Guild Wars 2

Edited this post cause we got +1s on revealed… which hurt… bad. It changed us from being graceful like cat woman and crafty like batman to being clumsy like jackie chan using the drunken master style (although not nearly as effective).

But now we might have some good news!

JonathanSharp.7094:

randomfightfan.4091:

In that case when do we PvE thieves get our 3s revealed debuff back?

Maybe so. We’re debating it.

I was a fat kid in a candy story when I saw this. They’re actually thinking about restoring the thief to their former glory.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Mif.3471:

JonathanSharp.7094:

A couple things:

• For PvE/PvP/WvW, we know that those are 3 different playstyles, we don’t just lump PvE and WvW together.

Considering WvW and PVE use the same skill values, yes you do.

We’re starting to split PvE/WvW in the upcoming patch.

But we want them to be things that keep consistency across the game types as much as possible.

If what I think you’re saying is true then sir, you have a e-hug coming your way

It will not. This will only affect the endless CnD spamming.
(Wait till out of combat then use CnD, repeat for infinite stealth)
You can still “chain” stealth as well, as long as you do not leave stealth at any time inbetween, so rather than chainging you’re layering (the duration).
Seems fine to me.

awesome! so it really doesn’t affect one’s escape ability whatsoever as long as the thief knows what they’re doing.

Already know how to take advantage of this :P Probably shouldn’t say much more… pretty obvious to anyone who knows thief and how fields/finishers work.

Technically we can’t really be sure of anything yet, we don’t know the entire changes yet, chances are though if your backstabbing often then it won’t effect you.

But who knows they could also be nerfing combo field abuse (which I think is much more exploitative than CnD spam though both are a rather unacceptable)

I don’t feel combo fields are something that can be abused. They can be used to their potential but since most everything has a limit, the fields can’t be abused any more than could a team of 5 warriors using fgs be abusing their shouts.

WAIT. So you can stack CnD now?! yay! so you can stack it, but you just cant come out of stealth or youll get revealed?

KrisHQ.4719:

It will not. This will only affect the endless CnD spamming.
(Wait till out of combat then use CnD, repeat for infinite stealth)
You can still “chain” stealth as well, as long as you do not leave stealth at any time inbetween, so rather than chainging you’re layering (the duration).
Seems fine to me.

What is this “wait till out of combat” before CnD? Does my init regen faster when I’m out of combat? Or does stealth last longer?

SOMEONE EXPLAIN. I just want to be able still do 1vX..

Rainbow.3496:

SOMEONE EXPLAIN. I just want to be able still do 1vX..

You can, you just have to be good. Not going to be commonplace.

Reveal will happen EVERY TIME you leave stealth, not just when you do damage. Everything else will be 100% the same as it is right now.

yep people will still stand around after seeing a thief stealth and not do anything and then complain its OP

Rainbow.3496:

WAIT. So you can stack CnD now?! yay! so you can stack it, but you just cant come out of stealth or youll get revealed?

No, you can’t stay/stack stealth with CnD. The damage portion of the skill will prevent this from happening.

only thing that I’m not looking forward to is the mug nerf… oh well, guess I’ll have to adapt…

If this flies, it sounds like stealth use will be for attacking or retreating; no more hanging around slow-plinking the slow-thinking?

As it should be…

^
As a thief, agreed

The only thing I’ve yet to see someone mention in regards to this change (and maybe I’ve just missed it) is now stealth is the only positive “buff” style effect that carries a negative consequence when applied automatically/through no action of the player.

If a target is given regen,stability,vigor,retal,might,fury,swiftness,protection or haste by a secondary means that they did not choose to initiate (another player, a combo field, etc), there is no downside. Now, every time a thief is granted stealth (smoke field AoE, mass invis, blinding powder, last refuge, instinctual response), they are going to take revealed – meaning if I’m too close to another thief using blinding powder, he might have screwed me by giving me stealth when I specifically didn’t want/need it.

Instinctual response becomes nearly worthless IMO (if I’m taking revealed for every stealth, I’m not interested in any stealth effect I don’t willingly initiate), and last refuge (a source of much frustration for thieves atm, since it sucks,can’t be turned off, and is at the very beginning of our best defensive trait line) gets even worse

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, and probably won’t come up so often (though I foresee that when it does happen to screw you, you will be annoyed), but its important to note – stealth is now the only buff in the game that carries a downside in situations where the player did not willingly apply it – that seems a dirty way to fix stealth spammers IMO. An easy fix (conceptually, maybe not programming wise) would be to cause stealth effects applied automatically (Instinctual response, Last refuge) or by another player (mass invis, AoE in a smoke field, etc) to not carry the revealed penalty if no ability is used.

evilapprentice.6379:

The only thing I’ve yet to see someone mention in regards to this change (and maybe I’ve just missed it) is now stealth is the only positive “buff” style effect that carries a negative consequence when applied automatically/through no action of the player.

