Stealth finishers need to go

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Posted by: ensoriki.5789

ensoriki.5789

I find stealth stomping is mediocre as hell outside of 1v1 and usage of Shadowstep or Shadow return + some kind of instant movement skill.
Why? People just blow up the corpse with aoe sometimes and or CC.
Very common in spvp. In WvW I never saw it common, not that it didn’t work, people just wouldn’t utilize it to marginalize a thief’s efforts.

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Posted by: Sebrent.3625

Sebrent.3625

Stealth is only “superior” to the other two in that noobs are baffled the most by stealth. It’s like when using a reflection and a noob thief spams unload 2+ times.

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Posted by: Zikory.6871

Zikory.6871

This is clearly unintended.

How is it unintended? Its been in the game since the start. If it was unintended they would have addressed the issue and made changes. They haven’t…Stealth stomp isn’t something that came about due to other changes they made in the game, its not new…

[KnT] – Knight Gaming – Blackgate
Zikory – Retired Thief
Zikkro – Zergling Necromancer

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Posted by: Zikory.6871

Zikory.6871

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

Also over all Mesmers have a decently strong down state. Mind blast your #1 skill not only damages but adds Confusion…anyone with low HP trying to stomp a Mesmer could end up downed them selves.

[KnT] – Knight Gaming – Blackgate
Zikory – Retired Thief
Zikkro – Zergling Necromancer

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight.

Well, you technically need only 1 skill to be available to guarantee a stomp.

Considering most Mesmers tend to run with Decoy + Mass Invis/Time Warp + some way of getting illusions out fast (Mirror Image being common, especially for shatter builds)

Unless you’re saying that in a 1v1 you always need to pop nearly every utility and your elite skill against every class (Note: I’m considering more than just Thief vs Mesmer fights when regarding balance of abilities and combos that are available across multiple professions)

That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost for stealth stomp on a thief:

  • Not having been in stealth for at least 3 seconds prior (Revealed)
  • Access to stealth (Be it spending initiative on CnD the downed target (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), spending initiative on BP > HS combo (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), using a 40 second cooldown, using a 60 second cooldown or using a 30 second cooldown heal skill (Can be interrupted to delay stealth))
  • Needs to ensure they have enough health to survive stomping (It’s quite possible to be downed if trying to stealth stomp at low health/with lots of conditions on)

The downside will be that thieves will be revealed after stealth stomping/if interrupted mid-stomp in the next patch.

I like how you say that being able to get nigh uncounterable stomps off is okay provided they come from situational skills that may or may not be used in combat yet don’t take into consideration that for a thief to get stealth stomps off they often will need to save up Initiative which is used for most of their damage, a thief will tend to have low initiative by the end of a fight due to needing to use it for getting to the end of a fight.

Regardless of whether I can use the skill during a fight or not, the fact of the matter is that I consciously save that up for that one situation. And if an opponent is down, chances are that I’ve just shattered my illusions so I’m left with exactly one second with personna trait. For classes that have interrupts like guardians, rangers, and sometimes engineers, I need to anticipate when they’re going to use it and time my one second. That takes skill and often doesn’t work.

Not to mention that if it’s a thief, mesmer, or ele they can avoid the initial stomp while my CD is blown.

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

This is clearly unintended.

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

I find stealth stomping far superior compared to stability/mist form/elixir s stomping because all those skills are on huge cooldowns while stealth is not. You’ll eventually miss those skills for your own defence when things go bad. And they take a utility slot while stealth… well not.

Which is balanced by the fact that stealth stomp has considerably more counters available than any of those other methods. And refer to my post above regarding opportunity cost. 6 initiative can mean the difference between a win and a loss, so the decision to save that for stomping is not trivial.

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Posted by: swinsk.6410

swinsk.6410

Knockback or knockdowns….when I myself am in a downed state as a mesmer? Are you high sir?

Yes, my bad. Let’s just give every class the “insta gib thief” button.

30s CD
Only works on thieves in pbaoe range of 900
Kills all thief instantly and sends them to dead (not downed) state.

That more what you are looking for?

Seriously, stop your crying. Thief has no better chance of getting up from downed as much as a mesmer has… Warrior on the other hand, best downed state #3 ever.

