Guild Wars 2

Okay, so for those of you who aren’t aware; if you come out of stealth after using an attack, you get the debuff called “Revealed”. It’s a few seconds where you’re unable to go in stealth again. If you don’t attack, you don’t get the “revealed” debuff.

We have the following manual ways to enter stealth:
-Cloak and Dagger (#5 dagger) attacks enemy, goes into stealth
-Hide in Shadows (healing) heal, gain regen, and go in stealth
-Blinding Powder (utility) blind surrounding enemies, stealth yourself and nearby allies
-Shadow Refuge (utility) create a spot on the ground that you and your allies can hide in to gain stealth
-Shadow Trap (utility) create a trap that when triggered, gives you the option to pop back to the trap in stealth

However, there are also automated/traited ways of getting into stealth, and this is where my tweak is proposed.
-Hidden Thief: Stealth for 2s after stealing (cooldown tied to stealing)
-Instinctual Response: Stealth and blind the enemy when you take more than 20% of your HP in one blow (60 second internal cooldown)

The problem as I see it, is that our ability to make use of these traits is completely tied to forces beyond our control. If you’ve already got the revealed debuff, you won’t/shouldn’t use Steal until it’s gone, otherwise you’ve wasted a stealth trigger that’s on a 45-ish second cooldown (unless traited in trickery). Steal is in and of itself an attack of opportunity, and using it properly is situational (especially when using it as an escape mechanism).

With IR, the ability to make use of the trait is completely out of your hands. Siege equipment, other thieves, most bursty classes, will force this skill to trigger – which often times simply won’t happen since you have the revealed debuff already.

If revealed, IR will be wasted
If revealed, HT will be either wasted or unused

What I propose, is that these two traits trigger regardless of whether you have the revealed debuff already. No more wasted steals, no more unused IR’s.

What are your thoughts?

I’d agree for IR disagree for HT.

You can control when to use Hidden Thief’s effects, so I disagree with that. Heartily agree with Instinctual Response. You also forgot Last Refuge (5 Shadow Arts). That needs to be exempt from Revealed as well. It’s more often than not the reason I die.

CnD>Infiltrator Signet>BS>Steal>BS no pls

Correct me if I’m wrong, Malicious – but doesn’t infiltrator’s signet break stealth? Shadowstep and untraited-stealth do.

LoreChief.8391:

Correct me if I’m wrong, Malicious – but doesn’t infiltrator’s signet break stealth? Shadowstep and untraited-stealth do.

Can I correct you if you’re wrong? C&D→IS is the same as C&D→Steal, and he’s saying that if you got two back to back BS opportunities, you’d be absolutely stupid OP.

Infiltrator’s Signet basically is an on-target shadowstep. It functions the same way as steal on that part. If you use it during the cast of CnD you will be instantly stealthed and rdy to BS. Or in other words, the stealth will be applied directly after your shadowstep.

Anyway shadowsteps do not break stealth. Your character becomes visible on your screen but you still have the stealth buff. Same applies to Infiltrator’s Arrow. Try it out with Shadow Refuge. Man I wish there was a way to break stealth without hitting a person/object at Kyhlo….

Ah, I wasn’t aware that when my char showed up visible again that they were still /stealthed/, lol.

I get the point about having two on-demand backstabs being OP though, perhaps Hidden Thief isn’t in need of a change. Personally I’d like to see it rolled into the skill itself instead of needing to trait it…

Auesis.7301:

You can control when to use Hidden Thief’s effects, so I disagree with that. Heartily agree with Instinctual Response. You also forgot Last Refuge (5 Shadow Arts). That needs to be exempt from Revealed as well. It’s more often than not the reason I die.

I agree with this too, the amount of times I’ve bought it because I’ve hit C&D and Last Refuge kicks in and I see that awesome “immune” sign.

Steal I don’t agree with, you can control when to use that, Last Refuge is completely beyond your control and nobody wants to hang around and see if it kicks in instead of using a stealth ability that should have gotten you out of direct trouble.

I’m not really going to QQ too hard about either, it’s not like we have it too bad.