Guild Wars 2

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

I disagree with the dot part, as every single class have a lot of Bleed/Poison/Burning attacks, and that would make stealth useless… But AoE and direct damage should be able to remove stealth status as you did hit the target.

No, this will severely hurt thieves’ survivability and offensive capability. So in a group fight, thieves are useless where AOE and random autos fly everywhere. They will be revealed every time they try to come near any group. Imagine a thief standing in Shadow Refuge and someone simply auto attacks and exposes the thief, wow, thieves who uses Shadow Refuge will become free meal. During actual combat when thieves start engaging, everyone is alerted of a thief’s presence, so naturally everyone starts auto-attacking which means it removes all possibility of backstab because a thief will be revealed when he tries to get close via auto attack…unless you have a precision of a super computer, a thief will almost always get hit coming in IF the group is aware of his presence, and there goes his backstab…what? You want a thief to just auto-attack their opponents and stand in front of them? Play a thief, a VS me once this is implemented, you will not land a single backstab on me. Bad suggestion, obviously targeted to hate on thieves once again…QQ

I don’t think AoE should remove stealth.
I hate thieves as well, but that is just pushing the margin.

I do think that there should be a 5 second reveal debuff after a theif comes out of or uses a stealth.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

I don’t think AoE should remove stealth.
I hate thieves as well, but that is just pushing the margin.

I do think that there should be a 5 second reveal debuff after a theif comes out of stealth.

Current ‘Revealed’ debuff is nothing short of hilariously bad, this is true.

it should be more like 7 seconds, because you all know first 2 seconds after unstealthing doesnt really unstealth

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.

It wouldn’t “balance” it, it would “destroy” it.

I agree that something needs to be done, but this is NOT it.

extend the revealed timer
fix culling

but what you’re suggesting would just kill the class.

And I have an 80 thief, I just don’t play it cause it’s just crazy OP with the culling.

If AOE’s removing stealth is a bit much then how about melee attacks. I think that would be a good balance….

This perma stealth exploiting is getting out of hand.

Won’t happen unless they implement a short invulnerability time once a player uses stealth… in fact, that’s a good idea!
In WoW Rogues had trouble with stealth getting canceled right upon using it for ages, because lag and traveling projectiles don’t care that there’s no target anymore.

And guardians should wear cloth.

Not on damage. Blood/poison/scorch trails I’d find interesting as you could track the thief but not actually target him. Reveal on damage however… I’d agree with Xolo there, and invul would obviously just make things worse.

Shadow refuge is already risky since you have to stay in it and take the AoE thrown inside for several seconds. Which already is a big counter (just wait 10 seconds afterwards to see the thief lying on the ground :P).

I’d say, raise revealed time, and possibly in return slightly raise the stealth times of short duration skills by a few seconds (but all should have a visible activation even if you are in stealth, and actual permastealth should not be possible)

This way stealth stays a useful mechanic for spying and safety, but attacking will leave you seriously exposed. Still allows assassinations, but doesn’t allow stealth-poking.

Musty.3148:

extend the revealed timer
fix culling

Ding, ding, ding.

This is a terrible execution of stealth. Most other games prevent perma stealth to ensure balance. This game needs to make stealth less god like, I agree. Lobby anet to fix it.

Huh? There’s no perma stealth in thieves, only non thieves will say there’s perma stealth. Perma stealth is not the same with culling. You don’t even know what you’re talking about and you want to lobby.

@Musty – Extend reveal timer does not fix culling, culling affects everything that involves rendering in WvW, not limited to thieves. Also, culling happens at different rates depending on your computer quality too, so you cannot extend reveal timer for 2 seconds (assuming) universally because the culling effect may not be as prevalent to someone with a good computer and the net effect would be a thief just being exposed longer than usual rather than addressing the culling, which is unfair to stealth thieves. To fix culling, you must fix culling period. There are minor patches like revealing the names first before the actual toon. You’re tunnel visioning on thieves, which is wrong. Stealth is not the problem, there’s no such thing as a perma stealth in fact thieves have SHORT stealths, however, culling happens. SO instead of hating on one profession’s set of skills, push for the “real solution” that’s causing the problem to the entire game.