Just another noob thief…

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Another point I would like to mention is that most other stomp securing mechanics counter your target’s allies’ attempts to save him/her as well. Whereas in a stealth stomp you are still vulnerable to every form of cc in existence, and one of the major pillars of stealth, confusing your current position, is rendered moot due to the fact that they know exactly where you’re standing for those 3 seconds.

Immunity from the other CC effects that players throw at you is often the difference between a successful stomp and an unsuccessful one. And the prospect of taking a player out of play for certain is most definitely worth blowing a long cooldown utility. If not, you wouldn’t see stability/invul stomps in the current meta to begin with. The thief has 0 access to reliable stomp securing options like invul and stability, so in return, we’re granted a semi-reliable way of securing stomps that only works on a subset of classes that stability/invul works on, but can be activated more frequently at the cost of our actual combat effectiveness. This alone was not enough to make up for the lack of a reliable stomp securing mechanic, so they also gave us one of the only ways to save teammates, with good coordination, from these stomp securing mechanics, which is also stealth.

This combined with my posts above is why I believe stealth stomp is more or less balanced in its current state.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

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Posted by: Dual.8953

Dual.8953

What good’s an assassin who can’t finish the kill?

Registered Altaholic
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Posted by: miniL.7361

miniL.7361

I am a thief, but since that wasnt my first character (warrior) I have to agree that stealth finisher (and perhaps some others) should be “immuned”.

However while were at it you might as well add more CC, because comparing it to other stun/kb classes were short a lot, same for defense.

So on that point, people should stop japping & whining about stealth, its the one of the few survivability options, next to movement (which can be countered with before mentioned CC), that a thief has.

Dont make this a kittening nerf game like WoW, makes PVE & PVP a lot more annoying instead of fun. More stuff should be addes for classes that might lack things, rather than nerfing everything.

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Posted by: Kyrion.2749

Kyrion.2749

I find stealth stomping far superior compared to stability/mist form/elixir s stomping because all those skills are on huge cooldowns while stealth is not. You’ll eventually miss those skills for your own defence when things go bad. And they take a utility slot while stealth… well not.

That’s why those skills make you immune to several (or all) things, while stealth do not.

Well to be honest, stealth does make the thief immune to one thing … Immune to low-powered brains… Underclocked brains that fail to compute that the thief is still there, even if they cannot see it.

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Posted by: Dual.8953

Dual.8953

Know what’s funny about complaining about how easily thieves can access stealth stomps? x/P builds can just as easily perform the much more powerful blind stomps yet you don’t see whining about that.

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

I find stealth stomping is mediocre as hell outside of 1v1 and usage of Shadowstep or Shadow return + some kind of instant movement skill.
Why? People just blow up the corpse with aoe sometimes and or CC.
Very common in spvp. In WvW I never saw it common, not that it didn’t work, people just wouldn’t utilize it to marginalize a thief’s efforts.

You lost me at “outside of 1v1”. Who cares about non 1v1 situations?

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

This is clearly unintended.

How is it unintended? Its been in the game since the start. If it was unintended they would have addressed the issue and made changes. They haven’t…Stealth stomp isn’t something that came about due to other changes they made in the game, its not new…

By that logic any bug that hasn’t been fixed so far was intended…

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight.

Well, you technically need only 1 skill to be available to guarantee a stomp.

Considering most Mesmers tend to run with Decoy + Mass Invis/Time Warp + some way of getting illusions out fast (Mirror Image being common, especially for shatter builds)

Unless you’re saying that in a 1v1 you always need to pop nearly every utility and your elite skill against every class (Note: I’m considering more than just Thief vs Mesmer fights when regarding balance of abilities and combos that are available across multiple professions)

That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost for stealth stomp on a thief:

  • Not having been in stealth for at least 3 seconds prior (Revealed)
  • Access to stealth (Be it spending initiative on CnD the downed target (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), spending initiative on BP > HS combo (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), using a 40 second cooldown, using a 60 second cooldown or using a 30 second cooldown heal skill (Can be interrupted to delay stealth))
  • Needs to ensure they have enough health to survive stomping (It’s quite possible to be downed if trying to stealth stomp at low health/with lots of conditions on)

The downside will be that thieves will be revealed after stealth stomping/if interrupted mid-stomp in the next patch.

