Guild Wars 2

You know why culling affects stealth people? Because a stealth character’s position and existence is not reported to the surrounding people’s clients. The suggestions of subtle hints, such as flaming auras, vomit trails and popping numbers, wouldn’t work because to the client that would be able to see trails wouldn’t because that stealthed characters existence, and therefore effects, are not reported to the surrounding clients.

If ArenaNet wanted to fix stealth in regard to culling, they’d move stealth from serverside to clientside handling. Obviously there is an issue with full character loading from disk when a new character is reported to a client, so every time a character pops out of stealth, that culling lag affects the visibility time. If character composition, positioning and actions of stealth characters were still reported to surrounding, in-area clients, the transition from invisible to visible should be almost instantaneous as the individual clients wouldn’t have to load from disk, recreate and re-position the revealed character. I understand their desire to minimize necessary reporting to clients, but when they’re breaking a class to do it, they need to reexamine their strategy.

The minimal reporting to clients is to prevent hacks, any information you send to the client that the player shouldn’t see risks players hacking the client for any advantage. You don’t need to send more then a handful of bytes to the client to give it sufficient information about PC’s to render them.

sachiel.8051:

You know why culling affects stealth people? Because a stealth character’s position and existence is not reported to the surrounding people’s clients. The suggestions of subtle hints, such as flaming auras, vomit trails and popping numbers, wouldn’t work because to the client that would be able to see trails wouldn’t because that stealthed characters existence, and therefore effects, are not reported to the surrounding clients.

You are so knowledgeable! Then how do you explain me tab targeting bleed damage numbers or the un-stealth swirl every day I play when people come out of stealth fully culled?

Culling is not good but those things render instantly.

waeren.9743:

So if we follow tf2 logic then thieves will be able to oneshot people with a backstab? Sounds like a good trade to me!

why on earth do people always think it has to be ALL this or ALL that?

Just use the part that make sense and not the other part that doesn’t fit here at all.
Try thinking instead of arguing for the sake of arguing.

You know well enough that was NOT what I was saying.
Neither was the one explaining the mechanic that could be usefull.

The mechanic could prove a very balanced solution for the issues with stealth in this game.
Of course it would have to be balanced for THIS game and not follow the balancing of another game.

So who cares if those TF2 thieves one-shot others or not.
That’s a balancing issue for that game.
It’s perfectly viable to use a mechanic of another game without implementing all other features as well.
This whole thread is a reaction AGAINST such things as one-shotting… so what are you on about?

Musty.3148:

Either – add to the revealed timer (hopefully just until they can actually fix culling, then revert the change)
Or – Actually FIX culling.

AI opponents have no culling problems, increasing revealed would severely hurt thief gameplay in PvE.

Any major changes to the stealth mechanic, which is the prerequisite for offence and defence, would require a complete redesign of the profession.

If you were to increase revealed from 3 to 5 seconds you’d almost half the damage output of several builds aimed at survival and attrition, pushing thieves into the only remaining build, the Mug burst assassin

Oh, and the effect of the culling problem is not limited to Thief, or stealth. People do find themselves in zergs that they never saw coming…

I do agree that culling affects everyone in WvW and that is unfortunate.

It would be a major fail to have an optimization interfere with a class mechanic so badly that it would require a redesign of that class, which is likely a lot more work then fixing the optimization problem.

The old days of MMOs when a stealther couldn’t restealth in combat and even had to be out of combat for a period of time before doing so. When you had to pick and choose your targets carefully and bad decisions actually would cost you.

Stiv.1820:

You are so knowledgeable! Then how do you explain me tab targeting bleed damage numbers or the un-stealth swirl every day I play when people come out of stealth fully culled?

Culling is not good but those things render instantly.