If a target is given regen,stability,vigor,retal,might,fury,swiftness,protection or haste by a secondary means that they did not choose to initiate (another player, a combo field, etc), there is no downside. Now, every time a thief is granted stealth (smoke field AoE, mass invis, blinding powder, last refuge, instinctual response), they are going to take revealed – meaning if I’m too close to another thief using blinding powder, he might have screwed me by giving me stealth when I specifically didn’t want/need it.

Instinctual response becomes nearly worthless IMO (if I’m taking revealed for every stealth, I’m not interested in any stealth effect I don’t willingly initiate), and last refuge (a source of much frustration for thieves atm, since it sucks,can’t be turned off, and is at the very beginning of our best defensive trait line) gets even worse

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, and probably won’t come up so often (though I foresee that when it does happen to screw you, you will be annoyed), but its important to note – stealth is now the only buff in the game that carries a downside in situations where the player did not willingly apply it – that seems a dirty way to fix stealth spammers IMO. An easy fix (conceptually, maybe not programming wise) would be to cause stealth effects applied automatically (Instinctual response, Last refuge) or by another player (mass invis, AoE in a smoke field, etc) to not carry the revealed penalty if no ability is used.

Its also the only buff that penalizes you for having multiple utilities giving it equiped.

Dasorine.1964:

evilapprentice.6379:

The only thing I’ve yet to see someone mention in regards to this change (and maybe I’ve just missed it) is now stealth is the only positive “buff” style effect that carries a negative consequence when applied automatically/through no action of the player.

If a target is given regen,stability,vigor,retal,might,fury,swiftness,protection or haste by a secondary means that they did not choose to initiate (another player, a combo field, etc), there is no downside. Now, every time a thief is granted stealth (smoke field AoE, mass invis, blinding powder, last refuge, instinctual response), they are going to take revealed – meaning if I’m too close to another thief using blinding powder, he might have screwed me by giving me stealth when I specifically didn’t want/need it.

Instinctual response becomes nearly worthless IMO (if I’m taking revealed for every stealth, I’m not interested in any stealth effect I don’t willingly initiate), and last refuge (a source of much frustration for thieves atm, since it sucks,can’t be turned off, and is at the very beginning of our best defensive trait line) gets even worse

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, and probably won’t come up so often (though I foresee that when it does happen to screw you, you will be annoyed), but its important to note – stealth is now the only buff in the game that carries a downside in situations where the player did not willingly apply it – that seems a dirty way to fix stealth spammers IMO. An easy fix (conceptually, maybe not programming wise) would be to cause stealth effects applied automatically (Instinctual response, Last refuge) or by another player (mass invis, AoE in a smoke field, etc) to not carry the revealed penalty if no ability is used.

Its also the only buff that penalizes you for having multiple utilities giving it equiped.

Kind of true, but since ANets position is “Stealth should always result in a revealed debuff”, it’s understandable – they’re trying to narrow down the use cases for stealth – you use it knowing you’ll get the revealed debuff, so you’re either going for the kill, or really need to escape/access something in your SA’s tree. You’re still in control of those uses of stealth, you make the decision of whether its worth it or not.

A way to fix that might be to make instinctual response and last refuge give you the non-stealth stealth(the one denoted by the little mask) that the npc in CoE gives you occasionally. This wouldn’t trigger the change to backstab, so it would become purely a defensive trait, and even if you’re immune to stealth(real stealth) you wouldn’t be immune to the alternative stealth.

evilapprentice.6379:

Kind of true, but since ANets position is “Stealth should always result in a revealed debuff”, it’s understandable – they’re trying to narrow down the use cases for stealth – you use it knowing you’ll get the revealed debuff, so you’re either going for the kill, or really need to escape/access something in your SA’s tree. You’re still in control of those uses of stealth, you make the decision of whether its worth it or not.

Unfortunately thats basically them saying “we don’t want thieves to be flexible”. If its used defensively its the only defensive skill that if you have multiple utilities for is punished if try to use them too often.

