Stealth: Suggestions and Changes

Stealth: Suggestions and Changes

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Stealth is a problem right now. It is overpowered in its current implementation because of an inherent bug with the design. It is designed so that on an attack out of stealth, the character is instantly revealed, and blocked from re-entering stealth for 3 seconds. Unfortunately, there is inherent rendering lag client-side (I think) that causes the actual stealth attack to go more like this: Character attacks, stays invisible for ~2 more seconds, and then becomes visible on the screen.

This causes 2 massive problems. The first is that the damage of thieves is extremely frontloaded, due to the initiative mechanic. I’ll use the CnD+steal+backstab combo as an example. This combo does too much damage, but that has nothing to do with the stealth. The problem is that after the combo finishes, the thief should be vulnerable to counterattack if it doesn’t kill the target. However, due to the uncloaking lag, the thief has enough time to use 2 HSS before unstealthing. This completely unbalances the action/reaction play of pvp, since it simply isn’t possible to retaliate effectively against the stealthed thief.

The other massive problem that the untsealth lag causes has to due with the restealth timer. The timer is designed to give the thief 3 seconds of vulnerability before being able to disengage with stealth. However, since the lag on uncloaking is 1-2 seconds, the thief effectively only is vulnerable for ~1 second, before restealthing.

The second problem is the simpler one to solve: simply increase the restealth timer to ~5-6 seconds, and that will result in the originally intended unstealthed time for the thief.

The problem with massive frontloaded damage coming out of stealth with no chance to respond is a trickier problem to solve. It needs to be fixed, and I’ve come up with a possible solution, so feel free to criticize/add/subtract/change what I propose.

To offbalance the difficulty of responding to an attack on stealth, all damage from an attack made from stealth will be severely reduced, to the point that the damage is not consequential. Replacing this will be powerful conditions. Each weapon will apply 1 common condition, and 1 unique condition (number of conditions up for debate maybe?). The common condition would be 25 stacks of vulnerability for 3 seconds. This allows the thief to get the massive damage advantage from a stealth attack, but also allows a player with very fast reactions to counter it via condition removal. The length of this condition could possibly be longer, but with vulnerability duration buffs, the 25 stacks could be chaincasted in pve with a longer base duration, and I don’t think that should be possible. Another idea is to replace the 25 vulnerability stacks with a unique stealth attack condition that boosts all damage the target takes for the next 3 seconds by 25 or 30 or 50%, so that vulnerability clashing isn’t a problem.

The other condition applied by the stealth attack would be some sort of disable. Give daggers a 4 second daze, sword a 4 second immobilize, pistol a 4 second cripple, shortbow a 4 second chill. These secondary conditions are, of course, changeable in both types and durations.

The overall effect of this change is to still allow the thief to get a large damage boost by attacking with a stealth attack, while allowing the target to mitigate this damage through quick reactions, which is the sort of action/reaction play that GW2 pvp was designed around. Because conditions are immediately visible, the unstealthing lag does not end up affecting the reactionary measures the target can take, thereby fixing the problem.

This probably isn’t a perfect solution, but it seems to be a big step in the right direction. Comments and advice are greatly encouraged.

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Posted by: ddrake.5436

ddrake.5436

an interesting read, however those that want stealth build thieves will tend to disagree. I am undecided on this and I will only offer some words of wisdom ‘we as players do not know what’s best for the game, and we will not design the game to suite our whim and play style’

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Posted by: VictorTroska.3725

VictorTroska.3725

an interesting read, however those that want stealth build thieves will tend to disagree. I am undecided on this and I will only offer some words of wisdom ‘we as players do not know what’s best for the game, and we will not design the game to suite our whim and play style’

Neither do devs. Just look at this Jon dude and his mastering of Death Shroud.

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Posted by: Zawaka.5170

Zawaka.5170

I play tournament pvp mostly paid now. I have no problems with thieves. Infact when i see them on the Score page in the start of the game all i can think is…“Thank god they arent a guardian”

Its SOOOOOO easy not to die to them. AND they are super squishy. pro tip thieves cant get out of Roots if they stealth…THEY ARE STILL STANDING THERE so auto attack.

