Guild Wars 2

Atherakhia.4086:

What is D/P doing that D/D isn’t? D/P is trading burst via CnD in favor of defense for BP and field use. This is intended and not the problem. What is the problem? It’s the initiative regen. And if ANet agrees with this assessment, the whole class will pay the price because this class doesn’t provide enough burst to down bunkers and when geared as a bunker you can barely provide the burst to down glass.

If we want to have an honest discussion about this class than be realistic in approaching the real issues.

What do you think they will do, put a cooldown on the 2 initiative on stealth trait?

Sunflowers.1729:

I doubt they will nerf perma stealth. The problem isn’t being able to stay in stealth forever…

I disagree.
Do you realize how powerful it is to be able to scout while stealthed in WvW/sPvP?
Perma stealth is the problem.

Frequent short bursts of stealth for positioning is totally fine now that culling is fixed.

Atherakhia.4086:

What is the problem? It’s the initiative regen.

I don’t think this is necessarily true either.
Init regen is just your solution to slow down stealth stacking. But you can fix stealth stacking without touching init regen.
The abilities that grant stealth on short/no cooldowns should be used as short duration positioning tools, so why not just stop stealth duration from stacking at all?Then simply adjust some of the durations (such as making Shadow Refuge hit us with 15s all at once), add a subtle screen queue so that people can easily know when stealth/revealed is about to wear off, and be done with it.

Stealthing to scout in WvW is ridiculous, you’d do much better just getting someone who can get around a bit faster like Elementalists to just run around to gather the information much easier.

Even if the thief wasn’t stopping every 6-10 seconds to restealth it would still be faster.

A thief permenately stealthing is doing nothing but putting themselves in danger.

In combat it potentially has its uses for resetting or as condition removal but your still spending a large portion of time letting the enemy recover also.

Add in the limitations of repeated stealths with BP, even with the 2 init on stealth your still spending initiative faster than your full recovering add to that the time it takes to apply multi stacks your not really getting much more duration while still being in a clearly marked area. Then of course if they happen to get between you and the field while your trying to do so your now revealed etc etc etc.

I mean at best if you want true perma stealthing you got to burn a lot of stuff to do so making you ineffective for most things, this is great for say doing the bomb tunnel in dredge fractal but not so good if you want to actually kill someone in a team situation or achieve anything that couldn’t be don just be standing on a hill halfway across the map in safety.

Xter.6271:

Yamsandjams.3267:

I still think they should just remove chain stealthing entirely… not stealth stacking, just the immediate restealth on unstealth.

They already have. It’s a debuff called revealed. Whenever you deal damage in stealth you are revealed for 4 seconds, soon to be reverted back to 3 seconds.

No, no, no. I’m talking about restealthing after stealth wears off by itself. That is, not acquiring revealed due to an attack.

It’s not exceptionally difficult to continually restealth when your stealth wears off, such as through C&D chaining. You can even just hit random mobs or bunnies in the area to do it.

It’s tougher against AoE spammers or when you have some lag, but it’s still doable. It wouldn’t be as bad if a thief wasn’t able to do it on random objects.

Either that, or just make it so you are always revealed when destealthing while in combat, but out of combat you can chain stealth all you like.

That would’ve made way more sense than the 4s reveal thing they put in.

New patch swoord dagger time to steal all boones.

It comes down to how strong is chain stealthing really.

Your going to be in the area and vulnerable to AoE or just regular attack spam while at the same time doing negligible damage.

Even if everyone suddenly forgets about you your still not doing anything other than maybe “scouting” at which point you could do just as well stood 3000 range away popping back and forth as any of the mobile classes.

Its not like things like protection have any form of penalty on trying to keep them up and they are mechanically more effective and don’t rely on the enemy forgetting you.

Enjoyluck.2618:

New patch swoord dagger time to steal all boones.

Hehe… two thieves spamming boon steals from each other… person with the most boons at the end wins.

Dasorine.1964:

It comes down to how strong is chain stealthing really.

Your going to be in the area and vulnerable to AoE or just regular attack spam while at the same time doing negligible damage.

Even if everyone suddenly forgets about you your still not doing anything other than maybe “scouting” at which point you could do just as well stood 3000 range away popping back and forth as any of the mobile classes.

Its not like things like protection have any form of penalty on trying to keep them up and they are mechanically more effective and don’t rely on the enemy forgetting you.

If I stealth for 3 seconds, the area that I can possibly be in is massive. For every extra second, this area increases even more. While it is true that AoE can still hit a stealthed thief, don’t forget that the thief can still dodge out of it (if it is even in the right spot). Obviously, if the thief keeps running in a straight line, that’s his problem.