I like how you say that being able to get nigh uncounterable stomps off is okay provided they come from situational skills that may or may not be used in combat yet don’t take into consideration that for a thief to get stealth stomps off they often will need to save up Initiative which is used for most of their damage, a thief will tend to have low initiative by the end of a fight due to needing to use it for getting to the end of a fight.

Regardless of whether I can use the skill during a fight or not, the fact of the matter is that I consciously save that up for that one situation. And if an opponent is down, chances are that I’ve just shattered my illusions so I’m left with exactly one second with personna trait. For classes that have interrupts like guardians, rangers, and sometimes engineers, I need to anticipate when they’re going to use it and time my one second. That takes skill and often doesn’t work.

Not to mention that if it’s a thief, mesmer, or ele they can avoid the initial stomp while my CD is blown.

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

This is clearly unintended.

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

A thief has multiple sources of stealth. One of these is sure to be available for use. For example, they just have to hit the heal button!

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

It means I had to save my skills for after the thief is downed rather than during the fight.

Well, you technically need only 1 skill to be available to guarantee a stomp.

Considering most Mesmers tend to run with Decoy + Mass Invis/Time Warp + some way of getting illusions out fast (Mirror Image being common, especially for shatter builds)

Unless you’re saying that in a 1v1 you always need to pop nearly every utility and your elite skill against every class (Note: I’m considering more than just Thief vs Mesmer fights when regarding balance of abilities and combos that are available across multiple professions)

That is not a consideration for thieves who can easily stealth regardless with no downsides and no opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost for stealth stomp on a thief:

  • Not having been in stealth for at least 3 seconds prior (Revealed)
  • Access to stealth (Be it spending initiative on CnD the downed target (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), spending initiative on BP > HS combo (Can be interrupted to delay stealth), using a 40 second cooldown, using a 60 second cooldown or using a 30 second cooldown heal skill (Can be interrupted to delay stealth))
  • Needs to ensure they have enough health to survive stomping (It’s quite possible to be downed if trying to stealth stomp at low health/with lots of conditions on)

The downside will be that thieves will be revealed after stealth stomping/if interrupted mid-stomp in the next patch.

I like how you say that being able to get nigh uncounterable stomps off is okay provided they come from situational skills that may or may not be used in combat yet don’t take into consideration that for a thief to get stealth stomps off they often will need to save up Initiative which is used for most of their damage, a thief will tend to have low initiative by the end of a fight due to needing to use it for getting to the end of a fight.

Regardless of whether I can use the skill during a fight or not, the fact of the matter is that I consciously save that up for that one situation. And if an opponent is down, chances are that I’ve just shattered my illusions so I’m left with exactly one second with personna trait. For classes that have interrupts like guardians, rangers, and sometimes engineers, I need to anticipate when they’re going to use it and time my one second. That takes skill and often doesn’t work.

Not to mention that if it’s a thief, mesmer, or ele they can avoid the initial stomp while my CD is blown.

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

This is clearly unintended.

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

Also you’re wrong that a mesmer has a guaranteed way to avoid ANY initial stomp – and that’s my point. The #2 skill requires a target to work. Hence the issue with stealth. Make downed skills not require a target and we’re all cool.

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

Another point I would like to mention is that most other stomp securing mechanics counter your target’s allies’ attempts to save him/her as well. Whereas in a stealth stomp you are still vulnerable to every form of cc in existence, and one of the major pillars of stealth, confusing your current position, is rendered moot due to the fact that they know exactly where you’re standing for those 3 seconds.

Immunity from the other CC effects that players throw at you is often the difference between a successful stomp and an unsuccessful one. And the prospect of taking a player out of play for certain is most definitely worth blowing a long cooldown utility. If not, you wouldn’t see stability/invul stomps in the current meta to begin with. The thief has 0 access to reliable stomp securing options like invul and stability, so in return, we’re granted a semi-reliable way of securing stomps that only works on a subset of classes that stability/invul works on, but can be activated more frequently at the cost of our actual combat effectiveness. This alone was not enough to make up for the lack of a reliable stomp securing mechanic, so they also gave us one of the only ways to save teammates, with good coordination, from these stomp securing mechanics, which is also stealth.