Thieves are the easiest class to 1v1. With only a total of ONE condition removal ability and 2 with tier 2 stealth talent…which backstab doesnt run stack a few conditions and laugh at them. Also you can dodge shadow step. If you die in a back stab i will say 2 things either you need more toughness or you need to dodge/use a stun break. CC the thief and kill them.

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Posted by: Coffeebot.3921

Coffeebot.3921

OP offers a “solution” that contains a hotfix and completely guts PvE thieves… well done OP.

I’ve heard that the rendering issue is a problem in WvW, it’s ~2 seconds of extra invisibility, the first step is to actually fix this bug, not introduce a hotfix, after that’s done the devs would need to gather more data on what’s happening and act according to that data… not the whimsical ideas of one player.

The OPs post didn’t really talk about stealth so much as changing backstab to not be the death of glass cannons, it’d be a good idea to stay on track for your own topic OP.

Backstab isn’t the problem contrary to popular belief, the problem is the interaction of specific traits, utilities and weapons as well as initiative all of which makes thieves a very bursty assassin… and it’s unlikely to change due to the length of time the game has been out. The design of a thief causes it to be deadly against other glass cannon people (every 45 seconds) and pretty useless outside of that period, if you want backstab to change you would be better off asking for the thief to be redesigned entirely because it’s flaws will always allow a bursty “glass-cannon killer” build to exist.

Fornicate like you’ve never fornicated before.
I am anti-censorship, for it doesn’t make sense to pander to a minority.

(edited by Coffeebot.3921)

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Posted by: ddrake.5436

ddrake.5436

The issue with a [burst thief], is the inability for other players to recognise how the ini mechanic works. everyone who wants a thief nerf, please start a thief, learn how ini works and realise after burst we don’t have much else. hopefully then you will realise it is not our traits/gear/runes/sigils/abilites that are bursting you, it is our ‘as intended’ ini.

P.S. don’t nerf ini, otherwise you might as well call us a low damage, low armour, warrior.

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

@Coffeebot: Rendering in WvW is actually a different thing entirely. Thats culling, or how the client displays large groups of objects on the screen, and doesn’t have any relation to stealth from thieves. People end up being invisible, especially with mesmer portals, because the client isn’t able to render them properly fast enough.

As far as gutting pve thieves, I think this would do the exact opposite. The massive damage boost quickly reapplyable through stealth is a fantastic utility to bring to a team, and would make thieves much more in demand for dungeons and other PvE areas, due to the stealth attacks giving everyone a massive damage boost, as opposed to just the thief.

With regards to PvP, this also allows a lot of new coordination techniques. A stealthed thief opening up on a target will provide a massive damage boost to everyone attacking that target. This has the potential to melt bunker builds, and especially melt glass cannons with good team coordination.

Additionally, the goal of this change is to take the damage a thief deals to a target over ~3 seconds, and keep it roughly similar, but changing the mechanics of how it is dealt. Instead of being 100% frontload burst in the current backstab incarnation, which is absolutely uncounterable except by a bunker build, it is changed to the same amount of damage, but now over several seconds, and counterable by very fast reactions and condition removal + stunbreaks. Everything must have a counter in balanced PvP, and glass cannon thief burst is no exception. The change still allows thieves to melt squishies, it just allows the squishies a chance to fight back.

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Oh, and one more thing @Coffeebot:

I recognize that this entire discussion is based around the fact that stealth is buggy in terms of the actual unstealthing animation. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, this sort of uncloaking lag is inherent to a stealth design, and extremely difficult to fix, if at all possible. It also can be caused by even small amounts of lag from your isp, and a game needs to function with small lag (100-150 ms ping).

Because of that, it seems to be a better idea to balance the mechanic around how it DOES work, as opposed to how it SHOULD work.

