Guild Wars 2

I readed all reply’s on this thread. And realy… OP this, perma stealth that.
Nerf nerf nerf.

Stealth is an broken skill, often a lot of stealth utilities don’t activate at all.
OP come on guys.. You got ever hit by skill 1 by a metal cannon warrior? 8k krit by skill 1? or the perma stun of Guardians etc… No complains here it seems.
Because most thief stunbreakers are broken anyway.

Culling stealth and thieves that make use of that are indeed a bad thing.
But I work in a small group of 5 – 6 players. When my stealth is over they target me right away. ( staying only in a zerg does’nt gives a honest conclusion)
I would say to all please test it in all situations before pointing your finger. (because atm 4 are pointing back)

Thief has high burst damage and stealth his survivability. Always remember that thieves have no Healthpool of 20k (more 12-15k) Armor is a joke so also here not much protection.
Changing this will makes this profession useless and ready for delete.
Beside of this all, people please try a thief and learn his pro’s and cons.
To beat a thief you realy need not much, just be aware…

p.s auto target just keep hitting a thief in stealth is this also justified?
Know your oponent skills, so you can exploit there weakness.

Thief has the same HP as Guardian/Elementalist, 10k, but we also don’t have awesome boons like protection… (we used to…)

Warriors usually one shot me if they can hit me, its kinda funny actually.

You know Protection (33% Damage Reduction.) is like having 1250 extra toughness?

Thief honestly needs more access to boons like this, but not in our stealth tree, more of our venom and traps.

Or a health increase to 15-18k, after they fix culling we are probably going to be a very weak class.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Implement it the way Team Fortress 2 did with their Spy class. Cloaking is not removed on taking damage. However, if suffering a condition in that game, the Spy – though still cloaked – is “revealed” by the condition. If they are set on fire, you see their silhouette fringed in flame; if they are bleeding, they remain cloaked but leave a trail of blood.

Furthermore, cloaking in Team Fortress 2 uses a timing device. One version of the cloaking device counts down at a certain rate while cloaked and will only recharge when uncloaked. The other cloaking device counts down to the uncloaked state much more quickly than the first. However, unlike the first cloaking device, it will recharge while the Spy remains motionless. Lastly, the Spy can not attack while cloaked. The Spy must first remove their cloak, then they can attack.

Ok but then thiefs that autoattack with daggers in someone’s back automatically get a backstab and backstab does 650% max HP damage to the target as in TF2.

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?

uh yes, obviously
if it didn’t, you’d be able to see the blood while it’s in me too

I think stealth is fine. But i think until the culling issues are fixed, stealth plus haste is a little OP. Remove haste until culling is fixed.

And if i still keep hearing NERF NERF NERF, then u just need to lrn2play.

reikken.4961:

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?

uh yes, obviously
if it didn’t, you’d be able to see the blood while it’s in me too

Tell that to the Predator. I bet thieves have glowing green blood.

Stealth is a thief’s survivability atm. Thieves are severely lacking in defensive abilities, which I would like to see more of for PvE where stealth isn’t as useful. In PvP I don’t have any issue with the stealth mechanic. You could have damage numbers appear if you attack a thief in stealth, although having dot damage appear would completely negate being in stealth, but personally I don’t think it’s necessary nor would it make that much difference. This is from someone who does sPvP though; I couldn’t comment about thieves in WvW.

Having damage or, even worse, dots break stealth would just ruin the class. Stealth isn’t just a way to run off if you think you’re going to die or a precursor to using backstab, it’s a way to avoid high damage attacks and reposition ourselves. Stealth is intrinsic to the profession and the way the profession functions. The proposed ‘fix’ would not balance the class it would simply make it nonviable.

Only to the person dealing the damage and not DoTs.
Honestly, If i smack you with a sword, i’m going to feel where you are, and know where you are, and you should be at least be shown as a silhouette for about a second or something like that, or what about a 1/4 second daze upon being hit while being under stealth? for all classes obv.
Revealed should also last longer per x amount of enemy players around, it should obviously be harder to hide right in plain sight when there’s 20 people running around looking for something to kill.
I have a thief i rarely play cuz I kinda suck at it, but i still drop 2k-5k and over then stomp you way way too easy imo.
Stealth is never my main problem when dealing with a thief, its, and i know its also been said a billion times over, but in the end, it’s the 3-4 hits and game over man, run back from wp and try again. Something needs to be done with the damage, then again, 50% of the time I get killed by a thief, I feel robbed, so i guess it lives up to its name.

When i hit you with my dagger, you should lose your power and drop all your equip… LoL.

Yes, game over man until you will learn how to play your class.

ezd.6359:

When i hit you with my dagger, you should lose your power and drop all your equip… LoL.