This combined with my posts above is why I believe stealth stomp is more or less balanced in its current state.

If something is not 1v1 balanced, it is not balanced.

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Posted by: Dasorine.1964

Dasorine.1964

If something is not 1v1 balanced, it is not balanced.

If something isn’t 5v5 balanced it is not balanced.

See I can say rubbish also, balance is not as simple as balancing 1v1 or balancing 5v5, there are so many different situations and roles to take into account.

Take AoE’s if you balanced them for 1v1 they’d do single target style damage that suddenly becomes overpowered in group situations, on flip side if you balance a single target move on a glass cannon to single target encounter as soon as you throw in a group with buffs and such it suddenly becomes ineffective.

Throw in the fact that all meaningful content both pve and pvp is team based then balancing for 1v1 is a surefire way to UNbalance everything.

1v1 balance would only matter if every combat situation was specifically made to be duels.

This is also why stealth is mechanically weak, in a group fight other people have each others attention so stealth keeps the thief (who doesn’t have many mechanical defenses) out of sight and why 1v1 stealth is easily countered to the point of almost uselessness (depending on enemy and thief’s respective intelligences)

(edited by Dasorine.1964)

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Posted by: Dual.8953

Dual.8953

@Bhagwad: If stealth stomping is unintended then why does Blind Stomping exist? Not even a guardian can interupt a Blackpowder stomp and just as easy to do as a CnD stomp with the same cost and everything. Your Warrior buddy can’t even 100b to save you.

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Posted by: Skorn.4906

Skorn.4906

I think we should make it clear that we’re only discussing 1v1’s. No one is interested in team fighting. As a mesmer, two of my main downed abilities require a target to activate.

It’s pretty clear that stealth stomping is something that the designers overlooked and which will be fixed soon.

I’m sorry, but if it’s 1v1 and the thief has you downed already why would he even need stealth to stomp you? It’s not like anyone’s gonna come help you up in the 4 seconds you buy with your #2 skill. Or are you talking about something beyond situational where the thief is nearly dead and you can down him during the stomp? In which case he should still be able to finish you off in downed state since you’ve taken damage already. ( I say ‘should’ because he can’t, not when you and 1-2 clones are stacking confusion on him and a rogue is backstabbing him. Or should we be discussing nerfing mesmer downed state here? Maybe that’s something the designers overlooked too)

(edited by Skorn.4906)

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

Also you’re wrong that a mesmer has a guaranteed way to avoid ANY initial stomp – and that’s my point. The #2 skill requires a target to work. Hence the issue with stealth. Make downed skills not require a target and we’re all cool.

Note how I said delay the initial stomp, not avoid it.

In most 1v1 situations, if you go down, that is essentially the end of the fight. Any class in downed state will be stomped or just simply DPS’d to death by a decent player at that point. All anyone CAN do is delay when the enemy can land the stomp, hoping that an ally will make it in time for a res.

In a 1v1 situation with Mesmer vs Thief, any decent Mesmer SHOULD be using their downed skill as soon as he goes down, while the Thief is still targetable. Not doing so is a sign of lack of judgement or experience or reaction speed, or any combination of the above, because as you say, when the the Thief cloaks, you will loose your ability to target him with your downed 2.

Against any decent Thief this is the optimal course of action the Mesmer can take, because it will delay the initial stomp by a good 3-4 seconds. Will it turn the fight around? Most likely not. SHOULD it turn the fight around for him? Of course not.

The downed state is a team oriented mechanic. Without a teammate around, when you go down, it is by design that you should end up dead against any decent player. The only thing that some classes have control over, is when, and sometimes where, that happens.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

Another point I would like to mention is that most other stomp securing mechanics counter your target’s allies’ attempts to save him/her as well. Whereas in a stealth stomp you are still vulnerable to every form of cc in existence, and one of the major pillars of stealth, confusing your current position, is rendered moot due to the fact that they know exactly where you’re standing for those 3 seconds.