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Posted by: ddrake.5436

ddrake.5436

I wouldn’t go as far as saying you need to be a bunker to survive, I would counter with

“Study the animations of your opposition and counter attack”.
“Practice the dodge mechanic on the Golem in HoM”
“Get a better ISP”

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

I wouldn’t go as far as saying you need to be a bunker to survive, I would counter with

“Study the animations of your opposition and counter attack”.
“Practice the dodge mechanic on the Golem in HoM”
“Get a better ISP”

Not viable advice, because with attacks from stealth, there are no animations to see and counter. That is the whole point of my argument, and why this needs to be changed.

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Posted by: ddrake.5436

ddrake.5436

Stealth isn’t animation enough? did you see him stealth?

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Stealth isn’t animation enough? did you see him stealth?

Any halfway decent thief will not let his target see him stealth.

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Posted by: Rottaran Owain.6789

Rottaran Owain.6789

You can’t do the steal + cloak and dagger combo from stealth. You’ll have a revealed debuff on you. 3-4 seconds is also not nearly long enough to get at someone from a starting point that’s both accessible, and outside the view of the enemy.

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Posted by: PopeUrban.2578

PopeUrban.2578

Also, this change completely destroys the pvp utility of several stealth builds that are not glass cannon backstabs.

I run a P/D condition build. I stealth and then immediately unstealth with my sneak attack once every five seconds or so because that is literally how the build is able to kill things. There are several non-burst theif builds like this that rely on the tertiary effects of a sneak attack as a major part of dps, survivability, or both. All of these builds rely on codition duration, which is carefully balanced around how often these builds can stealth to use the sneak to apply said condition again. By increasing the cooldown you are effectively removing all of those builds from play, and writing in stone that glass cannon backstab is the only effective theif build ever.

So now you need to rebalance every other theif skill around the new stealth. Which, honestly, is just silly when the correct response to this issue is fixing the rendering/culling issue that affects every person that has and will ever:

Stand in a shadow refuge or mass invisibility
use a mesmer portal
use swiftness or teleports to close distance to an enemy.

The bug that causes the issue you’re having with stealth affects a lot more than just thieves, and a lot more than just stealth. If we were to take your suggestion we’d have to change the function of every gap closing, stealth, portal, and teleport in the game. Its the equivalent of duct taping the side mirror back on your car in stead of just getting a new one and attaching it properly. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather that sort of thinking not be where balance patches lie, by admitting some bug wins so you just code around it.

Guild Master – The Papacy [POPE] (Gate of Madness)/Road Scholar for the Durmand Priory
Writer/Director – Quaggan Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky2TGPmMPeQ

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Posted by: Wolfgang Michael.8217

Wolfgang Michael.8217

The issue with a [burst thief], is the inability for other players to recognise how the ini mechanic works. everyone who wants a thief nerf, please start a thief, learn how ini works and realise after burst we don’t have much else. hopefully then you will realise it is not our traits/gear/runes/sigils/abilites that are bursting you, it is our ‘as intended’ ini.

P.S. don’t nerf ini, otherwise you might as well call us a low damage, low armour, warrior.

I couldn’t agree more~

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Posted by: Pyroatheist.9031

Pyroatheist.9031

Also, this change completely destroys the pvp utility of several stealth builds that are not glass cannon backstabs.

I run a P/D condition build. I stealth and then immediately unstealth with my sneak attack once every five seconds or so because that is literally how the build is able to kill things. There are several non-burst theif builds like this that rely on the tertiary effects of a sneak attack as a major part of dps, survivability, or both. All of these builds rely on codition duration, which is carefully balanced around how often these builds can stealth to use the sneak to apply said condition again. By increasing the cooldown you are effectively removing all of those builds from play, and writing in stone that glass cannon backstab is the only effective theif build ever.

So now you need to rebalance every other theif skill around the new stealth. Which, honestly, is just silly when the correct response to this issue is fixing the rendering/culling issue that affects every person that has and will ever:

Stand in a shadow refuge or mass invisibility
use a mesmer portal
use swiftness or teleports to close distance to an enemy.

