Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone
in this Thread I would like to discuss the effect “Revealed”, specifically granted by the skills I will mention in just a second.
I will post this in the Thief, Mesmer, Engineer, Ranger and Guardian Forum as these are the professions that either (usually) use stealth or have the ability to apply Revealed through their skills (or, in the case of Dragonhunter, will have the ability).

Before replying please read the whole post, I know it’s a lot but there are also important suggestions + notes in the last few sentences. Thank you

Skills/Traits applying Reveal:

• Analyze (Engineer Toolbelt Utility Skill of Utility Goggles: 6s 1200 Range Reveal + 10×8s Vulnerability, 25s CD)
• Lock On (Engineer Tools Major Master Trait: Striking foes in Stealth analyzes them – see above)
• Detection Pulse (Scrapper Toolbelt Elite Skill of Sneak Gyro: 6s 900 Range AoE Reveal, 20s CD)
• “Sic ’Em!” (Ranger Utility Skill: 6s 2000 Range Reveal, 40s CD)
• Light’s Judgement (Dragonhunger Utility Skill: 10 240 AoE Pulses with 1100 Dmg, 8x 1s Reveal and 25×2s Vulnerability, kitten CD)

Why Do We Complain?
In the Thief Forum there have been a lot of suggestions/complaints about these Skills/Traits in particular. While we do know that they are rarely taken, Analyze, Lock On or Sic ‘Em are seen fairly often on Burst Builds.
Especially Thieves are targeted by the Reveal, as Stealth is currently our best defensive mechanic as Acrobatics (the Thief’s dodge trait line) sucks.
Given that we have an entire trait line based on stealth, lots of utilities and weapon combos balanced around it (while Stealth is not a Thief mechanic, Sneak Attacks are).

These skills/this trait pretty much deny us a whole trait line in a fight and with that most of our surviability, while Revealed we don’t have access to as much dmg as usual (which we usually build for) and the only defensive mechanics we then got are:

• Dodges (which every profession got, so these basically don’t count)
• Blind (very Initiative heavy)
• Interrupts (very Initiative heavy)
  Basically the only other two viable options are kiting (= no dmg) and shadow stepping out to wait until Revealed is over (50s CD).

Suggestions
Because of these reasons there have been some suggestions to change the Revealed effect of these skills/this trait:

• Make the skills not apply “Revealed”, but rather an effect called “Spotted”: everyone can see the target(s) while they still gain the benefits from being in stealth (easy to avoid Backstabs or Mirror Blades for example, but Thieves and Mesmers are not totally locked out of stealth traits they may have chosen for survivability).
• Make the skills be AoE and not apply Revealed to the target(s), but simply drop the stealth that’s currently on them. In this case the skills could even get a casting time and an animation in order to make them counterable.

With these changes, Revealed (and therefore possible “locked” chosen traits) could only be achieved by dealing damage from stealth, which at least a lot of Thieves deem fairer.

Many Thieves think that Revealed on Skills is a bad mechanic that wasn’t thought through, just thrown in to give people a counter to the former counterless stealth. Funnily enough, Anet thereby designed a counterless counter.

Another Idea
Also, I personally think that Analyze (and thereby Lock On), Detection Pulse, “Sic ’Em!” and Light’s Judgement should get benefits when hitting targets without Stealth.
For example, if you’d hit a Thief and a Warrior with Detection Pulse while the Thief was revealed, the Thief would get “Spotted” or dropped out of stealth. As the Warrior wasn’t stealthed, a possibility could be for the Scrapper to gain 1s of Stealth (could be 1s of Stealth for every non-stealthed target hit, while prioritizing stealthed targets. Detection Pulse should have a maximum amount of targets then).
With changes like this, I think these skills and traits would see more use (outside of rekking Thieves ) and would also have a more tactical approach.

Before Answering, Please
Please, before answering, consider the following: With this thread or these suggestions I don’t mean to balance any professions or builds, but rather only the skills I talked about and “Revealed”.
Therefore simply saying “No, it should stay, Mesmer and Thief OP” doesn’t contribute at all, as Mesmer’s or Thief’s OPness or not should be balanced by itself (Traits, Weapon Skills,…) and not through Skills of other professions.
I know it can be hard to differentiate (especially as a lot of players hate Thieves and think that Mesmers are OP at the moment).

