Guild Wars 2

For the love of god, please Anet, could you at the very least set the cooldown to 0.5 seconds on stealth attacks. I completely understand the reason for the mechanic, as to not encourage backstab spam till you hit target, but being locked out of AA and having to waste ini to use another damaging skill is ridiculous.

edit: here’s an idea. if you insist on keeping it at 1sec how about mapping the stealth attack to a new button freeing up AA so we can at least keep attacking rather than wasting time or hopefully being lucky enough with timing to try hit for a second time.

Or you could just wait it out and use the time to re postion your self instead of wasting iniative.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Or you could just wait it out and use the time to re postion your self instead of wasting iniative.

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Not to mention, if you are actually low on ini and locked out of AA, you can’t cleave anymore which is really bad. No other class is locked out of AA for such long period of time but thief. I would really love to see mesmers getting their AA locked if they missed shatters or warriors getting locked out of AA if they missed burst. I bet the cries would be insane.

Thief also is only class that has extreme hardcounter to entire traitline and class mechanic, namely reveal on demand. No other class has to deal with this.

I also don’t even want to start on the fact that this nerf affected all weapon sets, even those that are already really weak. Once again, class discrimination at its finest.

Cynz.9437:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Or you could just wait it out and use the time to re postion your self instead of wasting iniative.

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Not to mention, if you are actually low on ini and locked out of AA, you can’t cleave anymore which is really bad. No other class is locked out of AA for such long period of time but thief. I would really love to see mesmers getting their AA locked if they missed shatters or warriors getting locked out of AA if they missed burst. I bet the cries would be insane.

Thief also is only class that has extreme hardcounter to entire traitline and class mechanic, namely reveal on demand. No other class has to deal with this.

I also don’t even want to start on the fact that this nerf affected all weapon sets, even those that are already really weak. Once again, class discrimination at its finest.

Ok well sure. I forgot I don’t do much pvp anymore so that kinda skipped my memory. But class discrimination, pff the wvw side of things thieves are gods creation and anets baby doll.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Cynz.9437:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Or you could just wait it out and use the time to re postion your self instead of wasting iniative.

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Not to mention, if you are actually low on ini and locked out of AA, you can’t cleave anymore which is really bad. No other class is locked out of AA for such long period of time but thief. I would really love to see mesmers getting their AA locked if they missed shatters or warriors getting locked out of AA if they missed burst. I bet the cries would be insane.

Thief also is only class that has extreme hardcounter to entire traitline and class mechanic, namely reveal on demand. No other class has to deal with this.

I also don’t even want to start on the fact that this nerf affected all weapon sets, even those that are already really weak. Once again, class discrimination at its finest.

Ok well sure. I forgot I don’t do much pvp anymore so that kinda skipped my memory. But class discrimination, pff the wvw side of things thieves are gods creation and anets baby doll.

More like nobody knows that wvw even exists :P

You should read the wvw section, think there is at least 3 threads there, also 1 more thread that’s bwen moved here lol

Fat Disgrace.4275:

You should read the wvw section, think there is at least 3 threads there, also 1 more thread that’s bwen moved here lol

You know what i meant =.=

Cynz.9437:

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Wasn’t that one of the reasons they introduced it? To prevent mindless spam through 1 hit defences like aegis or blind.

Lahmia.2193:

Cynz.9437:

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Wasn’t that one of the reasons they introduced it? To prevent mindless spam through 1 hit defences like aegis or blind.

By that logic they should have removed passives and instant aoe then. Not to mention: if you ask someone how do you deal with aegis and blinds, every single person will tell you to attack. I would agree that CD may have make sense if stealth attacks had no ini costs and didn’t require being behind the target (in case of bs, sword etc.), in melee and stealth but as it is right now, those spells already have quite a list of requirements bound to rather long CDs and/or hefty amount resources (that hardly any other spell has) that extra CD on top of it with side effect of locking thief from the AA is just absurd and just plain class discrimination as no other class has been punished as hard in design.