The bug that causes the issue you’re having with stealth affects a lot more than just thieves, and a lot more than just stealth. If we were to take your suggestion we’d have to change the function of every gap closing, stealth, portal, and teleport in the game. Its the equivalent of duct taping the side mirror back on your car in stead of just getting a new one and attaching it properly. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather that sort of thinking not be where balance patches lie, by admitting some bug wins so you just code around it.

I think you may not have read my proposal carefully enough. I’ve played P/D thief, and the bursty bleed stacking from the skill is probably the closest thing to what I’m already proposing. The pistol stealth attack would have the damage boost + 5 or 8 stacks of bleeding or something, that would be the condition set for that skill. Condition durations from the stealth attacks would definitely need to be adjusted, for sure, but thats a minor change.

As far as just fixing the culling/stealth issue, thats far easier said than done. First of all, culling and stealth are 2 separate problems. They have similar results, but different basic causes (as I understand). The culling issue has been said, by anet, to be an unbelievably hard issue to solve, and I have doubt that the stealth one will be solved ever. However, bugs aside, I think the changes to stealth I outlined would overall make thieves, all builds and types, more versatile due to different opportunities to deal massive damage, or different ways to stack conditions, etc.

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Posted by: ZLE.8293

ZLE.8293

Again and again and AGAIN:

Culling isn’t Stealth problem,nor it’s a thief problem.It is a client problem.

Not all thieves are Backstab builds.

The bug with the thief appearance after Stealth should be fixed,so as the bug where
1-2 sec after Stealth thief gets hit by target attacks like Eviscerate and Heartseeker.
Those two things compensate each other(at least in terms of time),so it will be roughly the same->bad players will lose again,so don’t hold your breath.

Ss Ninja- Rank 50 Asura Condition Thief (The Bulgarians [BG])
My Ringtones on Zedge >>>C l i c k <<<

(edited by ZLE.8293)

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Posted by: Thaiden.3487

Thaiden.3487

Fought against a thief in WvW who used this to be stealthed 90% of the time. He could not kill me and I stuck on him for about 5 minutes (I used everything from bursting him down to tonnes of AoE) but EVERY time he would get low on health he would just go stealth and stealth and stealth some more. Even with AoE he always managed to blink away even while crippled and would be healed by the time he came out of stealth again.
Definite problem. Please fix A.S.A.P.

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Posted by: Stin.9781

Stin.9781

Fought against a thief in WvW who used this to be stealthed 90% of the time. He could not kill me and I stuck on him for about 5 minutes (I used everything from bursting him down to tonnes of AoE) but EVERY time he would get low on health he would just go stealth and stealth and stealth some more. Even with AoE he always managed to blink away even while crippled and would be healed by the time he came out of stealth again.
Definite problem. Please fix A.S.A.P.

So a thief could not kill you, nerf him right … ?

Former Devils Inside Thief R43

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Posted by: Atmaweapon.7345

Atmaweapon.7345

They’ve already demonstrated a PvE/PvP split in a guardian skill as well as disabled Charr Land Mine in WvW (?)

Increasing the stealth delay to 5 or even 6 seconds in PvP/WvW hits the the two problem classes (Thieves and Mesmers). Both are pubstompers, Thieves are still awesome high end SPvP and Mesmers are required in in high end WvW so neither have problems with “already being behind.” Once they actually fix rendering issues, it can go back down to 3 seconds, but 2 additional seconds of stealth when breaking it is in no way balanced and needs immediate hotfixing. Sure there are stealth builds revolving around spamming stealth are screwed, but this is only a short-term fix to an ability that’s far more powerful than it should be at the moment.

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Posted by: Stin.9781

Stin.9781

Thief dagger offhand is stealth spam weapeon… If you change reveal time dagger offhand becomes pretty weak, and ther offhand is atm unplayable. Means … thief is faked unless you play pistol whip or backstab instagib builds.

Former Devils Inside Thief R43

(edited by Stin.9781)