It’s true, existence and therefore positioning, popup numbers and the effects do render instantly. It’s the loading of the character assets, body, face, customizations, armor, weapons, dyes, etc. that are taking so long and making a should be visible character still “invisible” when it’s tab-targetable. I swear it was DAOC, maybe I’m wrong there, but at distance, to compensate for loading time, a naked, generic doll would load. From there, customizations would load in as well as armor and weapon assets. That would at least give you a heads up that there was a pc there, even if they didn’t look perfect. Maybe that’s a possible solution to the culling and keeping stealth serverside: to load in naked characters first, but I don’t think they’d want to give up part of the polish of finished characters for better gameplay. If you wanted to keep the polish of complete, dressed characters popping out of stealth and make it faster, you’re going to have to report stealthed characters to the client so the client doesn’t have to rebuild from scratch characters every time they come out of stealth.

frans.8092:

The minimal reporting to clients is to prevent hacks, any information you send to the client that the player shouldn’t see risks players hacking the client for any advantage. You don’t need to send more then a handful of bytes to the client to give it sufficient information about PC’s to render them.

As for preventing client-side hacks on reported stealthed characters, you’ve got your priorities backwards. The greater majority of people playing this game are not hacking, but are affected negatively by stealth-culling issues. Do you code for the better gameplay of the majority or for the tiny percentage of people using third party tools to discover stealthed characters? Which makes for better gameplay for a larger number of people? ArenaNet has not done a great job in preventing third party hacking evidenced by the rampant teleporting, speedhacks and radar usage in this game as is. If on/off stealth were available in this game, then I would say that it would be more likely to be hacked and used against stealth classes. Considering the mechanic as it stands, I don’t think hackers would have a reliable way to keep stealthers visible considering it is such a combat mechanic and not a sneak mechanic.

sachiel.8051:

So, let’s use our story-telling imagination here: You’re bleeding like a stuck pig and turn yourself invisible. Does the blood that hits the ground and separates from you remain invisible? How about your vomit from the poisoning? What about the fire burning your invisible body? Sorry, that first tick on a dot should pop you out of stealth. Maybe we could see the effects of the burning, the trail of blood or if they don’t want to leave a trail of sick on the ground, a trail of green puffs. If a thief were to cleanse themself before stealth, problem solved and I know they can trait for cleanse on stealth as well.

As for aoe’s, you’re saying that ele’s and other aoe heavy classes are screwed for revealing thieves, but warriors and other melee classes are golden? That’s not quite fair as a staff ele would have nothing to “lock on” to, other than drop an aoe field where they THINK the thief might be, but that wouldn’t reveal them. Thiefs, in my opinion, shouldn’t be a class that wades into the middle of the zerg battlefield stealthed, but I could understand them using their stealth to flank the sides while avoiding damage.

If it broke on damage, I’d probably ditch the revealed debuff to compensate.

I honestly think stealth breaking on damage would balance the class quite nicely.

Sure but if we want to go down that road then if I land an attack from stealth you should auto die. I mean you didn’t see me coming and I had time to line up a perfect attack that you had no way to defend.

Or we could keep up with the fact that this is a fantasy game where people shoot fireballs and lighting and can shape change into bears.

Stealth breaking on damage would destroy the survivability of the theif class and would make it so the class would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. It’s a bad idea.

Even if it doesn’t remove stealth, damage should be shown to know you hit something. As far as I know everything in this game has a counter, other than dodging and stealth. Everyone can dodge. Just show hit damage even on invisible characters.

Samhayn.2385:

sachiel.8051:

So, let’s use our story-telling imagination here: You’re bleeding like a stuck pig and turn yourself invisible. Does the blood that hits the ground and separates from you remain invisible? How about your vomit from the poisoning? What about the fire burning your invisible body? Sorry, that first tick on a dot should pop you out of stealth. Maybe we could see the effects of the burning, the trail of blood or if they don’t want to leave a trail of sick on the ground, a trail of green puffs. If a thief were to cleanse themself before stealth, problem solved and I know they can trait for cleanse on stealth as well.

