Guild Wars 2

Thieves have, as I’m sure you are aware, a very limited incarnation of Stealth.

Stealth is typically attached to specific abilities as a utility effect and usually of rather short duration. Considering the history of Stealth classes in past MMOs, this is an understandable and reasonable incarnation of the Stealth mechanic.

However, it also limits the “sneaky” potential of Thieves. No longer can we truly “infiltrate” or even waylay opponents. It kind of limits our potential which is a bit of a shame. Now while I’m sure no one wants to return to the days of infinite ganking potential, I believe there is room for a middle ground.

Hence I propose a new ability, called “Sneak”.

Sneak – 60 seconds cooldown
Become stealthed, consuming 1 Initiative per second. Every hit you take while stealthed will consume one Initiative.

The effect ends when either all Initiative is spent, or when the effect is ended manually.

Reasoning: This would open up myriads of tactical opportunities for Thieves, especially in WvW, without reaching the overpowered dimensions of perma-stealth.

The fact that you consume initiative means that you won’t be able to “pounce” on unsupected players as your main resource will be depleted.

Bleeding initiative when hit by damage should ensure that Thieves can’t simply escape from a lost fight, as their Initiative would bleed rapidly (for those who don’t know, you still take regular damage in Stealth, it just doesn’t break immediately like it does in WoW).

Another side-effect is that this utility ability would give us an alternative way of spending Initiative outside of spamming our most effective attack.

Overall I’m curious to hear what you think. Would this kind of short-duration (12/15 seconds max.) stealth be a good addition to the class?

Oh god if i had stealth that lasted that long there would be sooo many more nerf thief threads.

My honest opinion is that it’s great already. I use a stealth spec on this game, it’s very powerful tool an allows you to do insane stuff. You should check out my thread WvW Solo Thief + New Video w/ Commentary. It’s under the same category as yours.

The mechanics you put in place work but there are already trait lines that can use elements of your inniative and utility skills to give you stealth that would outlast what you are describing.

No, it wouldn’t be a good addition. There’s a ton of ways to stealth as it is and they last long enough.

Horrible idea. Thieves don’t need long duration stealth to be effective.

I don’t get why everybody is demanding a long-duration stealth when the stealth we have already is crazy effective. We don’t need to initiate combat from stealth to be effective.

It sounds like all you want is the ability to catch enemies off-guard without them seeing you coming.

I don’t like this suggestion.

It was a very conscious design decision of the developers of this game to make stealth a short duration, in-combat mechanic instead of a long duration movement related mechanic. This is by design. This is intentional. It is not an oversight. It is not a weakness.

If you want movement related stealth you can still do it, btw. Use Infiltrator’s Arrow and shadowstep/teleport from one piece of physical cover to another. you actually an conceal your movement across a battlefield by Infiltrator Arrowing from behind one piece of terrain cover to another. Its actually very effective on most maps.