Anyway, thanks for reading and what do you guys think about my suggestions?

yeah this is the obvious way revealed should have worked, but it was a hastily added system put in place to stop thieves uptime of stealth, they then use the same effect for player skills, which is actually is not designed well into the concept of thief. It was ok before, but as it gets more common, its going to start really making stealth investment kinda lme for thieves

Got nothing negative to say here. I feel like this is a good implementation, mainly because of the main underlying point, casting revealed essentially can lock us out of an entire trait line. This obviously hurts our survivability, and let’s face it, other classes are just getting stronger.

I think they just need to expand the concept of Revealed.

1. Anyone actively using a shield should be permanently revealed. Mesmers have a trait that allows them to stealth themselves when using a shield but can’t be stealthed by others if they have a shield equipped.
2. Revealed increases aggro generated in pve. Solders have traits that amplify this affect. Revealed does not increase aggro for thieves.
3. Being forced out of stealth by revealed dazes you for a .5 second and reduces your armor by 5% for the duration of the debuff. Thieves are not subject to the effect.
4. Thieves can passively reveal a target by damaging it in stealth

Edit to explain: If revealed exist thieves should be the master of it and it should hurt other classes more than it hurts thieves.

Tarkan.5609:

Suggestions
Because of these reasons there have been some suggestions to change the Revealed effect of these skills/this trait:

• Make the skills not apply “Revealed”, but rather an effect called “Spotted”: everyone can see the target(s) while they still gain the benefits from being in stealth (easy to avoid Backstabs or Mirror Blades for example, but Thieves and Mesmers are not totally locked out of stealth traits they may have chosen for survivability).
• Make the skills be AoE and not apply Revealed to the target(s), but simply drop the stealth that’s currently on them. In this case the skills could even get a casting time and an animation in order to make them counterable.

There are many approached that they can take, however Revealed is already embedded into the system that it will take a large amount of people hours to update all the skills and traits.

For the Thief, the practical approach is to remove the reliance to stealth by removing the “while in stealth” condition from our skills and traits. (Skil-#1/Stealth attack has the hidden “while in stealth” condition that also needs to be removed)

Make revealed work the same way as Resistence.

Basically, we can have the “stealth” boom and Revealed at the same time.

Once once reveal wears off and stealth is on effect, we will automatically return to stealth state.

The solution is simple. Now that everyone and their mom is getting easy, cheap and low cooldown reveal skills, the time for thieves to be self-applying reveal is over. Get rid of it.

This way classes have to choose to bring these thief counters if they want to counter us. Not getting by with a free pass by allowing the thief to counter himself.

Prior to this xpac the self reveal was fair. After all, there was hardly any reveal in the game. Now that cannot be said. Thieves are nowhere near the top damage in pve so this shouldn’t really have significant implications there either.

Not sure what the point of this is, but this has been my experience with stealth/reveal.

Reveal unless focused down on (More than one player) is problematic, but for that you can simply disengage, Infiltrators arrow X2+Shadowstep gets you 3,000~ units away from anyone in about one second, during this time, you can escape and think about a new plan of approach or just outright escape, by this time you’re out of range of any potental reveal and can cloak freely.

Reveal in the one on one since is debatable, the only contest there is a ranger and engi, that can prevent cloak before it’s established, but to do that you have to be visable first. Entering cloak outside of the 1,200 range still allows you to steal-stab. And if you’re busted, again Shadowstep is a great escape utility.

It sounds like this discussion is based entirely around using cloaks and disregarding the other utility skills a thief has, which if you do that it does seem to come up short.

Aidal.4901:

Not sure what the point of this is, but this has been my experience with stealth/reveal.

Reveal unless focused down on (More than one player) is problematic, but for that you can simply disengage, Infiltrators arrow X2+Shadowstep gets you 3,000~ units away from anyone in about one second, during this time, you can escape and think about a new plan of approach or just outright escape, by this time you’re out of range of any potental reveal and can cloak freely.

Reveal in the one on one since is debatable, the only contest there is a ranger and engi, that can prevent cloak before it’s established, but to do that you have to be visable first. Entering cloak outside of the 1,200 range still allows you to steal-stab. And if you’re busted, again Shadowstep is a great escape utility.

