Guild Wars 2

Before we start on this suggestion let us be clear on this one thing: Stealth is not a mechanic unique to the Thief. It is quite obvious but, I want to be safe to point it out.

Thieves are the master of trickery, subtlety, subterfuge,and cheap shots. The things we do sometimes are beyond the wildest dreams of any other professions.

It is therefore natural that the Thief’s stealth skills be of higher quality than other profession’s stealth utilities.

OK let us get to the point
Introducing the 3 types of invisibility:

Camouflage – Stealth – Ghost. Please bare with me boys and girls.

I. General info

a- Camouflage is considered level 1, therefore it is affected by reveal. Camouflage however reduces movement speed.

b – Stealth is level 2, it is also the most common type of invisibility, the current profession will have access to it. It is still succeptible to reveal.

C- Ghost however is the prestigious and most intricate one. and it not bound by movement speed and is immune to Reveal. Very few skills have and invisibilty of Ghost quality.

II. More Details

Cloak: Mostly available to every class. Rangers, Dragonhunter, Engineers using elixirs,etc. Mesmer’s Prestige.

Stealth: Only Mesmer Elite Mass Invisibity grants this, and Scraper’s Sneak Drone.

Ghost: Only exclusive to the Thief. HOWEVER it is only accessible through combos finisher. So moves like, C&D, Blinding Powder or Shadow Refuge, or even traits will be either turn out to be Stealth or Camouflage quality.

Now for example, if you do Smoke Screen+ SB #2 you get Ghost quality.

So far, I think this will give us room to breathe without making everything absolutely obsolete. It will let our oponents be just as versatile in taking us down.

What do you think?
Please rate out of 10 and discuss, I won’t get offended if you put -5/10. I just want good arguments that are for and against this idea.

Thank you. Please don’ say stuff like « Yeah I don’t like the term Ghost, i like x,y,z » because that is not the point.

again, ty.

6/10

An interesting thought, however this would make D/P the indisputable king of Thief with no room for innovation. The other specs would just fall to ruin or be forced to take something that can leap or blast finish.

So… Not too far from the current meta. D/D would become useless in the upcoming HoT, kinda like it is now, but even more-so.

There’s a lot wrong with the idea and a lot right with it. It would take some serious balancing. Perhaps not through finishers but specific Thief abilities, that way D/P doesn’t become the absolute must have. Make it so that Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder and other Utilities give you the “Ghost” level of Stealth. It becomes more “Thief” like because it’s through our unique skills, not combo finishers.

You could even go so far as to provide bonuses for using Ghost stealth as it will be behind a long cooldown. If you blast finish the Blinding Powder then you would gain x2 the Ghost stealth, to keep it simple and fair. Also leaping or blasting a Smoke Screen would give Ghost stealth so it makes more sense.

Combo’ing through 1-5 skills doesn’t give Ghost Stealth… Gotta balance it somehow.

Heck, you could make it so that gaining Ghost stealth removes Reveal.

I don’t like the implementation, but interesting. I think we need a gm in sa or an elite to give brief ghost level stealth. I don’t think anyone wants stealth with movement speed decrease.

I like the idea of a GM trait in Shadow Arts totally negating reveal. Since reveal is a new mechanic I’d buff master and other traits with healing and condition removal upon stealth to avoid the reveal immunity from sacrificing what we simply just had before.

Zodryn.4216:

I don’t like the implementation, but interesting. I think we need a gm in sa or an elite to give brief ghost level stealth. I don’t think anyone wants stealth with movement speed decrease.

Ok you just want a trait that grants immunity to reveal? Wouldn’t that make SA a complete must? I like the idea thought. Nobody wants movement speed decrease on stealth that is true, but why would a Guardian or a Ranger need Stealth for? The idea is based on the fact that rangers and Guardian have rudimentary means of stealth, and because the camouflage is so basic, they have to move slower to remain undetected.

idk What do you suggest ?

meepeY.2867:

6/10

An interesting thought, however this would make D/P the indisputable king of Thief with no room for innovation. The other specs would just fall to ruin or be forced to take something that can leap or blast finish.

So… Not too far from the current meta. D/D would become useless in the upcoming HoT, kinda like it is now, but even more-so.

