Guild Wars 2

So, I happened to stop by the GW2 State of the Game stream just in time for their discussion on thieves. Apparently, ANET plans to change stealth so that it applies the revealed buff, regardless if you hit something or not.

Discuss.

I’d have to experience it in game. It might be too much or too little.

No sir, I don’t like it.

So if I fall out of stealth I get the revealed debuff? Nope. You just broke it, just take away stealth at this point and give us more armor. You dun goofed.

They need to just rename us ‘the’ Duelist.

No more cheese stealth over and over again till full health.

yea i dont even use stealth as a theif and i can say the reveal after every stealth would be real stupid and would make theives near unplayable for most.

What do you mean by “regardless if you hit something or not.”? So as long as you attack while in stealth you get revealed?

No, if you hit something while in stealth you get the revealed debuff. If you wait the three seconds and wait for stealth to fall off, you also get the revealed debuff. They also talked against stacking stealth, so D/P thieves may take an even bigger hit.

So, in the worst case Thieves can stealth for 50% of the time now (3 seconds stealth followed by 3 seconds revealed) instead of 90% and people here complain about the class becoming unplayable?

If they have 15+ points in Shadow Arts is 3 seconds revealed for 4 seconds of stealth.

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Mesmer since it will affect Mesmers as well.

Stacking stealth removal would be a huge hit for thief pve. Otherwise the change is good.

Oh well if they will make you revealed every time stealth JUST ENDS ON ITSELF… we all might aswell forget SA tree, couse half traits ther will be totally useless and go for google forged 25/30/0/0/15 gc zerk build.

with this upcoming change, i hope no more QQ will be made,

since we cannot tail the zerg using cnd to hide, and with the upcoming culling issue that will be fixed

i really hope that they will stop whinning about the thief,

(in the worst scenario after stealth nerf, they (baddies) will ask to nerf our overall damage like backstab damage)

As long as they give us some PVE buffs in the process, I’d be ok with the change. Stacking or chaining stealth is a cheesy tactic.

link http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/377719641

30:37 is where they start talking about class balance elementalist is first thief is 7 warrior is last profession. Digging now

Doesn’t change anything for me at all playing S/P except for very rare situations or CB + BP combo’s (which are rarely used). No biggie.
Will be lame for my S/D who trolled with it ocassionally but it makes sense, should be done. Healthy for the game.

As long as they give us some PVE buffs in the process, I’d be ok with the change. Stacking or chaining stealth is a cheesy tactic.

We’ll be getting better mobility, better boon removal, and generally more ability to stay in a fight.

doesn’t even seem that bad. The only class you need to worry about being in stealth like that vs is another thief. This will just quiken the cat and mouse. Also hardly effects D/P as they don’t “come out” until they want to.

I think it will make the thief more interesting, cant wait to try it.

guess i cant CnD the guy using the cata to death inside the enemy zerg anymore … AS easily, still do able

mixu.4281:

So, I happened to stop by the GW2 State of the Game stream just in time for their discussion on thieves. Apparently, ANET plans to change stealth so that it applies the revealed buff, regardless if you hit something or not.

Discuss.

I didn’t know thief was a top tier Tpvp class….

Its about time.

Just watched the whole thing doesn’t seem that bad really. Hopefully quiets down the QQ’s now.

We can still pick and chose our targets still break combat and added mobility to other weapon sets so sb won’t be as required(don’t feel it is but in tPvP it is as roamer)

I’m cool with this change have to be a bit more careful with trolling but can still troll.

While I agree some changes need to be made, I don’t have a lot of faith that Anet can get it right.

I watched the entire video and paid close attention to the discussion on thief.

It sounds like the Dev, and in particular Karl, really don’t know what a thief really does nor have any real plans to tune them. He sounds like he was beating around the bush just to pass time to move on to the next class.

He said “Infil Strike gives thief massive distance mobility.” I don’t consider 600 range “massive” distance. Maybe he was referring to Shadow Return but how can a Dev that is in charge of class balancing mix the two skills? Nor did he mention that Shadow Return is buggy and is only reliable on a flat/horizontal surface. I’m not too comfortable with him in charge…

Destroying the two classes only builds with one change, great suggestions. Now nobody will have a reason to roll thief and we can all make Guardians/Eles/Mesmers.

Daecollo.9578:

Destroying the two classes only builds with one change, great suggestions. Now nobody will have a reason to roll thief and we can all make Guardians/Eles/Mesmers.

And warriors

Sifu.6527:

I watched the entire video and paid close attention to the discussion on thief.

It sounds like the Dev, and in particular Karl, really don’t know what a thief really does nor have any real plans to tune them. He sounds like he was beating around the bush just to pass time to move on to the next class.

