Channeling skills + stealth
Its certainly not fair if you move while in stealth but it still follows
Denied | 5.9k PvP Games | PvP Rank: 236 | 8.6k hours | 9 Legendaries | Still Bad.
I think that too. It’s pretty frustating at least for me, because my instintual response when I see them (arrows in this case) flying towards me is to stealth. Only to see myself still get wrecked.
Stealth should make you lose all targetings.
Channeling skills in this game follow you in stealth for the sake of game balance, although I personally find it to be lazy design. For classes where stealth is a secondary form of defense, it doesn’t matter too much (Mesmers, Rangers, and Engis all have ways to block or go invulnerable). For Thief, where stealth and evasion are your primary forms of defense (depending on your build) the damage from channeled skills is almost impossible to negate. Especially from skills like Rapid Fire, or a fair number of Necro skills. For example, to negate the damage from Rapid Fire alone, a Thief generally needs to dodge twice in a row, or Shadow Step outside of the range of Rapid Fire (another trick is to Shadow Step behind the ranger, which cancels Rapid Fire altogether).
There are ways to deal with channeled skills at a Thief, it just feels a bit absurd at times, especially in WvW where a group of Rangers targeting one Thief can pretty much just all press their 2 keys and track the thief even after he uses Hide in Shadows, all while doing insane amounts of damage at 2k range. It would be nice to see a change to how channeled skills interact with stealth, but there would be far too much complaining from players who main classes like Ranger and Necro, so I don’t think we’ll ever see a good change in this case.
Godz Raiden (Thief)
Maguuma
Maguuma
Channeling skills in this game follow you in stealth for the sake of game balance, although I personally find it to be lazy design. For classes where stealth is a secondary form of defense, it doesn’t matter too much (Mesmers, Rangers, and Engis all have ways to block or go invulnerable). For Thief, where stealth and evasion are your primary forms of defense (depending on your build) the damage from channeled skills is almost impossible to negate. Especially from skills like Rapid Fire, or a fair number of Necro skills. For example, to negate the damage from Rapid Fire alone, a Thief generally needs to dodge twice in a row, or Shadow Step outside of the range of Rapid Fire (another trick is to Shadow Step behind the ranger, which cancels Rapid Fire altogether).
There are ways to deal with channeled skills at a Thief, it just feels a bit absurd at times, especially in WvW where a group of Rangers targeting one Thief can pretty much just all press their 2 keys and track the thief even after he uses Hide in Shadows, all while doing insane amounts of damage at 2k range. It would be nice to see a change to how channeled skills interact with stealth, but there would be far too much complaining from players who main classes like Ranger and Necro, so I don’t think we’ll ever see a good change in this case.
IMO nobody should expect to hit you with a 100% rate while you are invisible. Having homming proyectiles nullifies the use of stealth against ranged enemies, making it useful only for melee combat.
Balance-wide, I think it is pretty negative for the Thief.
Are there any Dev comments on this matter? I’ll try to find some.
I agree with you, MakubeC. It’s particularly annoying in certain situations, such as in WvW, when you just had a fight and some pesky ranger comes out of the woodwork and just presses 2 on you. You’ve got one dodge left (maybe) and your heal still has 15 seconds left on its cooldown. There’s no real way to survive that outside of using shadow refuge if you still have and managing to maybe res yourself while you’re in stealth, but that’s all assuming the ranger is a moron who can’t find you while you’re downed. Of course, lots of assumptions made in that example just now, but I think the point is made.
To my knowledge, there haven’t been any Dev comments, at least not recently, in regard this matter. In my observational experience on this forum, the game Devs have stayed pretty far away from the thief forum anyway, so I doubt you’ll find any meaningful posts from them here.
Godz Raiden (Thief)
Maguuma
Maguuma
I agree with you, MakubeC. It’s particularly annoying in certain situations, such as in WvW, when you just had a fight and some pesky ranger comes out of the woodwork and just presses 2 on you. You’ve got one dodge left (maybe) and your heal still has 15 seconds left on its cooldown. There’s no real way to survive that outside of using shadow refuge if you still have and managing to maybe res yourself while you’re in stealth, but that’s all assuming the ranger is a moron who can’t find you while you’re downed. Of course, lots of assumptions made in that example just now, but I think the point is made.
To my knowledge, there haven’t been any Dev comments, at least not recently, in regard this matter. In my observational experience on this forum, the game Devs have stayed pretty far away from the thief forum anyway, so I doubt you’ll find any meaningful posts from them here.
Maybe if we could attrack some people into this issue we could use the spotlight effect to lure a dev in and maybe bring some clarification into this matter. But people tend to read without commenting.
i understand your pain for the rapidfire in stealth but looking at what traits we get in shadowarts now you get the -50% damage reduction in stealth so while i agree the heatseeking is bs at least we get the trait.
Order of Grenth ~ P/P Thief~ [OGs] TC
Always thought that it was part of the counterplay to stealth. It’s been that way since the game came out as far as I know.
This is one of the most annoying things about playing a thief in WvW. It’s especially frustrating because it is completely unnatural behavior. The first time you see it happen you have to assume it’s a bug.
