Guild Wars 2

This is to all you who argue, “nerf stealth and give us more shadowstep”.

First, let’s not kid ourselves, Thief is the spiritual successor to Guild Wars Factions’ Assassin class. They have similar skills, mechanics weapons, and trait lines. Sin’s role was to target key members of the enemy party and burst them down with a combo chain, and the achieved this not by charging through the enemy line like some warrior, but rather, suddenly appearing at their target’s location, completely bypassing the dps and tanks. This was achieved with shadowsteps.
Now as you should be aware, combat in Guild Wars 2 is completely different from the original game. In the first game combat was very slow is terms of mobility, it was easy to pick you targets from a birds eye view and asside from getting out of an AoE, there was very little reason to move in combat. This mode of combat worked wonderfully for shadowsteps because it was so easy to pick you mostly static target.
Now in Guild Wars 2, combat is a completely different beast in terms of mobility. Combatants are constantly on the move with leaps, dodges, speed boosts and just plain running, in large scale fights like Zerg vs Zerg it’s incredibly difficult to single out a specific target. Because of this, shadowsteps are no longer up to the task of breaking the enemy line to set up key targets, you’re just as likely shadowstep to the wrong target as you are to your intended target, and the instant you appear, your target can react and render your burst useless.
Anet needed a new way to get to your target, something more versatilr that would allow the user to react to the rapidly changing state of combat, and still achieve the result of appearing suddenly while your opponent was off guard.
So they gave Thieves stealth. Stealth allowed thieves to get into position to burst thier targets down just as easily as shadowstep used to, while adapting to the ever changing pace of combat, thus allowing them to operate in big and small fights like in gw1, rather then confining them to small fights like shadowsteps would have.

In shor,t what I’m saying is shadowsteps prove too fast to be able to properly control in large scale PvP in Guild Wars 2, and usually can’t be used to target back row opponents like it used to, so since Anet couldn’t slow down battles to make shadowsteps as viable as they used to be, they slowed down Shadowstep and the result was an in-transit state called stealth.

I get what you’re trying to say, but you should probably add a conclusion of some sort because at the moment you’re not really conveying a clear point.

I think I agree with you (never played GW1) but wouldn’t it be cool to mix up the two styles together? At this point of the game I think stealth is overpowered in WvW (only there). Not when entering combat but when escaping. When a thief stealths up mid fight you never know where he is. He might be on your back or he used that time to ran away and is already almost OOC. That to me is a bit too strong. What I’d propose is a mix of shadowsteps and stealth. With a longer revealed built in but more access to other evasive moves like shadowsteps. And have it better built in than S/D. I don’t like that set very much and basically gets abused for 3 anyway.

I’m not sure if escaping can really be considered “powered” in any way.

Also, I agree with Sycarius. Could you tell us what your point is?

vinceftw.5086:

I think I agree with you (never played GW1) but wouldn’t it be cool to mix up the two styles together? At this point of the game I think stealth is overpowered in WvW (only there). Not when entering combat but when escaping. When a thief stealths up mid fight you never know where he is. He might be on your back or he used that time to ran away and is already almost OOC. That to me is a bit too strong. What I’d propose is a mix of shadowsteps and stealth. With a longer revealed built in but more access to other evasive moves like shadowsteps. And have it better built in than S/D. I don’t like that set very much and basically gets abused for 3 anyway.

Yeah. Not knowing where the thief is, is the idea. It’s basically supposed to be like is they slowed down shadowstep to increase it’s reliability. It’s pretty much, Shadowstep was too fast to be able to control in a hectic situation, so since they couldn’t slow down the battle to make everything easier to target, they slowed down the shadowstep to a speed that it could be controlled accurately. It’s two routes to the same end, breaching the enemy line to reach your desired target, uncontested. One way is instantaneous but difficult to use precisely to set up bursts, and the other is slow and ideal to set up bursts. (They made stealth drop when the user deals damage, because if they made stealth skills destealth you at the start of the channel, it’d be next to impossible to land a stealth skill effectively, the target would be too likely to dodge. The same reason why Infiltrator’s Strike has an immobilize)