Guild Wars 2

Zodryn.4216:

Revealed training isn’t counterplay. Counterplay is when someone reveals me and I can do something or something happens to react to it so I’m not totally screwed, or can even possibly turn the tables. 200 power with no access to backstab or my main survival source isn’t very valuable. It doesn’t counteract the reveal. It just gives a mild buff.

Example of active counterplay: if an SA trait made steal remove reveal, I could save steal instead of opening with it, then use it to counter the effects of lock on/sic ’em or what have you.

Example of passive counter: Mirror of Anguish. Wanna try and lock down that Mesmer? Joke’s on you. In this case it’s not active counterplay since it’s automatic, but it is certainly a counter.

I already mentioned elsewhere a couple of great ideas:

1.A Shadow Arts grandmaster trait that totally ignores reveal skills.

2.Many stacks of burning and bleeding upon being revealed.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Slowmelt.8547:

Zodryn.4216:

We need counterplay.

This.

Counterplay already exists, it’s called Revealed Training.

I’m not that kind of Thief.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you don’t trait fro Revealed Training, you get nothing when revealed.
If you trait for Revealed Training, you get +200 power.

The players who choose to reveal you have to deal with the powerful you. It is a counterplay.

However, not a lot of players spec for Revealed Training since they rather pick Panic Strike, thus they are purposely not wanting to counter Revealed. That’s their own fault.

200 Power is nice, but it doesn’t make you a beast all of a sudden. You might hit a bit harder, but you’re still squishy as hell and now unable to Stealth. If Revealed Training gave Protection or something along those lines, that’d be a start. As it is, it’s just too hard to justify most of the time.

And no, gaining 200 power is not “counterplay”. Counterplay would be having a way to avoid or disable their ability to Reveal (i.e., what Reveal literally is in relation to Stealth).

after I skimmed through I just noticed silly arguments here and there and I wish we stay focused on discuss OP’s topic of needing a counter play.

I think the only counterplay we need is more power. It’s the true joker card that trumps all kind of other plays. The suggestions of denying Mesmer the ability to create clones is truly interesting, but I say we go straight to the point. We need power.

I want to get to the point where no matter how much pain they have to put us through the sheer speed and cunning behind the Thief will just put them to sleep straight up.

Let them stealth and surprise us, let them hunt us down with Reveal. Power surpasses almost everything.

I suggest a passive that let the Thief become stronger after 30-45 seconds of fighting. Pretty sure the rest, we can handle it.

I am ready to play the Guild Wars version of Metal Gear Solid if they want to.

Counter play:

1. Roll a different profession,
2. Kill scrubs,
3. Get that profession nerfed,
4. Repeat steps 1-3 till all professions except the thief are nerfed,
5. Go on the thief, at this point it should be on par with other professions,
6. Kill the target that you originally wanted to kill.

May take sometime, but that’s the most successful counter-play I can think of, given if we QQ hard and long enough about a profession being OP it will get nerfed.

Seriously though, makes me want to buy the game even less now xD

Like Wildstar f2p is on the horizon (backed by NCSoft, so I aint gonna buy gem shop kitten), Overwatch beta is coming out, rumored Diablo 3 expansion is going to come out, SC2:LotV is coming out…. Won’t even have time to look back.

:P Don’t really understand why they can’t have a good hard deep look at classes, it’s a shame, but o well.

I think we need increased durability more than anything, as we are the squishiest profession in the game by a mile. Our damage is falling behind too, but the bigger problem is surviving the modern meta’s meat grinder long enough to even do any. The lack of durability also greatly limits the variety of builds Thief can bring to the table.

I wouldn’t honestly care if I could still use stealth skills. Stealth isn’t the thief’s class mechanic. Never did anything ever say it was. Stealth attacks, on the other hand, are. And being denied the ability to deal essential damage or effects is way too big of a penalty for no good reason. I get the stealth removal/reveal as a utility effect. It still shouldn’t compromise our damage and utility potential, and if it needs to disable the stealth skills, it needs to buff the thief innately to keep them relevant in the scope of a fight to counter senseless if not pointless uses of revealing effects.

Hell, I never stay in stealth longer than 1 second. I don’t use SA or any on-stealth effects. Nor do I run any stealth utilities. But I depend on that 1 second for my burst and CC.