Yes, game over man until you will learn how to play your class.

If that’s to me… uh what?

DeeSystm.1256:

Honestly, If i smack you with a sword, i’m going to feel where you are, and know where you are, and you should be at least be shown as a silhouette for about a second or something like that, or what about a 1/4 second daze upon being hit while being under stealth? for all classes obv.

Which is probably why the combat log already displays when you hit a stealthed target, even if you aren’t using anything else that will help indicate it.

@sachel., if i were you im going to role a thief nobody will listen to you they love thief and arena net will not listen to you., if you want to roaming a lot of player role a thief., if you want to run when u dont want to fight role a thief., if you want to over power role a thief only noob will make thief failed., nobody can kill thief., only noob will say they can still kill thief,, so role a thief so you can join to our glory of being gifted in this game., role a thief so that this game will become ( thief wars) long live thief only noob will make the thie failed.,

This thread made me laugh out loud. Lets also make all other classes abilities get interrupted on damage. This would make every damaging skill from every class double as an interrupt ability. It would be great. There would be no Zerg to speak of because everyone would be always interrupting each other. Combat would come down to who can get their spell off fastest and interrupt their opponent first.

kitten OP just needs to play a thief for 5 minutes in the mists to know that this is a ridiculous and completely untenable request.

Lol and the only one class can anoyed thief is mesmer but they nerf mesmer and i love this no one can match me yes yes yes thanks arena net for nerfing mesmer! I lov it! i feel the power!

Ok, I can’t keep reading. I cannot believe the pure lack of understanding in many of these posts.

Stealth doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s not broken. It’s not too powerful, nor is it too weak. It rides the line, and it has MANY vulnerabilities.

That said, it is completely obvious that many of the posters do not take advantage of these vulnerabilities. Rather than countering or avoiding the stealthed thief, they’re letting the thief have their way.

Aside from culling issues, this is a L2P issue. Don’t try to “fix” something if it’s not broken. Many of you may not enjoy stealth. You may think it’s annoying. Still… annoying does not mean broken. There’s nothing to be fixed.

Accept that stealth exists, demand that culling issues be fixed, and work with the system, not against it. Beat stealth with gameplay, not with “fixes.”

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.

I strongly disagree with breaking on condition damage. That argument has been tried many times, and it always comes down to “Can we go invisible in real life? No? Well who’s to say everything we were touching/holding (including bodily fluids) aren’t enchanted with this magical stealth (blood stains would appear when the natural stealth wore off)”.

You’re point (with one modification from me) about removing the revealed debuff, and adding breaks on damage (direct not conditional) seems like it may work, but how would you feel if I added:

-shadow stepping now gives a buff that makes thieve immune to this break affect for a few seconds (ie thief shadow steps into combat in order to deal his stealth attack without ‘destealthing’ the moment he shadow stepped in due to the insane amount of AoE that flies around in this game (rangers piercing, Eles attacking, War/Guardians twirling their sticks around, Necros covering the ground in vomit…)?

This buff would only last a few seconds, like 2 or 3 seconds and would stop the moment you reentered stealth. Environmental damage would be exempt for this “break on stealth” rule, as otherwise Thieves would become next to useless in WvW during any kind of seige (arrow carts blanketing everything).

Before anyone says something about “Well thieves would be useless in a frontal assault anyway in the real world” I say, give us the ability to scale walls or sneak through doors/gateways and I’ll consed you the point.

Opacus.4390:

or the perma stun of Guardians etc… No complains here it seems.

Stopped reading here. Guardians have 0 stuns. They have 2 knockdowns total, on 30s+ cooldowns.

Alarox.4590:

Opacus.4390:

or the perma stun of Guardians etc… No complains here it seems.

Stopped reading here. Guardians have 0 stuns. They have 2 knockdowns total, on 30s+ cooldowns.

If you are going to correct someone, please make sure you give them accurate information. Guardians have more then 2 knockdowns. Between weapons and utilities (excluding underwater of course) Guardians have up to 6 different sources:

-25 sec cd on knockdown/back on 2H Hammer
-30 sec cd on knockdown/pull in on 2H Sword
-40 sec cd on knockdown on Staff (granted only new players that don’t know not to cross that line will fall for this)
-45 sec cd on knockdown on Summoned Hammer (can be used twice in this cd if one chooses to trait into summoned weapons)
-45 sec cd on knockdown on Bane signet
-3 min cd on Elite Tome of Wrath (granted its a long cast) – 3 sec knockdown

All of these CD (except the Elite) can be reduced by 20% with proper traits. Amount of time a character is on the ground varies between skills.