Immunity from the other CC effects that players throw at you is often the difference between a successful stomp and an unsuccessful one. And the prospect of taking a player out of play for certain is most definitely worth blowing a long cooldown utility. If not, you wouldn’t see stability/invul stomps in the current meta to begin with. The thief has 0 access to reliable stomp securing options like invul and stability, so in return, we’re granted a semi-reliable way of securing stomps that only works on a subset of classes that stability/invul works on, but can be activated more frequently at the cost of our actual combat effectiveness. This alone was not enough to make up for the lack of a reliable stomp securing mechanic, so they also gave us one of the only ways to save teammates, with good coordination, from these stomp securing mechanics, which is also stealth.

This combined with my posts above is why I believe stealth stomp is more or less balanced in its current state.

If something is not 1v1 balanced, it is not balanced.

The downed state is a team oriented mechanic. Without a teammate around, when you go down, it is by design that you should end up dead against any decent player. The only thing that some classes have control over, is when, and sometimes where, that happens.

Thereby any discussion of downed state can only make sense in a team context.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

A thief has multiple sources of stealth. One of these is sure to be available for use. For example, they just have to hit the heal button!

All the non-initiative sources of stealth are cooldown-based. So the same argument can be made for the availability of multiple sources of stability/invulnerability for other classes. The Thief has 3 on-demand cooldown based stealths. This is comparable, albeit lacking for the most part, to the number of stability/invulnerability sources most other classes have.

Considering Stability/Invul are the technically superior sources of stomp securing, especially in a team setting, and that we have 0 access to said superior sources that could mean the difference between a failed or successful stomp, which could then in turn alter the outcome of a teamfight, I do still believe this should be considered balanced.

For the Heal button to be available for use it would have to mean the Thief didn’t HEAL in the last 30s of the fight for god’s sake, why would stealth stomping even matter at that point.

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

A thief has multiple sources of stealth. One of these is sure to be available for use. For example, they just have to hit the heal button!

All the non-initiative sources of stealth are cooldown-based. So the same argument can be made for the availability of multiple sources of stability/invulnerability for other classes. The Thief has 3 on-demand cooldown based stealths. This is comparable, albeit lacking for the most part, to the number of stability/invulnerability sources most other classes have.

Considering Stability/Invul are the technically superior sources of stomp securing, especially in a team setting, and that we have 0 access to said superior sources that could mean the difference between a failed or successful stomp, which could then in turn alter the outcome of a teamfight, I do still believe this should be considered balanced.

For the Heal button to be available for use it would have to mean the Thief didn’t HEAL in the last 30s of the fight for god’s sake, why would stealth stomping even matter at that point.

Like I said, it’s multiple sources. If it’s not heal it’ll be something else. One way or the other a thief is very likely to be able to stealth during any fight. And that is something other classes cannot do.

More importantly like I mentioned earlier, stealth has no counterplay for classes whose downed skills require targeting. Even invulnerability and stability have counterplay. You can move away from them. But with stealth, you can’t.

Give me an invulnerable opponent stomping me over a stealth guy any day. Absolutely any day.

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Posted by: bhagwad.4281

bhagwad.4281

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

Also you’re wrong that a mesmer has a guaranteed way to avoid ANY initial stomp – and that’s my point. The #2 skill requires a target to work. Hence the issue with stealth. Make downed skills not require a target and we’re all cool.

Note how I said delay the initial stomp, not avoid it.

In most 1v1 situations, if you go down, that is essentially the end of the fight. Any class in downed state will be stomped or just simply DPS’d to death by a decent player at that point. All anyone CAN do is delay when the enemy can land the stomp, hoping that an ally will make it in time for a res.

In a 1v1 situation with Mesmer vs Thief, any decent Mesmer SHOULD be using their downed skill as soon as he goes down, while the Thief is still targetable. Not doing so is a sign of lack of judgement or experience or reaction speed, or any combination of the above, because as you say, when the the Thief cloaks, you will loose your ability to target him with your downed 2.

Against any decent Thief this is the optimal course of action the Mesmer can take, because it will delay the initial stomp by a good 3-4 seconds. Will it turn the fight around? Most likely not. SHOULD it turn the fight around for him? Of course not.

The downed state is a team oriented mechanic. Without a teammate around, when you go down, it is by design that you should end up dead against any decent player. The only thing that some classes have control over, is when, and sometimes where, that happens.

