Guild Wars 2

How to fix thief chain stealth without destroying s/tPvP, WvW, and PvE thieves. If Anet feels that trolling in WvW is too overpowered and would like to tone down chain stealth/trolling, this in my opinion is how it should be fixed.

Reveal debuff decreased from 4 sec to 3 sec.

Remove/change the following traits

Shadow Arts
• -Infusion of Shadow
Using this trait alone gives the thief the ability to chain stealth via CnD. By the time stealth ends, you regen almost all of the 4 init spent. This trait is also used in D/P set to chain stealth via HS+BP.

o Change Infusion of Shadow to “Gain 5 sec of protection when using a skill that stealths you.”
• Patience
Same reason as Infusion of Shadow but less potent.
Change Patience to “Gain endurance faster while in stealth.”
• Quick Pockets
Additional init regen is not needed.
Change quick Pockets to “Weapon swap cool down decrease by 5secs.”
Acrobatics
• Quick Recovery
Same reason as Infusion of Shadow but less potent.
Change Quick Recover to “you recover from stun/daze/launch/knockback/sink/fear 33% faster.”

Trickery
• Keep Preparedness
• Hastened Replenishment
Very few use this trait but for the sake of consistency, please remove and replace with using useful.

Utilities
• Infilitrator’s Signet
Addition init regen is not needed.
Change Infilitrator’s Signet to “Remove 1 condition every 10 secs” to match other signet.

• Roll for Initiative
Additional init regen not needed.
Change Roll for Initiative to “Evade backward to gain protection and swiftness.”

Why am I suggesting that you should nerf almost all form of init regen? Because while other classes have traits that reduce cool downs by 20-25% at the most, thief can technically regen almost all init in a relatively short term. By keeping “Preparedness” in the trickery trait line, this allows the thief to increase their resource pool by 25% which is what other classes have.

Example:
Infusion of shadow +Infil Signet + quick recovery

Combo: BP + 3 HS
Cost 6 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 15 Init
Cost after traits = 6 + 3 -2 + 3 – 2 + 3 – 2 – 2 – 1= 6

So basically, you’re reducing the “cool down” by 60% which is above and beyond what other classes can do in terms of resource/cool down reduction. While thief does not utilities real cool downs on abilities, init acts as an artificial “cool downs.” By having massive init regen, thieves can use these traits to stealth indefinitely.

What will this do to certain builds? Let us see.

-Burst D/D – No change. They will still kill and be killed as fast as before.

-Balance BS D/D – Slight nerf to init regen but not much. They can still CnD and re-stealth but you will see fewer of those. The most CnD they will be able to perform is 2 CnD chain before waiting 1 to 2 secs for a 3rd CnD chain. After that, they are out of init and a sitting duck. This forces the player to decide between stacking stealth or DPS. If they stack too much stealth, their dps will decrease due to lack of init.

-S/D – Slight nerf in init regen. They can’t spam infil strike like before. More careful timing of skills used.

-P/D – Med nerf to init regen thus toning down the amount of sneak attack.

-D/P – Stealth via combo field with almost instant init regen got to go. This build will feel the nurf the hardes. This will end infinite stealth build.

What do you guys think?

This is not a good idea. Unlike other professions, we cannot switch to another weapon set and use the abilities on those.

2 C&D’s = our entire bar of initiative.

Furthermore, forcing people to trait into preparedness (trickery is a terrible trait line), how do you see that as a good idea..?

Stick to the SotG nerfs, keep or reduce the current revealed (IDGAF either way) and we’re fine.

If they had done what they were going to do originally and just make revealed apply every time you leave stealth it would have completely fixed the chain stealth problem.

The revealed nerf has to go, but Infusion of Shadow cannot be changed. It’s crucial to maintaining the initiative pool for DPS sustainability. It would destroy PVE DPS on any fight that lasts more than few seconds.

I don’t think gutting initiative regen as an indirect attempt to attacking stealth mechanics is a good idea. It’s another one of those “unintended consequences” things where you end up breaking or nerfing all sorts of things in the class that have nothing to do with stealth.

I don’t like 4s revealed either, but I consider 3s revealed even when stealth drops naturally to be even worse.

Although, why does revealed debuff have to be the same duration even if you do have it for dropping stealth naturally as it is for attacking? I would be able to prefer something like 3s revealed for attacking with 1.5s revealed for natural drop.

Daeqar.8965:

Although, why does revealed debuff have to be the same duration even if you do have it for dropping stealth naturally as it is for attacking? I would be able to prefer something like 3s revealed for attacking with 1.5s revealed for natural drop.

A: Devs are lazy.
B: They would screw that up entirely and break 5 more stealth related things in the process.

Something tells me the easiest solution is for WvW players to roll a thief for 5 minutes and try this silly CnD chaining on a target dummy.

The entire idea of “Infinite stealth” is hilarious – in SPvP, you can generally tell where a thief is going to go when he stealths by what weaponset he’s using, and what your respective healths are. It takes a bit of practice, but you get pretty good at guessing locations/countering stealth almost entirely via just a little bit of experience.

If a thief -has- to be in melee range every 3-4 seconds for CnD…countering them (if you call stopping someone from using a single ability ever 3-4 seconds something that needs to be countered) should be laughably easy. L2P has a negative connotation, but I don’t mean it that way – some of these people really need to learn how to play.

Sifu.6527:

What do you guys think?

Elementalist, if they choose to, have no CD because all they have to do is switch attunements while waiting for CD. Same goes with other profession who switches weapons while waiting for CD.

Thieves on the other hand, without Init, it puts all weapon set on CD, so switching weapons doesn’t bypass the CD unless Thieves will get Full Init after switching weapons if your proposed change is implemented. Doubtful that will happen.

/sidebar rant
IMHO, if the problem is in WvWvW, then the fix should be in WvWvW exclusively. Same goes with xPvP — exclusive fixes.

I hate the fact that the fixes is across the board that affects other parts of the game, especially the non-competitive part of the game.

All I’m asking is, the GW2 Devs should learn from GW1 — do not wait until people leave the game before separating the fixes between competitive and non-competitive. A lot of friends left GW1 because of that and the separation of fixes came way too late. Please don’t make the same mistake.

If the problem with stealth chaining is in competitive play, please keep the nerf bat swinging in towards that direction.
/sidebar end rant

Back on topic. Simply put, your suggestion will Init-starve my P/P build.

If I was not on my phone I would go in depth. Your changes are very short sighted and blatantly function towards /D at the cost of 3 other weapon sets. In addition instead of simply directly solving the issue as they planned in the sotg, you go out of your way to affect traits that would all of had ICDs of 3s minimum had Anet done what they originally planned. You’re straight reducing efficiency on great levels for near any build type whatsoever to try and prevent chain stealth while still keeping it. The only outlier is D/P which is what your changes are actually worth considering until you recognize how you crap over diversity and try to force trait roles worse than it can be now.

Til;Dr: no thanks.

I don’t really agree with most of the changes OP mentioned, but I would actually love a quicker weapon swap trait.

9 seconds feels very limiting in intense fights.

Oh yeah, let’s do it and break all the thieves build based on those traits.

No. The original change to give Revealed after every stealth was more than enough. Perma-stealth would be literally impossible with that one tweak, and the effect would be marginal on anyone else (people who aren’t being cheesy).

This is a totally drastic shift for absolutely no good reason. I can find literally no justification for any of that.

Breaking stealth means breaking the class if:
- no new defensive methods are provided or
- dmg isn’t buffed.

Also, atm I can only play 2 speccs effectively against a larger spectrum of classes and situations and that changed with this patch. GL HF with too many nerfs …. I’m done.