Amante.8109:

I think we need increased durability more than anything, as we are the squishiest profession in the game by a mile. Our damage is falling behind too, but the bigger problem is surviving the modern meta’s meat grinder long enough to even do any. The lack of durability also greatly limits the variety of builds Thief can bring to the table.

And yeah, that is what we need. It’s kind of simple.

Either make us hit HARD (And I mean like, drop light armored guys, 3/4 the mediums, and 1/4 – 1/2 the heavies), like an assassin – and possibly die after attempting the assassination due to low sustainability.
Or
Make us brawl/duel to get the kill by giving us sustainability in a fight.

Preferably though, it would be nice if we had the option of building into one of the two.

Agemnon.4608:

Zodryn.4216:

Revealed training isn’t counterplay. Counterplay is when someone reveals me and I can do something or something happens to react to it so I’m not totally screwed, or can even possibly turn the tables. 200 power with no access to backstab or my main survival source isn’t very valuable. It doesn’t counteract the reveal. It just gives a mild buff.

Example of active counterplay: if an SA trait made steal remove reveal, I could save steal instead of opening with it, then use it to counter the effects of lock on/sic ’em or what have you.

Example of passive counter: Mirror of Anguish. Wanna try and lock down that Mesmer? Joke’s on you. In this case it’s not active counterplay since it’s automatic, but it is certainly a counter.

I already mentioned elsewhere a couple of great ideas:

1.A Shadow Arts grandmaster trait that totally ignores reveal skills.

2.Many stacks of burning and bleeding upon being revealed.

For me a trait that completely remove reveal would be too OP cos it leads again to the first state of stealth this game had at the beginning.
Also giving this trait to 1 specific trait line is like making that traitline almost mandatory for thieves that rely on stealth and I don’t like mandatory things cos build differenzation should be the goal. We already have trickery that is too mandatory.
My personal idea is to remake all adept traits in all trait line but DD in a way similar to this:
- Deadly Art: When a foe applies reveal on you, he gets immobilized for 2s and up to 3 boons converted to conditions
- Critical Strike: When a foe applies reveal on you, he gets critted for 3k in an AoE circle that damage also foes around him, the thief is healed for half the total damage
- Shadow Art: Stealth last 1s longer and reveal last 50% less
- Acrobatics: When a foe applies reveal on you, refill your endurance and convert your conditions to Boons
- Trickery: When a foe applies reveal on you, break stun and shadowstep away, also gain 3 initiativegain

The weird thing behind this is that one could rightly say Illusions are the mesmers mechanic, and the thief using stealth completely hard counters them. Would you compromise by making it so that all ai wasn’t fooled by stealth? One could parry your language, playing Devils advocate, and say that stealth itself counters the mesmers and ranger class mechanics.

Daniel Handler.4816:

The weird thing behind this is that one could rightly say Illusions are the mesmers mechanic, and the thief using stealth completely hard counters them. Would you compromise by making it so that all ai wasn’t fooled by stealth? One could parry your language, playing Devils advocate, and say that stealth itself counters the mesmers and ranger class mechanics.

What? Illusions and pets that keep track of the thief in stealth and start moving and attacking the thief 0.000001 seconds after he leaves stealth, even if the thief is moved far away or hiding behing a wall? Illutions and Pets have the best reaction time I have ever seen
Also I could argue that channeling skills like Rapid Fire, counter stealth even better than skills that apply reveal

Kolly.9872:

Daniel Handler.4816:

The weird thing behind this is that one could rightly say Illusions are the mesmers mechanic, and the thief using stealth completely hard counters them. Would you compromise by making it so that all ai wasn’t fooled by stealth? One could parry your language, playing Devils advocate, and say that stealth itself counters the mesmers and ranger class mechanics.

What? Illusions and pets that keep track of the thief in stealth and start moving and attacking the thief 0.000001 seconds after he leaves stealth, even if the thief is moved far away or hiding behing a wall? Illutions and Pets have the best reaction time I have ever seen
Also I could argue that channeling skills like Rapid Fire, counter stealth even better than skills that apply reveal

I am referring to the fact all phantasm skills require targets. And some pets cannot be commanded to perform their command skill without a target. The thief class as a whole is being unfairly punished for the builds that never leave stealth.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Kolly.9872:

Daniel Handler.4816:

The weird thing behind this is that one could rightly say Illusions are the mesmers mechanic, and the thief using stealth completely hard counters them. Would you compromise by making it so that all ai wasn’t fooled by stealth? One could parry your language, playing Devils advocate, and say that stealth itself counters the mesmers and ranger class mechanics.