There’s a lot wrong with the idea and a lot right with it. It would take some serious balancing. Perhaps not through finishers but specific Thief abilities, that way D/P doesn’t become the absolute must have. Make it so that Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder and other Utilities give you the “Ghost” level of Stealth. It becomes more “Thief” like because it’s through our unique skills, not combo finishers.

You could even go so far as to provide bonuses for using Ghost stealth as it will be behind a long cooldown. If you blast finish the Blinding Powder then you would gain x2 the Ghost stealth, to keep it simple and fair. Also leaping or blasting a Smoke Screen would give Ghost stealth so it makes more sense.

Combo’ing through 1-5 skills doesn’t give Ghost Stealth… Gotta balance it somehow.

Heck, you could make it so that gaining Ghost stealth removes Reveal.

Ok reasonable. So you are suggesting more access to Ghost stealth. Just as fair I suppose.

Agemnon.4608:

I like the idea of a GM trait in Shadow Arts totally negating reveal. Since reveal is a new mechanic I’d buff master and other traits with healing and condition removal upon stealth to avoid the reveal immunity from sacrificing what we simply just had before.

So you agree with the one above. It is very interesting but I fear this would make it truly powerful for implementation.

I want a trait that gives the ability to remove reveal (example: remove reveal on steal so once every 20-30 seconds) not perma ghost mode immunity to reveal.

Traits that remove Reveal sound nice, but in the grand scheme of things they’re insignificant. The problem isn’t the rise of Reveal effects, it’s Thief’s absurd over-reliance on Stealth just to be able to survive. Until this is addressed, nothing of merit will change.

Amante.8109:

Traits that remove Reveal sound nice, but in the grand scheme of things they’re insignificant. The problem isn’t the rise of Reveal effects, it’s Thief’s absurd over-reliance on Stealth just to be able to survive. Until this is addressed, nothing of merit will change.

Ever thought that people might like to play stealth classes? Why grief and punish them for it so heavily? Counters are ok and needed, but not braindead crap they added to game.
900!!!!! range aoe reveal….how can one be so stupid?!

I roll a rogue/thief in every MMO I play because I like to play “stealth” classes too, but at this point I’d rather have a functional visible class than an broken invisible one.

5/10.

I will explain why I’ve graded it this low.

1) The implementation is very kitten a technical perspective. It is possible, don’t get me wrong, but they’d never implement a work-around this complex, affecting multiple classes at once.

2) The idea immediately creates the notion of difference between classes. Almost as if “classism” Don’t tell me you don’t already see posts on forum/reddit saying how thieves have real stealth while mesmers or other classes have the “useless” stealth. It will affect the community negatively.

3) The idea solves the problem for only 1 weapon set. I especially don’t like how you’ve mentioned “Ghost Stealth” will be attained through “blasts – finishers” which immediately says go D/P or go home. You know stacking stealth through Shortbow is never a thing unless out of combat.

4) After playing for so many years without any movement speed restriction in stealth I really don’t want to go back to “WoW-style stealth” where you’re punished for being invisible.

Overall, good & constructive effort to solve the reveal problem, but unfortunately, not enough in my humble opinion.

The only suggestion I can have for the whole reveal fiasco is to reduce the reveal to 2-3 seconds. 6 is incredibly long as it is. Ripping off stealth is already a huge counterplay, and not letting them gain for another 6 seconds is just ridiculous.

I would also like to see such reveals on a much longer cooldowns (60 + seconds) considering our utility stealth skills are on a relatively long cooldown and it wouldn’t be fair if they could counter it every single time we use one.

I already believe our “initiative-generated stealths” SHOULDN’T be countered that easily. We’re literally spending ~10 initiative to keep ourselves stealthed for 5-6 seconds. We trade our resource of damage/evade/debuffs (anything that initiative grants us) for stealthing ourselves.

I don’t know…. they are really fudging up Thief boys… I feel cheated and sad for investing this much time on a class that lingers on the border of being completely unplayable – unfun.

T_T

Kocoff.7582:

Before we start on this suggestion let us be clear on this one thing: Stealth is not a mechanic unique to the Thief. It is quite obvious but, I want to be safe to point it out.

Thieves are the master of trickery, subtlety, subterfuge,and cheap shots. The things we do sometimes are beyond the wildest dreams of any other professions.

