everywhere)

if revealed was proposed on any class than ranger id be strongly against it

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Should-muddy-terrain-get-reveal/first#post2891391

they have no burst for when the thief is visible, the only two weapons with a chance of hitting a stealthed thief are GS and LB (LB only with pre-empting stealth… which is exactly how i see sic em as going to work… except now for SB/sword/axe) and pets take god kitten ages to register a revealed thief (i mentioned rangers have kitten damage because of pets right?)

Well now my beserker theif is done with its hard enough to roam solo and get away quickly when u have nothing in stealth but now that rangers will be able to counter my one stealth skill since house is useless since u just need to aoe and they kno exactly were to do it. How about adding something in the power tree because i run 25/30/0/0/15 since i need something more then a immobilize that’s easily countered

Shemsu.8721:

Okaishi.8320:

Giving a specific class a counter to stealth is just stupid in my opinion, and I think it’s the wrong kind of counter anyway. For me it would make perfect sense to nerf perma stealth in a different way, perhaps like making it impossible to stack stealth for more than 2 or 3 times?

Fixing d/p perma stealth is so easy, add a 3 second icd to infusion of shadow, problem solved. They aren’t trying to fix permastealth.

Good point,

there are better ways to go about nerfing perma-stealth than adding a new utility to an unpopular ability.

Nobody in the world uses Sick ’em.
Get over it and if applied to you shadow step away. Our ability to disengage whenever we want is too strong and it is a nice debuff to D/P nabs.

I like it.

I play a P/D spec, in no way a perma stealth thief. I rely on stealth for my main attack, healing and condi removal.

That being said, people like Sanduskel laugh and encourage changes to the thief class that hurt other playstyles, because he doesn’t use stealth as much, so isn’t impacted.

Funny enough though, if some skill/ability etc. he relied upon was getting nerfed, he’d be in the front row making his opinion known about how it shouldn’t happen. Since the upcoming changes don’t affect him, he doesn’t care and denigrates other thieves.

That’s pretty disrespectful of other players, and their chosen playstyle. I dislike fighting perma-stealth thieves as much as anyone else. It’s a pain in the kitten most of the time. However, I don’t get on my high horse, and look down my nose at them, because I think I am superior, or that my chosen playstyle is the only “proper” way.

Instead of acting thus, how about suggesting alternatives that people who play differently than you can agree upon, instead of acting like your kitten doesn’t stink?

As you wrote: stealth cleanses our condis, heals us and enables burst skills. There hast to be a reliable way to counter that.

The point I’m making, is that Anet is setting precedent by introducing a skill to counter a core mechanic of thieves. Down the road, they will probably add it to another class, and then another and another. Before you know it, stealth as a skill will be nigh useless.

Along the way, Anet will probably not offer any sort of compensation to other skills, health etc. At the end of the day, you will have the thief class, which was built around utilizing stealth, now easily countered by everyone.

You’ll force people who want to play a thief, to have to play only a certain way, because stealth will not be able to be relied upon. We have decent variety in builds atm, but how long will that last if stealth is neutered? Do you really think Anet will balance things out along the way?

The bottom line is that if stealth is such a problem, then Anet shouldn’t take the lazy road, and simply drop abilities that cause reveal. They should put on their big boy pants and properly balance things and not in a way that is one-sided.

Implementing Sic’ Em as stated, in an attempt to address a certain build(s) could punish other builds that aren’t in need of that sort of balance. It’s like a doctor treating a patient for liver cancer, that could save the patient by just removing the cancerous part of the liver, but opts to just remove the liver entirely, just to be sure, and maybe later, going back with a donor liver (with the patient having to use a dialysis machine until then).

Zumy.6318:

Nobody in the world uses Sick ’em.
Get over it and if applied to you shadow step away. Our ability to disengage whenever we want is too strong and it is a nice debuff to D/P nabs.

I like it.

Think about it for a moment, d/p will be effected the LEAST of all stealth sets. d/d-s/d-p/d all rely on consistent stealth rotations for damage/condi/cc/heals/cleanse they are visible enough to easily target them and force MORE revealed on them. d/p stays in stealth most of a fight and is not targetable, sic em is a target reliant ability. You cant target whats perma-stealthed. This change will further knock down the less viable d/d-p/d-s/d sets and not even touch d/p. This is the wrong change to make if you want to knock perma stealth down a couple pegs. I’m guessing they DONT want to hurt permastealth. Every nerf for the last year has not only left perma stealth alone, but even made it MORE viable, by nerfing every other single set we have

It is not like people will spam this on you………………………………………..

Shemsu.8721:

Sanduskel.1850:

people rely too much on perma stealth, and it enrages other players. giving every class a chance to counter it is healthy for the game.