Wraithforge.8710:

Ok, I can’t keep reading. I cannot believe the pure lack of understanding in many of these posts.

Stealth doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s not broken. It’s not too powerful, nor is it too weak. It rides the line, and it has MANY vulnerabilities.

That said, it is completely obvious that many of the posters do not take advantage of these vulnerabilities. Rather than countering or avoiding the stealthed thief, they’re letting the thief have their way.

Aside from culling issues, this is a L2P issue. Don’t try to “fix” something if it’s not broken. Many of you may not enjoy stealth. You may think it’s annoying. Still… annoying does not mean broken. There’s nothing to be fixed.

Accept that stealth exists, demand that culling issues be fixed, and work with the system, not against it. Beat stealth with gameplay, not with “fixes.”

Culling issues make the class broken, so it needs a temporary fix. It isnt a “L2P” issue, its a “thieves vastly benefit from culling problems and should be handicapped till culling is fixed” issue. There is no way to work with a broken system (culling). There is no benefit to culling that can be worked with, except for thieves that we all know are exploiting.
Soon, either Anet fixing culling or nerfing thieves to make it in-par with the culling issue, everything will be resolved.
EDIT:
Atleast for WvW, im sure theres no problem with it in sPvP since theres no Zergs.
Pve im sure no ones complaining about.

Renny.6571:

jan.9745:

Lol and the only one class can anoyed thief is mesmer but they nerf mesmer and i love this no one can match me yes yes yes thanks arena net for nerfing mesmer! I lov it! i feel the power!

Good luck portal bombing anything if Anet does incorporate this nerf.

Actually, stealth dropping on hit will do nothing to Portal bombs. Why? Because when they leave the portal, they aren’t stealthed, their character model just hasn’t loaded for you.
Now if they fully optimize culling? That will do something.

sachiel.8051:

Direct, aoe or dot’d, being damaged should take anybody out of stealth.

There are a few classes that have attacks that can pull, push, fear a thief out of stealth if they are under refuge.

You people complaining really need to make a thief seriously. People are starting to realize that when your fighting a thief in WvW channeled skills still hit and follow the thief so you get a idea of where the thief is in stealth.

I see rangers all the time pop that fast arrow attack and I get hit by every single one. Then said ranger adjusts because he has a general idea of where I am. I run p/d if I see another p/d user you know what I do when I see them use hide in shadows? Sneak attck cause it still hits.

Here when you guys are fighting a thief as soon as you see them about to go into stealth use a channeled ability.

I bet most of the people complaining dont use a mesmer. If you see a mesmer with a scepter you know what alot of people use it for? Scepter 3 easy as all day to see channeled spell that lets them know where a thiefs general area is.

jan.9745:

Lol and the only one class can anoyed thief is mesmer but they nerf mesmer and i love this no one can match me yes yes yes thanks arena net for nerfing mesmer! I lov it! i feel the power!

What? They nerfed portal. I don’t even understand your post since everything else a mesmer normally did hasn’t changed.

Disagree. I don’t play a thief (anymore) but I know that the thief would be a completely useless class if any damage took them out of stealth.

Stealth drops on damage, cool-down on stealth abilities needs to drop by 75%, initiative recharge needs to double as well, and all traits need redesigned.

Stealth dropping on damage would never work in this game.

Unless they made it so you cant spam your autohit without a target, otherwise the second CnD is used in MELEE RANGE, a MELEE attack will hit them out instantly.

Wicked.5479:

stealth is not working fine… at all…
i am annoyed when my whole team gets killed by the same few thiefs abusing the kitten out of rendering issues and keep wiping us.
this D/P build is getting out of hand and you all know it.
90% invisible, over 15 stacks of bleeding, stealth finish, the list goes on and on.
and l2p wont work on me either, that just means you are out of usefull comments.
im at the point where i dont even care if they remove the ffing class entirely.
but then we will have sad panda’s who cant spam the same 3 attacks over and over again.

I feel your anger and had many moments like this.
We had a similar situation with one of those thieves. he was guaring the supply camp. WE were 6 players and the moment we came closer he attacked us 1 by 1 .my friend tried to knock him off me and couldnt, i used my aoe, which is kinda limited as a mesmer, i managed to deal some damage to him but not nearly enough to kill him as he would go right back into stealth. he ended up killing all 6 of us and dont get me wrong, we are good players. we neded 10 to overrrun him finally. how is that not OP? and its not just culling, if a thief is invisible due to culling my clones will react and i can kill those easily but the ones that backstab all the time…..