Tbh overall I’m not really sure anet really puts much thought into many of their changes, so many new content and other changes have been poor at best and never fully thought through. This is just another example.

randomfightfan.4091:

only thing that I’m not looking forward to is the mug nerf… oh well, guess I’ll have to adapt…

Mug only gives like 4k burst they maybe nerf it to 2k but you still will at least deal 20k burst in couple of sec no that bad.

Thief is already very predictable and will be even more so after the patch… not a good thing. Thief is hardly seen at higher sPvP… hopefully they’ll buff thief in other ways to make this not the case (but for this patch I just see nerfs inc.).

evilapprentice.6379:

The only thing I’ve yet to see someone mention in regards to this change (and maybe I’ve just missed it) is now stealth is the only positive “buff” style effect that carries a negative consequence when applied automatically/through no action of the player.

Forgive me if I’m missing something here, but unless I’m mistaken, all “revealed” does is prevent immediate re-application of the buff that initiates it.

If I have a cake, and then I eat it, I would no longer have a cake, at least not until I make another one. Now, if the cake were to have been poisoned or drugged, or if it gave me diabetes, that would suck. But in this case, it does none of those things. I just don’t have a cake anymore. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

Revealed may technically be a “debuff”, but it functions like a cooldown. Yes, a cooldown. Thieves don’t have to deal with nearly as many cooldowns as the rest of us, but you surely understand how it works. After you exit stealth, you need to wait a couple seconds to be able to use it again. And you can still prolong stealth by stacking duration- you can keep eating cake as long as you have it. But once you exit stealth, either by wearing it out or attacking, you need to wait a meager 3 seconds. Sorry.

I don’t think this will hit us as much as we expect. And if they give us the boosts they were talking about I’m really eager to start on the patch! They were talking about giving other weapon sets more mobility so that we won’t need the SB for it any longer. They also talked about giving us more mobility in general and more team support stuff, so this patch sounds more like a plus for us thieves than a drawback. I’m sick of feeling the need to have a SB with me for mobility and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

Geiir.7603:

I don’t think this will hit us as much as we expect. And if they give us the boosts they were talking about I’m really eager to start on the patch! They were talking about giving other weapon sets more mobility so that we won’t need the SB for it any longer. They also talked about giving us more mobility in general and more team support stuff, so this patch sounds more like a plus for us thieves than a drawback. I’m sick of feeling the need to have a SB with me for mobility and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

Trust me, we aint getting those promised boosts. At least not for a LONG time.

I have been reading and watching the videos. Based on the here-say on the forums, and the vague responses in interviews….

If everyone’s idea of “Nerfing” is posting a revealed buff after coming out of stealth, who will the truly effect. With my P/D build, I am already getting the revealed buff when coming out of stealth opening fire, I almost never waist it… so does that mean that the 1% percent of the time that I happen to fail on engaging when coming out of stealth will now make my play style 1% more difficult ?

I am intrigued.

Karolis.4261:

Geiir.7603:

I don’t think this will hit us as much as we expect. And if they give us the boosts they were talking about I’m really eager to start on the patch! They were talking about giving other weapon sets more mobility so that we won’t need the SB for it any longer. They also talked about giving us more mobility in general and more team support stuff, so this patch sounds more like a plus for us thieves than a drawback. I’m sick of feeling the need to have a SB with me for mobility and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

Trust me, we aint getting those promised boosts. At least not for a LONG time.

That’s what I’m afraid for too… They have promised things before and just skip it in the end. I just hope that this time they’ll actually do it.

Rainbow.3496:

WAIT. So you can stack CnD now?! yay! so you can stack it, but you just cant come out of stealth or youll get revealed?

No you can’t stack CnD. I assume if and set can stack stealth it’d be D/P and D/P alone.

Piogre.2164:

Forgive me if I’m missing something here, but unless I’m mistaken, all “revealed” does is prevent immediate re-application of the buff that initiates it.

If I have a cake, and then I eat it, I would no longer have a cake, at least not until I make another one. Now, if the cake were to have been poisoned or drugged, or if it gave me diabetes, that would suck. But in this case, it does none of those things. I just don’t have a cake anymore. You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

Revealed may technically be a “debuff”, but it functions like a cooldown. Yes, a cooldown. Thieves don’t have to deal with nearly as many cooldowns as the rest of us, but you surely understand how it works. After you exit stealth, you need to wait a couple seconds to be able to use it again. And you can still prolong stealth by stacking duration- you can keep eating cake as long as you have it. But once you exit stealth, either by wearing it out or attacking, you need to wait a meager 3 seconds. Sorry.