Sure you can say ‘predict his movements’ but that’s just a sorry excuse for a counter to this mechanic. Any Thief who has played for longer than a day knows that the moment you enter stealth, you change directions.

but that isn’t about stealth and how different people are capable of different amounts of awareness, which yes in 3 seconds a thief can go anywhere if your stood in the middle of a totally flat field with no obstructions and such.

Its about chain stealth, which requires you either to stay close to targets for CnD chaining (yes it can use bunnies and other creatures but then your essentially running away unless there is some sort of bunny chain where the group your “stalking” is) or your spending time to spam HS over a smokefield which is visible to the enemy and easily interruptable or utilizing a lot of utility and such.

All for something thats doing no damage and at best allows you to escape meaning you’ve lost any objectives you were trying to defend (unless your just there to stomp hotjoins and uplevels) and your still doing nothing combat wise.

At best chain stealthing can allow your zerg or team to cap a different objective by stalling a zerg that chases after you but that would have to be a group of really bad players.

Sunflowers.1729:

Dasorine.1964:

It comes down to how strong is chain stealthing really.

Your going to be in the area and vulnerable to AoE or just regular attack spam while at the same time doing negligible damage.

Even if everyone suddenly forgets about you your still not doing anything other than maybe “scouting” at which point you could do just as well stood 3000 range away popping back and forth as any of the mobile classes.

Its not like things like protection have any form of penalty on trying to keep them up and they are mechanically more effective and don’t rely on the enemy forgetting you.

If I stealth for 3 seconds, the area that I can possibly be in is massive. For every extra second, this area increases even more. While it is true that AoE can still hit a stealthed thief, don’t forget that the thief can still dodge out of it (if it is even in the right spot). Obviously, if the thief keeps running in a straight line, that’s his problem.

Sure you can say ‘predict his movements’ but that’s just a sorry excuse for a counter to this mechanic. Any Thief who has played for longer than a day knows that the moment you enter stealth, you change directions.

I prefer to mix it up. Sometimes I go straight then cut to a direction, sometimes zig zag, but I never repeat a pattern.

But more on topic… In less than a week I’ve seen so many nerf post is kitten Someone wants cooldowns on thief weapon skills, someone thinks we have to much initiative regen, so many people claim a thief stealth stacking is op, even though we still take damage, doing this cuts our dps/burst, if we are hidden chances are your getting a moment to prepare for the next move, evasive offensive or otherwise.

Waiting for someone to start a petition to literally delete the profession….

Dasorine.1964:

but that isn’t about stealth and how different people are capable of different amounts of awareness, which yes in 3 seconds a thief can go anywhere if your stood in the middle of a totally flat field with no obstructions and such.

Its about chain stealth, which requires you either to stay close to targets for CnD chaining (yes it can use bunnies and other creatures but then your essentially running away unless there is some sort of bunny chain where the group your “stalking” is) or your spending time to spam HS over a smokefield which is visible to the enemy and easily interruptable.

If I am in terrain with boulders and hills, don’t you think that actually makes it easier for me to stealth? You can’t see my Black Powder if I cast it behind a rock or the ruins of some building. Nevertheless, I don’t think actually being able to permanently stay in stealth is the problem.

It’s simply that the build offers too much damage for decent survivability, with good condition removal and high mobility. It’s also quite hard to counter (certainly harder than ‘dodge the 100 blades’) and in WvW, there is effectively no risk to trying to 1v1 anybody as you can usually escape. This is also done with just one weapon set, freeing up the other to use a shortbow in larger fights.

that would depend on the terrain, if for example your in one of the many little valleys or such your essentially limited to 2 exits, one of which is most likely past the enemy, at worst it one will be behind the enemy your trying to flee and the other will be blocked by a zerg and such, situation and environment can have a big effect.

Compare that to other professions that tend to be able to build for decent damage and static defenses (on top of any evasion they feel like doing) the only thing the thief defense gets is the ability to juke in actual sustained combat they are far far behind (which is why thieves flee so much, they don’t really have much choice)

Oh no. Thieves being mobile/slippery with the ability to burst but not go toe to toe because they are squishy? Whodathunk?

Maybe I am not the best thief (actually I know I am not) but the arguments above assume you BP/HS then BS all the time.

I find that I cannot always backstab because you have to get to the guys back and then get it off.

In the PvP I do the opponents move a lot and if they see the BP and get HS’d they dodge so I don’t get the backstab always. In fact my ability to get the backstab is considerably BELOW always.

Am i doing something wrong? The people calling for a nerf evidently get backstabbed at the end of this chain a lot. Are they doing something wrong?

Or is the argument that BP/HS is OP even without landing the backstab?

See the problem with ‘building for static defenses’ is that it is just static. If you hit me, I will take 30% less damage, and that’s that.