LOL, I can’t believe this is even a thread

selan.8354:

Wicked.5479:

stealth is not working fine… at all…
i am annoyed when my whole team gets killed by the same few thiefs abusing the kitten out of rendering issues and keep wiping us.
this D/P build is getting out of hand and you all know it.
90% invisible, over 15 stacks of bleeding, stealth finish, the list goes on and on.
and l2p wont work on me either, that just means you are out of usefull comments.
im at the point where i dont even care if they remove the ffing class entirely.
but then we will have sad panda’s who cant spam the same 3 attacks over and over again.

I feel your anger and had many moments like this.
We had a similar situation with one of those thieves. he was guaring the supply camp. WE were 6 players and the moment we came closer he attacked us 1 by 1 .my friend tried to knock him off me and couldnt, i used my aoe, which is kinda limited as a mesmer, i managed to deal some damage to him but not nearly enough to kill him as he would go right back into stealth. he ended up killing all 6 of us and dont get me wrong, we are good players. we neded 10 to overrrun him finally. how is that not OP? and its not just culling, if a thief is invisible due to culling my clones will react and i can kill those easily but the ones that backstab all the time…..

Wait, so your all terrible?

Thieves are easy to kill 1v1 if you know how to kill them, but each bad player around magnifies the thieves power, so 6 bad players = instant win.

If I was playing backstab and one player out of the 6 were just standing still, he was HELPING win the fight, so its more like 2 vs 5, if 2 players stand still, its 3v3, each bad player is punishing your party, thieves are vampires of bad players.

There are five main ways to fix stealth in my opinion without breaking the class but each has it’s little flaw, so a combination might be ideal.

1. Dot’s leave trails/show numbers on stealthed players
Flaw: many classes/builds are very limited on conditions…such as the guardian and staff ele’s.

2. Damage if high enough knocks the thief out of stealth. Two differences than the idea suggested in the thread; A. The damage has to be high enough (e.g. if thief takes more than 5-10% of their health while stealth they get kicked out B. You could have normal stealth abilities and make one or two higher cooldown abilities “superior stealth” where the thief can not be knocked out of stealth, or some other method where thief can not be knocked down from stealth one of or two times in a fight.

Flaw: people feel that’ll make stealth too weak, yet I do not see how; in a big fight AoE damage will hit you, and stealthing will reset targeting which is a HUGE advantage, people who manage to retarget you should be rewarded. I would love an ability to reset targeting with any other class.

Flaw 2: single target builds (rifle warrior, ranger, staff/scepter ele’s) still have no reliable counter.

3. Damage numbers and dot effects show on stealth people so you can somehow track them.

Flaw: None really…and this one should go without saying. It still has the same limitation for non aoe non dot classes to a lesser extent.

4. Redesign stealth.. in terms of cooldown/length/limitations/advantages/disadvantages.

Flaw: takes too much work and will cause too much rage.

5. Give an ability to reveal stealth to every profession.

Flaw: too much work as it’d be a completely new mechanic added to the game.

I do not find straight kicked someone out of stealth a disadvantage in big battles, since as I said, it resets targeting which is the big thing in big battles since AoE’s hit you anyway. It is a big disadvantage in skirmishes though.

And I like to point out that the big issue with stealth is not being too strong or too weak, it is not a numerical problem as much as it’s a mechanical problem; stealth as a game mechanic currently has no way to counter except spraying and praying. It’s about counter play here more than it is about balance….once there is a way to counter stealth, we later can talk about balance and numbers.

Ekove.4586:

There are five main ways to fix stealth in my opinion without breaking the class but each has it’s little flaw, so a combination might be ideal.

1. Dot’s leave trails/show numbers on stealthed players
Flaw: many classes/builds are very limited on conditions…such as the guardian and staff ele’s.

2. Damage if high enough knocks the thief out of stealth. Two differences than the idea suggested in the thread; A. The damage has to be high enough (e.g. if thief takes more than 5-10% of their health while stealth they get kicked out B. You could have normal stealth abilities and make one or two higher cooldown abilities “superior stealth” where the thief can not be knocked out of stealth, or some other method where thief can not be knocked down from stealth one of or two times in a fight.

Flaw: people feel that’ll make stealth too weak, yet I do not see how; in a big fight AoE damage will hit you, and stealthing will reset targeting which is a HUGE advantage, people who manage to retarget you should be rewarded. I would love an ability to reset targeting with any other class.

Flaw 2: single target builds (rifle warrior, ranger, staff/scepter ele’s) still have no reliable counter.

3. Damage numbers and dot effects show on stealth people so you can somehow track them.

Flaw: None really…and this one should go without saying. It still has the same limitation for non aoe non dot classes to a lesser extent.

4. Redesign stealth.. in terms of cooldown/length/limitations/advantages/disadvantages.

Flaw: takes too much work and will cause too much rage.