He said “Infil Strike gives thief massive distance mobility.” I don’t consider 600 range “massive” distance. Maybe he was referring to Shadow Return but how can a Dev that is in charge of class balancing mix the two skills? Nor did he mention that Shadow Return is buggy and is only reliable on a flat/horizontal surface. I’m not too comfortable with him in charge…

From what I got in the panel was that the devs have certain classes they kind of oversee in a sense. Then they come together to talk about how they balance it etc. Test and watch, I think Karl could have talked about everything but host was pressing time. He said any questions just ask and he can answer but they where pressing time.

oZii.2864:

Daecollo.9578:

Destroying the two classes only builds with one change, great suggestions. Now nobody will have a reason to roll thief and we can all make Guardians/Eles/Mesmers.

And warriors

Warriors are only good for CoF Path 1 and DPS (If you have a Guardian in your group.)

In PvP Warriors are “meh.” they are pretty much all the same.

With the changes that are coming, they are going to be pretty much “forced” into 30 vitality, since that is the only good builds it has.

Daecollo.9578:

Destroying the two classes only builds with one change, great suggestions. Now nobody will have a reason to roll thief and we can all make Guardians/Eles/Mesmers.

You are hilarious. Dudes say they want us to have better mobility than we currently have, we should be better with boon removal, and should be able to fight for longer without being forced to flee. Lol’d hard.

Sifu.6527:

I watched the entire video and paid close attention to the discussion on thief.

It sounds like the Dev, and in particular Karl, really don’t know what a thief really does nor have any real plans to tune them. He sounds like he was beating around the bush just to pass time to move on to the next class.

He said “Infil Strike gives thief massive distance mobility.” I don’t consider 600 range “massive” distance. Maybe he was referring to Shadow Return but how can a Dev that is in charge of class balancing mix the two skills? Nor did he mention that Shadow Return is buggy and is only reliable on a flat/horizontal surface. I’m not too comfortable with him in charge…

Shadow return is a chain skill of Infil strike, it’s really not necessary for him to mention Shadow return as it’s a packaged deal. With inf strike you are very mobile hell that’s the point of it. It’s like Aura of Displacement. You basically have free range of movement to scout/needle at things while removing yourself from the equation at whim. No one would’ve said AoD isn’t massive mobility, all of a sudden inf strike isn’t? Inf strike + Steal is moving 1500 units, and being able to go back 1500 units. That is huge zoning potential that can go even further with supporting utilities.
It’s like saying Ranger’s have lots of distance with Hornet’s sting. Monarch’s leap is part of the deal.

it’s shadowsteps in general (buggy), certain terrain just makes them go dumb and flop because they can’t figure out pathing.

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Xsorus.2507:

No more cheese stealth over and over again till full health.

Probably the best part of the interview.

Dasorine.1964:

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Watch the interview.
Hear when they say they want thieves to be better in team fights and think we are too weak in that department.
Hear where they say we could probably remove more boons.
Hear where they say our mobility should be better and Eles are doing our job.

Buffs are coming our way, they’re just reducing the cheese.

What about chaining Hide in shadows with Blinding powder?
Will it still give you 6-8seconds stealth? (and spamming clusterbomb on smokescreen?)

In general I won’t mind the nerf during combat. Will suck during an escape though. Not because the enemy will see me when I pop out of stealth (since culling will be fixed) but because I have to wait for the debuff before I can use my utility (assuming it was on a cooldown for a few seconds).

ensoriki.5789:

Dasorine.1964:

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Watch the interview.
Hear when they say they want thieves to be better in team fights and think we are too weak in that department.
Hear where they say we could probably remove more boons.
Hear where they say our mobility should be better and Eles are doing our job.

Buffs are coming our way, they’re just reducing the cheese.

Problem is this is another case of game developers thinking forum pvpers know everything and that everything in the game revolves around PvP and they think of doing changes without actually thinking about ALL the aspects of the games this will effect including things as simple as the actual skills being destroyed.

The fact that terrible people always think stealth is broken no matter what iteration its in just compounds this, take other games like TF2, people complained that spys where overpowered due to invisibility so they introduced tons of anti-spy specific stuff even though decent to good teams permanently shut down even the best spies anyway.

Sure I can see some things were a bit silly with stealth (aforementioned stacking stealth through combo fields which wasn’t exactly intended I daresay) but in general in pvp it was fine, even a little underpowered, in pvp it just took a bit of thought and learning (as it should, you shouldn’t be able to pop in to pvp and expect to never have to learn anything)

Dasorine.1964:

ensoriki.5789:

Dasorine.1964:

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Watch the interview.
Hear when they say they want thieves to be better in team fights and think we are too weak in that department.
Hear where they say we could probably remove more boons.
Hear where they say our mobility should be better and Eles are doing our job.