As for aoe’s, you’re saying that ele’s and other aoe heavy classes are screwed for revealing thieves, but warriors and other melee classes are golden? That’s not quite fair as a staff ele would have nothing to “lock on” to, other than drop an aoe field where they THINK the thief might be, but that wouldn’t reveal them. Thiefs, in my opinion, shouldn’t be a class that wades into the middle of the zerg battlefield stealthed, but I could understand them using their stealth to flank the sides while avoiding damage.

If it broke on damage, I’d probably ditch the revealed debuff to compensate.

I honestly think stealth breaking on damage would balance the class quite nicely.

Sure but if we want to go down that road then if I land an attack from stealth you should auto die. I mean you didn’t see me coming and I had time to line up a perfect attack that you had no way to defend.

Or we could keep up with the fact that this is a fantasy game where people shoot fireballs and lighting and can shape change into bears.

Stealth breaking on damage would destroy the survivability of the theif class and would make it so the class would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. It’s a bad idea.

If it was positional sure : p you should stand a 90% chance of winning.

Can you tell I miss the days before game companies decided to make playing a stealth class so freaking easy mode, heh.

Deano.7913:

Even if it doesn’t remove stealth, damage should be shown to know you hit something. As far as I know everything in this game has a counter, other than dodging and stealth. Everyone can dodge. Just show hit damage even on invisible characters.

Seeing damage numbers would be nice. I think if you hit someone with something other than a dot it should break stealth as a counter for being able to disappear in combat. Not just for thieves though, obviously.

I also suggest to remove cooldowns from skills like “Rapid Fire” and “Point Blank Shot”. Because thieves still have a chance to use their class mechanic. It is not fair, because they can kill us still

Every class must have a button “kill all thieves on this map”! It will be most fun and fair game ever! Haha!

I agree with the “Stealth should drop on damage”. Those who are QQing are mostly thief’s anyways that like to perma invisi and noob attack newbs.

Making stealth break on damage is effectively removing it from the game. So what do you think we as a class should get to compensate? Because with out it we are a free kill.

Better yet, stealth needs to be completely removed from the game. It’s pure crappiness how someone taking so much damage can simply stealth to freedom every few seconds, if not sooner.

if not removed, it definitely should not be allowed to be used if a dot is on the character. Do what every other class has to do, heal through it or remove the condition.

Also, anyone shooting a bow other than a ranger, should do squat for damage and should not be able to shoot the thing like a freakin’ machine gun.

Zatria.5783:

Better yet, stealth needs to be completely removed from the game. It’s pure crappiness how someone taking so much damage can simply stealth to freedom every few seconds, if not sooner.

if not removed, it definitely should not be allowed to be used if a dot is on the character. Do what every other class has to do, heal through it or remove the condition.

Also, anyone shooting a bow other than a ranger, should do squat for damage and should not be able to shoot the thing like a freakin’ machine gun.

Ok i will do what others classes do:
- i will equip heavy armor
- i will buf my health to 30k
- i will use death shroud
- i will summon illusions
- i will equip shield
- i will use mass pushes, knockdowns and knockbacks

Ok. Remove this stupid stealth please

P.S. So funny thread

In my humble opinion the current stealth mechanic is broken and would benefit greatly from an overhaul.

At present time stealth is too easy to come by and too hard to counter. Combine that with a dynamic initiative-system whilst all other classes have a static cooldown-system; add a bit of culling issues on the side and you have a recipe for disaster.

So my suggestion would be to remove the initiative-system and give the Thief class the same cooldown-based system as all the other classes have. That way there would be no more spamming of the same ability over and over again.

The initiative mechanic could then be applied as a bar that fills up over time; allowing the Thief to go into Stealth (or use a special feat depending on weapon) for a certain amount of time by pressing F1. Traits that focus around initiative would then focus on the speed/power of that bar. Steal would be removed as a result (but it didn’t make sense to begin with; I mean stealing someone’s wallet I understand; but stealing an ability??)

Then a lot of utility skills that provide ‘something+stealth’ could be changed as well. This could open up a lot more in terms of interesting utility potential and a more diverse way of handling combat from my perspective while making it a lot easier to balance as a whole.