I think that both balance wise and thematically the skill should continue to channel at the location the thief went stealth, as that is the last known location of the thief from the attacker’s perspective. Alternatively it could just break the channel altogether, perhaps putting the skill broken on a lowered CD.
This is one of the most annoying things about playing a thief in WvW. It’s especially frustrating because it is completely unnatural behavior. The first time you see it happen you have to assume it’s a bug.
I think that both balance wise and thematically the skill should continue to channel at the location the thief went stealth, as that is the last known location of the thief from the attacker’s perspective. Alternatively it could just break the channel altogether, perhaps putting the skill broken on a lowered CD.
It surely looks like a bug. I was testing this with my friend and he couldn’t believe it worked. “No wonder why I always nail them” – He said.
Interrumpting the skill would be too drastical, because even when the Thief went away it could still hit people left behind, specially with the piercing trait rangers have.
But ultimately, if you move out of the way it should not chase you. This also happens with turrets. If the proyectile is midair: you are screwed. It will chase you even at 360 degrees.
i understand your pain for the rapidfire in stealth but looking at what traits we get in shadowarts now you get the -50% damage reduction in stealth so while i agree the heatseeking is bs at least we get the trait.
This would mitigate the problem, but not really bring a solution to it. What if the proyectiles also inflict conditions? You are still getting them no matter what.
well im pretty sure there is also a trait for dodging ranged attacks now, keep running? i gave an example of the shadow arts trait but since you had to mention condi, what condi skill tracks in stealth other then thief pistol sneak attack? And for me being hit with a sneak attack is no where near as deadly as rapidfire, plus if your smart you will have condi cleanse in stealth.
Order of Grenth ~ P/P Thief~ [OGs] TC
Stealth isn’t invulnerability, and has never been intended as such.
The counter-play for a channeled skill is to interrupt it. They have a long window for you to do so, and you make your opponent waste their cooldown.
Mixing insults with your post is like pooping in a salad.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
It’s pretty obvious, and nobody’s impressed.
Not a bug, this is certainly intended.
Look at it from the other side (the enemy player that used the channeled skill), he just used a ranged skill that has a cooldown and that thief over there can stealth every few seconds. And most importantly, since he is ranged, most of his skills REQUIRE A TARGET. What would you expect him to do if stealth would break channeled skills? Stand around and dodge once in a while? While most people run ranged/melee, there are builds that require target on all their weapons’ autoattacks.
If stealth broke channeled skills, rangers wouldn’t kill another thief ever.
However, I personally do find it annoying that the skill shows my (changing) position. If the skill animation would stop in the location where I stealth up, but I’d continue taking the dmg, that would be fair.
Underworld Vabbi 1.5yr
Maybe if we get our rifle we will at least be able to shoot back at the ranger instead of just running away.
The counter right now is offhand pistol (interrupt) or steal (daze). Sometimes I just swap to shortbow and 3-3-3-3 but that’s always sad times.
I was the best at burning things. Especially bosses that
didn’t move.
didn’t move.
Not a bug, this is certainly intended.
Look at it from the other side (the enemy player that used the channeled skill), he just used a ranged skill that has a cooldown and that thief over there can stealth every few seconds. And most importantly, since he is ranged, most of his skills REQUIRE A TARGET. What would you expect him to do if stealth would break channeled skills? Stand around and dodge once in a while? While most people run ranged/melee, there are builds that require target on all their weapons’ autoattacks.
If stealth broke channeled skills, rangers wouldn’t kill another thief ever.
However, I personally do find it annoying that the skill shows my (changing) position. If the skill animation would stop in the location where I stealth up, but I’d continue taking the dmg, that would be fair.
I specifically mentioned interrumpting the skill would be unfair. However, I do understand your point. We’ll see how it turns out with the -50% dmg on stealth.
Still, I think it is pretty annoying. Remember we do not have access to any other form of defense, we got stealth and that’s it. We have to time it and have it available. Other classes have Invulnerability, Block, Retaleation and Protection. All of those lasting for several seconds and being accessible pretty easily. Homming proyectiles nullify our only defense making it, in simple words, useless. That is just a no-no.
This hasn’t been an issue since the release of the game. They changed stealth a while back. It’s resulted in long attack animation skills seeking me out long after stealthing as well (PvE enemies) and aggro from great distances as well. Running across a map, aggro an enemy, chain stealth to break aggro, run far beyond where any enemy would aggro, unstealth, monster runs over and tries to kill me.
Sadly, many game designers are half-hearted when it comes to balancing finesse characters. The common fixes are nerf to oblivion and ignore those who still play the class, make slight adjustments here and there (Read: make a change, roll it back, repeat) and never really accomplish anything, or give them a niche they can’t scratch.
Most of the core issues finesse classes suffer are derived from the game engine itself. Which only compounds the developer’s problems finding solutions.
My opinion on the subject: channeled skills should NOT be able to follow me when I stealth. It’s insane, takes away one of the three options I have for defense(Stealth, Dodge, shadow step. None of which are as plentiful as non Thieves would have everyone else believe.), and highlights my position while stealthed for the channeler’s buddies to drop some nasty AoE on me.
On the other side of things. I’ve used channeled skills to follow stealthing characters before. It’s kind of disturbing how easy it was to dispatch them when their go to move was completely useless.
I keep hoping a change will be made, but I won’t hold my breath for it.