Revealed doesn’t only prevent the skill that initiated it. It makes you immune to stealth. That means that any skill that would stealth you won’t work.

And yes it does work as a cooldown, because if it wasn’t there we would just CnD and backstab for ever. But this change IMO just prevents the defensive use of it through the Shadow arts tree(it gives regen and condition removal). I don’t like chain stealthing, but really, it was the only defensive option except for retreating for the build that most thieves use in WvW. I would love this change if they also gave us some alternative to have some regeneration/healing without retreating.

What I see happening from this change, is most thieves abandoning shadow arts because it really is more a pain in the kitten than it is useful with this change and just getting deadly arts instead, because it’s the second most viable option, and the rest of them trading SA for the Acrobatics tree, going for a semi-tank build.

Everyone is whining for glass cannon thieves, but they do not understand that not every thief wants to play glass cannon, but really it IS the only good option that we have at the moment, and this change is only making it worse. I expect even more whining now as more thieves go full GC.

Geiir.7603:

I don’t think this will hit us as much as we expect. And if they give us the boosts they were talking about I’m really eager to start on the patch! They were talking about giving other weapon sets more mobility so that we won’t need the SB for it any longer. They also talked about giving us more mobility in general and more team support stuff, so this patch sounds more like a plus for us thieves than a drawback. I’m sick of feeling the need to have a SB with me for mobility and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

As others mentioned above… the Dev’s while confirming the coming nerfs to stealth, talked only about “looking” at increasing the mobility of Thieves so as to not be so dependent on SB as well as boosting Thief’s ability to stay in a fight, etc…

So while it would be welcome… I definitely wouldn’t be hanging my hat on any positive boosts to Thief’s play style… certainly not in this patch at least.

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

Is this a joke?

I still think you should look into more specific changes.

For example lots of people find CnD spam and smoke field combo abuse out of combat to be silly.

CnD could be looked at in a way where you put something like a debuff called “feint” on its use, lasts 8 seconds while you have the debuff any other CnD do no damage (but still stealth) and refresh the buff, revealed clears the debuff, this would allow thieves to still burn their initiative to escape but prevent trolling new players that don’t know whats happening with 1 hit every 3-4 seconds.

Combo fields could be adjusted just by making a sucessful combo count as a landed hit thus preventing someone hopping back and forth across a field away from everyone for a long stealth duration.

But meh personally never encountered either of these just something I hear people complain about.

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

WAS THEIR NO THOUGHT TO THE HUGE NERF THIS WOULD HAVE TO PVE?

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

Congratulations, you’ve broken Thief PvE.

Do you even THINK before you just lob this absolute garbage out to the masses? If revealed duration was a problem, why have you applied it to PvE and not just sPvP and possibly WvW? Why punish PvE players for this? The SOTG change would have been PERFECT. It doesn’t affect any Thieves who play even slightly well in any environment, as almost all stealths will end with an intentional attack, but players fighting against Thieves would be in a better place after properly out-playing and out-manoeuvring them while they try and land their stealth burst. Instead, we get THIS?!

Meanwhile, Warriors/Guardians + Mesmers remain king. I’m quite frankly disgusted. I am now 100% convinced you do not actually care about PvE AT ALL and are quite happy for non-heavies and non-Mesmers to be absolutely worthless to any group that wants to be effective.

Hanging on a thread here.

unfortunately PvE is often left out of the thinking process where balance is concerned, oh sure they attempted to when they nerfed quickness massively (1 second more duration on a minute cooldown move thats had its effectiveness halfed, wheee)

PvP tends to be way more vocal and of course the changes effect both sides of the fight which are (potentially) paying customers.

I’ve never seen a game that hasn’t had its pve demolished at some point due to pvp changes that the developers just failed to actually think about, I don’t see why GW2 should be an exception.

that said these changes haven’t quite done that, theres a wide negative effect, they’ve pretty much managed to nerf every single thief build in some fashion this patch but not to a game destroying degree YET.

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

Seriously? So thieves and endlessly cloak and dagger players like they do currently? A thief appearing for a quarter a second just to cloak and dagger again is stupid.

Why isn’t this issue with Cloak and Dagger being dealt with?

I think adding 1.5 seconds revealed debuff when leaving stealth without an attack would be much better solution than add 1 more second to the revealed debuff with the attack. It would at least prevent CnD chain permastealth.

Imo they made the right call with this change, culling fix + and extra second reveal will give people a lot more time to react.