There needs to be a way for classes to pop characters out of stealth. I like DAOC’s implementation of the pop-out mechanic, but don’t agree with their on/off permastealth, though. Stealth isn’t interruptable or breakable, which to me, doesn’t make sense. If you swing a sword, hit something and hear someone scream, the jig should be up.

Bananasmile.4126:

Huh? There’s no perma stealth in thieves, only non thieves will say there’s perma stealth. Perma stealth is not the same with culling. You don’t even know what you’re talking about and you want to lobby.

@Musty – Extend reveal timer does not fix culling, culling affects everything that involves rendering in WvW, not limited to thieves. To fix culling, you must fix culling period. There are minor patches like revealing the names first before the actual toon. You’re tunnel visioning on thieves, which is wrong. Stealth is not the problem, there’s no such thing as a perma stealth in fact thieves have SHORT stealths, however, culling happens. SOOO let’s address the culling not the thief.

I know perfectly well how it works, I abused it for a month before I quit playing the thief because it’s crazy OP… On your opponent’s screen there IS perma stealth, the reason for it is immaterial. I see what you are saying but you have to be reasonable.

Those statements were actually supposed to be separate. What I meant was:

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

I do agree that culling affects everyone in WvW and that is unfortunate. But, be honest here… the only class that culling really breaks is thieves. So THAT is why you see so many threads on the subject. It is without a doubt broken I think that either of the above ideas MAY actually keep the thief from being nurfed into the ground. Because if they don’t fix the stealth issue the only other thing they can do is take your “teeth” away. I know thieves don’t want that to happen.

Since I think they cannot do the latter (at least in the short term) then they should implement the former.

Bananasmile.4126:

Huh? There’s no perma stealth in thieves, only non thieves will say there’s perma stealth.

There is but not for combat due to the revealed debuff. That was the way thiefs were able to hold camps for hours without getting out of stealth (if the enemys were dumb enough to not conter it) but meanwhile that capping is fixed.

“remove stealth if getting hit” – as a thief that isn’t playing with a lot of stealth mostly, I probably wouldn’t mind BUT still it wouldn’t work. Every single range attacks follows you if it still travels. Channeling attacks like rangers longbow “2” even completly hit you if started before the thief uses stealth. Dots breaking stealth? 2 cons on you and stealth is useless, not a good idea as well. Yes, there is a trait with removes condidtions while stealthed but iirc thats only 1 per 10s (correct me if im wrong, it’s in a tree I didn’t got any points in- toughness though).

As others have stated slightly increase the revealed debuff duration (2 seconds), increase base stealth skills duration (1 second) to compensate and fix the kitten culling.

I’m not a thief main and have no hidden agenda but honestly as annoying as thieves are I think they’ve been hit with that bat we all hate enough already.

Bananasmile.4126:

Huh? There’s no perma stealth in thieves, only non thieves will say there’s perma stealth. Perma stealth is not the same with culling. You don’t even know what you’re talking about and you want to lobby.

@Musty – Extend reveal timer does not fix culling, culling affects everything that involves rendering in WvW, not limited to thieves. Also, culling happens at different rates depending on your computer quality too

Please, PLEASE, everyone needs top stop saying this. Culling has NOTHING to do with your computer or internet connection. It is part of the way their servers handle traffic. This specific issue with the thief has NOTHING to do with how many people are in the area of the fight. It will happen if you are the only 2 people playing on the entire server.

This has been thoroughly tested by a few buddies who were on an enemy server. On two computers with one very low end and one the highest end you can possibly build and both on top tier internet connections. Both servers showing “outmanned buff” meaning the traffic is low compared to zergs running around near each other. A thief out in the middle of nowhere away from everyone will remain invisible every single time for 2-3 seconds after stealth wearing off. Every single time with no deviation.