TL;DR – Replace initiative costs with cooldowns and replace Steal with an Initiative bar offering the ability to Stealth or offer a special ability depending on your main weapon.

yeah good idea remove the crutch that makes thieves one of the most popular professions.

I am sure the Anet Devs will log off their Thief mains to get right on this.

Thieves need stealth because the players who use thieves can’t do anything unless they get to be invisible so they can get their initial cheap shot in. All the cryers in this thread prove this when they claim that any altercation or counter to stealth would ruin the profession.

Very few people are saying a counter to stealth would ruin the class, but just about everyone who is against it agrees that most of the provided ideas would.

You can’t give the Thief cooldowns, you can’t replace Initiative with something else, you can’t get rid of Stealth. Period. It would mean a total redesign of the class from the ground up. It would mean going all the way back to nothing and starting over. Anet will not do this. I mean come on, we can’t even get them to fix half the broken traits on Warriors almost 4 months after launch and you want them to completely overhaul a class? Good grief, even Blizzard with their billions of dollars per month revenues have never completely revamped a class like that. Though, apples to oranges here.

Culling needs to get fixed first and foremost. It’s fixed in tPvP / sPvP and nobody is complaining about the Thief there, so that ONE fix (that wasn’t due to the Thief), changed the whole game for the Thief. If anything, the Thief builds should be fixed and MORE Stealth mechanics added. Right now, without a Dagger in your offhand, the heal or a few utilities, we can’t Stealth at all. I believe half the skills for every weapon should put us in Stealth, and once there, each weapon set should have 5 different attacks to choose from when coming out of Stealth, not just 1 attack. Stuns, immoblizes, saps, pick pockets, weapon/armor stealing, shadow steps, spinning knockdowns, explosions, air combos, etc, etc. The Thief could be a zig zagging blur of Stealth and decent damage, where the person can chose to focus all their damage into one or two attacks against one person, or spread it out over several hits against multiple targets. What about attacks that make us hit people’s heads and double jump off them to other targets? A weapon set that’s a long chain with a dagger on the end for huge AoE attacks with low damage, snares and “get over here!” Scorpion style attacks (which would get rid of the semi useless utility Scorpion Wire).

This wouldn’t even need a redesign of the class, just making a new weapon set and adding animations to the attacks, something akin to what Blizzard does with each expansion. But I digress, I doubt Anet will change the Thief much at all, as they already put out their statements saying the Thief is meant to have high burst damage and high mobility, and the fact that they’ve done little to change either of those two core ideas since Beta, I don’t think they’re going to start now.

While you’re at it, why don’t you ask for Thieves to be deleted? That is the most moronic suggestion I’ve ever heard and shows you know nothing about actually playing the profession. Let’s just break a fair portion of the Mesmer and Ranger camouflage while we’re at it! Get out.

On the other hand, I’d be in favour of having a slight splash or graphic effect that shows your attacks hit a stealthed target. Any more than that and stealth becomes completely and utterly worthless to anyone.

The suggestions are so pathetic. When people encounter problems ingame they start yelling NERF. I’ve fought players that actually knows what skills to dodge and how the thief moves around in stealth, and i’ve fought clueless players that doesn’t know what the kitten they’re doing and it’s probably the same people writing their complaints here.

I must say stealth is a serious issue here because I can play on my thief and keep using Cloak and Dagger to go stealth again. erase conditions off of me and taking on 5 vs 1 at a time and beating them all. My caltrops stacks quicker than my warrior flurry and the duration stays at a high number for a very long time than a condition warrior bleed stack.

remove stealth= remove cond removal from thieves+hp regen+ faster ini regen+other traits based on stealth.
kills everything. period. n00bs

Thieves need 18500 base health, better traits, more stealth on moves, and a complete weapon revamp when this change happens.