On top of that if they had gone through with the change as intended a lot of thief utilities and traits would become counterintuitive as to what they where supposed to do, and punish our only form of substain and make us even more predictable.

in 1v1 a thief that chains c&d is either a condi thief or a hybrid power as pure burst should never and can’t stick around long anyway duo to the way it’s build.

in 1v1 a thief using c&d like that is a lot easier to deal with as c&d is still a melee skill that eats half initiative and he has less targets to c&d on.

In bigger groups fight this still means thieves could chain a stealth to lay low and substain in the fight without having to retreat straight away.

Imo that is good as almost all other classes have forms of substain or ways to absorb/deal with damage through longer fights, so overall i’m glad they reverted that change.

Each time they increase Revealed, they should increase in proportion the effect of all the Stealth attack skills that aren’t “Backstab”. Those skills are all only worth it when you can spam them back to back.

So, 33% more Revealed duration? Sure, give us 33% more damage and bleeding on the Pistol sneak attack. Give us a 3s Daze instead of a 2s Daze on Tactical Strike etc…

yeah the 1 second longer revealed totally wrecks sneak attack, its bleeds already ran out before you could reuse the skill unless you stacked bleed duration ><

Thieves had enough problems in PvE, and this just destroyed the PvE part of the thief…..

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

So you were taking a blatant glitch/bug/exploit (culling) being fixed and thus “nerfing” thief survivability because of said blatant glitch/bug/exploit being fixed into account when you were balancing?

What the actual Feline?

Jzaku.9765:

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

So you were taking a blatant glitch/bug/exploit (culling) being fixed and thus “nerfing” thief survivability because of said blatant glitch/bug/exploit being fixed into account when you were balancing?

What the actual Feline?

No culling in spvp last I checked.

randomfightfan.4091:

only thing that I’m not looking forward to is the mug nerf… oh well, guess I’ll have to adapt…

What is the mug nerf?

A.Net, i praise you for fixing the culling issue, even though it is a nerf to thieves who abused it, i was normally in the back lines of my zerg using a shortbow or dual pistol helping take down enemy zergs.

Lets get to the bread and butter on why im here, and thats perma-stealthing(in a sense). I know you guys dont want to “over-nerf” us, but lets face it, if i wait the stealth duration(4 seconds with my spec), and then use CnD(cloak and dagger), I can go stealth instantly, and ill recieve no revealed penalty. You’ve taken a good balance change, and turned it into a minor nerf, i can live with that, but when you decide to nerf whats really broken about thieves, i just know you wont revert the previous “4 second revealed duration” nerf.

I think you should of given us the proper nerf, and not a minor nerf, since now i can abuse stealth at the enemy back line, occupying 10+ people trying to kill me, while my zerg pushes in.

I cant balance thief for you, but this minor nerf will only change Thief PvE, PvP will be at a minimum, and stealth abuse will remain the same.

TL;DR i think you should of gone a different route, but its too late now, i will enjoy stealth abuse as much as possible, until you give us a reveal duration when we leave stealth.

Like do developers even understand basic math? They say the other nerf was worse but the increase of 1 second is 100x worse solution to the problem of CnD spaming in pvp. Does it even stop that ? Cause i dont think so. This nerf is just poorly thought out and shows how little thought A-net is putting into the game.

wookie.8934:

Jzaku.9765:

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

So you were taking a blatant glitch/bug/exploit (culling) being fixed and thus “nerfing” thief survivability because of said blatant glitch/bug/exploit being fixed into account when you were balancing?

What the actual Feline?

No culling in spvp last I checked.

I don’t see how that refutes or contradicts what I said at all? The fact remains that they still considered what essentially was an exploit into their balancing.

A well traited shadow arts thief is going to get less regen, less blinds, less backstabs, less dazes, and be targeted more often due to this revealed extension. That’s pretty bad mark down for a PvE thief who wasn’t overpowered anyway.

Jzaku.9765:

wookie.8934:

Jzaku.9765:

JonPeters.5630:

As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.

So you were taking a blatant glitch/bug/exploit (culling) being fixed and thus “nerfing” thief survivability because of said blatant glitch/bug/exploit being fixed into account when you were balancing?

What the actual Feline?

No culling in spvp last I checked.

I don’t see how that refutes or contradicts what I said at all? The fact remains that they still considered what essentially was an exploit into their balancing.

Because they only balance classes based on WvW scenarios where bugs are rampant, such as culling.

Please…