This culling issue will probably never be fixed. If it was possible it would have been done already. The only way to apply workarounds to the single class that exploits this issue the most. The thief.

Just raise the “revealed” debuff time to double what it is. That might help a bit.

Any fix for stealth shouldn’t take culling into account, that issue is being worked on elsewhere. If it works in spvp it will work in WvW once culling is fixed. That said I believe making stealth into a bad version of aegis that doesn’t even protect the stealthed character would be a very, very bad thing.

@Shini – That was before they implemented the reveal timer, now, there’s a few seconds where you cannot re-stealth. Even if you’re the best thief in GW2, you cannot go perma stealth, I will still be able to see you for at least 1 to 2 full seconds, maybe even longer depending on how good a thief is in connecting his CnD’s. Not many thieves can sustain repeated CnD’s. So it takes SKILL to pull it off. What’s being suggested is to increase that reveal timer to further address the culling issue.

Looking at the bigger scheme of things, thieves are not all powerful. They still follow the rock/paper/scissor model wherein there’s a build that can own thieves. I’m talking about Mesmers and Engineer (confusion), or Necro to frustrate their cooldowns with fear…Complain if thieves are totally not beatable, they are very beatable, in fact, free kills to some who expect them coming.

I have been killed a few times on my ranger by back stab thieves.

I am pretty much certian Culling was not the issue, these were 1v1 or at most me and a couple of allies. The problem was that I let them get the jump on me. I should have seen them but I didn’t, entirely my fault.

On my thief I use P/D condition. Its a battle of attrition with one of these, traited stealth is essential to survival and dropping the dots. Honestly in the fights I pick never once noticed culling but with no burst it shouldn’t be a problem.

I have noticed that some people fight my p/d thief as if he was a backstabber or a 2222 and it makes me wonder if folks think thieves can trait 30/30/30/30/30.

People asking for stealth to drop on damage don’t realize how thieves actually use stealth. A change like this would force more thieves into backstab-heavy play by weakening control and condition based builds.

sachiel.8051:

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

That’s like demanding protection to end on damage, can you imagine what that would do to Eles and Guardians if they nerfed protection in that way?

All I want with stealth is for the person in stealth to be revealed at the start of an action, not on damage.

I feel that stealth should drop upon attack making it more of a defense skill not an OP attack method. I mean getting hit multiple times from an invisible opponent is ridiculous, especially if there is no way to remove it, not being able to target an invisible target is unbalanced for certain classes who have limited AOE capability ie rangers. Perhaps they may allow pets attack invisible enemies…..or knock them out of stealth. Just a thought on how to balance abilities without breaking a class.

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

Jeda.5209:

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

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

If you take X% damage to your total health pool while stealthed, you become unstealthed for Y seconds.

As it is now, everyone is biased. We’re currently discussing two extremes, current OP or underpowered. Most Thieves would prefer to be OP, almost everyone else would prefer Thieves to be underpowered if those were the only two options. IMO we should all just want balance.

The problem with Thieves is that Stealth is the ultimate defense and the ultimate offense. It allows you to engage any fight on your terms and suffer no penalty for failure. Stealth in, burst someone by mashing buttons, if they’re a good player they will go 110% to counter that burst. If that burst fails, the Thief stealths and waits for initiative, then tries again.

Thieves currently have the advantage against ranged characters by being able to easily stay in melee, and have the advantage against melee characters by being able to easily stay at range.

I don’t believe the Stealth mechanic should be removed, but it needs to be BALANCED. I pity good Thieves atm since it’s relatively faceroll with the perma-stealth builds. When anyone can do well with little effort, the good players don’t stand out and aren’t rewarded for their skill.

Columba.9730:

Jeda.5209:

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

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

AOE rarely hits stealth thieves? You must not have a thief.

Jeda.5209:

Columba.9730:

Jeda.5209:

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

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

AOE rarely hits stealth thieves? You must not have a thief.

on the rare occasion i point in the correct direction, my aoe may hit a thief. however he remains stealthed.