What? Illusions and pets that keep track of the thief in stealth and start moving and attacking the thief 0.000001 seconds after he leaves stealth, even if the thief is moved far away or hiding behing a wall? Illutions and Pets have the best reaction time I have ever seen
Also I could argue that channeling skills like Rapid Fire, counter stealth even better than skills that apply reveal

I am referring to the fact all phantasm skills require targets. And some pets cannot be commanded to perform their command skill without a target. The thief class as a whole is being unfairly punished for the builds that never leave stealth.

“never leave stealth”
…
How do they kill or do anything in pvp then?
I know about that ghost something build, but thats not usable in PvP and even in WvW…I don´t know…
That “perma stealth” complaining always was the problem because how meaningless it was after the culling-fix years ago. Permastealth only existed because of that. Except, like I said, that “ghost-build”, but whatever.

You know the advantage of illusions btw? They keep attacking while the Mesmer is in stealth. I consider that a good compensation for only able to cast on visible targets…
Using iberserker doesn´t reveal you as Mesmer
And they can still use their distortion and invuln and whatever to be active. Sword 2 is such a great tool for Mesmers to bait attacks with evades after that or chaining them in different ways.

Coronit.9432:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Kolly.9872:

Daniel Handler.4816:

The weird thing behind this is that one could rightly say Illusions are the mesmers mechanic, and the thief using stealth completely hard counters them. Would you compromise by making it so that all ai wasn’t fooled by stealth? One could parry your language, playing Devils advocate, and say that stealth itself counters the mesmers and ranger class mechanics.

What? Illusions and pets that keep track of the thief in stealth and start moving and attacking the thief 0.000001 seconds after he leaves stealth, even if the thief is moved far away or hiding behing a wall? Illutions and Pets have the best reaction time I have ever seen
Also I could argue that channeling skills like Rapid Fire, counter stealth even better than skills that apply reveal

I am referring to the fact all phantasm skills require targets. And some pets cannot be commanded to perform their command skill without a target. The thief class as a whole is being unfairly punished for the builds that never leave stealth.

“never leave stealth”
…
How do they kill or do anything in pvp then?
I know about that ghost something build, but thats not usable in PvP and even in WvW…I don´t know…
That “perma stealth” complaining always was the problem because how meaningless it was after the culling-fix years ago. Permastealth only existed because of that. Except, like I said, that “ghost-build”, but whatever.

You know the advantage of illusions btw? They keep attacking while the Mesmer is in stealth. I consider that a good compensation for only able to cast on visible targets…
Using iberserker doesn´t reveal you as Mesmer
And they can still use their distortion and invuln and whatever to be active. Sword 2 is such a great tool for Mesmers to bait attacks with evades after that or chaining them in different ways.

Its not just mesmer. The pet bugs out when their target stealths. Basically it messes up all AI. One could argue that all traps and uncatchable should reveal the thief.

Also last time I checked your primary mechanic was steal, your secondary mechanics was initiative, dual skills, stolen skills, and stealth attacks. Either way you are discussing countering, not denial.

Please tell me what else completely locks out entire trait line.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Its not just mesmer. The pet bugs out when their target stealths. Basically it messes up all AI. One could argue that all traps and uncatchable should reveal the thief.

Also last time I checked your primary mechanic was steal, your secondary mechanics was initiative, dual skills, stolen skills, and stealth attacks. Either way you are discussing countering, not denial.

Mesmets can still shatter, which is AoE so it has a good chance of hitting your stealthed opponent, and many pet skills will also still work. AI isn’t the point of this thread though. It’s about the fact that you can completely deny a thief’s access to their primary survival mechanic (evades aren’t our thing anymore) for a very long time. Whether you call it our core mechanic or not, it’s far more essential to thieves than any other class.

Also, steal is our profession skill, but it’s just a shadowstep, and even the stolen skills are things other classes can do (not game changing things either). Using the “others can stealth so it isn’t a thief mechanic” logic, steal isn’t a thief mechanic either. Only initiative is truly unique to us.

Zodryn.4216:

Only initiative is truly unique to us.

It also makes us SLOWER, not faster.
Compared to a Warrior who can spend his cooldowns and then change weapons to spend a fresh pile of cooldowns, as a Thief you can do the same number of skills or less before you’re out of Initiative, then you swap weapon sets and… can’t do anything.

