Guild Wars 2

I am sure this is already being looked at by the Devs. Stealth is a core mechanic of the thief class and I don’t see it going anywhere. By itself, stealth is a very powerful mitigation mechanic. Stand alone, I don’t think stealth is gamebreaking.

Personally I think the problem lies in all of the compounded effects that come with going into stealth.

By itself, hide in shadows removes burning, bleeding, and poison. The poison removal comes before the 33% healing reduction, which effectively causes thieves to be completely immune to poison with their main heal. Burning, bleeding, and poison also are the only ways of dealing damage through conditions.

By going into stealth using their main heal, with no traits, a thief effectively removes ALL condition damage.

Aside from completely mitigating all damage (on top of mitigating all targeted attacks by being in stealth), removing all condition damage threats, the thief is also removes 1 condition every 3 seconds, is granted regeneration, can gain initiative bonuses, and can move 50% faster.

While I don’t think stealth should be nerfed, the “clean” slate condition removal ability of stealth turns hide in shadows or long periods of stealth into a full fight reset. The thief can easily come out with stealth with full health, no conditions, regeneration, and large amounts of initiative.

Instead of hitting stealth, perhaps stealth effects should be looked at and some very minor changes can be added:

HIDE IN SHADOWS:
Changed to remove only bleeding and one other condition.

This would allow burning to be effective against thieves, poison to now affect their heal if a large condition stack is placed on them. This also gives the thief the added benefit of removing one non-burning/bleeding/poison condition as compensation for losing the ability to clear all condition damage effects in one go.

Making it slightly harder to shake degenerative damage conditions in stealth may help balance things out.

You make good points, but I predict guarantee a wave of ‘L2P Thieves already suck’ comments.

lordhelmos.7623:

Stealth is a core mechanic of the thief class and I don’t see it going anywhere.

Look, there’s a host of retorts on the points you’ve made in your thread but I’m going to stop you here. Stealth is an optional thief mechanic, not an imposed one. Lots of thieves choose to operate without stealth, just like lots of thieves don’t use traps, signet, or venoms. Starting off with the assertion that it is a vital part of the profession is going to taint the rest of your conclusions, and is a little defeatist if you’re not a stealth fan.

For the rest of what you said, the answer is mostly in that stealth is only a fight reset if the opponent is allowing that. Against a skilled opponent, stealth merely means the thief trades in the ability to attack for trait benefits while the opponent is allowed to attack as much as they want. As always, stealth is exceptionally amazing against people who have no idea how to fight it, but merely a decent tradeoff when someone knows how to combat stealth adversaries.

At this point your argument switches to ‘Well, even if I’m a good player and can predict stealth movements (and, indeed, the vast majority of thieves move predictably, they’ve never had to learn not to), I can’t catch thieves, they’re too fast!"

Which is a very good point, and the reason I’ve continued to assert that thief mobility, not stealth, is the reason thieves can reset fights and escape. It isn’t stealth, you know where they probably are (or should), you just aren’t fast enough to catch them.

So should thief mobility be nerfed? This is the question it always boils down to. Everyone loves to scapegoat stealth, but this is the question the playerbase needs to answer within itself.

Tulisin.6945:

lordhelmos.7623:

Stealth is a core mechanic of the thief class and I don’t see it going anywhere.

Look, there’s a host of retorts on the points you’ve made in your thread but I’m going to stop you here. Stealth is an optional thief mechanic, not an imposed one. Lots of thieves choose to operate without stealth, just like lots of thieves don’t use traps, signet, or venoms. Starting off with the assertion that it is a vital part of the profession is going to taint the rest of your conclusions, and is a little defeatist if you’re not a stealth fan.

For the rest of what you said, the answer is mostly in that stealth is only a fight reset if the opponent is allowing that. Against a skilled opponent, stealth merely means the thief trades in the ability to attack for trait benefits while the opponent is allowed to attack as much as they want. As always, stealth is exceptionally amazing against people who have no idea how to fight it, but merely a decent tradeoff when someone knows how to combat stealth adversaries.

At this point your argument switches to ‘Well, even if I’m a good player and can predict stealth movements (and, indeed, the vast majority of thieves move predictably, they’ve never had to learn not to), I can’t catch thieves, they’re too fast!"

Which is a very good point, and the reason I’ve continued to assert that thief mobility, not stealth, is the reason thieves can reset fights and escape. It isn’t stealth, you know where they probably are (or should), you just aren’t fast enough to catch them.

So should thief mobility be nerfed? This is the question it always boils down to. Everyone loves to scapegoat stealth, but this is the question the playerbase needs to answer within itself.

Don’t derail the topic, this is not a discussion about stealth itself. This is a discussion of the beneficial effects that a thief has access to when going into stealth due to traits and skill effects, namely condition removal.

Thieves should continue to maintain having an effective stealth mechanic, that is the heart of the class and what it does best. I don’t think you will find a single thief that doesn’t utilize stealth is some way. Any thief that doesn’t is probably running a horrifically bad build. Hell, even my Venonshare Support build runs offhand D/P or P/D just to have access to stealth when needed.