Columba.9730:

Jeda.5209:

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

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

They’d be pretty much forced to only fight single targets. You think a thief would last long in Orre without stealth? Or in a zerg vs zerg?

I do not agree that stealth should be removed when taking damage.

I do however think that stealth should break when the stealthed player is knocked down/back, stunned or dazed. It forces offensive CC out of people but, if aimed correctly, has a rewarding factor.

Also the leaving a trail of blood / vomit sounds like a fun idea, could play around with the intensity as stacks increase etc.

I don’t think stealth in this game is that badly designed. I just think that, using resources such as CC, there should be a way to reveal the stealthed target.

Jeda.5209:

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive.

Elem has less base survivability stats and people are widely considering them to be the most tanky profession in the game. They use Protection, mobility and build tons of defences into their gear and build.
All a thief has to do is stealth. Which I think is fair, if there is a way for people to counter it, as the thief doesn’t have to give up anything to get stealth in the first place.

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

What would be the point then? Stealth would become entirely useless for all purposes if it dropped when you took any damage. I think people grossly underestimate how much damage Thieves actually take.

There needs to be a way for classes to pop characters out of stealth.

No, there doesn’t. This isn’t like other games where a Rogue can stay stealthed for minutes at a time. Stealth in GW2 only lasts a few seconds at a time anyways, there doesn’t need to be any methods to end that prematurely. Now if being invisible also made you invulnerable then I can see your point, but you’re perfectly free to rough up an enemy whether you can see him or not.

If you swing a sword, hit something and hear someone scream, the jig should be up.

You don’t hear Thieves scream when they take damage, we’re hard like that. Also, Stealth is almost always interruptible, pretty much every method Thieves have for activating Stealth involves an interruptible casting time, just play better.

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

How about this, Thieves lose Stealth when hit, but in exchange they get Heavy Armor and can use Ranger pets.

Ohoni.6057:

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

What would be the point then? Stealth would become entirely useless for all purposes if it dropped when you took any damage. I think people grossly underestimate how much damage Thieves actually take.

There needs to be a way for classes to pop characters out of stealth.

No, there doesn’t. This isn’t like other games where a Rogue can stay stealthed for minutes at a time. Stealth in GW2 only lasts a few seconds at a time anyways, there doesn’t need to be any methods to end that prematurely. Now if being invisible also made you invulnerable then I can see your point, but you’re perfectly free to rough up an enemy whether you can see him or not.

If you swing a sword, hit something and hear someone scream, the jig should be up.

You don’t hear Thieves scream when they take damage, we’re hard like that. Also, Stealth is almost always interruptible, pretty much every method Thieves have for activating Stealth involves an interruptible casting time, just play better.

Being able to stealth and dodge is the thieves survivability. Without it they are completely useless. They dont have the health or toughness to survive. Considering anybody can dot/ aoe/ direct damage that would take stealth completely out of the game.

How about this, Thieves lose Stealth when hit, but in exchange they get Heavy Armor and can use Ranger pets.

swell. you can have my pets.

Just a thought: What if stealth would not grant invisibility? Thief would only turn transcluent, be unattackable by direct attacks and have stealth specific skills available to them.

Intigo.1653:

Musty.3148:

extend the revealed timer
fix culling

Ding, ding, ding.

+1

I refuse to play my theif until this is fixed (as well as some other issues with thief). It’s basically a class that functions by constantly exploiting bugs as it is right now.

You can still tell where the thief is if you can catch that animation black dust swirlies… which can help… but that’s still not too reliable as you need to be looking where the thief is for that short animation time.

To clarify I didn’t mean stealth is dropped when damaged, I meant they should lose stealth when they decide to attack someone which means no multiple attacks while invisible. Thieves will still manage to attack singular targets with ease but will have to make decisions on engaging more than one enemy like everyone else.