You are required to take Trickery, and most people need to take RFI as well.
The Initiative system is crap. It should have fewer init-restoring options, but regenerate faster baseline. As it is, it makes us worse, not better.

Lulz more reveal to come confirmed. Meh my necro will love them anyway.

Again to clarify: stealth is not the thief’s class mechanic. Primary survival or not, it isn’t a mechanic belonging solely to the thief nor was it designed to be.

Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.

DeceiverX.8361:

Again to clarify: stealth is not the thief’s class mechanic. Primary survival or not, it isn’t a mechanic belonging solely to the thief nor was it designed to be.

Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.

There’s a trait line that’s called Shadow Arts who wants to say hello — it’s been here since the beginning — was working well in the beginning — the addition of reveal ruined everything about it.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

DeceiverX.8361:

Again to clarify: stealth is not the thief’s class mechanic. Primary survival or not, it isn’t a mechanic belonging solely to the thief nor was it designed to be.

Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.

There’s a trait line that’s called Shadow Arts who wants to say hello — it’s been here since the beginning — was working well in the beginning — the addition of reveal ruined everything about it.

And it still doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t a mechanic unique to the thief. The mesmer has had PU and surrounding stealth traits as well, the ranger has had Hunter’s Shot, and so on. Shadow Arts, (old) Remorseless, PU, etc. have all modified stealth and given it benefits. Just because the thief has more access to it and more of an emphasis on it does not mean that the entirety of the ability is the thief’s. Stealth attacks are the class mechanic. We have access to frequent stealth because of these attacks as a means of proccing them, not the other way around. SA is an option. I don’t play with SA. Evasion during its primetime never used SA. S/P and P/P are designed not to use SA. the shortbow has no stealth access without a smoke field/blasting will reveal if it hits a target.

Frankly, I’d rather see stealth nerfed across the board into being not able to be stacked at all but with the thief getting access to better cleanses and getting big benefits from becoming revealed fully utilizing the in-and-out active gameplay the class was designed around utilizing. Given the ability to continue to use big damage and control effects like backstab and Tactical Strike every 3s without needing to be stealthed and some other buffs elsewhere like stability, I would gladly make the trade, because it’d especially help our PvP performance by being able to hold points and help our WvW periphery engages immensely.

DeceiverX.8361:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

DeceiverX.8361:

Again to clarify: stealth is not the thief’s class mechanic. Primary survival or not, it isn’t a mechanic belonging solely to the thief nor was it designed to be.

Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.

There’s a trait line that’s called Shadow Arts who wants to say hello — it’s been here since the beginning — was working well in the beginning — the addition of reveal ruined everything about it.

And it still doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t a mechanic unique to the thief.

It’s just a mechanic with multiple unique benefits for thief, you’re just pointlessly arguing semantics at this point so you’re not perceived as wrong.

Who cares if stealth is unique to the Thief? It’s arguing semantics at this point. Regardless of how “unique” it is to Thief, no other profession relies on it so heavily just to survive, and that’s obviously the real problem here.

I’m trying to distinguish the fact that we don’t necessary need more buffs to stealth or that thieves shouldn’t feel cheated or feel targeted. Other classes and builds do depend on this as well and are similarly influenced.

Yes, it’s horrible design. But perhaps we can look to other avenues to request changes for the betterment of the class and all of its builds rather than camping SA/stealth builds? If they had positional revealing that didn’t affect our stealth attack capabilities, I wouldn’t give a cat. I’m not saying a build without SA is viable. I’m saying that it then doesn’t violate any class mechanics. These are two very big differences from a design and balance perspective.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m trying to distinguish the fact that we don’t necessary need more buffs to stealth or that thieves shouldn’t feel cheated or feel targeted. Other classes and builds do depend on this as well and are similarly influenced.

We’re not misunderstanding you, we’re telling you you’re wrong.

No other classes loses as much as thief does when denied access to stealth.

For examples, See: stealth attacks, the entirety of the shadow arts line, the fact that thief was designed with stealth as one of their defensive mechanisms where 6 of the games other classes (at minimum) never had stealth considered in their defensive designs.

Your opinion is incorrect.

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m saying that it then doesn’t violate any class mechanics.

DeceiverX.8361:

Initiative, Steal, and dual-skills (albeit bad), and Stealth attacks on the other hand, are the thief’s class mechanics.