If damage broke stealth the thief would never stealth in combat again as the swing of a sword would break it as soon as they were in it or the ability would finish channeling and break them out of it. As it is, the thief is only in stealth for 3 (4 if traited) seconds at a time. There is only 1 weapon ability that allows them to enter stealth (excluding combo fields). Block, blind, or dodge this and you force them to use an ability on CD. If thieves can’t stealth as they do now, it would force anyone using a control or condition build to switch to a burst build since they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves in extended combat situation. If thieves were actually based around non combat stealth roaming the countryside invisible then it would be a good idea to have a way to negate it, but for such a short duration, there really is no point in being able to break it.

Edit: if you guys want, we could go back to the critical defenses and flashing blades of guild wars 1 and really be annoying when you could see us and not be able to hit us. Add the dodging which didn’t exist then and it really would be untouchable.

ezd.6359:

Zatria.5783:

Better yet, stealth needs to be completely removed from the game. It’s pure crappiness how someone taking so much damage can simply stealth to freedom every few seconds, if not sooner.

if not removed, it definitely should not be allowed to be used if a dot is on the character. Do what every other class has to do, heal through it or remove the condition.

Also, anyone shooting a bow other than a ranger, should do squat for damage and should not be able to shoot the thing like a freakin’ machine gun.

Ok i will do what others classes do:
- i will equip heavy armor
- i will buf my health to 30k
- i will use death shroud
- i will summon illusions
- i will equip shield
- i will use mass pushes, knockdowns and knockbacks

Ok. Remove this stupid stealth please

P.S. So funny thread

No one class does all of that. I know you are aware of that, just thought I would point it out again.

Regardless, none of those abilities you mentioned is a get out a trouble to run and hide to stay alive and to completely remove yourself from the fight.

If you are having trouble staying alive wearing better armor than casters, who by the way always seem to be up in the face of melee, then I would recommend finding a different build. I have not only seen countless videos of them doing so, I have witnessed it first hand.

Worst idea ever.

Just the very thought of it shows that you haven’t a single clue how stealth was intented in GW2, and how it actually works as intented.

“Hey, let’s make 3 second in combat stealth break on hit!”
What the..?

Next idea: make Stability break on hard CC, because… hey why not.
And when we are already on it, I’m kind of annoyed by people taking less damage when they are under the protection buff, so let’s make that break on damage too.

/E:
If i get flagged for trolling for this, i gonna ask myself why the OP isn’s banned for it already.

Glektor.2934:

Like other people mentioned, we just need to see damage numbers pop up when we hit a stealthed target. But, I don’t think damage should break stealth.

Fighting other thiefs as thief myself I dont even need that. I got 3 signs if I hit my enemy or not.
1: my signet heal will show me a green number if hit
2: my buff food will heal me in ~50% of my hits
3: my 2nd/3rd autohit wil be activated

Almost every class got a way to see if his/her attack was successfull or not, so its simply not important to see the dmg but still I wouldn’t care if it would be visible.

Shini.7542:

Glektor.2934:

Like other people mentioned, we just need to see damage numbers pop up when we hit a stealthed target. But, I don’t think damage should break stealth.

Fighting other thiefs as thief myself I dont even need that. I got 3 signs if I hit my enemy or not.
1: my signet heal will show me a green number if hit
2: my buff food will heal me in ~50% of my hits
3: my 2nd/3rd autohit wil be activated

Almost every class got a way to see if his/her attack was successfull or not, so its simply not important to see the dmg but still I wouldn’t care if it would be visible.

What you are telling them is that they need skill to counter Stealth, not easymode mechanics, or getting it nerfed to the ground by forum QQ.

If they were interested in actually getting better at the game to overcome challenges instead of everything else getting dumbed down so they dont’ have to deal with them at all anymore, then they wouldn’t even be making threads like this (like the Pro player base), but actually improve themselves ingame, or asking for help and tipps in the forum instead of complaining.

//E:

I still appreciate your effort, but sooner or later you will learn that it doesn’t matter what you say, no matter how much it is true or backed up by facts, you can’t argue with trolls and QQ’ers.