Look at all thief builds, what is the most prominent thing about them (beside condi d/d) ? Main damage comes from AA. Maybe some IP here and there but it is mainly AA and there is good reason for it – it is not worth using anything else since everything has been getting nerfed over and over and over again to the point where AA is only choice. If you diminish the class to running away from enemies and using AA 90% of the time, sry, but you did rather poor job as designer.

Cynz.9437:

Lahmia.2193:

Cynz.9437:

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Wasn’t that one of the reasons they introduced it? To prevent mindless spam through 1 hit defences like aegis or blind.

By that logic they should have removed passives and instant aoe then. Not to mention: if you ask someone how do you deal with aegis and blinds, every single person will tell you to attack. I would agree that CD may have make sense if stealth attacks had no ini costs and didn’t require being behind the target (in case of bs, sword etc.), in melee and stealth but as it is right now, those spells already have quite a list of requirements bound to rather long CDs and/or hefty amount resources (that hardly any other spell has) that extra CD on top of it with side effect of locking thief from the AA is just absurd and just plain class discrimination as no other class has been punished as hard in design.

Look at all thief builds, what is the most prominent thing about them (beside condi d/d) ? Main damage comes from AA. Maybe some IP here and there but it is mainly AA and there is good reason for it – it is not worth using anything else since everything has been getting nerfed over and over and over again to the point where AA is only choice. If you diminish the class to running away from enemies and using AA 90% of the time, sry, but you did rather poor job as designer.

So why did they introduce it? Also no need to get shirty. I was asking a legit question.

Lahmia.2193:

Cynz.9437:

Lahmia.2193:

Cynz.9437:

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Wasn’t that one of the reasons they introduced it? To prevent mindless spam through 1 hit defences like aegis or blind.

By that logic they should have removed passives and instant aoe then. Not to mention: if you ask someone how do you deal with aegis and blinds, every single person will tell you to attack. I would agree that CD may have make sense if stealth attacks had no ini costs and didn’t require being behind the target (in case of bs, sword etc.), in melee and stealth but as it is right now, those spells already have quite a list of requirements bound to rather long CDs and/or hefty amount resources (that hardly any other spell has) that extra CD on top of it with side effect of locking thief from the AA is just absurd and just plain class discrimination as no other class has been punished as hard in design.

Look at all thief builds, what is the most prominent thing about them (beside condi d/d) ? Main damage comes from AA. Maybe some IP here and there but it is mainly AA and there is good reason for it – it is not worth using anything else since everything has been getting nerfed over and over and over again to the point where AA is only choice. If you diminish the class to running away from enemies and using AA 90% of the time, sry, but you did rather poor job as designer.

So why did they introduce it? Also no need to get shirty. I was asking a legit question.

It won’t let me quote directly due to the thread being locked, but here you go:

Robert Gee:
“Unlike other thief weapons skills, stealth attacks do not have an initiative cost. Previously they did not have a cooldown as well. Guild Wars 2 frequently uses recharge as a cost to casting a skill as a result, these skills were essentially “free”. With the previous version of stealth attacks, you could spam your stealth attack until it hit at essentially no cost while your opponent had to use resources like aegis, blind or evasion to avoid it.
tldr; We added the recharge to stealth attacks to insure that there would be appropriate cost to failing to hit with a stealth attack. We’re pretty happy with this change and aren’t planning to revert it.”

Which I find funny that he says Stealth Attacks don’t have a cost, when either 6-9 initiative has to be expended or a long CD has to be expended for the Thief to even gain access to Stealth Attacks, would would mean they do have an indirect cost, in a surprisingly short window aka 3 secs. Since we all know Thieves don’t gain Stealth for free.

And let it be noted it took months (July 2016 is the day it was added, 22 February 2017 was the given response to why) before we got this justification for the nerf, before it was just silence as per usual.

Sly.9518:

Lahmia.2193:

Cynz.9437:

Lahmia.2193:

Cynz.9437:

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Wasn’t that one of the reasons they introduced it? To prevent mindless spam through 1 hit defences like aegis or blind.