If you can’t access Stealth Attacks because you were denied by anti-stealth, how is that not a violation?

Thief’s mechanic relies on stealth. Go play a thief and fight someone without going into stealth even once (and no don’t go fight a new player who don’t know what they are doing). I can tell you that you wont be able to win a single fight because without stealth you barely remove any conditions (enjoy dying to every condi build), thieves are squishy we use stealth so that we can prevent some dmg and heal without it we just die fast to burst (enjoy dying to every burst build). So without stealth thieves dies to everything what is balanced about this?

Stealth is indeed a thief mechanic and in particular stealth attacks. The offcial Wiki lists steal , stealth and dual wield.

While other classes have access to stealth NONE of them have a weapon trait in the #1 position that changes its function when stealthed. Every single thief weapon skill occupying slot 1 changes when attacking from stealth. Most of these weapon skills are uniquely powerful when used from stealth.

This is unique to the thief and a unique thief mechanic. We can not access these unique attacks without stealth.

Zodryn.4216:

TL;DR enemy reveals are basically a “nope” button against thieves. We need counterplay.

stealth has no counterplay currently. thieves will need to learn their multiple teleports and evades to leave the area when “reveal” utility is used. simple as that.

Stealth has counterplay: it’s called understanding how it works and exploiting its weaknesses (of which there are many).

But as usual, emotion and feeling trumps rationality and reason. Stealth FEELS bad to play against, especially when you don’t know how to handle it, so it must have no counterplay.

mistsim.2748:

Zodryn.4216:

TL;DR enemy reveals are basically a “nope” button against thieves. We need counterplay.

stealth has no counterplay currently. thieves will need to learn their multiple teleports and evades to leave the area when “reveal” utility is used. simple as that.

Yeah Thief is the best class 1v1 cos OP stealth. That’s the only reason thief is choosen over other classes in pvp teams. Also 5 thieves team should be banned cos it is blatanty OP
EDIT: where are our multiple ports? The only ground target teleport I can think of is shadowstep on 50 sec cd and shortbow 5 usefull for running away draining all our iniziative. The others are a sign on 30 sec cd and a couple of weapon skill that require an enemy target anyway. So not realy the best optio for disengage.

For some reason every thief seems to think they are revealed 100% of the time. I agree that revealed training should give protection like somebody mentioned already on this post, 200 power is nothing. Also revealed is counterplay, even though engi gets to do it abit too easily. And what is this violating class mechanics bs? Every profession can completely deny everything the other can do by outplaying. Afraid of engi revealing you? Well dont go try to stealth near a one or like lot of ppl here like to say: understand how it works and exploit it.

Lenaios.2781:

For some reason every thief seems to think they are revealed 100% of the time. I agree that revealed training should give protection like somebody mentioned already on this post, 200 power is nothing. Also revealed is counterplay, even though engi gets to do it abit too easily. And what is this violating class mechanics bs? Every profession can completely deny everything the other can do by outplaying. Afraid of engi revealing you? Well dont go try to stealth near a one or like lot of ppl here like to say: understand how it works and exploit it.

Lol what? Yes reveal is counterplay, just like a stun is counterplay (deny just about anything briefly with an interrupt). But there are these things called stun breakers. Counterplay to counterplay so when you are stun locked you aren’t completely screwed. There is nothing like that for reveal.

And it’s not just engi. Almost every class is getting a reveal skill now. You’re also saying if I don’t want to be denied stealth I just shouldn’t stealth (there is no way to exploit 8 sec reveal at the moment so that suggestion is useless)…in other words, if I don’t want to be denied my primary condi removal and regen I shouldn’t remove condis or regen. Makes sense, I’ll try that next time…

Revealed was done cos apparently for some people there wasn’t any counter play to stealth, even if indeed there are many.
Well for sure there is no counter play to reveal, so add something that can counter this debuff now. If everything needs a counter in this game, even reveal needs one.

Nothing is going to happen.

This thread makes me laugh. Thieves are so crappy now due to major nerfs and stealth counter play.

Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.

Also doesn’t take a genius to know that anet will never buff thieves.

I really think we the short end of the stick due to all the whines about the culling problems…

I’m probably overstaying my welcome here in the thief forums, but I’d like to add my 2 cents to the mechanic denial debate, and clear up some misconceptions.