The downed state adds another level of play. If the thief has 200 hp left he shouldn’t be able to stomp me. With stealth, he can. I can delay even invulnerable/stability players. But stealth is clearly something that’s akin to cheating.

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Posted by: Rusc.4978

Rusc.4978

The downed state adds another level of play. If the thief has 200 hp left he shouldn’t be able to stomp me. With stealth, he can. I can delay even invulnerable/stability players. But stealth is clearly something that’s akin to cheating.

Why shouldn’t he? He’s got 200 health, and you’re downed. If he can pull it off, then I’d say it’s a well-deserved victory.

Prosper

Brought to you by ArenaNet. Soon™.

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Posted by: Grimwolf.7163

Grimwolf.7163

Sorry but you seem to consider ini cost of stealth to be a trivial cost, but that is simply untrue. At minimum, a thief needs 6 initiative to enter stealth, which is half of our initiative pool. In terms of opportunity cost, that is 6 initiative that the thief “consciously saved up” and did not use during the fight with an extra backstab, daze, unload, pistol whip, sneak attack, etc, all of which are skills that could end the fight faster and by choosing not to use them, the thief risks a vastly higher chance of being taken down first.

A thief, ele, and mesmer can avoid ANY initial stomp as long as they don’t screw up the initial timing. That’s rather a class balance issue than a problem specific to Thieves. I believe these are balanced that way because these down skills do not have cc effects that allow them to assist teammates while downed, and in return they get an almost guaranteed way to delay the initial stomp. Thief’s downed skill can still be negated by a well-timed teleport though, whereas Mesmers and Elementalists down skills have no counter if timed correctly.

Also you’re wrong that a mesmer has a guaranteed way to avoid ANY initial stomp – and that’s my point. The #2 skill requires a target to work. Hence the issue with stealth. Make downed skills not require a target and we’re all cool.

Note how I said delay the initial stomp, not avoid it.

In most 1v1 situations, if you go down, that is essentially the end of the fight. Any class in downed state will be stomped or just simply DPS’d to death by a decent player at that point. All anyone CAN do is delay when the enemy can land the stomp, hoping that an ally will make it in time for a res.

In a 1v1 situation with Mesmer vs Thief, any decent Mesmer SHOULD be using their downed skill as soon as he goes down, while the Thief is still targetable. Not doing so is a sign of lack of judgement or experience or reaction speed, or any combination of the above, because as you say, when the the Thief cloaks, you will loose your ability to target him with your downed 2.

Against any decent Thief this is the optimal course of action the Mesmer can take, because it will delay the initial stomp by a good 3-4 seconds. Will it turn the fight around? Most likely not. SHOULD it turn the fight around for him? Of course not.

The downed state is a team oriented mechanic. Without a teammate around, when you go down, it is by design that you should end up dead against any decent player. The only thing that some classes have control over, is when, and sometimes where, that happens.

The downed state adds another level of play. If the thief has 200 hp left he shouldn’t be able to stomp me. With stealth, he can. I can delay even invulnerable/stability players. But stealth is clearly something that’s akin to cheating.

…Once again, I think that’s more an argument for Mesmer downed state being the overpowered thing here, not Thieves stealth stomping. Most classes cannot single-handedly avoid an Invulnerable/Stability stomp. You’re apparently complaining because a stealth stomp is literally THE ONLY thing that can catch you. Blind might work as well, but I don’t know.

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Posted by: TheGuy.3568

TheGuy.3568

sigh…

Some time is think these threads are jokes. Look with stability invul etc what difference does it make? Among all the stomps your team could stop stealth is the easiest (drop an aoe stop being foolish). The rest are impossible or nearly impossible to stop.

Sometimes teams are like this when the thief disappears.

Here’s a hint he is stomping your down ally now go get him.

Kor The Cold Heart War
Wrekkes-Engineer Kore Rok Thief-Asraithe-Ele

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Posted by: Dualona.4506

Dualona.4506

What no one seems to say is the fact that your downed and that basically means you lost the fight. The fact your complaining about something like this means that you rely on downed state far to much. Tell me how many other games give you a second chance once you have basically been killed.