Jaytee.9513:

To clarify I didn’t mean stealth is dropped when damaged, I meant they should lose stealth when they decide to attack someone which means no multiple attacks while invisible. Thieves will still manage to attack singular targets with ease but will have to make decisions on engaging more than one enemy like everyone else.

It technically does… you can target them (via tab) the second that they attack.

However, they are not shown on your screen due to other problems… If you play a mesmer you’ll see your illusions start to attack them long before they actually show up visually to you the player.

Korgov.7645:

Just a thought: What if stealth would not grant invisibility? Thief would only turn transcluent, be unattackable by direct attacks and have stealth specific skills available to them.

Sounds scary honestly. Invul spamming bursters, they’d become what people accuse them of being.

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.

Implement similar mechanics in GW2. Thieves – when stealthed – will use up 1 point of initiative per unit of time (whatever that may be; 1 per second, 1 per 2 seconds, etc.). Stealth then becomes a trade-off of cost:benefit. If the Thief wants to remain stealthed for a longer period of time, they will use up more of their initiative, thus decreasing the effectiveness of their attacks from lack of same. If they want to burst with a high initiative pool, they won’t be able to stealth for as long.

With Thieves no longer permitted to attack from stealth, the reveal debuff could be eliminated altogether along with stealth durations of skills. As long as the Thief wisely manages their initiative resource, they will be free to enter and exit stealth for as often and as long as that resource remains available. This will reward skilled Thieves while leaving the unskilled button mashers without stealth or without the ability to burst an opponent.

Aberrant.6749:

It technically does… you can target them (via tab) the second that they attack.

I honestly have had difficulty with this as well, I tab target like a freakin’ madman, but I’ll actually SEE them a lot of times and STILL have to actually click-target them because the tab-targetting isn’t working well. I am not honestly sure what the reason for this is, but it’s kitten annoying.

/shrug

Posts like this show a true lack of understand of game mechanics. Go to your class forum and ask them how they deal with a Thief. If you aren’t a Ranger (they are getting better) they will have an answer for you. Instead of posting game breaking suggestions try to educate yourself. Believe it or not other people who play your same class have no issue with Thieves.

To be honest, I rather see thieves damage greatly reduced if they want to keep their stealth. Even with stealth removed, they still hit very hard

My suggestions:

If a thief enters stealth and loses more than 25% of his MAX HP, in -one- stealth duration, he should be uncloaked.

A trait could be added in so that the thief could increase this threshold to 35-50%. So if they had the trait, they’d have to take half of their MAX HP in one stealth duration to be uncloaked.

Numbers are debatable. Guardian is my main. I have very little problems with thieves. They realize they can’t insta-spike me to death, and I realize I can’t chase them down. We tend to avoid each other in WvW. But thief is a very close second main. Culling needs to be fixed, or stealth needs to be tweaked. It is a problem.

People say “oh, learn to play, a thief can still be hit by AOE.” Yeah, maybe a terrible kittening thief that can’t dodge red circles when stealthed, or a thief that sticks around still trying to kill you. And even if they get hit by this AOE, nothing. You don’t even know if that AOE hit them. The thief could just be sitting back laughing at you as you waste all your long cooldown AOEs.

And what if this thief decides to stealth and run away? Culling gives him even more stealth, essentially. This isn’t a whine post because DPS thieves are easy to counter. I’m not whining about glass cannon thieves who put all of their stats towards Power, Precision, and Crit Damage, because they still rarely kill an aware defensive Guardian. Basilisk venom is easily blockable/avoidable if being aware.

This is about stealth. It is not overpowered in design, it’s overpowered in implementation, and because of current game limitations, like culling.

It’d be like Guardian’s having “Renewed Focus” last an extra 2 seconds because of an animation inconsistency, and that kitten would be fixed fast.

Also, If a thief is bleeding, burning, or poisoned to a certain intensity, a small visual indicator should help people see the thief. If the thief has more than 6 bleeds, 5 seconds of poison, or 3 seconds of burning. It won’t reveal them, it won’t be like a massive icon above their head. But small specks of red, green, and…burning I guess. Aware players will be able to track them, but clever thieves can still hide behind objects and lose any pursuers.