5. Give an ability to reveal stealth to every profession.

Flaw: too much work as it’d be a completely new mechanic added to the game.

I do not find straight kicked someone out of stealth a disadvantage in big battles, since as I said, it resets targeting which is the big thing in big battles since AoE’s hit you anyway. It is a big disadvantage in skirmishes though.

And I like to point out that the big issue with stealth is not being too strong or too weak, it is not a numerical problem as much as it’s a mechanical problem; stealth as a game mechanic currently has no way to counter except spraying and praying. It’s about counter play here more than it is about balance….once there is a way to counter stealth, we later can talk about balance and numbers.

1. Aside from taking away the main asset of stealth rather cheaply (the enemy not knowing your location), this wouldn’t be particularly effective since most heavy-stealth thieves remove conditions via stealth anyways.

2. Being able to easily break stealth would still let it be a target breaker, sure, but breaking targets isn’t the primary function for stealth in most thief builds. It’d also disallow current healing, mobility, stealth attacks, etc that come from stealth and stealth traits. If stealth becomes easily breakable, that means rebalancing all of those thief aspects to contend with stealth becoming unreliable. So it isn’t an unviable solution, but it would require major retuning to implement, starting with an increase in thief base offense and defense.

3. I’m actually in favor of critical hits showing floating numbers. It should be noted that damage numbers already show up in the combat log when a stealthed target is successfully damaged. Conditions showing the location of a moving stealthed entity have the same issues discussed in #1 though.

4. I’m all for redesigning stealth from the ground up. The problem, as you’ve noted, is in having to redesign the profession as well.

5. Not a terrible idea, as long as it is a situational and sufficiently expensive counter. Being able to bring an anti-stealth utility like you bring a stun-break should be fine, shutting down stealth permanently with a single utility, trait investment, or weapon skill would be broken.

I do disagree with the assertion that stealth cannot be countered. Countering stealth is mostly in player behavior, though, as opposed to mechanical.

Tulisin.6945:

1. Aside from taking away the main asset of stealth rather cheaply (the enemy not knowing your location), this wouldn’t be particularly effective since most heavy-stealth thieves remove conditions via stealth anyways.

2. Being able to easily break stealth would still let it be a target breaker, sure, but breaking targets isn’t the primary function for stealth in most thief builds. It’d also disallow current healing, mobility, stealth attacks, etc that come from stealth and stealth traits. If stealth becomes easily breakable, that means rebalancing all of those thief aspects to contend with stealth becoming unreliable. So it isn’t an unviable solution, but it would require major retuning to implement, starting with an increase in thief base offense and defense.

3. I’m actually in favor of critical hits showing floating numbers. It should be noted that damage numbers already show up in the combat log when a stealthed target is successfully damaged. Conditions showing the location of a moving stealthed entity have the same issues discussed in #1 though.

4. I’m all for redesigning stealth from the ground up. The problem, as you’ve noted, is in having to redesign the profession as well.

5. Not a terrible idea, as long as it is a situational and sufficiently expensive counter. Being able to bring an anti-stealth utility like you bring a stun-break should be fine, shutting down stealth permanently with a single utility, trait investment, or weapon skill would be broken.

I do disagree with the assertion that stealth cannot be countered. Countering stealth is mostly in player behavior, though, as opposed to mechanical.

Well you make good points. I do think some abilities should break stealth still in a way or not, but as with most things in requires rebalancing.

I know that combat logs show hits on stealthed players, but that as a stealth counter is a little…ridiculous for many reasons, combat logs is not a fighting mechanic and it shouldn’t be. It also still doesn’t help to tell exact location/direction so it is not that helpful. Though it’s also not that useful out of 1v1’s.

Could you expand on how stealth is countered? there are things that are countered through player behavior, such as knowing warriors will bullcharge into HB, so as D/D ele for example, one I see a GS warrior in the distance I just stand still making them think I am a free kill, let them frenzy bullcharge, and I pop my stunn aura.

There’s a counter for things like elementalist churring earth+lighting flash combo for example knowing that people will do it anyway so it’s pointless to run away, one should take the chance to hit them for the 3 seconds while they are channeling making them thing you are giving them a free hit and you dont understand how strong churring earth is, and then surprise them wit ha dodge roll at the final moment (and a behavioral counter to that counter from ele’s is to cast your lighting flash behind your target right way before they expect a typical ele today, and also because most people roll backwards than to the sides against churring earth)

All of these behavioral counters are built on a basis that is usually visually communicated through knowing how certain combo’s are common through certain weapon set ups or certain spells. How can you do that with stealth? you cannot see the player to determine their behavior, there are no…real combos with things like p/d thieves, they just spam their number 1 attack and gain stealth through several ways. And most importantly, thieves lack major cooldowns with all these things..you cant wait until they waste their bullcharge/HB on a warrior, or waste their ROL/blink on an ele, or their blink/one or two invisibility on a mesmer…etc. And worst of all, invsibility has no disadvantages in this game…it really doesn’t. All of that because it has a short duration in this game.