Warrior, necromancer, and to some extent, Mesmer both experience mechanic denial, and while Necromancers are fairly strong against D/P, both Necromancer and Warrior are subject to, quite literally, “mechanic denial” when facing a S/D thief or anything with high avoidance, especially Necromancer which actually has a much harder time with S/D than D/P, despite its less than optimal performance overall.

Evading a LF building attack or a Scepter or Axe can leave a Necromancer almost entirely void of Life Force which is basically certain death against a thief. This is part of the reason most PvP Necromancer builds have adopted to Soul Marks/Dagger+Warhorn and Spectral Armor. It’s the most likely to build sufficient Life Force against a thief, where a build that differs from this norm can be quite literally cut from most of their “mechanic”, which also includes basically all of their defense.

Warriors are similar in that the more pure-avoidance you have, the harder it is to build Adrenaline which reduces Burst finished rates, lower condition removal, less healing and so on, so that’s something to consider.

Mesmers are a bit in their own category where AOE is a mechanic denial.

Arguably, these situations are more of a mechanic denial as these are things ALL warrior/Necromancer/Mesmers use, and not just certain build types.

Food for thought.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m probably overstaying my welcome here in the thief forums, but I’d like to add my 2 cents to the mechanic denial debate, and clear up some misconceptions.

Warrior, necromancer, and to some extent, Mesmer both experience mechanic denial, and while Necromancers are fairly strong against D/P, both Necromancer and Warrior are subject to, quite literally, “mechanic denial” when facing a S/D thief or anything with high avoidance, especially Necromancer which actually has a much harder time with S/D than D/P, despite its less than optimal performance overall.

Evading a LF building attack or a Scepter or Axe can leave a Necromancer almost entirely void of Life Force which is basically certain death against a thief. This is part of the reason most PvP Necromancer builds have adopted to Soul Marks/Dagger+Warhorn and Spectral Armor. It’s the most likely to build sufficient Life Force against a thief, where a build that differs from this norm can be quite literally cut from most of their “mechanic”, which also includes basically all of their defense.

Warriors are similar in that the more pure-avoidance you have, the harder it is to build Adrenaline which reduces Burst finished rates, lower condition removal, less healing and so on, so that’s something to consider.

Mesmers are a bit in their own category where AOE is a mechanic denial.

Arguably, these situations are more of a mechanic denial as these are things ALL warrior/Necromancer/Mesmers use, and not just certain build types.

Food for thought.

I don’t see any specific examples of how a s/d stops necros from building LF…

Necros just has to hit spec armor whole he’s taking damage and presto LF…

Besides s/d sucks due to now… Pretty much a non viable build since the nerf to acro line and several sword skill nerfs.

Other than spectral armor, the major outlier in burst generation, most skills require landing an offensive hit, and most have cooldowns, hence why the higher evasion of an enemy the more easily starved a Necromancer is.

The reason it’s less of a problem is because D/P doesn’t actually do a ton of evasion. When engaged it’s still buildable.

Your statements just seem like ignorance of the Necromancer class, though. I see no point in trying to discuss a topic of you are clearly at a lack of understanding and negatively biased.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m probably overstaying my welcome here in the thief forums, but I’d like to add my 2 cents to the mechanic denial debate, and clear up some misconceptions.

Warrior, necromancer, and to some extent, Mesmer both experience mechanic denial, and while Necromancers are fairly strong against D/P, both Necromancer and Warrior are subject to, quite literally, “mechanic denial” when facing a S/D thief or anything with high avoidance, especially Necromancer which actually has a much harder time with S/D than D/P, despite its less than optimal performance overall.

Evading a LF building attack or a Scepter or Axe can leave a Necromancer almost entirely void of Life Force which is basically certain death against a thief. This is part of the reason most PvP Necromancer builds have adopted to Soul Marks/Dagger+Warhorn and Spectral Armor. It’s the most likely to build sufficient Life Force against a thief, where a build that differs from this norm can be quite literally cut from most of their “mechanic”, which also includes basically all of their defense.

Warriors are similar in that the more pure-avoidance you have, the harder it is to build Adrenaline which reduces Burst finished rates, lower condition removal, less healing and so on, so that’s something to consider.

Mesmers are a bit in their own category where AOE is a mechanic denial.

Arguably, these situations are more of a mechanic denial as these are things ALL warrior/Necromancer/Mesmers use, and not just certain build types.

Food for thought.