And before “Whine whine that’d be sooooo OP.” Save it. If a thief is running away, chances are he’s hurt. If you did over 6 bleeds, 5 poison, or 3 burning, you should be able to see these visual effects. (They disappear once you go below 6 bleeds, 5 seconds of poison, or 3 seconds of burning.) Furthermore, if they’re hurt, they’d need to heal. Chances are they’d use their healing skill, and chances are a stealth thief would use “Hide in Shadows” THUS removing Bleed, Poison, and Burning, so don’t give me that kitten. So all it does, is make it so a thief can’t use their utility stealth to become omg untrackable culling help me.

There is no tactical counter to stealth, and there should kitten well be one. In a lot of games involving stealth, AOE damage would unstealth someone. AOE is not a counter for stealth, it’s a deterrent. You never know where the thief is, you only predict where they go, and put an AOE down. Guess what I do if I’m a thief and someone tries to hit me with an AOE? I dunno, kittening avoid it?

AOE is not a counter to stealth. There is no direct counter to stealth, except Revealed, and non-thieves can’t even apply it?

(Revealed as a bonus effect for certain utility skills would be kittening amazing too.)

I don’t give a kitten about their glass cannons, but stealth and culling need to be sorted out.

I dont think damage is a good way to pop them out, otherwise theyd never be stealthed after a fight started, especially in WvWvW.

Perhaps making them pop out of stealth after CCing them would be a good balance. Like KB/KD, stun/root, etc. That way if u can at least predict where theyre going or where theyre at u can drop an AoE CC or something.

Edit: I also like the idea of making certain abilities specifically reveal stealthed foes

Stealth is working fine, except for culling.

You’re just annoyed you can’t kill thieves easily when they should be hard to kill. Play a thief, and you’ll understand how easy it is to get killed playing thief.

I don’t think there should be any way of knocking a thief out of stealth simply because that doesn’t allow them to use their stealth skills. It would put the ability to use some of their skills in the hands of other professions and no other profession has that restriction. No elementalist can be stopped from using their water attunement skills if you hit them enough or stack enough conditions on them. Hitting a mesmer doesn’t stop them from using skills that summon clones. So why should a thief not be able to use his stealth skills just because you hit him a few times?

With that said, I feel there should be a way to more efficiently track a stealthed thief. I think a big reason that a lot of players don’t even try to attack a stealthed thief is because even if they hit the thief they get no feedback that their attack was successful. In this game damage is a reward for performing an action correctly, but even if a player hits a stealthed thief he or she is shown no reward because no damage displays. For this reason, I feel that direct damage done to a stealthed thief should still show damage numbers and that conditions on a stealthed thief should show damage every 2 seconds with the first tick being at the start of the stealth.

Now this change would not make stealth useless. The lack of target created by the stealth still saves the thief from any skills that require a target (like ballista skills in WvW). Furthermore, any skills that are likely to hit a stealthed thief are AoE skills which means that even if an enemy player manages to hit a stealthed thief they wouldn’t know the thief’s exact location and only have a hint of where to place their next shot. As far as conditions go, I specified they should show damage every 2 seconds because if they ticked constantly a simple bleed would result in complete tracking of the thief’s position, which negates one of the advantages of stealth completely. Since most thief stealth options last 3 seconds, 4 if traited, a condition would show damage when a thief is either halfway through his stealth or has one second left in the stealth giving the attacker at least a clue what the thief is doing in stealth.

In short, there shouldn’t be a way to knock a thief out of stealth because that prevents them from using some of their skills. However, there should be better ways of tracking stealthed enemies. Showing direct damage done to a stealthed enemy and showing damage from conditions every 2 seconds accomplishes this while also not rendering stealth useless. It also emphasizes that stealthed thieves are not invulnerable, and rewards players who are able to deal damage to stealthed thieves while making the second aspect of thief defense, mobility, more valuable.

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.