With stealth, a skilled player can avoid far more than 30%. You can’t hit me with Mind Wrack if I keep stealthing, and at any point in the fight, I have the option to stop damage being done to me by just stealthing and moving erratically. There isn’t even much disadvantage to doing so because it lets me use a stealth attack that does huge damage. The other player has no such luxury – once their dodges are used up, active defensive skills like Mist Form or Aegis have to be used. These have long cooldowns and are hard to use effectively especially when the thief can attack while invisible.

Edit: This is why D/ kitten o good, because there is no CnD to stop. Normally stealth is on a long cooldown (HiS, Blinding Powder.etc) or requires melee range (CnD). D/P removes both of these prerequisites while keeping high consistent damage through Backstab.

This disparity peaks in WvW, because no amount of Aegis will save you from a zerg. Nobody cares whether you have 1500 or 3000 armor, 50 people will tear through you in a second, or land five different snares on you and chase you down. Stealth (and mobility) are only things that will save a player, because how can you kill someone who you can’t see, or can’t catch? (Obviously if you get portal bombed, you will die, just like everyone else). Thieves are the clear winners at these two areas.

TLDR Stealth is a stupid mechanic and should be replaced with something like more evades.

animalmom.1062:

Maybe I am not the best thief (actually I know I am not) but the arguments above assume you BP/HS then BS all the time.

I find that I cannot always backstab because you have to get to the guys back and then get it off.

In the PvP I do the opponents move a lot and if they see the BP and get HS’d they dodge so I don’t get the backstab always. In fact my ability to get the backstab is considerably BELOW always.

Am i doing something wrong? The people calling for a nerf evidently get backstabbed at the end of this chain a lot. Are they doing something wrong?

Or is the argument that BP/HS is OP even without landing the backstab?

Try to use #3 first, then spam 1. The backstab will still connect.
Edit: And if you still can’t land backstab, just stealth again. What can the other player do to you?

thanks for your reply, I find that i get like a fronstab if i just spam, i mean i try to attack from the rear but things move pretty fast.

Are you saying just spam 1 and if it comes from the back then all well and good and if it doesn’t it still does damage so just try again?

Turn off collision detection in your settings; this allows you to run through an enemy, then press 1 the moment you are behind them. Your character will auto-rotate to face them, and use Backstab.

If you feel like your remaining stealth duration is too short, you can choose to front-stab them, restack stealth if you feel too vulnerable, or just wait until stealth expires then use normal attacks. If you have a lot of initiative and they are low consider using Heartseeker as well for the guaranteed crit.

Hopefully that helps : )

Sunflowers.1729:

See the problem with ‘building for static defenses’ is that it is just static. If you hit me, I will take 30% less damage, and that’s that.

With stealth, a skilled player can avoid far more than 30%. You can’t hit me with Mind Wrack if I keep stealthing, and at any point in the fight, I have the option to stop damage being done to me by just stealthing and moving erratically. There isn’t even much disadvantage to doing so because it lets me use a stealth attack that does huge damage. The other player has no such luxury – once their dodges are used up, active defensive skills like Mist Form or Aegis have to be used. These have long cooldowns and are hard to use effectively especially when the thief can attack while invisible.

Edit: This is why D/ kitten o good, because there is no CnD to stop. Normally stealth is on a long cooldown (HiS, Blinding Powder.etc) or requires melee range (CnD). D/P removes both of these prerequisites while keeping high consistent damage through Backstab.

This disparity peaks in WvW, because no amount of Aegis will save you from a zerg. Nobody cares whether you have 1500 or 3000 armor, 50 people will tear through you in a second, or land five different snares on you and chase you down. Stealth (and mobility) are only things that will save a player, because how can you kill someone who you can’t see, or can’t catch? (Obviously if you get portal bombed, you will die, just like everyone else). Thieves are the clear winners at these two areas.

TLDR Stealth is a stupid mechanic and should be replaced with something like more evades.

But theres sort of a catch with all that, if someone puts up protection thats a flat 33% damage reduction and thats all, no other effects to them, however if a thief hits stealth their damage suddenly stops, sure they have backstab if they are main hand dagger for the biggest hit available to them but other professions aren’t exactly lacking when it comes to higher coefficient attacks.

A thief trying to get the most out of their defensive stealth while still attacking in a meaningful way can spend at most 4 seconds in stealth if they land their hit at the very last point of the final second, even with a 3 second revealed thats 60% stealth time which would equate to 60% damage reduction but also a 60% damage loss.

Now this is without factoring in that they will/can/should still be taking damage while in stealth unless its 1v1 (which the game just isn’t balanced for) so that damage reduction rapidly drops for every hit they take in it yet the damage loss does not.

All the while the person with protection could be glass cannon geared and throwing out ridiculous blasts of damage all the while taking 33% less damage without any great sacrifice.