Buffs are coming our way, they’re just reducing the cheese.

Problem is this is another case of game developers thinking forum pvpers know everything and that everything in the game revolves around PvP and they think of doing changes without actually thinking about ALL the aspects of the games this will effect including things as simple as the actual skills being destroyed.

Um no it’s not?
They specifically said (if you watch the video…) that the reason certain changes haven’t been made is specifically because of the other areas of the game. Aoe nerf they wanted to do? They have to consider the other aspects of the game.

Stealth causing reveal? Smart for the entire game. It causes a lot of cheese for PvE as well. Has been straight out harassing World vs World on absolutely insane levels mixed with the culling they had, and is cheesey in spvp as well, especially for new players.
Right now you can go in pve, and chain CnD to marginalize a significant amount of PvE encounters especially as a result of the blind on stealth trait. Essentially making certain monsters largely shutdown by simplistic thief CnD spam. It’s good for the whole of the game. This is more problematic for when you say enter stealth to get some cooldowns up and then try to use Hide in Shadows or a Blinding Tuft you just stole and have to wait a moment to get the full effect of HIS or just decide you cannot wait and need to heal now regardless of reveal. This again is just reinforcing the role of stealth. Be in it, make a decision, to reposition or to fight back, and then move on. Only reason it sucks really is because of that previous patch that affected “Hate” in pve (which also affected Ranger pets), which means abusing stealth on them isn’t a tremendous strategy.

Sure I can see some things were a bit silly with stealth (aforementioned stacking stealth through combo fields which wasn’t exactly intended I daresay) but in general in pvp it was fine, even a little underpowered, in pvp it just took a bit of thought and learning (as it should, you shouldn’t be able to pop in to pvp and expect to never have to learn anything)

However again.
1.) They want to increase the Thief’s staying power in fights.
2) It’s large effects are basically CnD chaining indefinitely and flopped D/P assaults. Which were cheesey and in the later case far too relaxed. The former was incredibly silly as you could CnD at 4s as soon as it wore off you were back in stealth and visible for literally less than a half second if done right. Nobody in their right mind could react to it. So it was up to guess work, or NPC’s (turrets/phantasm’s) to give any concrete punitive measures for a thief otherwise just cheese harassing. Being able to do so wasn’t good for the game and you know it brah.

Introduce traditional stealth mechanics, or make stealth like death shroud (obviously with some restrictions), and get rid of easy access stealth spam with C&D, smoke combo fields. After that, improve(redesign) all stealth attacks to feel more special and awesome.

I don’t think a lot of you understand. Nerfing stealth in this way removes our main source of might, healing, and condi removal. We are already weak in the defense department. If you nerf our main defense give us more vit or armor so I can take mroe than one hit from a any other class. And god help us with Confusion or Condi Necros now.

what pve encounters can be cheesed with CnD spam exactly? open world mobs around the place? most people can and do just run past them anyway, bosses? well your not really going to acheive much if you spend all your time stealthed, dungeon mob skipping? doesn’t help if your the only one that gets by.

Theres maybe one or two passages outside of dungeons where you could potentially get away with CnDing through, but its not like you can just keep doing CnD on the same mob, stack up an hour of stealth and instant kill things with it, however there are time when shadow refuges extended stealth comes in handy, or where you may need a few more seconds of stealth thus burning a limited utility and such.

And you know what? even if they do those changes people will still complain, people will still claim its overpowered, people will still get cheesed.

Granted this is true for all changes but this would currently be just a straight up nerf to a profession rather than fixing unintended side effects, something they’ve claimed a fair few times they wouldn’t do.

I mean I wouldn’t even mind if it WAS just fixing the main “problem” area’s, such as preventing combo field abuse (have it so comboing counts as an attack thus revealing you) or overly spammy use of cloak and dagger (find some way to prevent cloak and dagger being used imiediately after stealth ends naturally for instance or remove all/most damage from it so the thief isn’t actually acomplishing anything) its the fact that its a blanket nerf to combinations that were not that strong for the cost or other stuff.

I’m ok with this change, think it needed to be done. I found stealth chaining pretty silly, and only did it in moments of desperation anyway (ie finding myself culled into a massive Zerg).

However, about stacking, I’m curious how they plan on achieving this with Shadow Refuge. SR in and of itself utilizes stacking of stealth at the core of the ability, so I’m sure they will have a way around that that won’t break it.

People QQing should really chill out, it won’t kill the class, it will just kill bads.

As for the other classes, I haven’t watched, but I hope to Christ things like mesmers and elementalists will also be adjusted.

Xsorus.2507:

No more cheese stealth over and over again till full health.

Yeah, they pretty much nerfed your troll spec, didn’t they?

its not that big of a deal, you just have to know when to get out now cant really stay inside 2-3 people etc and CnD.