Stealth is what it is, the ability to disappear. However, it has an overabundance of beneficiant non-stealth related effects tied to it. This includes regenerative boons, initiative gains, mobility, and condition removal.

Instead of stealth being just stealth, its turned into a pancaea one button fix everything.

Is this because of stealth’s core mechanic of disappearing? No.

It’s because stealth abilities are steriod infused with a host of beneficial effects, even when the stealth effect is already powerful (which it should be).

What I am saying is:

IF you DISASSOCIATE some of these beneficial effects and load them into non-stealth related abilities, you will end up with a much better and more active Thief class that requires a higher skill cap to play and feels more balanced.

The thief should always have the option of going into stealth to confuse the enemy, setup an opportunity attack, or buy time. However, the beneficial boons and effects of the thief class should be spread among other non-stealth related skills to promote more actively play instead of having the stealth go straight for the stealth button to universally fix EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM.

That is the issue with the class. Stealth as it is, is a fine mechanic. The problem is everything tied to it. Other weaker abilities and some weapon skills can be modified to grant the thief beneficial effects at the trade-off of having those effects disassociated from stealth.

I think what you will find is Thief utilizing stealth more strategically in a fight instead of pressing the fix it button everytime they are in trouble for a fight reset. And that is what we want right? A more dynamic thief class that can do more outside of stealth, but still have strong stealth mechanics.

lordhelmos.7623:

Don’t derail the topic, this is not a discussion about stealth itself. This is a discussion of the beneficial effects that a thief has access to when going into stealth due to traits and skill effects, namely condition removal.

Benefits more than offset by the primary detriment of stealth, that detriment being that the thief cannot attack if they want to retain those benefits. A skill allowing you to self-daze for 3-5 seconds in return for some condition removal and regeneration would generally be viewed as incredibly bad and a great way to lose a fight quickly, but with the element of stealth this self-crippling is suddenly entirely forgotten.

You’re quick to point out that you weren’t finding issue with stealth as an overall mechanic (rather some of its compounding attributes when traited), but your assertion that things need to be “balanced out” by inducing weaknesses to stealthed thieves via condition damage seems at odds with that. You believe that in the current state stealth is too powerful of a tool in the thief arsenal, particularly because it provides high resistance to condition damage and the ability to reset a fight.

In short, you want to create a mechanical counter to the thief heavy-stealth play style (namely, debilitation/pressure via things like poison/burning). However, stealth is much more a dynamic advantage than a mechanical one, and approaching it as a mechanical problem shows you don’t really understand what makes stealth powerful in the first place (it isn’t trait benefits).

Condition damage is already over the top and try interrupting a thref using HiS while you use perplexity runes. Dead thief. It’s so easy and condition builds certainly needs a nerf rather than a boost.

Lol, Im sorry Lordhelmos but this is just making me laugh. Thieves are already one of the most under powered professions. I love that thieves have received so many nerfs that people are complaining about things that are absolutely fine. Infact, Hide in Shadows should remove torment as well.

I can’t wait for the day where the profession becomes so useless that it HAS to receive some buffs

necro old topics much ?

lordhelmos.7623:

By going into stealth using their main heal, with no traits, a thief effectively removes ALL condition damage.

ALL condition damage. Well except Confusion. And Torment. Hey, that’s still 3 out of 5, it’s nearly ALL!

lordhelmos.7623:

Aside from completely mitigating all damage (on top of mitigating all targeted attacks by being in stealth), removing all condition damage threats, the thief is also removes 1 condition every 3 seconds, is granted regeneration, can gain initiative bonuses, and can move 50% faster.

Ok, all these effects you mention include 3 major traits in shadow arts, so for this to be true you just lost 30 trait points on only defensive abilities (you haven’t dealt any dps yet). And to be frank, you are gonna need them as a thief with your tiny health pool and your lack of stability/protection/block/invulnerability. Furthermore, yeah it is a good skill but all classes have very strong healing skills.

And concerning fleet shadow (Acrobatics line) giving you 50% speed boost. THIS IS A LIE! or it is BROKEN and NOT FIXED (hear me anet) since the start. I tried it out and when in combat (when you need it to land a backstab on runnign targets with high mobility) it merely gives a 33% speed boost. It thus is useless because you cant catch a target with swiftness (which many classes have easy acces to). FIX THIS PLEASE!

And to conclude, along with all the other stealth qq’ers out there you suffer from the misconception that in stealth = safety. That is not true, in stealth you take just as much dmg and in this game, where point blank aoe dmg is omnipresent, it is super easy to down a stealthed target with some common sense. As i think of it: GREAT TRAIT IDEA: INVISIBLE INERTIA: When stealth is applied thief receives 3 sec of protection! This would be great to fix/replace one of our many broken traits like fleeting shadow e.g.

Furthermore if talking SPVP, stealth has major tactical disadvantages (cant cap a shrine, cant take an orb, …)

Over and Out.