By that logic they should have removed passives and instant aoe then. Not to mention: if you ask someone how do you deal with aegis and blinds, every single person will tell you to attack. I would agree that CD may have make sense if stealth attacks had no ini costs and didn’t require being behind the target (in case of bs, sword etc.), in melee and stealth but as it is right now, those spells already have quite a list of requirements bound to rather long CDs and/or hefty amount resources (that hardly any other spell has) that extra CD on top of it with side effect of locking thief from the AA is just absurd and just plain class discrimination as no other class has been punished as hard in design.

Look at all thief builds, what is the most prominent thing about them (beside condi d/d) ? Main damage comes from AA. Maybe some IP here and there but it is mainly AA and there is good reason for it – it is not worth using anything else since everything has been getting nerfed over and over and over again to the point where AA is only choice. If you diminish the class to running away from enemies and using AA 90% of the time, sry, but you did rather poor job as designer.

So why did they introduce it? Also no need to get shirty. I was asking a legit question.

It won’t let me quote directly due to the thread being locked, but here you go:

Robert Gee:
“Unlike other thief weapons skills, stealth attacks do not have an initiative cost. Previously they did not have a cooldown as well. Guild Wars 2 frequently uses recharge as a cost to casting a skill as a result, these skills were essentially “free”. With the previous version of stealth attacks, you could spam your stealth attack until it hit at essentially no cost while your opponent had to use resources like aegis, blind or evasion to avoid it.
tldr; We added the recharge to stealth attacks to insure that there would be appropriate cost to failing to hit with a stealth attack. We’re pretty happy with this change and aren’t planning to revert it.”

Which I find funny that he says Stealth Attacks don’t have a cost, when either 6-9 initiative has to be expended or a long CD has to be expended for the Thief to even gain access to Stealth Attacks, would would mean they do have an indirect cost, in a surprisingly short window aka 3 secs. Since we all know Thieves don’t gain Stealth for free.

And let it be noted it took months (July 2016 is the day it was added, 22 February 2017 was the given response to why) before we got this justification for the nerf, before it was just silence as per usual.

Ah. So my previous assumption about it being about aegis and blind, was true.

In a sense yes, but their reasoning is flawed since Stealth Attacks do have a cost and they have Conditions to be met to even have max effectiveness unlike the majority of every other attack.

Sly.9518:

In a sense yes, but their reasoning is flawed since Stealth Attacks do have a cost and they have Conditions to be met to even have max effectiveness unlike the majority of every other attack.

Oh ya, I’m not disputing whether it was justified or not.

Does anyone really run SA in PVP and use that Rending Shade. I find it hard believe that 1 trait is good enough to nerf thief core mechanic.

LONGA.1652:

Does anyone really run SA in PVP and use that Rending Shade. I find it hard believe that 1 trait is good enough to nerf thief core mechanic.

You know it works only if you landed a hit? Which will apply reveal to you anyway and prevent you from using another stealth attack for a while. Rending shade is definitely not the reason to add CD.

I run SA in a non-meta P/D build. I’m not sure the “why” is about Rending Shade despite the timing coinciding.

That said it’s quite strong and can shut down people who rely too much on boons for their damage or defense. Very useful on condition builds to steal resistance and therefore reduce the uptime significantly.

Sly.9518:

In a sense yes, but their reasoning is flawed since Stealth Attacks do have a cost and they have Conditions to be met to even have max effectiveness unlike the majority of every other attack.

The condition is stealth. That’s not a cost. That’s one of the best abilities in the game. Free attacks and stealth together is admittedly a bit much.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Cynz.9437:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Or you could just wait it out and use the time to re postion your self instead of wasting iniative.

That only works in 1v1. It does not work in pvp for example as target might gain random block from the guardian for example the very same moment you hit backstab.

Not to mention, if you are actually low on ini and locked out of AA, you can’t cleave anymore which is really bad. No other class is locked out of AA for such long period of time but thief. I would really love to see mesmers getting their AA locked if they missed shatters or warriors getting locked out of AA if they missed burst. I bet the cries would be insane.

Thief also is only class that has extreme hardcounter to entire traitline and class mechanic, namely reveal on demand. No other class has to deal with this.

I also don’t even want to start on the fact that this nerf affected all weapon sets, even those that are already really weak. Once again, class discrimination at its finest.