Almost. You see a skill like this hurts normal stealthers WAY more than perma stealth. In fact this won’t even affect perma builds hardly at all. So once again, ppl cry about perma stealth and anet nerfs EVERYTHING else. Great plan. I can’t wait till I get a skill to disable ele atunement swaps or necro ds. Hmm perhaps a skill to disable mesmers from summoning clones. No skill, one button counters are great!

Exactly.

Fade.7658:

Implementing Sic’ Em as stated, in an attempt to address a certain build(s) could punish other builds that aren’t in need of that sort of balance.

Totally agree!!! That would be like nerfing all pet damage for rangers just because one build needs a nerf.

Shemsu.8721:

Zumy.6318:

Nobody in the world uses Sick ’em.
Get over it and if applied to you shadow step away. Our ability to disengage whenever we want is too strong and it is a nice debuff to D/P nabs.

I like it.

Think about it for a moment, d/p will be effected the LEAST of all stealth sets. d/d-s/d-p/d all rely on consistent stealth rotations for damage/condi/cc/heals/cleanse they are visible enough to easily target them and force MORE revealed on them. d/p stays in stealth most of a fight and is not targetable, sic em is a target reliant ability. You cant target whats perma-stealthed. This change will further knock down the less viable d/d-p/d-s/d sets and not even touch d/p. This is the wrong change to make if you want to knock perma stealth down a couple pegs. I’m guessing they DONT want to hurt permastealth. Every nerf for the last year has not only left perma stealth alone, but even made it MORE viable, by nerfing every other single set we have

This point is worth repeating.

Perma-Stealth is a broken mechanic that needs to be removed from the game, but implementing Revealed as a counter from other Professions is not the way to accomplish this, and in fact won’t accomplish much at all besides severely limiting the viability of other builds that make use of Stealth as it is intended.

Evilapprentice and I both ended up posting this alternative in different forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Modified-Anti-Stealth-Suggestion/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first

But as you said, even with something like the above implemented for other classes, regular Thieves who use Stealth sparingly will be disproportionately impacted and Perma-Stealth Thieves would be barely affected at all.

D/P perma-stealth can be easily fixed without impacting other builds by making Infusion of Shadow not able to proc while already Stealthed.

I still firmly believe that once this is implemented, Stealth as a mechanic will be in a good place in terms of balance (asides from the 4s Revealed in sPvP).

kinda like how hunters can reveal rogues in wow

Jack.3658:

kinda like how hunters can reveal rogues in wow

This isnt wow, I (and i would guess many others) DONT want this to be wow. wow still exists, please feel free to go play wow.

Kaon.7192:

Shemsu.8721:

Zumy.6318:

Nobody in the world uses Sick ’em.
Get over it and if applied to you shadow step away. Our ability to disengage whenever we want is too strong and it is a nice debuff to D/P nabs.

I like it.

Think about it for a moment, d/p will be effected the LEAST of all stealth sets. d/d-s/d-p/d all rely on consistent stealth rotations for damage/condi/cc/heals/cleanse they are visible enough to easily target them and force MORE revealed on them. d/p stays in stealth most of a fight and is not targetable, sic em is a target reliant ability. You cant target whats perma-stealthed. This change will further knock down the less viable d/d-p/d-s/d sets and not even touch d/p. This is the wrong change to make if you want to knock perma stealth down a couple pegs. I’m guessing they DONT want to hurt permastealth. Every nerf for the last year has not only left perma stealth alone, but even made it MORE viable, by nerfing every other single set we have

This point is worth repeating.

Perma-Stealth is a broken mechanic that needs to be removed from the game, but implementing Revealed as a counter from other Professions is not the way to accomplish this, and in fact won’t accomplish much at all besides severely limiting the viability of other builds that make use of Stealth as it is intended.

Evilapprentice and I both ended up posting this alternative in different forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Modified-Anti-Stealth-Suggestion/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Counter-Invisibility-not-Stealth/first

But as you said, even with something like the above implemented for other classes, regular Thieves who use Stealth sparingly will be disproportionately impacted and Perma-Stealth Thieves would be barely affected at all.

D/P perma-stealth can be easily fixed without impacting other builds by making Infusion of Shadow not able to proc while already Stealthed.

I still firmly believe that once this is implemented, Stealth as a mechanic will be in a good place in terms of balance (asides from the 4s Revealed in sPvP).

I’ve posted that adding a 3-4s icd to infusion of shadow would fix it, but i kinda like your solution too. You are 100% correct, d/p needs to be toned down without further neutering other sets, and that is an excellent way to accomplish it

Just make it so Infusion of Shadow only works if you were un-stealthed to begin with, and doesn’t work if you are currently in stealth.