They don’t want to hear “The thing you think is to strong actually isn’t, and you could have countered it all the time if you just would have been smart or good enough to do so.”, but only “Yes. Yes, you are right. It is to strong (while it actually isnt), and it will be ruined with nerfes so you don’t have to deal with it anymore at all. Hail you and your wisdom.”

Shini.7542:

Glektor.2934:

Like other people mentioned, we just need to see damage numbers pop up when we hit a stealthed target. But, I don’t think damage should break stealth.

Fighting other thiefs as thief myself I dont even need that. I got 3 signs if I hit my enemy or not.
1: my signet heal will show me a green number if hit
2: my buff food will heal me in ~50% of my hits
3: my 2nd/3rd autohit wil be activated

Almost every class got a way to see if his/her attack was successfull or not, so its simply not important to see the dmg but still I wouldn’t care if it would be visible.

I think the main problem is when it’s dagger offspec cloak and dagger that they can keep using that ability to go stealth and with the support of the Shadow Art they stay stealth for another second while regenerating their health and removing conditions off every 3 seconds.

That move is pretty much an escape goat if shadow refugee fails, auto stealth at low hp and healing stealth.

People would say if you don’t like cloak and dagger ability then don’t use it, but whats the point? The ability is very good and so many ways to abuse it when fighting a large numbers of players while dropping caltrops to maintain a base.

as much as i hate fighting thieves because of the culling i don’t think this would be a good idea. yes it does suck when they are only revealed for like .5 to 1 sec in between stealth however this means they would never get to stealth.

how about a compromise with them, maybe change a few skills to reveal thieves and put like a 4 sec debuff that keeps them from stealthing.

could put this on one of my rangers traps, on one of the necros marks or maybe one of their wells so they wouldn’t be forced to use a staff. also maybe add to one of the engis turrets.

Majik.8521:

as much as i hate fighting thieves because of the culling i don’t think this would be a good idea. yes it does suck when they are only revealed for like .5 to 1 sec in between stealth however this means they would never get to stealth.

how about a compromise with them, maybe change a few skills to reveal thieves and put like a 4 sec debuff that keeps them from stealthing.

could put this on one of my rangers traps, on one of the necros marks or maybe one of their wells so they wouldn’t be forced to use a staff. also maybe add to one of the engis turrets.

Which would make room for huge exploitations, basically removing stealth from the game by giving groups the option to permanently denying stealth.

This isn’t like, let’s say permanently denying Protection or some other “minor” buff, but more in a line of a debuff on skills affecting heavy armor classes, reducing their armor by 80 %, a debuff preventing the use of clones on Mesmer for a long duration, or the switching of Attunements for Elementalists..

It’s a mandatory (defense) mechanic of Thieves, and therefore should stay under their control (even their own traits, like stealthing on x% health atomatically gets Thieves killed by causing them getting the revealed debuff rather random).

You do realise always calling for nerfs will just result in a downward spiral of nerfs from developers.. until we’re all fighting each other with fists.

Columba.9730:

they aren’t completely useless without it. secondly, aoe rarely hits stealthed thieves.

i’d say roughly half of my deaths are when i try to down someone while stealthed, and die to random aoe.

Rednik.3809:

Give us at least damage indication then we hit stealthed target by melee damage.

You already have this. It’s just not at all clear.

1. Look at your auto-attack chain skills.
2. Look at the combat log.

The problem is that both of these are pretty subtle. I’m all in favor of just showing players damage numbers when they hit stealthed foes (maybe not for ongoing DOT conditions, but certainly for attacks and probably even area damage) so that you don’t have to fight the UI to access information that the game is already making available to you.

This is stupid because its stupid. Many of the unused traits are designed around stealth being defense plus passive healing and condition removal. It took me a long time (and leveling a thief myself ) to see how fragile the class is without stealth.

And even aoe go ahead do that. D/D ele every single attack on my bar is aoe.