Ok well sure. I forgot I don’t do much pvp anymore so that kinda skipped my memory. But class discrimination, pff the wvw side of things thieves are gods creation and anets baby doll.

Naw thats berserkers and DH

DaShi.1368:

Sly.9518:

In a sense yes, but their reasoning is flawed since Stealth Attacks do have a cost and they have Conditions to be met to even have max effectiveness unlike the majority of every other attack.

The condition is stealth. That’s not a cost. That’s one of the best abilities in the game. Free attacks and stealth together is admittedly a bit much.

You have to use a CD or Over 1/3 of the initiative for the class to gain Stealth for 3s hmm no cost what so ever….. the condition for max damage is to get behind them in that short timeframe. There’s a cost since you can’t use Stealth Attacks without paying it.

You’re paying for stealth. Stealth is one of the best abilities in the game. Stealth attacks are a bonus.

Stealth has needed a nerf for a very long time… since release IMO. Problem is ANet has nerfed everything around it instead. They need to unwind all those nerfs then take a bat to stealth.

Straegen.2938:

Stealth has needed a nerf for a very long time… since release IMO. Problem is ANet has nerfed everything around it instead. They need to unwind all those nerfs then take a bat to stealth.

So we would be pushed more into evade/dodge spam? Have you not seen all the QQ threads about thieves spamming dodges that lead to multiple endurance nerfs? I mean what is thief supposed to do, stand afk and give people loot bags?

revealed (and auto-reveal after bs) is stealths nerf. Prior to that it was backstab vanish backstab vanish spam, and it was disgusting.

So, question for the masses who are asking for the revert – what if rather than a 1s cooldown, the backstab skill switched to autoattack for 1s? Then you can still autoattack if you desire, but it won’t be a backstab. Encourages sound tactics, penalizes spammers, but still allows for cleave when the situation dictates? It’ll drive many people even more bonkers than the current implementation, because it will actively punish them for not knowing their timing, as opposed to penalizing them but giving them an opportunity to still utilize their stealth.

cyn.2157:

revealed (and auto-reveal after bs) is stealths nerf. Prior to that it was backstab vanish backstab vanish spam, and it was disgusting.

So, question for the masses who are asking for the revert – what if rather than a 1s cooldown, the backstab skill switched to autoattack for 1s? Then you can still autoattack if you desire, but it won’t be a backstab. Encourages sound tactics, penalizes spammers, but still allows for cleave when the situation dictates? It’ll drive many people even more bonkers than the current implementation, because it will actively punish them for not knowing their timing, as opposed to penalizing them but giving them an opportunity to still utilize their stealth.

If it can’t be reverted, I am for this.

@cyn

That is by far, so far, the best idea I have heard to at least remedy this disgusting nerf, much better than my alternate button option. IF this nerf won’t be reverted, I also agree that would be an awesome implementation. At least i won’t be locked out of AA knowing i don’t have enough time for a second backstab try but want to keep pressure up.

Razi.6031:

@cyn

That is by far, so far, the best idea I have heard to at least remedy this disgusting nerf, much better than my alternate button option. IF this nerf won’t be reverted, I also agree that would be an awesome implementation. At least i won’t be locked out of AA knowing i don’t have enough time for a second backstab try but want to keep pressure up.

I also agree that this is a great idea for the same reason. Its bad enough we cannot backstab for another 1s, however to lock us out of #1 completely is kind of a double nerf on 1 attack with the same patch, which Anet (to my knowledge) hasn’t done before. despite me adapting to that change, I never understood why the double nerf in 1 shot to the #1 skill. If you miss a backstab, stealthed or not you are vulnerable and if something can catch ya in that 1s cooldown then its a good chance its game over (all because of the #1 skill)

saerni.2584:

I run SA in a non-meta P/D build. I’m not sure the “why” is about Rending Shade despite the timing coinciding.

That said it’s quite strong and can shut down people who rely too much on boons for their damage or defense. Very useful on condition builds to steal resistance and therefore reduce the uptime significantly.

RS is more effective now with some of the changes to stability and while it very effective as a tactic to steal a persons boons so as to lower their sustain, those boons coming to you can really adress a lot of the shortcomings of a given thief build. (stealing resistance and protection is sweet)