To be fair about the classes you gave as an example
Warrior – has shouts if traited to give adrenaline, plus the heal shout maxes your adrenaline
Necromancer – if traited spectral skills give extra life force (while not huge, it’s something) and only spectral grasp needs to hit (20% if traited is really good life force gen for spectral grasp)
Mesmer – has many ways to generate more clones, phantasms not as much
Thief – if revealed, has no way of getting back into stealth until revealed is gone. As you can see, he is the only one actually denied getting off one of his mechanics, the stealth attack.

I would also like to add ranger to your list as aoe kills the pet quite fast.

I’m not of the opinion revealed needs to be taken off us, I’m fine with it, just wanted to clarify things.
Also good to see someone not raging at thief mains

swinsk.6410:

I don’t see any specific examples of how a s/d stops necros from building LF…

Necros just has to hit spec armor whole he’s taking damage and presto LF…

Besides s/d sucks due to now… Pretty much a non viable build since the nerf to acro line and several sword skill nerfs.

I don’t play any necro, and I don’t often fight them, but a quick visit to the wiki can show a lot.

A list of their lifeforce generating skills:
Staff 1 (all staff skills if traited for)
Axe 2
Scepter 3
Dagger 1c
Signet of Undeath
Spectral Armor
Spectral Grasp
Spectral Walk
Lich Form

If you take the meta Celestial Necro build, you will see that the only life force generators are Dagger 1c, the Staff skills, Spectral Armor and Lich Form. Again, I don’t really play necro, but I’m pretty sure necros don’t use Lich form for life force. Spectral Armor does generate a lot of life force, but that looks like it is more effective against fast multi-hit attackers rather than slower harder hitting attacks. It is also on a 50s cooldown, so it’s not something they can just use on a whim.

The rest of their life force comes from their weapon skills. My guess is that staff is the big generator, since all of the skills generate life force. A bit of contention, though. From what it looks like to me, the marks grant life force regardless of whether or not they are evaded…meaning in terms of life force generation against marks, s/d does not have an advantage over d/p.

S/d will, however, get an advantage against avoiding the auto-attacks that staff throws at them. I’m not sure how much of an advantage it is, but if we are comparing s/d with d/p, then s/d does indeed have the upper hand in this engagement, at least in terms of preventing the necro from generating lifeforce.

I don’t know why people keep bringing up other classes saying that you can deny their mechanics. Sure, I can dodge an adrenaline skill, or kill mesmer clones with AoE, and that is denial, but it isn’t “every 20 seconds you get no clones for 8 seconds.”

Zodryn.4216:

I don’t know why people keep bringing up other classes saying that you can deny their mechanics. Sure, I can dodge an adrenaline skill, or kill mesmer clones with AoE, and that is denial, but it isn’t “every 20 seconds you get no clones for 8 seconds.”

AFAIK the highest is 6, (though that number is still a bit questionable imo, not sure why it isn’t 4), but to be honest, as a Necromancer myself, sometimes you don’t get that full 20 seconds, if you’re denied enough LF early in the fight (especially if spectral armor is on CD), you’re usually pretty much dead. Not to mention their heal is super easy to head shot.

But we could argue about who gets screwed over worse until we’re blue in the face, and solves pretty much nothing.

The good news is, the only two that are overly problematic are the Revenant and scrapper ones. Revenant’s is delayed and VERY visible, so not too hard to dodge, and supposedly, engineer won’t even use this elite in sPvP. So really, I think this doom and gloom might be a bit premature as a freak-out, more than a legitimate concern.

That said, if it gets launched in whatever state and is as bad as you fear, I’ll apologize and tell Roy and uh… Whatever that Engineer guy’s name is, to be nicer. <3 NHF.

Since there are more anti stealth stuff going around, I think thieves should get more evade and block type of builds. Theres already a lot of evade stuff now with the daredevil line but I think they should add some counterplay spec where you rely on blocking and countering enemy attacks when timed right.

Mosharn.8357:

Since there are more anti stealth stuff going around, I think thieves should get more evade and block type of builds. Theres already a lot of evade stuff now with the daredevil line but I think they should add some counterplay spec where you rely on blocking and countering enemy attacks when timed right.

Bandit’s Defense is basically what you’re looking for then, right? I haven’t played Daredevil yet, but this skill seems incredibly strong. It’s a VERY short cd stunbreak (maybe the shortest in the game), as well as a block and decent potential cc.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m probably overstaying my welcome here in the thief forums, but I’d like to add my 2 cents to the mechanic denial debate, and clear up some misconceptions.