This thread is a waste of time. In the betas, thieves were already briefly de-cloaked when they recieved damage.

It was later changed to the current system, because… yes, you guessed it… stealth was almost useless. What many people is suggesting here is nothing more than a return to pre-release beta status. Anet has already been there… And it won’t return, no matter how much you argue, sorry.

All you thief whinners can defend your crutch all you want but its a simple fact that stealthers in any game like the ability because it allows them to get easy kills. You can’t argue with that at all.

Theives are gankers and to get ganked is to get killed with little to no option to counter otherwise you were just killed in a fair fight. The fact that a Thief can be invisible and also deliver one of the highest bursts in the game just shows that the proffession is nothing more than the GW2 version of Rogues. I played a Rogue and I ganked faces all day, but I would never brag about it because it is the easiest way to get a kill. Thieves are no different.

That being said everyone else needs to quit crying about wussy thieves, in sPvP you will know they are there so you should always be ready for them. In WvW just dodge away from their burst then they will go stealth and run away the same way Rogues did. You ppl act like this is the first game to have a cheap kitten class played by fat head, K/D ratio loving, game-genie using, kitten burglars.

sachiel.8051:

So, let’s use our story-telling imagination here: You’re bleeding like a stuck pig and turn yourself invisible. Does the blood that hits the ground and separates from you remain invisible? How about your vomit from the poisoning? What about the fire burning your invisible body? Sorry, that first tick on a dot should pop you out of stealth. Maybe we could see the effects of the burning, the trail of blood or if they don’t want to leave a trail of sick on the ground, a trail of green puffs. If a thief were to cleanse themself before stealth, problem solved and I know they can trait for cleanse on stealth as well.

So…you attempt to use realism in your argument, but start said argument with ‘turn yourself invisible’?

Problem… thieves constantly abuse a rendering bug to remain (visually) stealthed.

Solution:

Increase revealed time to force them to be visible more

Fix rendering

(Pick one or both)

Thief is now fixed.

Also few will continue to play thief because they can’t abuse a bug that so many rely on. Most will re-roll as 100b wars or DD eles… (depending on if they’ve nerf vapor form on down yet or not).

Maybe they should add something Like the Panda game has or had, Hunters could mark a Rogue it was removalable by a priest or mage cant remember. For 2 or three minutes even if you stealthed the Huntersmark showed.

Again it was removalable by another class

There bag engine problem fixed

You cannot give classes the ability to remove stealth from a thief because thives get special skills while stealthed. Saying any class should be able to get a thief out of stealth by hitting them is akin to saying that warrior adrenaline skills should go on a 3 second cooldown whenever they are hit. You cannot give other classes ways to specifically deny thieves from using their abilities without introducing the same thing for other classes as well. I wouldn’t mind a skill that prevents elementalists from swapping attunement if they’re in 1000 range of me, but that’s just not going to happen.

Likewise, you cannot have an increase in the revealed debuff without severely nerfing some of the builds that rely on those stealth skills, like the pistol condition thief that relies on using the ability to stack bleeds. A change like this would severely limit thief build diversity and push people more towards stealth abilities they need to use fewer times (read backstab) and severely weaken thief PvE capabilities.

I’m not saying that stealth is perfect as is, far from it in fact, but these two changes are both unfair towards the thief class and are not helping the discussion. What needs to happen is that first, culling needs to be fixed so that thieves reappear exactly when their attacks hit, not 0.5 to 1 second later. After that, classes need a better way of knowing if they hit a stealthed thief. The best way to do this would be to show damage numbers from direct damage attacks that hit a stealthed thief. This reinforces the idea that invisible does not mean invulnerable and gives people an indication when they actually hit a thief that is stealthed. There are already ways of telling if you’re hitting a stealthed thief, they just tend to be convoluted like looking to see when a chain skill swaps to the next skill, so there is very little reason to not simplify this down to just showing direct damage.