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Posted by: Kincaidia.3192

Kincaidia.3192

Except when you get a Mesmer down and somehow get 6 stacks of confusion, or a necro lifetaps you from half health down to downed state. Or when you down a ranger under water and the pet bugs out while healing, and doesn’t stop healing even when it’s dead, and it takes 3 people to out-dps the pet rez.

And you’re picking out stealth stomp as the worst offender?

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Posted by: Dirty Dova.6490

Dirty Dova.6490

Could you try to read that post agin plz? Maybe you get my point then, thx.
Neither stability nor invisibility nor shrinkform helps you to stomp a thief, thats my point. As engineer i cant prevent a thief from stomping, not even once.
This isnt about 1v1 a thief at all. Its the same for groupfights or larger encounters.
Thiefs are almost the only classes that can ruin my elixir s stomp on others with shadowrefuge.

With your grenades …. you should stick to your commander and camping walls.
And jes i played nades after release where no one even knew what 100nades is about.
Had to change my build, mostly because of thieves to survive thier burst. Its just not that good for soloing compared to conditionspec.

I dont 1vs1 i usually play 1vsX, you wont do that well there with nades but where should you know. Dont know how bad you are on your thief but this is the only class which causes trouble to me because they clean all thier conditions everytime they stealth. Jes i usually beat them, but it takes longer then every other class and of course i only mention the really good ones. Even mesmers and D/D eles are easy compared to thiefs. Again its not about fighting a thief, if you play alot WvW you have to learn that because most players here are so bad that they cant have success on nonlamer professions. So every 2nd enemy i face is a thief, no im not exaggerating.

Oh yea bacause when we clear confusion as a glass cannon its basically asking for death and im pretty sure that engineer are the best or 2nd best at stacking confusion

I have a lvl 80 ele thief and warrior also a lvl 52 mesmer. I understand what op is and isnt.

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Posted by: Dirty Dova.6490

Dirty Dova.6490

What no one seems to say is the fact that your downed and that basically means you lost the fight. The fact your complaining about something like this means that you rely on downed state far to much. Tell me how many other games give you a second chance once you have basically been killed.

Someone give this kid a medal stealth stomp in 1v10s is one of the hardest things known in gw2. But in 1v1 you lost. If you want to trait in 50% damage in downed state go for it. 1v3 is probably the only fight you cant talk about and that just means your getting out played but stealth stomp isnt op or whatever you wanna say. Ok so look if your gaurdian you can just put down your bubble and they cant come in easy rez. If your ranger just slap some traps down and then rez. If your thief… If your necro plz let someone stand in your wells. Escpically a glass cannon thief. If your engineer pop the almighty crate of death. Its not hard just think if your mesmer pop some interrupts.

I have a lvl 80 ele thief and warrior also a lvl 52 mesmer. I understand what op is and isnt.

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Posted by: Kaon.7192

Kaon.7192

A thief has multiple sources of stealth. One of these is sure to be available for use. For example, they just have to hit the heal button!

All the non-initiative sources of stealth are cooldown-based. So the same argument can be made for the availability of multiple sources of stability/invulnerability for other classes. The Thief has 3 on-demand cooldown based stealths. This is comparable, albeit lacking for the most part, to the number of stability/invulnerability sources most other classes have.

Considering Stability/Invul are the technically superior sources of stomp securing, especially in a team setting, and that we have 0 access to said superior sources that could mean the difference between a failed or successful stomp, which could then in turn alter the outcome of a teamfight, I do still believe this should be considered balanced.

For the Heal button to be available for use it would have to mean the Thief didn’t HEAL in the last 30s of the fight for god’s sake, why would stealth stomping even matter at that point.

Like I said, it’s multiple sources. If it’s not heal it’ll be something else. One way or the other a thief is very likely to be able to stealth during any fight. And that is something other classes cannot do.

More importantly like I mentioned earlier, stealth has no counterplay for classes whose downed skills require targeting. Even invulnerability and stability have counterplay. You can move away from them. But with stealth, you can’t.

Give me an invulnerable opponent stomping me over a stealth guy any day. Absolutely any day.

And you still keep ignoring my point that this is balanced by the fact that stealth is a decidedly inferior form of stealth securing in a team context, which is the only context that downed state actually matters. In a 1on1, if you’re downed first, you’ve lost. Admit defeat and move on. Downing your opponent after you’ve been downed is just plain cheesy because at that point the outcome is determined purely by a matter of which class you play.