It sounds like this discussion is based entirely around using cloaks and disregarding the other utility skills a thief has, which if you do that it does seem to come up short.

Well in both cases, you are assuming that we have enough initiative and Shadowstep off cooldown. Let’s not forget that it takes 9 initative for the meta D/p thief to enter stealth. That is more than half of our initiative. We will definitely not be able to I-arrow twice afterwards if we are revealed. As for Shadowstep, I would hardly call it fair for a short cooldown skill to force the use of a very long and important cooldown.

If that isn’t enough, we will apply reveal to ourselves anyway if we attack you from stealth.

SoulSin.5682:

Make revealed work the same way as Resistence.

Basically, we can have the “stealth” boom and Revealed at the same time.

Once once reveal wears off and stealth is on effect, we will automatically return to stealth state.

That’s an interesting approach. Certainly a lot more forgiving than the stealth wiffing completely.

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Well in both cases, you are assuming that we have enough initiative and Shadowstep off cooldown. Let’s not forget that it takes 9 initative for the meta D/p thief to enter stealth. That is more than half of our initiative. We will definitely not be able to I-arrow twice afterwards if we are revealed. As for Shadowstep, I would hardly call it fair for a short cooldown skill to force the use of a very long and important cooldown.

If that isn’t enough, we will apply reveal to ourselves anyway if we attack you from stealth.

That’s why I started packing Roll for initiative over blinding powder. My emergency escape has always been RFI>Shadowstep>Arrow>Arrow>HiS. It hasn’t failed me yet

I use D/P and I feel the pain of the cloak, but all of my escapes have been due to the 3k range I cover with that little chain. Cloak has been an afterthought.

I’ve rarely needed to use shadowstep offensively to feel the pain of the cooldown, maybe I’ve just been lucky so far, but my steal has always had enough to get me in, and burst down a single target before too much trouble hits me. The one time I did, I got the target downed, but had to use it to retreat as I was nibbling the tail of a zerg, even then cloak didn’t come into play save for the initial 5-2

Thief as master of revealt? hmm change shadow arts trait(stealth dmg reduc) to revealt dmg reduc, change shadow rejuv to regen when revealt so thief will want to be revealt as fast as he can (less stealth camp more fun).

Tarkan.5609:

• Make the skills not apply “Revealed”, but rather an effect called “Spotted”: everyone can see the target(s) while they still gain the benefits from being in stealth (easy to avoid Backstabs or Mirror Blades for example, but Thieves and Mesmers are not totally locked out of stealth traits they may have chosen for survivability).

I basically suggested the same thing in my Total Thief Rebalance thread but called the new debuff Exposed instead. The name doesn’t really matter, but I think this is the best solution because it will make all of the current skills that apply Revealed function just about the same as they do now, but they won’t shut down the Stealth Attack Thief mechanic in the process. These skills will all be very effective at countering stealth still.

Raiden.1375:

Tarkan.5609:

• Make the skills not apply “Revealed”, but rather an effect called “Spotted”: everyone can see the target(s) while they still gain the benefits from being in stealth (easy to avoid Backstabs or Mirror Blades for example, but Thieves and Mesmers are not totally locked out of stealth traits they may have chosen for survivability).

I basically suggested the same thing in my Total Thief Rebalance thread but called the new debuff Exposed instead. The name doesn’t really matter, but I think this is the best solution because it will make all of the current skills that apply Revealed function just about the same as they do now, but they won’t shut down the Stealth Attack Thief mechanic in the process. These skills will all be very effective at countering stealth still.

Yeah I saw that suggestion in your thread and a very close on in another one as well.
Didn’t want to link your thread though as I don’t agree with some things you changed (one being Cloak&Dagger) and I think a lot of people would’ve read through your post and answered mine with comments regarding your thread.

Edit: Don’t get me wrong though, I liked a lot of your suggestions, just some things in SA or Acro didn’t really fit to my point of view.

Um. Why didn’t you post it in the revenant forum since they have a reveal skill?

Daniel Handler.4816:

Um. Why didn’t you post it in the revenant forum since they have a reveal skill?

true I completely oversaw that one… don’t have time atm but if I find time in the next few days I’ll do just that