@OP

No. This isn’t WoW, DAoC.
If you don’t like the mechanics that this game uses, don’t play it.
Crying on the forums doesn’t do anything except display an inability to adapt on your behalf.

Ekove.4586:

And worst of all, invsibility has no disadvantages in this game…it really doesn’t. All of that because it has a short duration in this game.

Why this is wrong is key to understanding the weakness of stealth and consequently how to effectively fight it. Stealth doesn’t have an inherent statistical disadvantage, but it does have a very simple tradeoff. To retain the benefits of stealth (by default the inability to be seen, and via traits a slew of other benefits), one cannot attack. This means necessarily that stealth uptime is therefore combat downtime.

If the thief is unpressured when stealthed, this downtime is not much of a tradeoff for the stealth benefits. However, if the thief’s opponent continues pressure and reads the thief’s likely actions to the best of their ability, this combat downtime shifts from a “free” advantage, to an expensive tradeoff. Against an opponent that stays offensive, one or two auto attacks will completely negate all stealth advantages and then some, especially against glassier thieves. Depending on the terrain it isn’t hard to read the thief’s likely position and continue to attack. If the thief is intent on disengaging and has superior mobility, you’re unlikely to catch them. If the thief is merely using stealth to reposition and continue offense, reading their eventual position is relatively easy (right on top of you if they’re using melee). If you pressure the thief, you either force them to eat a heavy penalty for getting their stealth benefits (taking damage, or at least being unable to dictate positioning), or otherwise completely cancel those benefits by attacking when they’d rather stay in stealth.

Stealth’s disadvantages are largely behavioral instead of mechanical, and a big part of why so many players consider stealth too strong is they don’t use proper behaviors to punish stealth use. For every player that knows what to do when their tab target vanishes, there are ten who merely stand around or wander off because they don’t know what to do without a locked target. This leaves the stealth fighting meta relatively undeveloped. Thieves could practice deceptive movements to try and anticipate their actions in stealth being read, but most thieves haven’t bothered to develop this skill since most opponents don’t make them. Advice like “spam AEs everywhere” doesn’t help, and leads people to believe that AEs are an effective stealth counter when really they just further allow the thief to turn an intense PvP encounter into a PvE dodge-the-circles fight.

There is one piece of good advice that the community does consistently offer in regards to fighting stealth: Play a thief for a little bit. It is infinitely easier to read stealth actions when you’ve been in those shoes. Most thieves follow a rough logical flowchart of what they’re going to do after stealth, depending on situation and build. Once you understand what they’re thinking it is oftentimes as simple as walking over to (or aiming at) where you know they’re going to be and hitting #1.

Tulisin has it down. Players need to get out of the habit of relying purely on the game’s inherent mechanics for desired outcomes. They seem to forget that input on the player’s part is infinitely more important than anything else. There are no noticable skill rotations barring the Mug → C+D → Backstab combo for Thieves – players have to apply available skills depending on situation rather than running a standard rotation. Players who complain so often about stealth are often relying on tab target way too much. Anticipation, foresight and quick thinking are an important part in any player’s repertoire, but moreso against stealthy types. It needs no “mechanical” counter. The player him/herself IS the counter.

I +1 the advice to just run a Thief and get some PvP experience – you get a much better understanding of what a Thief is likely to do and where to go when stealthing. Keeping up the pressure on a stealthed Thief is key to overpowering them in a duel. I see too many players just give up as soon as the Thief vanishes.

They will never make stealth drop on damage due to channeled skills and things that still “home” to you while stealthed, so if implemented stealth wouldn’t work anymore.

All you have to do is the usual guys, learn to use the one, single, little button that every class has and prevents a spike.
Endure pain, decoy, arcane shield, etc.

Yes, classes like Thief and Mesmer require an active brain to be beated and can hardly be beaten by just mashing buttons randomly like you do with other classes.
Thf and Mes are master of mind tricks and decoys – very easy to beat if you use your brain, very hard if you don’t.

I thought the reason that stealth wasn’t removed from damage was because you aren’t in fact allowed perma stealth like in other games.

Like in WoW rogues can stay perma stealthed but once you hit someone theres only two ways to enter stealth again Vanish, an ability with a long cooldown and dropping combat, which requires you to run away while still visible.