Warrior, necromancer, and to some extent, Mesmer both experience mechanic denial, and while Necromancers are fairly strong against D/P, both Necromancer and Warrior are subject to, quite literally, “mechanic denial” when facing a S/D thief or anything with high avoidance, especially Necromancer which actually has a much harder time with S/D than D/P, despite its less than optimal performance overall.

Evading a LF building attack or a Scepter or Axe can leave a Necromancer almost entirely void of Life Force which is basically certain death against a thief. This is part of the reason most PvP Necromancer builds have adopted to Soul Marks/Dagger+Warhorn and Spectral Armor. It’s the most likely to build sufficient Life Force against a thief, where a build that differs from this norm can be quite literally cut from most of their “mechanic”, which also includes basically all of their defense.

Warriors are similar in that the more pure-avoidance you have, the harder it is to build Adrenaline which reduces Burst finished rates, lower condition removal, less healing and so on, so that’s something to consider.

Mesmers are a bit in their own category where AOE is a mechanic denial.

Arguably, these situations are more of a mechanic denial as these are things ALL warrior/Necromancer/Mesmers use, and not just certain build types.

Food for thought.

The scale of the situations just aren’t comparable, IMO.

These next 3 points are closely related, so it might seem like I’m repeating myself.

A) None of them are nearly as binary as another class applying revealed to thief. Once you’ve been hit revealed, there is literally no way to gain access to stealth. It’s all or nothing. Evading/blinding an attack counters the LF/Adrenaline gain from a single attack.

B) There are other ways to gain Adrenaline/LF. Even if there aren’t a ton of ways, other ways still exist. The mechanic is never wholly shut out. As I said before, the second revealed is applied to a thief, it is literally impossible to gain access to stealth until revealed is over.

C) Both Adrenaline and LF (correct me if I’m wrong about LF, I’m not super knowledgeable about necros) can be used from a partial state. If you have at least some LF or at least 1 bar of adrenaline, you can access those mechanics.

D) Necro and Warrior have always needed to land their attacks to gain LF/Adrenaline. They were designed that way from launch, the way their skills work (should) take that into account. The inclusion of outside skills that apply revealed to a thief are new, and thief has not received any substantial buffs to help combat that.

E) Warrior does not lose access to every single pvp viable trait in a particular line if they have no adrenaline. Some yes, but not every single one. This may be true for necros as well, though I am not sure.

On one hand, we have some classes sometimes having trouble taking advantage of their mechanic, in a way that’s been around since the launch of the game, while also still having access to secondary methods of accessing that mechanic.

On the other hand, we have a class that can be entirely shut out of its mechanic (and every pvp viable trait in the associated traitline, considered mandatory in the current and previous meta), with no secondary methods of accessing it, all by new skills that thieves have never received balance changes to help counteract. The mechanic being denied is also considered one of the classes primary defensive mechanics and is inherently very squishy due to design choices which deny them a litany of sustain options other classes have, and make taking any sort of defensive stats a losing proposition.

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Mosharn.8357:

Since there are more anti stealth stuff going around, I think thieves should get more evade and block type of builds. Theres already a lot of evade stuff now with the daredevil line but I think they should add some counterplay spec where you rely on blocking and countering enemy attacks when timed right.

Bandit’s Defense is basically what you’re looking for then, right? I haven’t played Daredevil yet, but this skill seems incredibly strong. It’s a VERY short cd stunbreak (maybe the shortest in the game), as well as a block and decent potential cc.

Bandit’s defense is nice, but already has it’s own design problems. It’s CD is already being bumped to 15s, and the melee retaliation automatically firing is kind of a huge detriment in team fights (which DrD was clearly designed to participate in) seeing a sit locks you in an animation and stops blocking. You’ll be knocking down minions/clones/phantasms while you get chewed up by AoE because you’ve stopped blocking. It’s potentially useful as a short CD stunbreak if you back up out of the fight while blocking, but that’s hardly good design.

I’m still not 100% sure why they are releasing glaringly problematic skills into the game, my assumption is they want to add counter play to stealth engages, if so, thats fine. But they need to give thieves and improved stealth that you only get revealed from, when you deal damage. Simple as that. So they can have these scrappers reveal the thieves team, but not him, and hes able to do as he is intended, position and stab some one.