It is therefore natural that the Thief’s stealth skills be of higher quality than other profession’s stealth utilities.

OK let us get to the point
Introducing the 3 types of invisibility:

Camouflage – Stealth – Ghost. Please bare with me boys and girls.

I. General info

a- Camouflage is considered level 1, therefore it is affected by reveal. Camouflage however reduces movement speed.

b – Stealth is level 2, it is also the most common type of invisibility, the current profession will have access to it. It is still succeptible to reveal.

C- Ghost however is the prestigious and most intricate one. and it not bound by movement speed and is immune to Reveal. Very few skills have and invisibilty of Ghost quality.

II. More Details

Cloak: Mostly available to every class. Rangers, Dragonhunter, Engineers using elixirs,etc. Mesmer’s Prestige.

Stealth: Only Mesmer Elite Mass Invisibity grants this, and Scraper’s Sneak Drone.

Ghost: Only exclusive to the Thief. HOWEVER it is only accessible through combos finisher. So moves like, C&D, Blinding Powder or Shadow Refuge, or even traits will be either turn out to be Stealth or Camouflage quality.

Now for example, if you do Smoke Screen+ SB #2 you get Ghost quality.

So far, I think this will give us room to breathe without making everything absolutely obsolete. It will let our oponents be just as versatile in taking us down.

What do you think?
Please rate out of 10 and discuss, I won’t get offended if you put -5/10. I just want good arguments that are for and against this idea.

Thank you. Please don’ say stuff like « Yeah I don’t like the term Ghost, i like x,y,z » because that is not the point.

again, ty.

They are fixing thief by removing revealed debuff from our own skills or it it is n’ont the case they are killing thief class.

I have a simpler solution given all the reveals in game.

In every thread where we comment on it those defending the reveals claim “we are not going to use it as there better skills” Ok than with that in mind.

CIS becomes in addition to the fall trait “on gaining stealth thief stays in stealth untl revealed or until he attacks”

bliss.4305:

5/10.

I will explain why I’ve graded it this low.

1) The implementation is very kitten a technical perspective. It is possible, don’t get me wrong, but they’d never implement a work-around this complex, affecting multiple classes at once.

2) The idea immediately creates the notion of difference between classes. Almost as if “classism” Don’t tell me you don’t already see posts on forum/reddit saying how thieves have real stealth while mesmers or other classes have the “useless” stealth. It will affect the community negatively.

3) The idea solves the problem for only 1 weapon set. I especially don’t like how you’ve mentioned “Ghost Stealth” will be attained through “blasts – finishers” which immediately says go D/P or go home. You know stacking stealth through Shortbow is never a thing unless out of combat.

4) After playing for so many years without any movement speed restriction in stealth I really don’t want to go back to “WoW-style stealth” where you’re punished for being invisible.

---

Overall, good & constructive effort to solve the reveal problem, but unfortunately, not enough in my humble opinion.

The only suggestion I can have for the whole reveal fiasco is to reduce the reveal to 2-3 seconds. 6 is incredibly long as it is. Ripping off stealth is already a huge counterplay, and not letting them gain for another 6 seconds is just ridiculous.

I would also like to see such reveals on a much longer cooldowns (60 + seconds) considering our utility stealth skills are on a relatively long cooldown and it wouldn’t be fair if they could counter it every single time we use one.

I already believe our “initiative-generated stealths” SHOULDN’T be countered that easily. We’re literally spending ~10 initiative to keep ourselves stealthed for 5-6 seconds. We trade our resource of damage/evade/debuffs (anything that initiative grants us) for stealthing ourselves.

I don’t know…. they are really fudging up Thief boys… I feel cheated and sad for investing this much time on a class that lingers on the border of being completely unplayable – unfun.

T_T

Thank you for the feedback. You want “ghost” do be available with diverse means, not just combos. I do still believe that some professions should be inherently be penalized for going stealth. Let us be honest here mate, Guardian stealth? Warrior? Why? They can do well with out without it, they are not as dependent as we are. That is why, the movement speed debuff is implemented. It’s better than damage reduction I think…

Idk. I hope you reconsider that side. The rest is completely reasonable. Ty again.