Just think for a second stop panicking people rofl.

If reveal buff is applied once you come out of stealth you just have to now be a bit more careful when you decide to come out. That doesnt mean you can’t still stack it (see d/p) if you let your stealth wear off then that means you decided to attack or back off a bit. This is hardly game breaking lol.

This hurts off hand dagger builds more than it hurts D/P thieves.

EXITING STEALTH DOESN’T MEAN WE CAN’T STILL STACK IT

Dat caps for the over reactors lol.

Fine by me – I never stack stealth or chain C+D. This will have absolutely no effect on my gameplay whatsoever.

There are mentions of Thief being buffed in other areas eg. team contexts/mobility, so I say bring it on.

Ok, I’m using my phone and tired so I’m sure I read too deeply into the stacking aspect of the sentence. All good, 100% approve.

Columba is probably on his way to the laundromat to clean his pants.

Dasorine.1964:

what pve encounters can be cheesed with CnD spam exactly? open world mobs around the place? most people can and do just run past them anyway, bosses? well your not really going to acheive much if you spend all your time stealthed, dungeon mob skipping? doesn’t help if your the only one that gets by.

Specifically in combat. You can easily atm just chain a mobs health if it gets cumbersome at any point as basically a “I goof’d” result, which was nonsensical even if not very effective.

Granted this is true for all changes but this would currently be just a straight up nerf to a profession rather than fixing unintended side effects, something they’ve claimed a fair few times they wouldn’t do.

It isn’t without context however, as again through the video they say favorable changes they want to give the thief.

I mean I wouldn’t even mind if it WAS just fixing the main “problem” area’s, such as preventing combo field abuse (have it so comboing counts as an attack thus revealing you) or overly spammy use of cloak and dagger (find some way to prevent cloak and dagger being used imiediately after stealth ends naturally for instance or remove all/most damage from it so the thief isn’t actually acomplishing anything) its the fact that its a blanket nerf to combinations that were not that strong for the cost or other stuff.

This is fixing it?
Combo fields are not just for the thief. If a warrior savage leaps through your field towards an enemy and gets stealthed. That is Supposed to happen. It’s part of Cross-Profession-Combo’s. You’re suggesting a breaking down of team-based mechanics for an individual problem. So you’re suggesting a Cool down on CnD upon success? That discredits it from the initiative system for weapons the profession is based on.
This makes actual sense as a fix instead of arbitrarily putting limitations on skills themselves and without discrediting the Smoke Field. You get, 3 or 4s of Stealth as a “break” from your enemies. At which point it’s fight or flight. Make a choice and take initiative (pun intended).

It by and large does not affect most builds or anything outside of silly play and legitimizes the system by meaning without using utility/stolen skills or combo fields. A thief is visible as much as they are invisible except in the case of 15 in Shadow arts. This let’s mobs be properly offensive against thieves and for players to form succesful attacks.

oZii.2864:

its not that big of a deal, you just have to know when to get out now cant really stay inside 2-3 people etc and CnD.

Just think for a second stop panicking people rofl.

If reveal buff is applied once you come out of stealth you just have to now be a bit more careful when you decide to come out. That doesnt mean you can’t still stack it (see d/p) if you let your stealth wear off then that means you decided to attack or back off a bit. This is hardly game breaking lol.

This hurts off hand dagger builds more than it hurts D/P thieves.

EXITING STEALTH DOESN’T MEAN WE CAN’T STILL STACK IT

Dat caps for the over reactors lol.

D/P thieves don’t really do damage…

Daecollo.9578:

oZii.2864:

its not that big of a deal, you just have to know when to get out now cant really stay inside 2-3 people etc and CnD.

Just think for a second stop panicking people rofl.

If reveal buff is applied once you come out of stealth you just have to now be a bit more careful when you decide to come out. That doesnt mean you can’t still stack it (see d/p) if you let your stealth wear off then that means you decided to attack or back off a bit. This is hardly game breaking lol.

This hurts off hand dagger builds more than it hurts D/P thieves.

EXITING STEALTH DOESN’T MEAN WE CAN’T STILL STACK IT

Dat caps for the over reactors lol.

D/P thieves don’t really do damage…

Its not like cloak and dagger will stop doing damage during reveal buff.

Daecollo.9578:

D/P thieves don’t really do damage…

Then why roll one? To troll? Guess the party’s over…

Daecollo.9578:

D/P thieves don’t really do damage…

Better tell all those thieves in Pvp they’re not doing damage.
Lol’d hard.

Laika.8795:

Daecollo.9578:

D/P thieves don’t really do damage…

Then why roll one? To troll? Guess the party’s over…

Trolling is the reason I rolled the class, it would make dozens of stupid people follow you all over Tyria and waste there time :/ …