Imo the if you allowed damage to drop stealth then you’d need to change stealth to work something like it did for rogues in WoW, its already limited anyways once you attack someone if you don’t kill them in the next few seconds all they need to do is run away until you exhaust all your stealth abilities. Then your basically forced to ether run away yourself and wait somewhere or more usually just die.

No, it doesn’t.

/thread

Stealth is the thiefs only defense, you cannot just take it away …
Thiefs do still get damage when in stealth, this is just fine !

If you are to bad to understand that mechanic its your problem, not a stealth problem !

Good thiefs in sPvP will always own all the baddies, but so will good players on other classes.

For Wvwvw i can only say, there are so many other “OP” machanics / skills that i would not balance anything.

I really don’t know why people have so much problems with thiefs, they should really just reroll one for themselfs, to better understand the mechanics.

It’s the best thing in GW2 that you can actually create any class and have the best gear ingame and all stkills, to check out how this class plays / can be countered.

Tulisin.6945:

Ekove.4586:

And worst of all, invsibility has no disadvantages in this game…it really doesn’t. All of that because it has a short duration in this game.

Why this is wrong is key to understanding the weakness of stealth and consequently how to effectively fight it. Stealth doesn’t have an inherent statistical disadvantage, but it does have a very simple tradeoff. To retain the benefits of stealth (by default the inability to be seen, and via traits a slew of other benefits), one cannot attack. This means necessarily that stealth uptime is therefore combat downtime.

You make excellent arguments but you miss the point of lack of behavioral signs to have a behavioral counter. Behavioral counter depend on people following patterns and combos, with thieves it’s a simple spam stealth/number 1 combo….it is known what’s happening, it is not very known how to reliably counter it.

Not doing damage while stealthed is hardly a tradeoff…you don’t do damage when you are using many channeling skills. Take elementalist churring earth for example, you can’t do damage in the 3.75 seconds cast time, and on top of that you are vulnerable to be attacked. If you think of thief stealth as a similar mechanic of going into a phase of not being able to attack to for a few seconds to land a big attack right after it is quiet similar to any spell with a long cooldown, except…you can’t be seen, you cant be targeted, you can still move, you gain buffs during that channel time…and best of all it is more spammable.

I haven’t mastered the thief class, I tried it and I do ok with it, and I do feel like I put some people in hopeless situation with a p/d build where they can’t do crap to me. Yes the argument of learning the class is valid, but don’t you think people have done so? And don’t you think there’s something wrong when a class requires you to do so significantly more than other classes?

honestly I could go on and on about how stealth is a mechanic with nearly no reliable counters. And while an experienced player, as myself, can hold their own against most thieves (except the lovely tanky p/d thieves) that was not my main problem…it is the ability to escape with such ease and not only there’s no way to counter stealth as an escape mechanism, it is, again, ridiculously accessible; you don’t have to make a decision between using it offensively or defensively or to escape, it is readily available to be used in all these forms with great abundance and no reliable way to be countered.

Ekove.4586:

I haven’t mastered the thief class, I tried it and I do ok with it, and I do feel like I put some people in hopeless situation with a p/d build where they can’t do crap to me. Yes the argument of learning the class is valid, but don’t you think people have done so? And don’t you think there’s something wrong when a class requires you to do so significantly more than other classes?

No, people have NOT done so far.
Because otherwise they would autoattack in the air , and dodge / block after 2 seconds.

It is absolutly okay that way !

There are classes that are harder to master than others, therefore the harder to master one are way more versatile ( engineer / elementalist ).
Once people will learn that you will realize the QQ in these forums….

Its easy to pull of good dmg as thief, however the good thief is the one that also plays a good defensive role.

Take a warrior for example, its soooo easy to pull off big numbers, but thats just nothing of value in a envirnment like tPvP , which is , the only reliable place we can talk about balance.

No thief plays P/D in there, because it just has nothing that would help you to win fights ( points ).

Of course you can harass baddies in WvW , but there is so much more involved in WvW, like Gear ( even ascend gear ) , bufffood and also the different gearlevels.

There a plenty of vids from other classes that literally just oneshot people in WvW that its not a thief or stealth problem.

Take a good thief player and give him another class, he will do as good as before.
Give a bad XX player a thief, and he will still be as bad as he was before.

I always have to laugh when i do my daily PvP in sPvp, soo many thiefs, and 90% of them fail !
I really don’t know when i died the last time by a thief.

But well, Anet will know what they need to do, and i think they will “balance” other classes but not the thief – but we’ll see soon enough.

For all the people saying, “If you understood stealth you’d have no trouble…”

I’ve played a thief in sPvP a bunch now. I know how it works. I still have trouble with many builds. So maybe you could tell me how I’m supposed to beat stealth? Maybe you should write a guide, “This is how everyone can fight stealth, so you all can stop complaining.”