Let me elaborate further, once both players enter downed state in a 1v1, all pretenses of balance is lost. Some classes have such an insane amount of damage and/or sustain in downed state that others in down state simply have no chance of killing them before being killed themselves. Let me use Mesmer vs Thief as an example, since you seem to be so interested in this scenario. If both of you enter downed state at close to the same time and start attacking eachother, do you honestly think the Thief stands even a tiny thread of a chance? If so, you’re completely delusional. And Mesmers downed state is not even overpowered when you put it in context with Rangers/Necros/Warriors. There is simply 0 chance other classes in downed state can win against any of these classes also in downed state. Rangers will have their pet res themselves after 5 seconds, Necro’s will laugh in the face of your puny downed state damage output with his life drain, and Warriors will just get up with vengeance and take you down first.

If ANet ever does implement a 1v1 dueling mode. I am willing to bet downed state will not play a role in it at all due to the obvious fact that it was not balanced with 1v1s in mind.

In most formal 1on1 duels, the duel ends when a player is down, not when a player has been stomped. Precisely because downed states in a 1v1 context does not make sense, and winning after you’ve been downed due to your class having a decidedly superior downed state damage output or sustain is anything but fair and balanced.

But I’m beginning to doubt balance is what you’re looking for here. I agree with Grimwolf that you do seem to be complaining about stealth simply because its the only stomp securing mechanic that has a chance of countering Mesmer’s downed 2 (and this is only when the Mesmer failed to activate downed 2 in time while the Thief is still visible). You seem to want your downed mechanic to have 0 counters rather than 1 counter. This is a rather childish stance considering the number of counters available for most other classes’ downed states. Ele’s is the only one that has 0 counters (even Thief’s downed 2 is countered by a well timed teleport stomp, which does not work on Mesmer due to the invisibility it grants). It will be better for the state of the game if you spent your time advocating for at least 1 viable counter to ele’s downed state rather than trying to take your downed state to the same level of brokenness.

(edited by Kaon.7192)

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Posted by: Zikory.6871

Zikory.6871

This is clearly unintended.

How is it unintended? Its been in the game since the start. If it was unintended they would have addressed the issue and made changes. They haven’t…Stealth stomp isn’t something that came about due to other changes they made in the game, its not new…

By that logic any bug that hasn’t been fixed so far was intended…

Stealth stomps are not a bug…so your statement is null…

[KnT] – Knight Gaming – Blackgate
Zikory – Retired Thief
Zikkro – Zergling Necromancer

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Posted by: Zikory.6871

Zikory.6871

If were talking about down states, unless a thief drops shadow refuge then gets downed in it or gets rallied, a downed thief is a dead thief.

[KnT] – Knight Gaming – Blackgate
Zikory – Retired Thief
Zikkro – Zergling Necromancer

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Posted by: Dasorine.1964

Dasorine.1964

If were talking about down states, unless a thief drops shadow refuge then gets downed in it or gets rallied, a downed thief is a dead thief.

but but but smokebomb! instant revive and aoe instant death for entire zergs around them!

</sarcasm>

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Posted by: FKNrocked.7421

FKNrocked.7421

Example of why this is crap…
Necro = lots of power / Thief = lots more power
Necro = 28k hp / Thief = 13k hp to get all that power
Necro = no stealth / Thief = stealth
Necro: “WAAA! Why does HE get to stealth?!”

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Posted by: Master of Timespace.2548

Master of Timespace.2548

The initiative costs for stealth however are trivial. The “costs” that you’ve outlined vastly outweigh the benefits. And in a 1v1 thief mesmer fight if the mes is downed, the stealth completely negates any damage whatsoever even if they have just 100 health left making the downed skill state a joke.

Learn the rules of the game before complaining about them. What can a ranger, engineer, warrior, necro or guard do when you distortion stomp? What can a thief do when you blink stomp?

Blind might work as well, but I don’t know.

It does not. Mesmer downed skill #2 can be countered only in an ideal situation where you can stealth stomp and there are no other targets nearby.

? <(^-^><)>^-^)> <(^-^)> ?

(edited by Master of Timespace.2548)