Notice that this change would not have any adverse effects for the thief in build diversity or PvE, as mobs don’t care for damage numbers. This change affects only stealth’s use against other players and makes it more fun for players to fight against stealthed people as they at least get satisfaction of seeing damage if their hits connect.

I understand thieves have stealth. What I don’t understand is how many stealths they get and how long they can get them to last. Poping in and out of combat at will, taking no damage while stealthed, being able to stay in stealth and still do damage. There has to be a give and take. Thieves shouldn’t be able to get stealth whenever they want and still do large amounts of damage at the same time. Might as well give them permanant invis while in combat because thats what they are getting anyway.

no please no. This may be an issue in wvw but in spvp this is certainly not an issue. if you made stealth break on dmg or even a number show thieves would be immensly under powered. try having a thief in your party and dueling them in a random server and see how much easier it is.

Buckwheat.4392:

I understand thieves have stealth. What I don’t understand is how many stealths they get and how long they can get them to last. Poping in and out of combat at will, taking no damage while stealthed, being able to stay in stealth and still do damage. There has to be a give and take. Thieves shouldn’t be able to get stealth whenever they want and still do large amounts of damage at the same time. Might as well give them permanant invis while in combat because thats what they are getting anyway.

Thieves work on initiative for their weapon skills. These skills have no cooldown, but each cost a certain amount of initiative. A dagger offhand uses cloak and dagger which uses a melee attack which stealths the thief if they hit succesfully, but costs half of the thief’s initiative. With a D/P weapon combo, a thief can put down a combo field that they can leap through and stealth themselves. This costs 3/4 of the thief’s base initiative. There are 2 utility skills that directly stealth the thief, blinding powder which is on a 40 second cooldown, and shadow refuge which is an area stealth on a 60 second cooldown. Stealth lasts for 3 seconds untraited, and 4 seconds when traited. If a thief makes a successful attack from stealth, they becom revealed for 3 seconds in which they cannot restealth. There are a few traits that only work while stealthed, one grants regen for 5 seconds, one cures a condition every 3 seconds, one gives health every second while in stealth. Stealth does not make you invincible, but stacking the aforementioned traits can sometimes make it seem like they are not getting hit, especially because shadow refuge also heals, and stacks multiple instances of stealth on the thief. Finally there is a Healing utility that cures burning poison and bleeding while stealthing the thief. To effectively counter the thief, the best thing you can do is block or dodge the CnD attack so that the thief will have to blow a cooldown. If you root a thief and they stealth, continue to attack the place where you rooted them, and you have a decent chance of downing them. I hope this has cleared up any questions about the availability of stealth to a thief.

i dont think that thieves should lose stealth upon taking damage it would stop traits like shadows embrace or shadows rejuvination and that would be a big hit on certain builds

I have a counter suggestion. Damage needs to stop on stealth. You stealth and channeled abilities keep hitting you. WTF?

yeh that is silly , especially if its rapid fire that thing is nasty in D/D spec.

sachiel.8051:

As for preventing client-side hacks on reported stealthed characters, you’ve got your priorities backwards.

I don’t, it’s not just about stealth and even a small amount of people hacking can destroy a format. besides that, if you implement the communication between server and client properly, sending information on a need-to-know basis does not generate bandwidth or lag problems. Not following a ‘need-to-know’ design philosophy develops faster but creates hard to solve problems down the road, especially for a game presenting itself as an e-sport.

The greater majority of people playing this game are not hacking, but are affected negatively by stealth-culling issues. Do you code for the better gameplay of the majority or for the tiny percentage of people using third party tools to discover stealthed characters?

This is not just about stealth, it’s about selected clients being able to see your build, traits, weapons, even cooldowns. You don’t think that would give an advantage?

Which makes for better gameplay for a larger number of people? ArenaNet has not done a great job in preventing third party hacking evidenced by the rampant teleporting, speedhacks and radar usage in this game as is.

The root of these problems is that the designers believe the client can always be trusted, while they should have designed with the idea that the client is not under their control and thus can never be trusted.