It would be advantageous for you to do that, because the majority of the player base is complaining about your mechanics and if that doesn’t change, eventually your revealed debuff time will be increased.

P.S., if you do write it and it includes the words, “Click on the black smoke” you’re immediately disqualified. It doesn’t work reliably, it has been shown to not work reliably.

Drop stealth on damage, what next? Not bad, not bad then why not 25% damage nerf next, increase reveal timer till you have 100% certain win against all thiefs. When you lose again what will you say?

Double all stealth cd’s and they definatly should not be able to stealth while taking damage. All thief abilities need a 30% reduction at a minimum and this might fix this broken op class.

I love how all the suggestions other players give for Thieves basically turn them into warriors with less armor and combat skills. Quite amusing really.

StugLyfe.2134:

Double all stealth cd’s and they definatly should not be able to stealth while taking damage. All thief abilities need a 30% reduction at a minimum and this might fix this broken op class.

So ANet should make thief a profession that can stealth every 5-6 sec, cant take any damage at all in or out of stealth and cant do any damage because they die before or they can stealth? :P Doesn’t really sound good..

There is a reason to the low hp pool of thieves, stealth as defense.

Do something about the culling bug and then people will hopefully complain less, Thieves are not OP.. And if thieves without culling still get you killed, your probably a worse player then the thief, i’m sad to say.

To counter stealth is really tricky. All you have to do is swing your kitten weapon around and hit the Thief. Tough, I know, but I have faith in you all.

5-6 seconds lol that’s much too short. Stealth cd more like 30 seconds is more like it and it will still be op. stealth should be for an opener or escape that is all.

lvis.3824:

No, people have NOT done so far.
Because otherwise they would autoattack in the air , and dodge / block after 2 seconds.

It is absolutly okay that way !

There are classes that are harder to master than others, therefore the harder to master one are way more versatile ( engineer / elementalist ).
Once people will learn that you will realize the QQ in these forums….

Its easy to pull of good dmg as thief, however the good thief is the one that also plays a good defensive role.

Take a warrior for example, its soooo easy to pull off big numbers, but thats just nothing of value in a envirnment like tPvP , which is , the only reliable place we can talk about balance.

No thief plays P/D in there, because it just has nothing that would help you to win fights ( points ).

Of course you can harass baddies in WvW , but there is so much more involved in WvW, like Gear ( even ascend gear ) , bufffood and also the different gearlevels.

There a plenty of vids from other classes that literally just oneshot people in WvW that its not a thief or stealth problem.

Take a good thief player and give him another class, he will do as good as before.
Give a bad XX player a thief, and he will still be as bad as he was before.

I always have to laugh when i do my daily PvP in sPvp, soo many thiefs, and 90% of them fail !
I really don’t know when i died the last time by a thief.

But well, Anet will know what they need to do, and i think they will “balance” other classes but not the thief – but we’ll see soon enough.

ironically I have less trouble in sPvP against thieves than in WvW. Simply because they have to either fight me to death or abandon the objective. In WvW though…a thief can harass forever, can harass people traveling or taking camps with little to no risk, and can easily kill a dolyak protected by 4-5 people with no way for them to counter stealth…especially a p/d thief that can avoid melee stuns…most range stuns require target lock so it’s hard against something invis. And it happens…p/d thieves are the best dolyak killers and unless you have a group of people with enough damage to burst the thief in the 2 seconds he is revealed, there is simply no stopping to a good thief with full exotics no matter how good the defending group is. So don’t say they have no function in WvW, dolyak escorting/hunting is one of the most important tasks in the first 1 or 2 days (which decide the score anyway) in higher tiers.

Now here’s something I don’t mind but dev’s usually fear…have different balance for PvE and sPvP and WvW…it’s nearly impossible to balance things for all these 3 at the same time but in most games doing that is always feared. though anet has done it and nerfed some spells in PvP while leaving them the same in PvE. Now time to distinguish between sPvP and WvW.

StugLyfe.2134:

5-6 seconds lol that’s much too short. Stealth cd more like 30 seconds is more like it and it will still be op. stealth should be for an opener or escape that is all.

This kind of post is why I have no faith in the GW2 community. Have you even played a Thief? Oh wait, of course you haven’t.

I think someone plays a bit too much WoW

If you really want stealth to drop on damage, then make the game exactly like WoW where you have to target someone with all your non-target circle abilities

or else people will just be running around in shadow refuge swinging their kittenty glass cannon greatswords and knocking you out instantly.

And this game isnt WoW so tough luck.